drnuncheon
Explorer
This has also been posted to the reviews database, but I'm putting it here because it will probably generate more discussion - I'd like to hear other folks' comments about the book. I'm assuming that since it's not really d20 it shouldn't go in the d20 forum, but if that turns out to be the proper place, please move it.
Reviewer's Note: This is not a playtest review, nor did I receive the book as a review copy. It is, however, a sort of karmic payback for me never writing a review of Midnight's Terror, which I did get free from the Kenzer folks.
The Kalamar Villain's Design Handbook is much like the characters and magic items described in its pages: fascinating ideas, but with some deep flaws.
Physical Appearance
$24.99 - 176 b&w pages, hardbound, including an 11 page index (very complete) and 2 pages of ads in the back.
Although the book is not printed on the glossy paper that WOTC and other companies tend to use for their hardbacks, the paper is high quality and feels very sturdy (and it doesn't show fingerprints like the glossy stuff, either). The art is fairly infrequent and no particular pieces stand out in my mind as being notably good or bad.
Advice
The book starts out with some excellent broad advice on what makes a good villain and how to tweak classic fantasy stereotypes to make them a bit more interesting. The 'villainous classes' information that follows, on the other hand, is not as good - mostly very obvious blurbs such as "Fighters make excellent villains in combat heavy campaigns" that seem to exist to fill space. How about showing us how to turn those stereotypes around? Hints on how a fighter could be used as a villain in a non-combat campaign would have been far more valuable.
There's also a Good aligned villain section - depending on your views of alignment, you may like it or hate it. It falls into the 'alignment is relative' theory that caused so much debate in earlier editions - are good intentions enough to make one 'good', even when they lead to acts like genocide, poisoning and the like? I don't think so, but the authors seem to.
There are 6 villain archetypes detailed, although each has a variety of sub-archetypes and even sub-sub archetypes, making for quite a few more. The main archetypes and sub-archetypes are well decribed, with notes that highlight the unique factors of each, and differences from the other archetypes. Each sub-archetype comes with a sample villain complete with descriptions and discussions of exactly why they are villains - these "Why?" sections range from the thought-provoking to the blindingly obvious. Stat blocks for the sample villains are neatly tucked into an appendix.
There are also discussions of villain motivations, henchmen, settings (discussing what types of villains are more appropriate to urban or wilderness areas) and organizations. The organizations section could have used a little more meat: it is basically a paragraph covering the type of organization in broad strokes, and then a set of 5 feats for a 'typical' villain from that organization. If you're not a Kalamar player, note that these feat paths do tend to include feats from the KoK Player's Guide. There's also a section on placing your villain inside an organization, with questions to make you think about his relationship with the organization and what that might reflect about the villain.
Mechanics
Feats
There are several new feats in the Villain Design Handbook, most of which look relatively balanced - many of them I would only take if it were strongly appropriate for the character in question, which is a decent enough measurement. The one that gives me pause is Spell Swap, which lets a wizard trade in a spell to spontaneously cast another spell which he has memorized. There's a Spellcraft check involved, and failure means the loss of both spell slots, but it's fairly powerful as it lessens one of the major advantages a sorcerer has over his wizardly cousins - the tactical flexibility of choosing the spell mix at casting time.
Anti-Feats
Then there's the Anti-Feats. An interesting idea, anti-feats are 'disadvantages' that can be taken, one per level. Two anti-feats will get you a regular feat. While it's an interesting concept, it has some fairly major flaws, and is probably one of the more disappointing parts of the book.
First, the anti-feats are randomly rolled on a d1000 table, meaning that you could easily get results that are no penalty at all.
For example, take a wizard with four anti-feats. 145: Craft Drilbu - my crafting and XP expentitures for drilbu go up to 125%. Oh, the humanity. 1000 - Zen Archery, I've got to subtract my Wis bonus from ranged attacks within 30 feet. I suppose that might come up. 231: My familiar loses the ability to fly. If it weren't a toad, that might have hurt. 879: Spirited Charge - I do only half damage when mounted and performing the charge action. Must remember to merely do normal attacks from horseback, I suppose.
