Customer Reviews

Enemies and Allies (Dungeons & dragons)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Back in the late 70's or early 80's, TSR (for those of you who are new, TSR owned D&D before WoTC) created a book of NPCs called the "Rogues Gallery". It was page after page of lists of stats for characters of each class... Boring.

However, in the back of the book was 10 or so pages of fully fleshed NPC's (mainly from Gary Gygax's campaign)... and that was the GEM hidden in the trash.

Enemies and Allies is the modern version of those last 10 pages... And it is a bit of a Gem itself.

Only 64 pages in length, this booklet packs quite a punch.
Each section is divided by evironment (Crime, Religion, Mages, The Law and Adventurers).

Each chapter provides a cross-section of fully detailed characters for the Niche they have been assigned. There are unique spells and some new Feats that appear (as one might expect), additionally some of the NPCs run beyond interesting into the realm of inspired (such as the Illithid Assassin Yarrick Zan).

The real meat of the book is in the Two-Page "One-Minute NPC" section.

Finally, the "Iconic" characters from the Players Handbook are provided (Redgar, Tordek, etc.) Which is just fun.

Surely this is not a necessary addition to a Game Masters arsenal, but it is a happy addition for those of us that like to see how someone else thinks.

I was excited at the prospect of getting this book but when I opened it, I was dissapointed by its contents. I was expecting rules and guidelines as to how to create balanced and proper NPCs but rather I saw a lot of missmatched classes, especially with the "monster" types like Mindflayer Assassin (huh?). In short, I was expecting a lot from this material, hoping this would help me create NPC's (enemies or allies) using sound guidelines but rather the entire booklet is just full of silly and ridiculous samples.

If you're not feeling creative, then this might help you. But, if you need to make a perfect villain or ally in your campaign, then stick with your own imagination and it might save you a few bucks!

Not a bad product, but it could have been better. I like the visual candy a book offers, and i think it helps make the product more fun to read. With all the vaunted artwork WOTC has, this book has overall weak pictures with not a smidgen of color.
Of course, all that aside, the content is fairly good. I particularly like the mind flayer assassin. There are groups of non-human parties that are somewhat strange, but i suppose they all fit the flavor of 3rd edition where weird is the norm.
Not a mandatory book, and sort of on the thin side, but a resourceful DM can use it.

I read this book and couldn't help but chuckle a bit. Being a long time fan of RPGs (D&D 1e-3e, Paladium games, Shadowrun, Gurps, Warhammer, WoD..) I read this book with a cynical feeling of "well duh!"

I think most of the DMs that are up to buying this book (ie: Have all the other required tools for the job) should most likely NOT need this resource. It spells out some NPCs for you that really didn't need spelling out, and takes away what little creativity the module-only DM had left.

Personally I am not a module-bible DM, and use them only from time to time as a jumping off point, but the utter lack of originality that would send someone out looking for this title absolutely blows my mind... I pitty their gamers.

I expected the suppliment to be a good resource to MAKE NPC's...instead, much if it is hashed together people that I wouldn't put in any of my campaigns even if I was desperate enough!!

And a little pet peeve of mine; whenever I open a book, I expect at least DECENT pictures that portray the characters (like in Forgotten Realms...well, not all of them) or at least a caption telling me what's in the picture. Okay, I can see the "Iconic Character" NPC's in the back, like Lidda and Krusk and can identify them, but the rest...some I had to guess who was who (The Circle of Green being a prime example...i'm still trying to figure out which female is which).

And, I know this is a "Basic" suppliment, but was the budget for the book artwork that bad?? Looks like the "Iconic Characters" chapter blew the budget, while the rest are hardly recognizeable. And why the small ammount of pictures? The Iconic Characters would've been worth it for the pictures alone; seems they shafted the Elves, Half-Elves and two of the three "Religious" characters for the others. The others...from passable to pure...pure...you get the point.

Only buy if your desperate...

