Book of Encounters and Lairs
By August Hahn
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 8803
256 pages, $34.95
[SPOILER WARNING:
The Book of Encounters and Lairs is a DM-only book. Reading this review may spoil some of the adventures for you if you're not the DM of your game, and your DM probably wouldn't appreciate it if your perusal of this review ruined the adventures he had planned to use from this book. The sucker's nearly $35.00, too - don't make him regret having spent the money for a book he can now no longer use.]
The third book in the new "Classic Play" series, the
Book of Encounters and Lairs was one I was really looking forward to. It seemed to be based on a similar book from the TSR days,
The Book of Lairs, of which I have heard many good things (but have alas to find a copy myself). It's a good concept, too: a book of short encounters with various D&D monsters, rather like a collection of short "Side Trek" adventures from the pages of
Dungeon magazine, perfect to throw at any adventuring band when you need a little action on short notice, or you want to spice up a session where the PCs are traveling from Point A to Point B.
The Book of Encounters and Lairs is filled with some good ideas and some clever concepts, but the production level is (sadly) pretty low and there seems to be an inordinate amount of "filler" material for a book of this price. There are also quite a few things just plain wrong.
The cover, by Ralph Horsley, depicts a band of adventurers being attacked by a group of ropers. There's some nice detail work here, but the leftmost adventurer's head seems far too small for his body and the fighter in plate mail has a right leg that bends rather strangely. The colors are muted, but that works well for a subterranean scene; I especially like the fact that there are two different light sources: the figures up front are illuminated by the fighter's torch, while those in back are lit by a wizard's green-glowing staff. Unfortunately, Ralph falls for the biggest roper mistake of them all: ropers don't have flailing tentacles; their "strand" attacks are more in the way of spider-silk shot from glands along their bodies. Also, it seems kind of odd to feature ropers on the cover when ropers don't appear at all inside the book.
The interior artwork this time is provided by 8 different artists, and consists of 46 black-and-white illustrations and 46 maps. There is some really good artwork in here by Philip Renne, who does an excellent job on many of the monsters (I especially liked his half-beautiful hags on pages 82 and 88, the lamias on pages 94 and 98, the phase spiders on pages 151 and 158, the Tarrasque on page 184, and the unicorns on pages 199 and 204). In fact, I'd say the artwork itself is well above Mongoose standard - not that Mongoose has lower standards, but the pieces in this book are generally even better (as a whole) than they are in most other Mongoose books I've seen.
However, the maps are a completely different story. Without mincing words, the maps are bad - really, really bad. Strike one: No grid marks (with one exception, but then the room in question has its floor broken up into hinged square tiles, so the cartographer really had no choice). Strike two: No scale. There's no telling just how big any of the buildings, caverns, or what have you are in
any of these maps. When you come right down to it, those first two strikes really kill most of the utility of an adventure map right there. But then there's the strike three: Overall poor drawings. I can't assign blame where blame was due (since the Table of Contents page does not list a cartographer, nor does the "artist" of the maps sign his name or leave any initials - and for good reason; I don't think I'd want my name associated with the maps in this book, either!), but whoever's responsible not only isn't a very good cartographer, he/she's not a very good artist, either. One map has a squiggly line representing a road on the left and a bunch of blobs on the right representing trees. That's it. Several of the scenarios take place in the streets of a town; those generally have a couple of rectangles representing buildings with a "PCs start here" indicator. That's it. The dragon encounter has a bunch of wavy lines of alternating solid ground and marsh, with an "X" where the dragon lands. That's it. Really, as much as they say "a picture is worth a thousand words," I don't think many of the maps in
The Book of Encounters and Lairs are even worth 50 words. (Take the lamia map, the first one I mentioned above. "You are walking down a dirt road, heading north. There are several trees to your right." There, I just did it in 16 words.)
One final word about the art: despite my approval of the overall high quality of most of the individual pieces, I have to disapprove of the repetitiveness of much of it. I'm kind of skipping ahead to the layout of the book, but briefly, there are two separate mini-adventures for each of the 23 featured monsters: one where the PCs meet up with the creature on the move, and another where they meet the monster in its lair. In almost each case, there are two separate pictures of the monster, one in the encounter and one in the lair. Philip Renne draws a mean phase spider, but what was gained by having him draw two different shots of a phase spider? Likewise, do I need a shot of the Tarrasque looming over a building
and a shot of him head-on? If the book has an illustration of an ettercap in front of some trees, do we really need another picture of an ettercap in front of some webs? The artwork's good, like I said, but it's rather repetitive, and the second shot really doesn't serve all that much of a purpose. (Plus, if they're going to do the same monster twice, why not spread the wealth a little and have two different artists draw each monster? That way we'd at least get two different "takes" on each critter.)