Second, some of the conversions from feat to antifeat are particularly ill thought-out - take the Psionic Weapon anti-feat, for example: "Your melee weapon deals 1d4 fewer points of damage when you pay the cost of 1 power point." Others are useless, liek the Ability Focus anti-feat, which merely says "Choose one of your special attacks. This attack is less potnent than normal." I have to wonder how well this table was reviewed by both Kenzer and WOTC when things like that get past.
There's the core of an interesting idea here, but the execution is, sadly, very sloppy.
Prestige Classes
After that we have some Prestige Classes. Blackfoot is a 5-level 'revolutionary' class with mob-inciting abilities. Blue Salamanders are much like rogues with some added psionic abilities (although added as Spell-like abilities and not actual psionics.)
The first of the 'problem' PrCs is the Unchainer. It's a 5 level class that doesn't require any spellcasting to enter - but under it is a chart marked 'Unchainer Spells Known' and directly under that 'Free Domain Spells Per Day', which lists spells for levels 1-20. I am completely baffled by this table. Under the 'free domain' class ability you get to pick a domain from a short list, and your caster level is your Unchainer class level plus your cleric levels - but that would mean a Clr15/Unchainer5 would by the table be able to cast her free domain spell 5 times per day for levels 1-5 and 4 times a day for levels 6-9, in addition to the spellcasting ability of a 15th level cleric! That seems a bit excessive.
The Darklight Wizard is even worse. A 10-level prestige class that can potentially be entered at 2nd level (requirement: 5 ranks each in 2 Knowledge skills), which strips you of all of your levels when you enter it (but not ability scores, skills or feats), this PrC lets you get a new spell level with each level. Not a new /caster/ level - you'll be casting 9th level spells at your 9th level of darklight wizard. Well, you would if there were any 9th level spells on the darklight wizard list. Plus, you get class abilities like animate dead and control undead and 3 times the skill points of a normal wizard. Way too over the top for my taste, even if the list of spells is severely limited. The table here also has the 'spells known' header directly above the 'spells per day' header. Cut and paste error, I suppose.
After this, things calm down again with the Sentinels of the True Way (5 level PrC member of an anti-magical organization) and the True Disciples of Avrynner, a psionic group. Last is the veteran officer, which is a great concept that is crippled by the entry requirements - 8 ranks total in class skills plus 4 ranks each in 4 different Knowledge skills means that your typical fighter (the apparent target of the class, since it requires Weapon Specialization) can't get into the class at all - it would require all 20 levels of his skill points, unless he was human or had an Int bonus - while a fighter/wizard multiclass would be able to enter at 6th level. I'm not sure this is exactly what was intended.
None of these groups or classes, by the way, seem all that inherently villainous (with the exception of the Darklight Wizard and the Blue Salamanders) and many could be used as 'good' organizations or PrCs.
New Spells & Magic Items
The new spells cover a wide variety of territory. Some seem overpowered (like arm, which gives you an extra arm for 2 hours/level - this does not seem like a first level spell to me - or ball of disruption, a 4th level spell which does up to 15d6 damage and causes a variety of detrimental effects on spellcasting for the next 10 minutes in the area of effect). Some are underpowered (boil really shouldn't be a 2nd level spell - the ability to boil 3 quarts of water is pretty minor all things considered- or personal combustion, a 4th level spell that does less damage than a fireball and hurts the caster as well). Some seem fine (like night watchman, a sort of combination alarm and unseen servant). Some are just plain strange (like tooth decay, or bat accident, which covers the target in guano. No, really.)
The next rulesy section is on magic items - mostly items with curses or drawbacks. There are a few rules hiccups here, like the arrow which compels its firer to go retrieve it after it is shot (with no save apparently possible, and apparently ignoring the fact that magic arrows are basically only good for one shot anyway), but for the most part the items are well done - and you won't have to worry too much about your players wanting to keep them.
