Fantasy Personae - Sages, Spies, and Informants
FANTASY PERSONAE - SAGES, SPIES, AND INFORMANTS
By Alex Freed
The Inner Circle product number INC2000
36-page PDF, $7.00
[This review is of a product primarily intended for the DM, detailing NPCs that could easily become recurring characters in a campaign. If you're a player whose DM is planning on using this product, please do yourself a favor and don't read past the first 8 paragraphs. I'll remind you when it's time to quit reading. Thanks!]
Some time ago, I was sent a product link to download a review copy of
Fantasy Personae - Sages, Spies, and Informants. As is my habit when receiving unsolicited material, I set it aside in my "to be eventually reviewed" pile, figuring I'd get to it when the opportunity arose. Recently having finished up all of my other commitments, I took a peek in my "to be eventually reviewed" pile and rediscovered this one. To tell the truth, I picked this one for two main reasons: it was short (34 pages when printed out), and I recognized The Inner Circle as the company that put out the excellent
Denizens of Avadnu; since I liked that product so much, I figured I'd probably like this one.
I was right.
The cover art is a painting by Jason Rosenstock, depicting a white-haired female spellcaster (a cloud giant, as it turns out) with arms spread wide and sporting an outfit with some rather interesting sleeves. Jason creates some nice "magic wave effects" emanating from the figure, and does a good job with the shading. All in all, it's a rather simple piece, but effective.
The interior artwork was provided by Robert J. Gallagher, Jason Rosenstock, and Michael A. Mumich, although I had to go back and find it because I had originally printed out the "printer-friendly" version of the PDF. (The printer friendly version is 34 pages and has no interior artowrk; the one with the artwork included is 36 pages.) In any case, they provide a full-color illustration of each NPC, which is an unexpected bonus in a PDF (from my own admittedly limited experience, in any case). The artwork is about average for the most part, and I found that their interpretations didn't often match my own mental picture of the NPCs in question (perhaps because I initially read the "printer friendly" version), but there are a few above-average pieces in here as well. I particularly liked the picture of Yvath Cawin (with runes all over his golden skin) on page 30, and the illustration of Tabra Marto on page 21 not only synched up well with my own mental image of the NPC but has some nice lighting effects.
Fantasy Personae - Sages, Spies, and Informants details 10 different NPCs geared for fantasy d20 games, each an expert in a particular subject. That doesn't sound very interesting, does it? You'd be forgiven for assuming that the NPCs are along the lines of Joe Average Sage #1, who maxed out his skill points in Knowledge (arcana), and Jane Average Sage #2 (who lives down the street), who put all of her skill points into Knowledge (the planes). Not knowing exactly what to expect, that's what I figured the NPCs would be like.
Silly me. I couldn't have been more wrong; instead, each of these NPCs is an extraordinarily creative, fully fleshed out character that will make an information-gathering session much more interesting than you'd probably expect it could be.
[Okay, those of you who are players whose DM might be using Fantasy Personae - Sages, Spies, and Informants, time for you to stop reading, because I'm going to start getting into specifics. Don't ruin it for yourself, or your DM!]
The first NPC is Cogswrack, a clockwork gargoyle expert 1, who lives on an island retreat where until recently he was a sort of manservant/butler to three different wizards who performed experiments and offered advice to those willing to pay. Another is the Prince of Mosquitos, a djinni conjurer 7 exiled from the Elemental Plane of Air who has set himself up as an information broker. Then there's Presage, a shapeshifting alien probe from another reality out to learn as much as it can about the Prime Material Plane of the campaign world and is willing to trade information it has about other planes. Anyone seeking zoological information might seek out Tabra Marto, a phasm duelist 3/horizon walker 2 who has a well-developed "cover life" as a human expert on various monsters (and who, sadly, has amassed some significant gambling debts). What impressed me most about this PDF is not only the creativity of the NPCs themselves, but also Alex's willingness to embrace Open Game Content from various sources - scanning Section 15 of the PDF, I see he's using material from both the D&D and d20 Modern SRDs, Green Ronin's
Advanced Bestiary and
Mutants and Masterminds, Silverthorne's
Book of Templates: Deluxe Edition and
Template Troves, Volume 1: Serpents, Spiders, and Godlings, Wizards of the Coast's
Unearthed Arcana, The Game Mechanics'
Swords of Our Fathers, and The Inner Circle's own
Denizens of Avadnu. I really like seeing the OGL being used like this, and best of all, you don't need to have any of these products to be able to use this one; all of the relevant information is provided.
