E.N.Guilds: Adventurers' Guild
E.N. Guilds: Adventurers' Guild is a pdf product from E.N. Publishing, the fourth in E.N. Publishing's Guild Series. Written by Robert Hunter, Adventurers' Guild features a fully detailed guild devoted to supporting adventurers to insert into your campaign, including guild services, membership benefits, organisation and new feats, spells and a prestige class. This pdf has a page count of 27 pages, 1 page devoted to OGL declarations, 1 page to the cover, and 1 page to a table of contents and the credits, leaving 24 pages to detail the guild itself. E.N. Guilds: Adventurers' Guild normally retails on RPGNow for $4.95.
Initial Impressions:
Adventurers' Guild follows the same layout and structure as the other products in the E.N.Guilds series, and this is a nice little touch that gives the whole series a more complete feel. There are four pieces of art in this pdf, although only the cover is really worth a mention, as the other pieces are simple pencil sketches, and not the best. The cover itself is used three time in the pdf, and some of the other art is repeated as well, though only sections of it. Layout is a little scratchy in places, such as the table layout not being consistent throughout, but otherwise is put together in a decent fashion. Editing missed a few errors, but nothing major.
Content wise the pdf details the guild completely, giving such details as membership, death in service, services offered such as selling weapons, armor or equipment; messaging services, job seeking services, and a host of other details. It's a complete package, with as much detail as you can expect, including some things unique to the guild such as feats, spells or prestige classes. Unfortunately, the material itself wasn't very exciting, with almost no inspirational ideas or suggestions, just a detailed overview of a guild - a very mechanical approach. For example, the guild itself doesn't have an interesting history (created for adventurers by adventurers sums it up), it offers most of the services you can expect, the prestige class is strange and has some poorly explained mechanics, and a few others. But more on that in the details.
The Details:
The pdf is divided into four chapters, each addressing a different aspect of the Adventurers' Guild.
Chapter 1: This chapter provides an overview of the guild, including its inner machinations, services provided, history and other pertinent details. The guild itself was founded by adventurers for adventurers, in order to aid them support their communities in fighting dangers. Members gain certain benefits, such a death in service resurrection, and different levels of service depending on membership fees paid. Other benefits include mail services, equipment services, maps and scribing services, and local knowledge and history services within the area the guild operates from. Being a member requires some responsibility beyond just adventuring and dealing with danger, such as aid in dealing with fires or to bolster the local military force. There are some hints at intriguing ideas surrounding the role of the guild during wartime, but it's not as detailed as I would've hoped. Guild politics would've made an interesting addition to this chapter, given its involvement with the local militia.
The majority of the chapter is devoted to the services provided, each with details, cost and availability. A lot of the information could've been condensed, as services related to armor, equipment, clothing, weapons etc. were all broadly similar. Normal items can be sold at better prices than half the market value, while magical items generally sell for significantly less. You can sell items or swap them, but there's nothing to buy. There are some odd mechanics in, for example, the upgrade service, which allows you to upgrade equipment, weapons or armor. For equipment the upgrade is costed as equivalent to a +1 bonus for each upgrade in quality, but that doesn't explain upgrading say, a lute to a masterwork lute which should not be that expensive or for that matter has a +1 qualifier. Other than a few poorly worded sentences, and some aspects not explained clearly, it was a solid chapter giving everything required from the guild.
Chapter 2: This chapter details the guild secrets, such as their common skill uses, and feats. Typical skills found within a guild are detailed, and their uses described, such as Appraise used to give value to items or equipment or Knowledge (local) to give information on the local area and environment. Three new feats are described: Multitask (enables you to simultaneously cast two 1st level spells), Greater Multitask (enables you to simultaneously cast a 2nd level and 1st level spell) and Vivid Memory (grants a photographic memory allowing the use of Knowledge skills untrained). I didn't find these feats particularly well conceived. For example, the Multitask feat lets you cast two first level spells as a standard action, but the concentration check is only DC 12, and the feat requires the ability to cast 3rd level arcane spells. The concentration check is almost an automatic pass for most casters. In addition, the feat under the 'Normal' heading describes that you would need to normally cast spells one after the other or find situations where you are able to move faster than normal, such as the Haste spell. Clearly a holdover from earlier editions. Some might argue balance as well related to these feats.
Chapter 3: The Information Weaver prestige class is described in this chapter. This class is an information gatherer, one who is capable of projecting an image of himself great distances to seek knowledge or manage it. It has two main abilities: Ethereal Projection and Gemini Form, the first allowing the weaver to send visual illusions of himself or a creature he's familiar with to locations and communicate at those locations, while the second appears to allow the Information Weaver to send out more than one form or some form of object such as a parchment, but the wording is often weak in the descriptions. On another front, one of the prerequisites for the class is a high ability score, that is, Con 13+. To me this is poor design - what happens if the Information Weaver suffers Con poison damage? Does the class lose all its abilities, and which of those does it keep? On top of that, the saving throw and BAB progressions use non-standard progressions, the BAB weaker than the Wizard poor progression. The Information Weaver is not a class for PCs, but DMs might find them useful as a kind of 'oracle' that can appear and disappear while guiding PCs with information.
Chapter 4: The last chapter details the magic and gods of the guild. Three new spells are given: Restore (removes environmental damage from mundane items, such as water-logged books), Transfer Enchantment (transfer the enhancement from one magical weapon to another, the name is a misnomer), and Unseen Filer (an adaptation of Unseen Servant for office work). New magical items are also described, and these include the Chronicle Log (writing in one log appears in its partner within a certain range) and the Eye of the Beholder (a petrified eye that acts like a visual recorder of data). The spell levels on the spell were probably too high given their abilities, while Transfer Enchantment is probably open to abuse in that the spell description allows a certain chance that the spell might provide additional benefits to the new weapon the [enhancement is transferred to, but there is no limitation on whether this enhancement can be done again to gain even more benefit from the spell.
The pdf ends by providing in the appendixes tables of typical weapons, equipment and armor found in the guild, along with guild prices and general comments, the comments being a nice little addition. However, my overall impression of this pdf was not very positive. The guild was mechanically well described, although the supporting material in spells, prestige class and feats was on the weak side. The flavor text was largely missing, and as such there was not a lot to entice me into using this guild in a campaign, although I do believe that it can be used successfully with some creative integration work provided by DMs, particularly in the politics area between the guild and the local militia during war time.
Conclusions:
E.N. Guilds: Adventurers' Guild details a guild devoted to supporting adventurers by providing a variety of services two them. Adventurers can keep in contact via the mail services, use the local information provided to aid them in navigating the local area or sell their equipment or trade it for different equipment. It's a completely detailed guild, but some of the mechanics is weak when it comes to feats, spells, and the prestige class. There is a lot of usable material in the guild overview, but there's also a lot that would require some work on a DMs part, and the pdf wasn't strong on the ideas front. Based on a complete detail, but lacking in strong mechanics and flavour, and generally not enticing material, I'd grade it with two and a half stars, rounding up to three.