Having already started on the book's layout a bit, let's look at the chapter-by-chapter breakdown:
- Introduction: Explaining the reason for this book, including a "warning" that (unlike most Mongoose books) this one is strictly for DMs, not players
- Aboleth - Encounter (EL 7+)
- Aboleth - Lair (EL 9+)
- Behir - Encounter (EL 7+)
- Behir - Lair (EL 10)
- Bugbear - Encounter (EL 5+)
- Bugbear - Lair (EL 9+)
- Chaos Beast - Encounter (EL 7+)
- Chaos Beast - Lair (EL 10)
- Derro - Encounter (EL 3+)
- Derro - Lair (EL 7+)
- Dragon - Encounter (EL 18+)
- Dragon - Lair (EL 12)
- Ettercap - Encounter (EL 4+)
- Ettercap - Lair (EL 6)
- Giant, Fire - Encounter (EL 10+)
- Giant, Fire - Lair (EL 14+)
- Hag, Annis - Encounter (EL 6+)
- Hag, Annis (Covey) - Lair (EL 9+)
- Lamia - Encounter (EL 6+)
- Lamia - Lair (EL 12+)
- Magmin - Encounter (EL 3+)
- Magmin - Lair (EL 6+)
- Mimic - Encounter (EL 4+)
- Mimic - Lair (EL 9+)
- Naga, Spirit - Encounter (EL 9+)
- Naga, Spirit - Lair (EL 11+)
- Nightmare - Encounter (EL 8+)
- Nightmare - Lair (EL 6+)
- Otyugh - Encounter (EL 4+)
- Otyugh - Lair (EL 7+)
- Phase Spider - Encounter (EL 5)
- Phase Spider - Lair (EL 7+)
- Purple Worm - Encounter (EL 12+)
- Purple Worm - Lair (EL 12+)
- Ravid - Encounter (EL 5+)
- Ravid - Lair (EL 7+)
- Tarrasque - Encounter (EL 20)
- Tarrasque - Lair (EL 20+)
- Unicorn - Encounter (EL 7+)
- Unicorn - Lair (EL 8+)
- Will-O'-Wisp - Encounter (EL 6+)
- Will-O'-Wisp - Lair (EL 8+)
- Worg - Encounter (EL 3+)
- Worg - Lair (EL 7+)
- Wyvern - Encounter (EL 6+)
- Wyvern - Lair (EL 10+)
- Encounter Charts: Random encounter charts for wilderness areas, aquatic (cold, temperate, and warm), deserts (cold, temperate, and warm), forests (cold, temperate, and warm), hills (cold, temperate, and warm), marshes (cold, temperate, and warm), mountains (cold, temperate, and warm), and plains (cold, temperate, and warm)
- Help for Games Masters: 7 tips on running encounters
- Designer's Notes: August explains the problems he had while writing this book and the respect he gained for combat as a result of it
Before I go into the details of the writing itself, I also want to point out that the cover to
The Book of Encounters and Lairs (my copy, at least) is warped. Not as bad as
The Book of Dragons was, but very noticeably. Whatever problems Mongoose had with some of their previous books warping, they haven't fixed them yet.
Okay, as for the scenarios themselves, I have to credit August with coming up with some pretty interesting adventure ideas mixed in with the rather ho-hum "you meet a monster while walking down the road" ones. One of his favorite ploys is to take the "expected" basic encounter for a given monster and turn it on its head. For instance, the very first encounter, the one with the aboleth, takes place not in or on the water (as you'd expect with an aquatic creature) but rather on dry land. The Tarrasque encounter (and yes, I was surprised that the Tarrasque was picked as one of the 23 out of all of the monsters in the
Monster Manual, too) isn't about destroying the rampaging monster, but
saving him. Even some of the "you're walking down the road and you meet up with a monster" ones have a clever twist or two to them, so my problem isn't with the quality of the adventures themselves (although some do seem awfully similar: one of the magmin adventures involves a magmin burning down part of a town for fun, and one of the nightmare adventures involves a nightmare...burning down parts of a town for fun). However, just as I didn't think having two different pictures of each monster was the best possible use of the art budget, I similarly don't think that giving each of 23 monsters an "encounter" adventure and a "lair" adventure was necessary. It would be much more interesting (and therefore a much more useful gaming product) to pick 46 monsters, giving half of them an "encounter" and the other half a "lair." Especially since one of the basic ideas behind the "Classic Play" series was that each book was to be the "ultimate sourcebook on the subject in question," it seems like intentionally limiting the number of monsters that appear in the adventures is kind of shooting yourself in the foot.
