I haven’t covered a D&D product in over three months since I’ve really scaled back on my purchases and most of what I have bought were adventures. Those are tricky to write about; you don’t want to give away the surprises as players outnumber DMs five to one. Wizards’ Fourth Edition announcement doesn’t help neither. All publishers’ output will slow to a crawl in anticipation of the changes. Same goes for the gamers’ purchasing in addition to all the whining they post on the Internet. So now comes all the limbo products such as this one; part preview of what’s on the horizon, part throwaway and part revenue generation until the “surge” in May 2008.
My Exemplars of Evil review practically wrote itself for it’s an overpriced, egregious product. I swear this book should have an Under Armour label so I can wear it playing football because it’s nothing but padding. The first 30-some pages cover the essentials on making better, more satisfying villains through tips, descriptions, unique Feats, spells and primarily stuff I would’ve found impressive when I was 13. Not to completely dismiss those 30 pages, there’s a rule on Minions and Lackeys which is a great Evil option over the Leadership Feat. It gives an Evil opponent with a high CR but poor Charisma score a chance to have disposable flunkies.
As for the remaining superfluous 130 pages, they’re divided into two sections. The first are stat blocks and back stories covering eight mediocre, tedious villains, their strongholds and Minions. The second section are those useless tactical maps for use with the official minis; what I branded D&D for Dummies in my review for Scourge of the Howling Horde. Without these tactical maps, the book’s page count would be shaved by 48 and then it could be sold as a softcover at a lower price.
Another irksome matter is the book’s introduction mentioning the game’s famous villains Eclavrda, Warduke, Rary, Manshoon, Iggwilv, etc. Why aren’t they present? These new ones feel like something the designers whipped together over a long weekend to fill a gap in WOTC’s release schedule. The use of non-core classes on them and their Minions really annoyed me too. Not everyone buys the supplements so it would be more courteous to publish them with core PHB classes. Then include a paragraph afterwards with suggested substitutions; in place of sorcerer use warlock if one owns Complete Arcane. The NPCs also feel like they were designed by power gamers trying to out do each other on WOTC’s old Fight Club forum. Fire giant ninjas? A ranger/duskblade/cancer mage? Hobgoblin rogue/hexblade/scarlet corsair pirates? These aren’t imaginative combinations, these are rationalizations for using lame prestige/alternate classes. I personally feel the fire giant queen Valbrynn in Exemplars would’ve been more impressive if her background made her a successor to King Snurre, the infamous fire giant king from Against the Giants; it certainly would’ve given this book an air of continuity and legacy.
Bottom Line: I’m just grateful I received this book indirectly as a gift. Had I spent my own $30 on it, I would’ve been pissed and contemplated requesting a refund from WOTC before hocking it at Half Price Books. My recommendation is this, avoid Exemplars and hunt down The Book of Vile Darkness if you don’t have it. Otherwise put the money away for a good module published by Paizo, Goodman or Necromancer Games. One other note, those 48 pages of tactical maps were why I refused to buy WOTC’s recent books on Castle Greyhawk, Castle Ravenloft, the Demonweb Pits and Undermountain. They’re an insult to every DM’s intelligence, even my 11-year-old nephew. He may not have the “logic” of an encounter down yet but neither did I when I first started playing D&D in 1981. It didn’t matter then, my friends and I had a great time because we were kids who didn’t need TSR to telegraph everything.