Etc.
The rules finish up with some new monsters - the Darkling Snatcher (a goblinoid) and the Guardian Effigy (a sort of mini-golem), plus a set of undead templates - renamed wraiths, ghouls, mummies, vampires and wights, intelligent skeletons and zombies, and of course the lich. Each of the templates has a detailed description of the ritual needed to add it, and the templates themselves look fairly reasonable.
There's also a short 'adventure' in the book (although it's more just an 'encounter') - a simple run-in with some slavers.
But what about Evil?
So, the question that is no doubt on everyone's mind after all of this is, "How does it stack up against AEG's Evil?" The two books share such a similarity in focus that a comparison is inevitable.
Evil is ~$5 cheaper, but almost 50 pages shorter, and with larger type to boot. It's also a softback. The evil in Evil seems more vile - it handles topics like selling your soul, demonology and the like that the Villain Design Handbook hardly touches on. It also has much more of a focus on running evil PCs and/or an evil campaign, so if this is what you want, definitely pick this book.
The Kalamar book, on the other hand, is much more concerned with the villain as opposition to the PCs. The personality archetypes are more detailed than those in Evil, and there's definitely more rules based stuff - most of which is pretty good, with the major exceptions noted above. Oddly, the PrCs, magic items and spells seemed more flavorful to me than the ones in AEG's book, despite AEG's viler evil in the early sections. If you're not as interested in running evil PCs, I would lean more towards the VDH - even with the mechanical problems, it's got a lot of good raidable rules stuff.
I would love to compare this with the old 2e Villains book, but unfortunately I don't have a copy of that work.
Wrap-Up
All in all, I was left feeling slightly disappointed by the Villain Design Handbook. After hearing so many positive things about the Kalamar line, and knowing that it was endorsed by WOTC, I expected great things from the book. And really, it could have been great. It had the right ideas, but it fell short of their execution in too many ways.
Still, it is definitely raidable for ideas. The advice and planning tips are sound, even if the mechanics are not always, and that definitely keeps the book from falling into too low of a rating.
(rated 3 out of 5)
Reviewer's Note: This is not a playtest review, nor did I receive the book as a review copy. It is, however, a sort of karmic payback for me never writing a review of Midnight's Terror, which I did get free from the Kenzer folks.
The Kalamar Villain's Design Handbook is much like the characters and magic items described in its pages: fascinating ideas, but with some deep flaws.
Physical Appearance
$24.99 - 176 b&w pages, hardbound, including an 11 page index (very complete) and 2 pages of ads in the back.
Although the book is not printed on the glossy paper that WOTC and other companies tend to use for their hardbacks, the paper is high quality and feels very sturdy (and it doesn't show fingerprints like the glossy stuff, either). The art is fairly infrequent and no particular pieces stand out in my mind as being notably good or bad.
Advice
The book starts out with some excellent broad advice on what makes a good villain and how to tweak classic fantasy stereotypes to make them a bit more interesting. The 'villainous classes' information that follows, on the other hand, is not as good - mostly very obvious blurbs such as "Fighters make excellent villains in combat heavy campaigns" that seem to exist to fill space. How about showing us how to turn those stereotypes around? Hints on how a fighter could be used as a villain in a non-combat campaign would have been far more valuable.
There's also a Good aligned villain section - depending on your views of alignment, you may like it or hate it. It falls into the 'alignment is relative' theory that caused so much debate in earlier editions - are good intentions enough to make one 'good', even when they lead to acts like genocide, poisoning and the like? I don't think so, but the authors seem to.
There are 6 villain archetypes detailed, although each has a variety of sub-archetypes and even sub-sub archetypes, making for quite a few more. The main archetypes and sub-archetypes are well decribed, with notes that highlight the unique factors of each, and differences from the other archetypes. Each sub-archetype comes with a sample villain complete with descriptions and discussions of exactly why they are villains - these "Why?" sections range from the thought-provoking to the blindingly obvious. Stat blocks for the sample villains are neatly tucked into an appendix.
