A D20 System supplement from
Alderac Entertainment Group
Rating:
(2 out of 5 hearts)
by Jean-Michel
"Evil" by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG)is a study on the psychology
of Evil and a sourcebook offering guidelines to play a Dungeons & Dragons
campaign in which the PCs are evil. Eliminate any notions you may have that
evil PCs necessarily lead to a hack-and-slash campaign, where innocent villagers
are put to the sword instead of fiendish monsters. This book will guide the
reader in creating all forms of villains; stylish, boorish, crafty, subtle
or otherwise.
The beginning of Section One is reprinted from AEG's previous publication
"Dungeons" and explains the different facets of evil according to
alignment (Chaotic, Lawful, Neutral). We find strewn throughout the rest of
the book descriptions of evil from a villain's perspective, motivations of
evil characters, reasons that might have caused a hero to turn to evil, archetypes
of evil personalities (such as the avenger, the insecure, the letch, the manipulator
and the zealot) and role-playing tips. Guidelines for playing non-human evil
characters are also provided. Because the premise of the book is that of an
ongoing evil campaign, the topic of villain co-operation is discussed.
Section two contains advice for DMs on how to create a campaign for evil characters,
but there is also a lot of advice regarding campaigns in general. The last
pages of the book offer quite a few well fleshed-out adventure hooks including
statistics for NPCs and magic items. Some new artefacts and new monsters (mostly
good aligned) are tossed into the mix. The book finishes with an introduction
to a city where an evil campaign could begin.
Rules for summoning Demons are proposed and a few new spells are offered to
facilitate the process. The sourcebook assumes that the of reason for summoning
a Demon is to strike a bargain with the infernal being, and they suggest different
modifiers that can affect a bargaining test DC.
Any character can become the servant of a "Dark Master" by striking
a bargain with a Demon or a Devil. The book provides a system where a character
can make an infernal pact instead of taking a general feat when the character
becomes eligible for one. Those infernal pacts always have a drawback accompanying
the benefits. For example, an infernal pact that grants Darkvision has the
drawback of making the irises of the character's eyes slit like those of a
cat. An infernal feat gives immunity to diseases, but the character has a
raspy cough that shows up when least desired. Another lets the character become
invisible once a day as per the spell, but the character becomes less and
less noticeable. These feats are much more powerful than normal feats, of
course, but if they are available to everyone in the Evil campaign, you will
just end up with a lot of devil worshipers. They are obviously not intended
as an addition to what is generally available to "good" PCs.
Some "normal" feats are presented and most of them are well-balanced,
such as the feat Tyrant, the evil counterpart of the Leadership feat. Some
new spells are proposed, and only a few seem flawed. The spell Bonewand permits
the caster to store any spell he knows into a piece of bone. It is a sixth
level spell, but no restriction is given as to the level of the spell that
can be stored. As a matter of fact, this spell completely ignores the magic
item creation rules. Also, the spell Ill Omen could be renamed Give Yourself
a -1 Morale Penalty.
Some new domains have been constructed in association with a handful of new
evil gods, but as a symptom of the lack of cohesion found throughout the book,
none of the new domains make use of the new spells.
This book is an interesting source of inspiration if one wants to play an
evil campaign and if the rules provided are used as a closed system for that
purpose. It is a self-contained book rather than a general contribution to
the d20 system. Using the material in this book as a standard supplement to
a normal campaign would be the equivalent opening the gates of hell to your
campaign with many unbalancing factors that make PCs too powerful.
Weaknesses: The different parts within the sections of the book are jumbled
together in no logical order. For that reason and the fact that the book is
plagued with typos it is not an enjoyable read. A few errors concerning the
Third Edition rules surface here and there, such as in the stats of one of
the new monsters, the Shadow Raven, whose undead type warrants d12 hit dice
(probably a confusion with the animal d8 hit die. No explanation for the +2
con modifier though).
