Product Description
Heroes need to be prepared for anything, which means having the right weapons and gear on hand at all times. The well-stocked pages of this book hold an impressive inventory of merchandise to get you into and out of all manner of trouble, including:
A caravanload of equipment, trade goods, alchemical items, poisons, mounts, and vehicles.
Over 230 magic weapons and armors, such as the flameshroud axe, lance of the unending charge, and vampire hunter armor.
Over 125 magic items, including new artifacts, such as elixir armor, rings of the hive mind, the ghost rod, and the bag of endless caltrops.
Rules for vehicle combat on land, sea, and air.
Within these pages, players and Dungeon Masters will find what they need to outfit their characters for nearly every contingency.
To use this accessory, a Dungeon Master also needs the Player’s Handbook and the
Dungeon Master’s Guide. A player needs only the Player’s Handbook.
Brad Smith @ 3:39 pm
I love equipment books. They give you more options, more TOYS to play with. Properly done, they’re great for any game.
This is fairly well done, too.
Arms and Equipment Guide (A&EG) descends from a long line of D&D equipment/specialized rule books, such as Aurora’s Whole Realms catalog, Of Ships & Sea, and, of course, the AD&D2 Arms and Equipment Guide. It also collects a lot of things that have appeared in print in other supplements, like weapons from Sword & Fist and magical vehicle equipment from Dragon magazine; while you’re (possibly) paying for the same thing twice, you get it all in one place, which is quite handy.
If you’re looking for anything that can be remotely construed as a possession, this is for you. There are new weapons, new armors (and materials for each), new adventuring gear, detailed rules for mounts, hirelings, and vehicles, and the required magic item section…at 56 pages, the longest section of this 160-page hardcover.
The magic item section has elicited most of the comment. There are a bevy of new special weapons, the special properties of which are easily reverse-engineered for use elsewhere. There are a lot of new wondrous items, rods, and rings as well, many of which are rather cheap for what they do. And, of course, you can also now add armor enhancements to your Bracers of Armor, which will be loved by rogues and wizards everywhere. New rules for creating intelligent magic items are included, which have long been needed. Many named intelligent items (such as Black-razor) are included, and there are a few new artifacts (like the Regaliae of Good and Neutrality).
In summation, really, it’s a nice, nifty book. Just take the things in it with a grain of salt, and get your DM’s final say before you make your paired Ringweapons so you can wear four rings at once.
Rabbitbait @ 5:36 pm
This book is what it claims to be. No more, no less.
It has a lot of new equipment for PC’s and some handy rules for the use of it. The most useful part of the book and the only part that really differs from the Players handbook and the DMG is the vehicle rules and stats which I had felt was lacking greatly in the original core books.
Unfortunately in the charts for weapons, items, magic items etc, this book does not include any of the stuff from the Players Handbook or the DMG which means you either have to make your own lists or refer to both books if you want the basic stats for any items. This is a small niggle but, it is always nice to know which chart to refer to when you need to know something.
It is a good sourcebook, but if you are wanting anything that is particularly new or exciting then it is not worth the cover price. This book is more an expansion on the old stuff than anything new.
Rafael Lopes Vivian @ 8:15 pm
First off, let me point out that we’re talking of a 152-page hardcover D&D book, and one that’s entitled to bring you only the newest in arms and equipment.
Unfortunately this book will hardly help you at all, if you want any of this. The book could bring on hundreds of new mundane equipment, but instead wastes too many pages describing its few magic items you’ll hardly use, which actually sounds like they forced some irrelevant material in just to make the book a little longer.
All chapters seem to miss something. “Weapons and armor” have lots of totally new things, yes, but overlook many usual weapons that you won’t find in any other book so far. “Vehicles” has only around 20 vehicles in a total of 18 pages, while the “Mounts” sub-chapterchapter brings you so many creatures you’ll never use, that it makes you kind of frustrated.
The book is also too confusing. Wanna hire a soldier? If you get into the rules of guilds, market and whatnot, you’ll certainly give up, because the variables make it too hard to bother.
I don’t know, I really favor the old-fashion equipment books they used to make, with hundreds and hundreds of things you’ll actually need some day, not just some source of new treasure hoard. I’m sorry for their attempt.
Anonymous @ 8:16 pm
I end up buying too many sourcbooks as i like to collect them. What i actually use from these books rarely justifies the cost. That’s the case with the 3rd edition AaEG, a book that has some solid rules and some stuff that makes you scratch your head (such as flippers and a snorkel). Although many people don’t care, the art is the same as the splatbooks, and despite being hardcover the book is completely b/w, and not especially great. Sometimes i really miss the full-page color templates from 2nd edition. Anyway, the book is broken down into mundane adventuring items, magical items, and vehicles. The biggest section is the magic items, and while many of them are nice, such as the manticore blade +3 that fires projectiles, a lot of the items are just tried and true and generic “it lets you cast true strike twice per day.”
Many of the items are gleaned from Dragon and other sourcebooks, but as i lack most of those so it’s all new to me. Still, I just can’t shake the feeling that i could have thought of that magic item myself without paying someone to tell me…
guth_r @ 8:40 pm
Yeah, it’s the Arms & Equipment book for the 3.0 and probably the 3.5 series unless Wizards decides to update it to 3.5 with new wacky items. Basically the book is a little handbook of mercenaries and followers, gadgets like spyglasses and wacky little knives that your characters hold in between thier fingers, and other strange equipment like that. There’s also rules for mounts and vehicles. However, this information is fine and dandy but I couldn’t justify paying the price the Wizards wants for this book for some wacky gadgets and expanded rules that are already explained in the PHB and DMG. If you have the extra cash, or someone is looking to give you a gift, ask for this book but don’t expect much. But if you’re spending your own hard earned cash, look somewhere else. This isn’t like the 2nd edition Arms & Equipment book that gave rules for cool thief tools and castles. It’s just a DM guide to wacky gadgets, vehicles, and mounts. Oh yeah, and how to hire hirelings and mercenaries. Whatever….