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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drnuncheon" data-source="post: 328648" data-attributes="member: 96">Re: Re: REVIEW: Villain's Design Handbook (Kenzer)Hi Mark! Glad you saw it - and disagreement is the spice of, if not life, at least the Internet.  I'll respond in kind to clarify where I'm coming from, and try to take note of some of the suggestions for future reviews.The 'infrequent' art was mostly in comparison to the other books I'd been flipping through lately, which was WOTC stuff like OA and the FCRS, which seem to have art on almost every page - plus some of the old 2e stuff.  Maybe those books would be better charactersized as having 'frequent' art?Now, that's not to say that 'infrequent' art is a bad thing.  Unless the art is spectacular (or important, like in a monster book), I'd rather not have it all over the place.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I'd rather have a thousand words well-chosen and relevant than five thousand that only deal peripherally with the topic.I guess it was just jarring to see that in the midst of some otherwise well done advice.  When I see something like "fighters make excellent villains in combat-heavy campaigns" it makes me feel like either the authors think I'm a drooling idiot, or they're trying to put something, anything there - for reasons of extra space, parallel structure, or whatever.  (In this case, I think it was parallel structure, which is a fine idea, but it still made me feel as if I were being talked down to.)That definitely needs to be there, and in a bit more detail (how do you determine if something "applies to your villain's class"?  Some are obvious - like metamagic feats for a non-spellcaster - but how about Point Blank Shot for a wizard?)  I understand the need to avoid minmaxing - the random rolls had the potential to be bad enough.  Hmm, I may have given the wrong impression in that section.  It wasn't the loss of all the other levels that I was really talking about - although that's an extremely bizarre mechanic, and I'd have been happier seeing it worked into something a little more similar to Oh, and it's supposed to screw me over by giving me 9th level spells at 10th level?  I know hordes of people that would be saying "sign me up"!  I realize it's supposed to give you Great Power for Evil, but when the DM pulls out a CR7 villain that starts smacking you around with 3 or 4 enervations followed by a circle of death...there might be some balance issues.Sure, but...20th level?  32 ranks of cross-class skills? I see what you're trying to do, and I agree with the theory behind it, but it works out to being pretty excessive.  When it's easier to qualify for a PrC by taking levels in a completely unrelated class, I tend to think that there might be a problem with the entry requirements.Actually, I meant that as a positive thing.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Not Blatantly and Inherently Eeevil = more useful for DMs.Well, sure.  I'm pretty against 'no saving throw' effects in general, especialyl mind-affecting ones (the only mind-affecting spell without a saving throw that I can think of offhand is geas).  It's not terrible, it just needed more explanation.  Is it an exception to the rule that magical arrows are destroyed when they hit their target?  Does the destruction of the arrow mean that the archer does not need to go retrieve it?You're right - I need to correct that, because each template does add some unique ablities not present in the lesser forms.I agree, and those chapters are definitely what pull the book upward. I'll see if I can expand on that a bit.J</blockquote>

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