This book does provide some good ideas on how to develop non-player characters (as foes and friends), but I feel that there could have been less of a stress on representing the characters that the current module sets are shown with (Lidda the Halfling Rogue, Mialee the Elven Wizard, etc).

The best villains and supporting characters have history, and perhaps this book can help novice DMs build better adventures using villains, and not just cliched wandering monsters (which I absolutely hate, by the way, as all encounters should be planned and not randomly rolled).

One final point: The story is the most important thing to a D&D adventure (or any role-playing game), so any source material you can find that helps flesh-out the supporting cast of YOUR story is a good one.

NPC books are a common find in roleplaying games - from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to Shadowrun, practically every RPG has released them for their systems. Because of this, consumers tend to expect one or more of the following in such a sourcebook: extremely interesting premade NPCs, rules/mechanics for creating new NPCs, and statistics for established (read: popular) NPCs. Enemies and Allies has all three of these aspects, but doesn't do any of them well. For example...

- Premade NPCS. The first fifty pages are devoted to presenting premade NPCs in two formats: "typicals" are generic archetypes of that group and "specifics" are named members with their own personalities. The archetypes lack any sort of "sliding scale" mechanism that would make them useful beyond their presented CR (level) - a burglar is always a CR 2 rogue unless you take out your PHB and DMG and figure out what new skills and stats they would have at CR 5 (what's the point of having pre-made NPCs if you still have to do a lot of work to make them useful?). "Specific" NPCs are more useful and have adventuring hooks, but the vast majority simply didn't capture my imagination in the slightest.

- Mechanics for creating new NPCS. The supplement has a page and a half devoted to rules for creating "The 1-Minute NPC" and that is exactly what you get - a few skimpy tables that will result in one-dimensional NPCs that don't have most of their statistics attached. This product could have provided a million more options for better NPC creation (even if it wanted to stay in the 1 minute format), but in the end we get next to nothing.

- Established NPC statistics. This book contains the stats for all of the "iconic" characters in the Dungeons and Dragons books. Who are the iconic characters? Those are the class "examples" drawn into all of the core D&D products (at least one for each of the core classes). Want to know what skills Lidda the Rogue or Tordek the Dwarf Fighter have? They're in this book! Plus, their skills are presented at every five levels (5,10,15,20) in a sliding scale that was ignored with the previous NPCs. There's no other background information on these characters, however - no personality traits, history, or ideas as to what motivates them. Because of this, the "iconics" remain icons rather than functional characters that can be used in a game.

In the end, this book was not worth purchasing and wasted a great deal of its potential.

This is a great addition to the book collection. While billed as a resource guide for dungeon masters, I think it's actually something more. Most of the campaigns I've seen are limited in the types and use of non-human races. In Enemies & Allies though all the gloves come off. Detailed information on a variety of different classes and races - an umber hulk monk, a minatour mage, etc. The information on the non human characters is what makes this book great. It's a way to start thinking in different directions, where to take your characters or campaign that's "out of the box". The only thing I could say bad about the book is there isn't enough of it. They could have added even more characters and ideas.

I've been playing D&D now for about 14 years, off and on. When I started getting interested in the 3rd edition, I bought the ENEMIES & ALLIES book on Ebay with the thought in mind that since it was new, I could get it for a reaosonable price and sell it here on Amazon.com if I did not really like it. After flipping through the book, then later reading over it, my first impression was that it was basically "AD&D's The Heroes Lorebook" or "AD&D Dragonlance's Unsung Heroes" remade for the third edition campaign. Not so. It provides TEMPLATES as well as INDIVIDUAL non-playing characters who can easily be modified to your campaign and dropped into the setting. I have decided to keep the book because it provides me with interesting suggestions for characters that I can use to interact with my player's characters within the game. Also, the artwork is excellent and the written content is interesting and amusing enough to hold attention while you read - which I find to be a huge merit. It's a good tool to have on hand, and a useful addition to your trove of 1e, 2e, and 3e D&D books. :)