Furthermore, I really disliked the monster stats that appear in this book. For each of the "encounter" adventures and "lair" adventures, there's a mini-stat block, in paragraph form (much like is found in
Dungeon), at the end of the adventure. In most cases, these stat blocks are either incomplete or just wrong. I really don't want to go through the whole blow-by-blow this time around (having done that on several recent reviews in the past), let's just leave it at me listing the most common errors in these sections:
- Monsters being given multiple base attack bonuses.
- No breakdown between "Attack" and "Full Attack" lines.
- In many cases, no "touch" and "flat-footed" ACs given.
- Missing skills or feats (or too many feats for the creature's Hit Dice, although this wasn't nearly as common).
- Missing special attacks or special qualities (again, not as common an error as the above).
- Incorrect melee or ranged attack bonuses.
- Creatures with advanced Hit Dice not having their CRs adjusted accordingly.
- "Knowledge (Other) +13" isn't particularly helpful.
- Undead with Constitution 0 instead of no Constitution score (there's a difference).
In addition, these mini-stat blocks show up immediately after the "encounter" adventure, and then again immediately after the "lair" adventure. In many cases, they're identical except for the creature's given name (except for the Tarrasque, the creature encountered in the "encounter" adventure is not the same one that appears in the "lair" adventure). This wasted space adds up fast.
Worse yet, at the end of each "lair" encounter, there's a
Monster Manual reprint (straight from the SRD) of each of the monsters that appear in either the "encounter" or "lair" adventures (and some adventures have other monsters than the "featured" one; the unicorn lair adventure, for example, has a unicorn, a dryad, a treant, and an elder water elemental). Personally, I view this as wasted space: does Mongoose seriously think any DM is going to buy
The Book of Encounters and Lairs without already having purchased the
Monster Manual? Oh sure, there's something to be said about not having to flip back and forth between the two books, but even so, if that had been August's primary concern in adding those sections, you'd think he'd at least put in the relevant information. For example, the aboleth lair has a kapoacinth (aquatic gargoyle). Rather than make the necessary (and minimal) changes to the "gargoyle" entry and turn it into a ready-to-use "kapoacinth" entry, instead we get the "gargoyle" entry from the SRD, complete with the "kapoacinth" blurb at the end stating that these aquatic gargoyles have the aquatic subtype, a base land speed of 40 feet, and a swim speed of 60 feet (with no flying speed). How hard would it have been to just make those changes? Similarly, when a worg encounter involves a 2nd-level goblin fighter mounted on a worg, do we get the stats for a goblin Ftr2? No, we get the stats for a 1st-level goblin warrior (straight from the SRD), with a reminder that these stats are a sample only, and that we'll have to convert them to account for Greelok the goblin's two levels as a fighter.
Some of August's concepts kind of fall flat on their face in the adventures.
- The aboleth lair adventure includes an aquatic elf slave, who's been subjected to the aboleth's mucus (which means she can only breathe water, not air), and thus dares not try to escape. So what? She's an aquatic elf - she breathes water anyway! As soon as the mind control wore off (and the adventure even states the aboleth doesn't usually even bother, knowing his slaves can't escape anyway), she could swim to freedom.
- If there's a feast going on celebrating the fire giant king's latest military victory, why are there a good number of fire giants sleeping or repairing their weapons in their bedrooms? Of course, since the fire giant king has no more hit points than any of the others (and his Craft skill is devoted to tailoring), maybe he doesn't deserve too much respect in the first place. But then how'd he get to be the fire giant king?
- Spirit nagas must devour a living, sentient creature's flesh at least once a month, yet the average distance between a spirit naga lair and the closest human city is 100 miles? Not bloody likely. Also, one of the spirit naga adventures has a (limbless, mind you) spirit naga dragging a large chunk of a Huge hydra back to its lair. Not bloody likely.
