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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009992" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Steven Creech, Exec. Chairman d20 Magazine RackSizing Up the Target The Villain Design Handbook is a campaign resource book published from the folks at Kenzer & Company. This 174-page hardcover, which retails for $24.99, is meant to provide GMs with the tools to make good, memorable archvillains and nemeses to use in their campaigns.First Blood I'm glad I had my glasses handy for this book because the 174 page count is a bit misleading due to the smallness of the print. If the font size was the normal size you typically see, this would most likely be a 200 plus page book. There is a lot of information squeezed into these pages. Chapter one addresses villain stereotypes and gives suggestions for moving beyond them and thinking outside of the box. Here you find discussions on various races as villains along with the role alignment plays. Chapter two looks at six distinct villain archetypes: deviant, devoted, fallen, inhuman, power mad, and visionary. Each archetype (and subtype) is closely detailed and includes examples of such. Chapter three explores the psychology of a villain. Motivations, obsessions, and thought procesess of villains are discussed. Remember, there are real emotions behind a villain, he shouldn't be a cardboard cutout of nothing but stats. Chapter four examines the villain's stronghold or base of operations. Logical placement is critical for developing a support structure of minions and a flow of income (by various means). Chapter five tackles secret societies and organizations and how your villain may fit in. The Black Market, guilds, the military and religious organizations are all addressed. Chapter six goes into new variant rules that may be utilized including enhanced familiar feats, new villain-specific feats and anti-feats. Anti-feats are disadvantageous traits a villain may take in order to acquire more feats. Chapter seven is all about villainous prestige classes. There are six prestige classes in all with a few requiring membership in an organization. Chapter eight introduces new spells appropriate for villains, while chapter nine delves into magic items that will give your villain an edge. (Chapter nine also covers summoning an outsider and barginning with it.) Finally, chatper ten discusses new monsters and templates tht can be attached to your villain. Critical Hits This book succeeds on many levels. It gives DMs solid suggestions and tips to be considered when crafting a villain. It points out the more common traps and pitfalls that often occur when creating a villain and offers ways to avoid them. The alignment use discussion is good, as is the chapter on archetypes. Many of the new spells are interesting but the magic items have a coolness factor all their own. Critical Misses Unfortunately, much of the information is campaign specific to the Kalamar world setting rather than going with a more neutral approach. However, a good GM can get around this fairly easily. The prestige classes are tied directly to Kalamar and will require some extensive work to adapt them for other worlds (some more so than others). The chapter on lairs and strongholds, while respectable, could have gone into more depth. There are a lot of generalizations present. It would have been nice to have had a blueprint sample map for each lair type (stronghold castle, wilderness lair, underground or sewer location). The anti-feat concept, while a good idea, tends to be unbalanced. The disadvantages acquired are often more debilitating than the benefits gained by the bonus feat because of the two for one rule. On the other hand, some anti-feats like the item creationones offer no real penalty if your character never plans to craft an item. Coup de Grace All in all, Villain Design Handbook is a good resource for GMs. There are several excellent tools for developing good villains that will live on in your campaign world. The suggestions and tips help GMs avoid many villain retreads and the repetitous "I'm going to take over the world" raving villain. It has no open content since Kenzer has licensed the D&D rules and therefore, does not fall under the OGL. It really is a GM only resource book that will not benefit players, in general. Despite its faults, this is a book worth having and I do recommend it.To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments, go to The Critic's Corner at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=&topic=3" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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