There are also discussions of villain motivations, henchmen, settings (discussing what types of villains are more appropriate to urban or wilderness areas) and organizations. The organizations section could have used a little more meat: it is basically a paragraph covering the type of organization in broad strokes, and then a set of 5 feats for a 'typical' villain from that organization. If you're not a Kalamar player, note that these feat paths do tend to include feats from the KoK Player's Guide. There's also a section on placing your villain inside an organization, with questions to make you think about his relationship with the organization and what that might reflect about the villain.
Mechanics
Feats
There are several new feats in the Villain Design Handbook, most of which look relatively balanced - many of them I would only take if it were strongly appropriate for the character in question, which is a decent enough measurement. The one that gives me pause is Spell Swap, which lets a wizard trade in a spell to spontaneously cast another spell which he has memorized. There's a Spellcraft check involved, and failure means the loss of both spell slots, but it's fairly powerful as it lessens one of the major advantages a sorcerer has over his wizardly cousins - the tactical flexibility of choosing the spell mix at casting time.
Anti-Feats
Then there's the Anti-Feats. An interesting idea, anti-feats are 'disadvantages' that can be taken, one per level. Two anti-feats will get you a regular feat. While it's an interesting concept, it has some fairly major flaws, and is probably one of the more disappointing parts of the book.
First, the anti-feats are randomly rolled on a d1000 table, meaning that you could easily get results that are no penalty at all.
For example, take a wizard with four anti-feats. 145: Craft Drilbu - my crafting and XP expentitures for drilbu go up to 125%. Oh, the humanity. 1000 - Zen Archery, I've got to subtract my Wis bonus from ranged attacks within 30 feet. I suppose that might come up. 231: My familiar loses the ability to fly. If it weren't a toad, that might have hurt. 879: Spirited Charge - I do only half damage when mounted and performing the charge action. Must remember to merely do normal attacks from horseback, I suppose.
Second, some of the conversions from feat to antifeat are particularly ill thought-out - take the Psionic Weapon anti-feat, for example: "Your melee weapon deals 1d4 fewer points of damage when you pay the cost of 1 power point." Others are useless, liek the Ability Focus anti-feat, which merely says "Choose one of your special attacks. This attack is less potnent than normal." I have to wonder how well this table was reviewed by both Kenzer and WOTC when things like that get past.
There's the core of an interesting idea here, but the execution is, sadly, very sloppy.
Prestige Classes
After that we have some Prestige Classes. Blackfoot is a 5-level 'revolutionary' class with mob-inciting abilities. Blue Salamanders are much like rogues with some added psionic abilities (although added as Spell-like abilities and not actual psionics.)
The first of the 'problem' PrCs is the Unchainer. It's a 5 level class that doesn't require any spellcasting to enter - but under it is a chart marked 'Unchainer Spells Known' and directly under that 'Free Domain Spells Per Day', which lists spells for levels 1-20. I am completely baffled by this table. Under the 'free domain' class ability you get to pick a domain from a short list, and your caster level is your Unchainer class level plus your cleric levels - but that would mean a Clr15/Unchainer5 would by the table be able to cast her free domain spell 5 times per day for levels 1-5 and 4 times a day for levels 6-9, in addition to the spellcasting ability of a 15th level cleric! That seems a bit excessive.
The Darklight Wizard is even worse. A 10-level prestige class that can potentially be entered at 2nd level (requirement: 5 ranks each in 2 Knowledge skills), which strips you of all of your levels when you enter it (but not ability scores, skills or feats), this PrC lets you get a new spell level with each level. Not a new /caster/ level - you'll be casting 9th level spells at your 9th level of darklight wizard. Well, you would if there were any 9th level spells on the darklight wizard list. Plus, you get class abilities like animate dead and control undead and 3 times the skill points of a normal wizard. Way too over the top for my taste, even if the list of spells is severely limited. The table here also has the 'spells known' header directly above the 'spells per day' header. Cut and paste error, I suppose.