- How convenient, there just happens to be a scroll of comprehend languages lying around in the centuries-old tomb holding the secret word to a planar gate, written in hieroglyphics! What are the odds?
- Both ravid adventures involve Huge animated objects. What are the odds?
- Worgs can taste the difference between the flesh of a cleric or wizard and the flesh of other classes? Oh really? And how exactly can worgs (with no hands, mind you) "arrange nearby trees into crude but effective shields" to block their lairs?
- Since when do wyverns have an "avian ancestry?" Did I miss something here, or did they somehow evolve from birds when I wasn't looking? Also, it's a pretty poor "biological reaction" for a wyvern to destroy its own eggs rather than take the chance of others capturing their young. I'd think any race that destroyed its own eggs at the first sign of trouble would probably be extinct by now. Also, I doubt that a typical wyvern, with a 6 Intelligence, would be able to differentiate individual PCs after a span of several years.
In an unrelated note, a dire raven is mentioned in one of the fire giant adventures, but there are no stats for such a creature in this book (nor any indication where such stats might be located, should they exist elsewhere).
Proofreading and editing were both rather poor in this book; one especially irritating quirk was that apparently somebody did a "global find and replace" changing "ft" to "-ft." Why would that be so irritating, you ask? Normally, it wouldn't be, if all it affected were measurements in feet - but check out the stats for the "Male Human Ftr4" on page 13: yep, that's right, he's a "Male Human-ft.r4." How could no one have caught that? (For that matter, how could no one have caught the numerous misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, missing words/letters, and so on that often plague Mongoose books?) I'm afraid I have to apply my "asleep at the wheel" supposition to proofreader Ted Chang and editor Richard Neale for their "work" on this book.
Let's move on to the encounter charts. These surprised me mostly by their overall lack of variety. It was nice to see each chart broken down into ten different Challenge Rating groupings (CR 1-2, CR 3-4, CR 5-6, etc.), but many of the entries were blank, and several of the charts had a mere handful of creatures overall. There sure are a lot of animated objects running around in the wilderness. Fully 40% of
all temperate desert encounters are with blue dragons! Cold marshes apparently only hold cryohydras, hags (annis only), and grey oozes. And personally, given that the Tarrasque is a unique creature (there's only one - at most - Tarrasque on any game world) and that it spends decades asleep at a time, I really don't think he should show up on any random encounter table - but maybe that's just me. I'm pretty sure that the "1600-member sahuagin tribe" is a typo with one zero too many. (At least, I hope it was!) Finally, here's a quote from the Encounter Charts section:
"In addition, each set of charts has a blank column the Games Master can use to fill in with encounters specialized for a given campaign." Cool idea - if only it were true. There's not a blank column to be found in any of the encounter charts. Nice one.
One final gripe I have is with the last sentence on the back cover:
"With The Book of Encounters and Lairs at his side a Games Master could run an entire campaign and never need another source of scenarios!" This is patently untrue, especially since the lowest-level adventure in the book is for 3rd-level PCs. Plus, with a stated rule of thumb in 3.0/3.5 D&D that PCs should level up after 13.3 (or is it 13.5?) encounters, the 46 mini-adventures in this book just aren't going to take a party from 1st level all the way through 20th.
On the plus side, it was nice to see round-by-round combat actions given for the main monsters in each adventure. That was a nice touch, considering the
Monster Manual only goes to the trouble to do so for the "heavy hitters" like the major demons/devils, mind flayers, and so on. Also, each of the adventures has ways to alter it for PCs of higher levels (much like the "Scaling the Adventure" sidebars in
Dungeon adventures). Still, I'm left with an overall feeling of disappointment about
The Book of Encounters and Lairs. It could have been so much better than it turned out. August, in his "Designer's Notes" page at the end of the book, mentions that he was afflicted with "surgery, hospital visits, dead computers, dying laptops and a leaky roof" while trying to write this book. Maybe it's just bad timing, because I've enjoyed several other works by August
much more than this book. I hope his various troubles go away and he can work up to his (considerably greater) potential now that
The Book of Encounters and Lairs is behind him. I'm afraid I have to give this book a mere 2 stars (Poor), with the proviso that it's a
much higher 2 stars than I gave
Ultimate Monsters, Volume 1.
In the meantime, I think I'll try to find an old copy of TSR's
Book of Lairs.
