Allies & Adversaries

[Ghostwind]

A character collection of trusted advisors and cunning foes, Allies & Adversaries is a vital addition to every gamer’s library. Whether you’re a GM looking for a fully detailed villain to add to your arsenal, or a player looking for a ready-made character, this book has what you need, all fully illustrated and detailed in an easy-to-use format.

Allies & Adversaries features the artistic talent of Jason Engle in Talisman Studio's first product. This is the first product in the Legends Collection series of sourcebooks, providing characters and their statistics for use with any d20 game world. Contained within the pages of each book are 15 full-color characters, their histories, and complete statistics that make them the perfect choice for quick NPCs or full-fledged player characters to jump quickly into a game.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Allies and Adversaries is a character compendium to add NPCs to any d20 fantasy based game. The book is a short, 32 page full color collection of mainly high powered individuals that misses some important details in NPC creation.

First off, there is no table with a master listing of challenge ratings. A small thing in and of itself but one that would be nice to have. Second and more importantly, there is no methodology for how the characters were created. Without this knowledge, it’s difficult to decide how best to change elements of the characters that don’t fit with your own campaign style. Third, there are no challenge ratings. For the most part, this isn’t an issue as most of the characters within the book are base races but there are a few half breeds and non-standard races that hail from the Monster Manual which throws their Challenge Ratings off. Lastly, another minor point, there isn’t really anything unique about these characters. Bonds of Magic, an NPC collection of spellcasters by Malhavok, provided at least one unique thing in the form of a new spell, magic item or feat that the creatures had. All of these are completely self contained.

Now for the good news. The book is in full color with some great illustrations of each and every character. Each character has role playing notes, an easy to read stat block, and a chunk for background information. Most characters are world neutral so if you’re looking to add a dwarf fighter or a wandering elf monk, you won’t have any problems as the characters have no named homes in the backgrounds. There are some though, like Uthmar the Dragon, a 16th level barbarian, who won’t be appropriate for some games due to his conquest of oh, say about a quarter of the known world.

Characters are arranged in alphabetical order by character name so it’ll take a read through or two before you can find what you’re looking for. For example, if you’re looking for a good aligned cleric to help bump up you’re party’s healing, Lillith, a half-celestial 12th level cleric, might be exactly what you’re looking for. You wouldn’t look under cleric, or under CR 14, but under L for Lillith.

Hopefully any future releases in this series will include a methodology of how the characters were created, how their items were chosen and some unique factors to add value to the product. In the meanwhile, it remains a solid source of mid (minimum level of 10th) to high (20th) level characters for any d20 fantasy campaign. Those looking for a well-illustrated collection of characters will enjoy Allies and Adversaries.

 

[GameWyrd]

One day there will be a book of NPCs published that does not include an NPC with a parent slain by raiders background. One day there will be such a book but it isn’t today and it isn’t Allies and Adversaries. The very first character in the book, a dwarf fighter called Dagan, had his parents killed by Drow.

Cliched character backgrounds wont be your first impression of Allies & Adversaries. Your first impression will be "Coo. Pretty." It is an attractive book and its super model thin with only 32 pages. Allies & Adversaries is full colour. Really, full colour, the pages aren’t white but a lovely weathered and decorated leather style instead. Your second thought, if you’re anything like me, is to wonder just how much it costs to colour 32 pages. The suggested price at the back of the book is $14.95. I think there are two ways of looking at that; that’s not all that much more expensive than many of the black and white "guide" books, on the other hand, it’s nearly a third extra. Hmm, but it is a pretty book. Did I say that? All the female characters inside are pretty too.

There are 15 characters in all and you’ll have to go through and count them yourself because there isn’t any sort of index. The best way to find an NPC that you think will suit your needs when you’re in a hurry is to flick through, check out the top quality character portraits and stop when you see one that fits. As I said all the female characters are pretty and all the warriors are muscled and square jawed, apart from the assassin who’s tall, thin and sinister, or the wizard who is old, not really frail and dressed in a red robe. Allies & Adversaries simply wont win any prizes for originality. The illustrations don’t need to be original though, the quality carries them through and inspiration shines from each. The text, the stats and background, on the other hand doesn’t shine as much. It’s not easy finding an NPC you want to use, especially if you’re in a hurry. There are valid calls for an index by class, by race or even by challenge rating. Even having one of those tables would mean that there would be one fewer NPC in a book where people are already likely to inspect for value for money. I’m not sure you’d want to find one of these allies or adversaries in a hurry either, I think the weakest is challenge rating 10, the strongest 20 and the average rating must be around 15. These are the sorts of challenge ratings campaign villains should have, or perhaps the player characters’ mentor and these are the NPCs that I can only imagine most GMs would to design for themselves. Just when will you need to reach for a book and grab an unexpected CR18 hero?

The best way to sum up Allies and Adversaries is as a luxury item. If you can afford it and buy it then you’re not likely to be disappointed with your purchase. That first "if" hurdle is the biggest challenge though, if you’re only going to buy one accessory in 2003 then its unlikely to be this book. Did I mention how pretty it is?

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Eridanis]

Not to mention the fact that several of the NPCs are error-riddled (for example: Malgrim, the fighter4/wiz12, has four attacks listed when he should only have three, even with his spear of speed). The character descriptions also leave one scratching one's head; Maliss, the Paladin 10/ Blackguard 4, is described as having turned to evil on his first campaign, but that would seem to mean that he'd earned ten paladin levels sitting around and training. Not terribly logical.

