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"Money is the only goal worth dying for; mercenaries know this, and have learned profit from their wisdom.
This sourcebook is the perfect resource for playing mercenaries and running mercenary campaigns."
- the back cover blurb of Mercenaries

The product

Mercenaries is the latest topic-specific volume for d20 from AEG. It purports, as the quote above indicates, to be the perfect resource on the subject. How well does it stack up? Let's take a closer look.

The book itself is a 256-page softcover volume, with a less-than-glossy cover (which feels like it might be a bit tougher than your average softcover; time will tell). The cover itself is a handsome green with a picture of a warrior - presumably a mercenary - carrying a large warhammer over one shoulder.

The interior is well-laid out, in two-column format. There's a certain amount of watermark artwork used, but not to distraction, and the book is easy to read. The interior artwork (all in black & white) is of a generally good standard - there isn't much that makes me cringe, but on the other hand few of the pieces really floored me. The editing is good but not perfect - for instance, the writeup of the Fifth Column prestige class sometimes make reference to the Unseen Hand, another prestige class included in the book.

A rundown of the various chapters of the book:

1. Races

Details the following non-human races:

Aradan (rat-people)
Ashemi (an old race with vestigial wings, that are dedicated to fighting evil)
Bael (proud and greedy traders)
Drallocs (subterraneans who hire out as mercenaries to the overworld, but must keep their skin covered or burn)
Lahryk (small, civilized reptilian race, settled around desert oases)
Magirn (a small, strange race having its origins in the familiars of dead spellcasters)
Makall (another reptilian race hailing from the desert, great natural hunters and trackers)
Taranuhl (a very rare race, closely resembling humans, with retractable spurs and a lust for blood)
Uldrath (a race of large bestial bipeds, well-disposed, however)

I liked these in general, but with some exceptions: the Aradan didn't strike me as particularly original. I quite like the Drallok motivation for adventure (to acquire political power in their society, they must literally buy it), but they take 1d4 damage per minute their skin is exposed to direct sunlight. If that's necessary to balance their abilities, I think it's quite bad; such a weakness is far worse than Superman's for kryptonite.

The Magirn struck me as quite odd: spellcaster's familiars tend to be animals, and the explanatory text says the Magirn are "no longer precisely animals", but the Magirn don't resemble animals at all: they're "small bipeds somewhat resembling gnomes." Explanation, please, AEG!

The Taranuhl seem quite nasty, and would make for good villains (even if retractable spines/fingerblades/claws are not exactly original) I'd note, though, that the book says their favoured class is "Bounty Hunter", which doesn't appear in this book.

2. Classes

These are new base classes:

Alchemist (able to create alchemical elixirs with the effects of spells
Guardian (failed wizards who combine force of arms and spells)
Guerilla (similar to fighters or rangers, but gaining weak sneak attacks, and trap-setting and other related abilities)
Hunter (again, similar to fighters or rangers, but with an emphasis on hunting and surprise attacks)
Legionnaire (specialized in heavy armour and formation fighting)
Mercenary Ranger (a customizable ranger variant, possibly with or without spells)
Myrmidon (fighters using spells without somatic components)
Nomad (see below)
Scout (receives "Sniper shot" bonuses akin to sneak attacks with ranged weapons only, plus some abilities related to their role)
Tattoo Mage (imbue themselves with permanent tattoos that control a spell)

The Nomad requires something of a longer explanation. They get a lot of skills, primarily centred around living by one's wits, and a smattering of different abilities:they can hide small weapons easily, carry a lot and with great endurance, gain a few bonus feats, et al. They may subscribe to a nomadic system of honour, whose principles are accountability, paying one's debts, hospitality, and (more of a cultural element) the telling of tales. This is all quite fitting and elicits a "cool!" response from me, but I wonder if this isn't veering a little too much in the direction of 2nd edition kits.

There is some obvious repetition in these classes. The Guardian and Myrmidon are both in concept to a fighter-wizard. The differences are somewhat subtle: the guardian is closer to a wizard (wearing only light armour, and being able to gain a familiar, as well as being able to gain the ability to use magic items as a wizard, and a special ability to empower a weapon as if it was magical). The myrmidon, on the other hand, has a more restricted spell list which does not include any with somatic components, so they can cast spells while wearing heavier armour. They also get a slightly larger number of bonus feats (6 vs 5) with a wider choice available to them.

There is much more repetition in the "alternate rangers": the Guerilla, Hunter, Mercenary Ranger, and Scout could all fall into that category, although the Scout shares no abilities with the standard ranger, except being able to be sneaky. However, they each take a different approach, and I admit to liking them all. Those people who dislike the standard 3rd edition ranger get a lot of alternatives here.

3. Skills

This short chapter (8 pages) is a gem. It mainly details new uses for existing skills, a few specific to mercenaries, like using Appraise to review a contract, or Diplomacy to renegotiate one. Others include Hide Background (Bluff), Mimic an animal cry (Wilderness Lore) and Puzzle-solving (Concentration). New Craft and Profession skills include Explosives (using "dracotechnics"), Trapmaking, and Detonator. I like having some rules addressing the setting of traps, and the inclusion of explosives is very satisfying to a fan (such as myself) of Steven Erikson's military-fantasy Malazan Empire novels.