After this, things calm down again with the Sentinels of the True Way (5 level PrC member of an anti-magical organization) and the True Disciples of Avrynner, a psionic group. Last is the veteran officer, which is a great concept that is crippled by the entry requirements - 8 ranks total in class skills plus 4 ranks each in 4 different Knowledge skills means that your typical fighter (the apparent target of the class, since it requires Weapon Specialization) can't get into the class at all - it would require all 20 levels of his skill points, unless he was human or had an Int bonus - while a fighter/wizard multiclass would be able to enter at 6th level. I'm not sure this is exactly what was intended.
None of these groups or classes, by the way, seem all that inherently villainous (with the exception of the Darklight Wizard and the Blue Salamanders) and many could be used as 'good' organizations or PrCs.
New Spells & Magic Items
The new spells cover a wide variety of territory. Some seem overpowered (like arm, which gives you an extra arm for 2 hours/level - this does not seem like a first level spell to me - or ball of disruption, a 4th level spell which does up to 15d6 damage and causes a variety of detrimental effects on spellcasting for the next 10 minutes in the area of effect). Some are underpowered (boil really shouldn't be a 2nd level spell - the ability to boil 3 quarts of water is pretty minor all things considered- or personal combustion, a 4th level spell that does less damage than a fireball and hurts the caster as well). Some seem fine (like night watchman, a sort of combination alarm and unseen servant). Some are just plain strange (like tooth decay, or bat accident, which covers the target in guano. No, really.)
The next rulesy section is on magic items - mostly items with curses or drawbacks. There are a few rules hiccups here, like the arrow which compels its firer to go retrieve it after it is shot (with no save apparently possible, and apparently ignoring the fact that magic arrows are basically only good for one shot anyway), but for the most part the items are well done - and you won't have to worry too much about your players wanting to keep them.
Etc.
The rules finish up with some new monsters - the Darkling Snatcher (a goblinoid) and the Guardian Effigy (a sort of mini-golem), plus a set of undead templates - renamed wraiths, ghouls, mummies, vampires and wights, intelligent skeletons and zombies, and of course the lich. Each of the templates has a detailed description of the ritual needed to add it, and the templates themselves look fairly reasonable.
There's also a short 'adventure' in the book (although it's more just an 'encounter') - a simple run-in with some slavers.
But what about Evil?
So, the question that is no doubt on everyone's mind after all of this is, "How does it stack up against AEG's Evil?" The two books share such a similarity in focus that a comparison is inevitable.
Evil is ~$5 cheaper, but almost 50 pages shorter, and with larger type to boot. It's also a softback. The evil in Evil seems more vile - it handles topics like selling your soul, demonology and the like that the Villain Design Handbook hardly touches on. It also has much more of a focus on running evil PCs and/or an evil campaign, so if this is what you want, definitely pick this book.
The Kalamar book, on the other hand, is much more concerned with the villain as opposition to the PCs. The personality archetypes are more detailed than those in Evil, and there's definitely more rules based stuff - most of which is pretty good, with the major exceptions noted above. Oddly, the PrCs, magic items and spells seemed more flavorful to me than the ones in AEG's book, despite AEG's viler evil in the early sections. If you're not as interested in running evil PCs, I would lean more towards the VDH - even with the mechanical problems, it's got a lot of good raidable rules stuff.
I would love to compare this with the old 2e Villains book, but unfortunately I don't have a copy of that work.
Wrap-Up
All in all, I was left feeling slightly disappointed by the Villain Design Handbook. After hearing so many positive things about the Kalamar line, and knowing that it was endorsed by WOTC, I expected great things from the book. And really, it could have been great. It had the right ideas, but it fell short of their execution in too many ways.
Still, it is definitely raidable for ideas. The advice and planning tips are sound, even if the mechanics are not always, and that definitely keeps the book from falling into too low of a rating.
(rated 3 out of 5)
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. I don't have much experience with other games.