Buy this book for the great Jason Engle paintings, and not as a source for thought-provoking characters.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Allies & Adversaries is a collection of mid to high level NPCs from Bastion Press, under the Legends Collection series.

Allies & Adversaries is a 32-page full-colour softback product costing $14.95. The layout is attractive with a standard font size, but large margins. On the left hand side of each page is an illustration taking up about 3/4 of the page, whilst the right hand page is all text - one character per two pages, giving 15 characters in total, plus credits and OGL. The artwork by Jason Engle is exquisite - probably the best I've seen in any d20 product so far. The writing style is average, tending to be a bit nebulous. Editing seems good.

Each character has some brief roleplaying notes, a non-standard stat block (containing errors) and a background history. CRs range from 10 to 20, races are mainly human and elf (no halflings, half-orcs or gnomes - not attractive enough for the book I guess), and cover most of the core classes and some of the prestige classes from Core Rulebook II. There is no listing by level, CR, race, and no index.

One of the advertised advantages of the product is the setting neutral backgrounds. I am fairly sceptical of claims like this as either the background ends up being bland (as is the case with many of these characters), or its just not a lot of use (take Uthmar the Barbarian whose "first campaign outside the Icy Desert was against the Southern Empire" and who "has conquered all the lands above the Crown Mountains". I have neither icy desert, southern empire, nor Crown Mountains in my campaign and its just as hard to change these details as it would have been if Uthmar had come from Anauroch, warred against Amn, and conquered all the lands north of the Spine of the World).

Conclusion:
With its broken stat blocks, nebulous text, and high price for the number of pages, I cannot recommend this product. None of the characters stand out as colourful in personality or original in concept. If you like great art, or want a cool picture for your human or elf character, this might be worth a look, but the art is not enough to fix a mediocre game product.

 

[Arnwyn]

Examples of "broken", please. This review wasn't particularly helpful.

 

[Simon Collins]

Arnwyn

Here is a list of the errors in the stat block for the first character, Dagan the 14th-level Dwarven Fighter:
1. Entry that reads hit points instead of hit dice - this listed as 14d10+140. This character has a Con of 22 - therefore should be 14d10+84 (and therefore 245 hit points also wrong).
2. Skill points are calculated incorrectly, so he is at least 14 points short of the skill levels actually given. Thats without factoring in any of the armour check penalties from plate.
3. Improved Critical, Weapon Focus, and Weapon Specialisation are not defined in terms of weapon. Which wouldn't be too bad, except that the only weapon the character has is a +4 keen, "might cleaving", vorpal dwarven war axe - a weapon for which he needs the Exotic Weapon Proficiency (at least until v3.5), which is not included on his list of feats.
4. The character has Great Cleave as a feat, making the mighty cleaving aspect of his dwarven great axe somewhat redundant. Not an error per se, just not too sharp (excuse the pun).
5. He has a +5 shield (type unidentified), and +2 platemail (not identified as full or half plate), which would give a minimum AC bonus of 15 (small shield +5, half plate +2), or maximum of 17 (large shield +5, full plate +2). However, his AC lists the armour bonus as +14.
6. His Will save is listed as +6. They presumably forgot to add the bonus from his Iron Will feat. It should be +8 with this included.
7. The Attack of his War Axe is at +21/+17/+12/+7. Firstly, a 14th level fighter gets only three attacks per round as standard, not four. Secondly, the progression between the first and second attack is at +4 instead of +5. Thirdly, its wrong - it should start at 22, if weapon specialisation is factored in.
8. His speed is listed as 30 ft. This should be 15 ft (for a dwarf in plate).

The rest of the characters show similar faults. In fact, on re-reading I would change the comment on editing to average as I found several more mistakes I'd missed first time round in terms of spelling. Not all the above rules comments may be perfect - its just off the top of my head, without reference to books, but most of it will stick.

Arnwyn, I'm always willing to try and improve the quality of my reviews. However, this requires _constructive_ criticism from EN World's readership about what they want to see. If you make a crtiticism of a review I have written, I would appreciate some detail about what you would like to see different. In what way was my review unhelpful? I believe most people would be intensely bored by seeing the listing I have just given you - if I say a product has broken stat blocks, I expect most readers to understand that I found several errors such as the ones I listed above, without having to list them one by one. But I'd appreciate your views on this and any other suggestions for improvement.

Simon Collins

 

[ASEO]

I must say, the list of problems is exactly what I want to know about.
This kind of specifics really lets me know if the company has an idea how D&D3ed works, or if they are trying to slop the 3ed logo on some poorly reworked 2ed notes like Fast Forward Games does.

ASEO out

 

[Simon Collins]

ASEO

What do you get from me listing what's broken that you don't get from me telling you it's broken? Except eyestrain ;-)

Simon Collins

 

[ASEO]

The specifics let me know that it is character generation game mechanics that is the problem, and not poorly developed feats, spells or prestige classes. Do you need to list every problem in the book? No, but the example you provided above was what I'd want to know about, even if it was a bit sarcastically provided. If there is a Prestige class that is broken, let me know what aspects of it are broken, not just that it is "over/under powered".
Personally, I like your reviews and I think you were generous to this product since it had such grievous problems. I know that when a product blows it can take a lot of work to fix (if you even think that is worth the effort) and that for some poorly developed products it would be nearly impossible to list all the specific problems (Hell, a list from Dungeonworld would be longer than the original product), but the type of example you gave is right on. Keep up the great work.

ASEO out