Each NPC write-up has sections detailing their physical appearance, background, attitudes (how they'll react when they're hostile, unfriendly, indifferent, friendly, or helpful, depending on the PCs' success at their Diplomacy checks), reputation and rumors (a Knowledge table with different known "facts" about the NPC depending upon how high a DC the Knowledge check covers), "adventure ideas" (actually a bit of a misnomer, as each NPC has only one adventure idea provided), alternatives (two different ways to tweak the NPC to fit into slightly different roles in the campaign), a stat block (pretty good for the most part; I'll list discrepancies in a later section), and where necessary the book or PDF where you can find additional information about the NPC's race/class/template. Then, after the 10 NPC write-ups, there's an additional 9 bare-bones ideas (no stats) for other NPCs that might make for interesting encounters.
Proofreading and editing were both pretty good; I only caught a few errors that made it past "Layout & Typesetting" guru Jeffrey J. Visgaitis (the closest I can find to a proofreader or editor on the credits page): one instance of a missing space merging two words ("avoidthe"), a word missing a letter ("nconscious"), a period taking the place of a space between two words ("pursuit.of"), and an "apostrophe-s" following a name that ends in an "s" ("Tobias's"), although that's starting to become so common nowadays I wonder if it isn't becoming an accepted alternative. Like I said, not too bad at all. The only conceptual problem I noted was in the initial quote leading into the Tabra Marto material: I sincerely doubt that a "zoological expert" would have difficulty distinguishing between the tracks of a Huge bulette and a Large owlbear. If you look at their respective illustrations in the
Monster Manual, their feet look nothing alike. (He also uses the term "aberration," but since he's probably unaware of D&D creature type classifications - or at least doesn't use the same terminology in-game - I'm willing to let that one slide.)
It's also probably worth mentioning that since each NPC starts at the beginning of a new page, there are several pages with considerable white space at the end. I know this generally isn't a big deal with PDFs, but I thought I'd mention it for those who, like me, prefer printing out their PDFs and slapping them in a binder.
As for the stat blocks, I can't account for the accuracy of all of them - not having all of the "section 15" materials listed - but I did note the following few items, which I'll list as my "unofficial errata" and hope that I haven't overlooked something simple (it happens):
- p. 6, Daiyev the Faceless, female twilight hagling doppelganger rogue 6: Flat-footed AC should be 23, not 21 (due to uncanny dodge). Fort should be +6, not +8 (+1 as a 4-HD monstrous humanoid, +2 as a Rog6, +3 Con).
- p. 12, Lhorighast the Emissary, male half-fiend ooze human monk 12/blackguard 2: Will should be +11, not +10 (+8 as a Mnk12, +0 as a Blk2, +3 Wis).
- p. 15, The Prince of Mosquitos, male djinni conjurer 7: He should have 7 feats (plus Improved Initiative as a bonus feat, as a djinn), not 6 plus the bonus feat. (He gets 5 feats for having 14 HD as a djinn, plus two bonus feats - at 1st and 5th levels - as a conjurer 7.)
- p. 21, Tabra Marto (human form), phasm duelist 3/horizon walker 2: AC should be 22, not 18 (+6 Dex [+2 normal Dex, plus another +4 from gloves of Dexterity that he wears while in human form], +1 armor from bracers of armor, +2 deflection from a ring of protection, and +3 from Intelligence [apparently a duelist can use his Int bonus - up to his duelist class level, at least - to apply towards his AC, except when flat-footed]). Likewise, touch AC should be 21, not 17. +1 wounding rapier attacks should be at +22 melee, not +19 (+16 BAB, +6 Dex with Weapon Finesse). Likewise, under Full Attack his rapier attacks should be at +22/+17/+12/+7 melee, not +19/+14/+19/+4. Fort should be +13, not +11 (+5 as a 15-HD aberration/humanoid, +1 as a duelist 3, +3 as a horizon walker 2, +0 Con, +4 phasm "resilient" bonus). Ref should be +18, not +14 (+5 as a 15-HD aberration/humanoid, +3 as a duelist 3, +0 as a horizon walker 2, +6 Dex, +4 phasm "resilient" bonus).
- p. 26, Xaicounta, female cloud giant sorcerer 15: Fort should be +23, not +25 (+10 as a 17-HD giant, +5 as a Sor5, +5 Con, +1 robe of stars, +2 Great Fortitude). Ref should be +14, not +16 (+5 as a 17-HD giant, +5 as a Sor15, +1 Dex, +1 robe of stars, +2 Lightning Reflexes).
Stat block glitches aside, I really liked
Fantasy Personae - Sages, Spies, and Informants; it's a very imaginative resource sure to liven up any campaign when it comes time to hunt out an expert in a field that the PCs aren't too knowledgeable in. Just reading through the PDF should give any DM dozens of plot hooks - in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if many DMs go out of their way to incorporate these NPCs, whether their "knowledge specialty" comes into play at all; I know I'm tempted to throw Cogswrack the clockwork gargoyle into my own campaign just because I like his backstory. I give this PDF a hearty "4 (Good)," and look forward to any possible sequels to the
Fantasy Personae line in the future.
