This article originally appeared in d20 Weekly
Villain Design Handbook
Published by Kenzer and Company
Written by D. Andrew Ferguson, Brian Jelke, Don Morgan, Mark Plemmons, & Jarrett Sylvestre
Cover Art by Arnie Swekel
Interior Artwork by Jiffy, Burke, Timmy Castillo, Thomas Denmark, Stacy Drum, Brendon Fraim, Brian Fraim, Ferdinand Gertes, Jon Hodgson, Richard Longmore, David Esbri Molinas, Eric Olsen, Tony Parker, Arnie Swekel, and Kevin Wasden
176-page b&w hardcover; $24.99
The Villain Design Handbook is a hardcover release for the Kingdoms of Kalamar Campaign setting. The book's focus, as the title suggests, is on designing villains for your d20 System campaign. The book's layout conforms to previous Kalamar releases and small fonts, reasonable margins and no eye-straining backgrounds make for a pleasant reading experience. The interior line art varies in quality, but is generally decent.
The book is divided into two major sections. The first half is devoted to designing the villain and his environment, and is fairly rules-light. The second half has the crunchy bits: new feats, anti-feats (a new concept), prestige classes, spells, magic items and monsters. Appendices contain stats for the book's sample villains, a glossary of terms and a short adventure.
Villain design opens with a section devoted to determining the villain's basics like race, class, and alignment. Some basic roleplaying stereotypes are also covered. There is an interesting section on creating good-aligned villains. I didn't particularly care for it since I like . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: November 27, 2002
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