The chapter closes with a page and a half on stealth, and how to reduce the amount of die-rolling that it can require. This seemed fairly sensible to me; then again, if you don't use much stealth, or like the system as it is, this bit of the book will be rather useless to you.

4. Feats

There are far too many feats (more than 70) for me to detail here. Some are apparently corrected versions of feats originally published in AEG's book Dungeons. Since I don't have that book, I don't mind. The feats range from Armor Focus (providing a bonus point of AC in the armor category of your choice) to Contortionist, Light Sleeper, Rabble-Rouser (the ability to raise a group of temporary followers), to School Focus and Thick Skull.

I think the feats in general are good, although some of them raise possible alarm bells in my mind. Improved Sneak Attack, for instance, increases the die size of sneak attacks (from d6 to d8, for instance), which seems very nasty for a single feat. Blood Lust is similar to the Barbarian's rage ability; should feats duplicate class abilities?

5. Description

So, here we are on page 69, and finally Mercenaries begins to actually discuss mercenaries: the sort of people they are, how mercenaries of varying alignments might generally behave, negotiating contracts, mercenary work, and various related parties: the law and law-enforcement, heroes, villains, contacts, suppliers, and so on.

Then, rather oddly, the chapter closes with a 2 3/4 page section on religion. To be precise, it describes new gods - mostly deities that mercenaries might worship, like Astal the Sell-Sword King, Grimaldi the Wagefarer, or Manahr, Lord of Sea Battles. These deities certainly don't make up a full pantheon on their own, although some are related to each other.

Finally, out of place but at least included, we get age, height, and weight tables for the races introduced in chapter 1.

6. Equipment

Lots of stuff here: money-changing, new weapons and armour, new rules for specially-forged items (weapons of laminated or with serrated edges, and dwarven-forged and elven-forged armor), dracotechnics (explosives, you may recall), adventuring gear, chariots(!?), special clothing, mounts, tattoos, etc.

Some of it is definitely filler. Combined equipment tables including both new and standard equipment are reasonably useful, but there are some useless short entries (to paraphrase, "a future AEG book will talk about Guilds", "see the DMG for information on hirelings") and a list of all magic items under 4000gp, including ones from previous AEG books.

Speaking of contacts, they were mentioned briefly in Chapter 5. Here we find a list of the price of contacts, but it would seem that the price of friendship is not cheap. In fact, it seems to have been subject to massive overinflation. To whit, the cost of befriending an individual ranges from a barmaid for 25gp, town guard for 250gp, or bishop 1000gp. Well, maybe the last is appropriate, but when good meals cost 5 silver a day, why would making friends with a barmaid cost 50 times that? And making friends with a town guard ten times that!?

Keep in mind, this is just the cost to know somebody well. It's twice as much for them to be willing to go out of their way for you, and three times as much if they'd ever break the law for you. Fortunately, not very much space in the book is devoted to this.

7. Spells

Lots of spell lists. These lists include references to all the AEG-published spells and what book they were in, which is nice in the case of rather full lists like those for alchemist elixirs. But the lists for Bards, Rangers, and Paladins, comprised only of AEG's spells, are not very useful to someone who only has Mercenaries, except as advertisements for AEG's other books. And then we have a 12 1/2 page listing of cleric domains, both AEG-published and standard. I appreciate having these new domains, but that many pages is an awful lot.

Of more importance are the previously-mentioned alchemist list, and the lists for tattoo mages and myrmidons. (Guardians use the standard wizard/sorcerer spell list.) And then we get new spells, something over 40 of them, generally interesting.

8. Mercenaries

Here we have systems for finding and hiring mercenaries, pay rates and negotiating salaries, morale, and a system of skirmish combat rules, followed up by tables to randomly create mercenary NPCs, and 100 mercenary adventure ideas.

The skirmish combat rules look reasonably good; they collect groups of up to 10 individual troops into units, with special rules for handling their attacks and taking damage, but these are basically an addition to the standard combat system, so should work just as well as regular combat does. A note of interpretation: I presume that units' attacks of opportunity operate on the same basis as their regular attacks, rather than being resolved individually, but that should have been made more clear.

The pay rates, on the other hand, seem to be totally insane. A mercenary who was a first level warrior would earn 40gp/day, or 10 if hired by a larger group like a caravan or army. So, such an individual hired for a 3-month campaign, assuming he survived, would earn... 900 gp!? Perhaps it's worth noting that the Dungeon Master's Guide lists rates for mercenaries (p149), ranging from 2 to 6 silver pieces, for individuals ranging from a 1st level warrior to a 2nd level warrior acting as a leader.

9. Mercenary Companies

This chapter starts with some different types of mercenary specialists (e.g. air rider and archer) and two examples of each. To be blunt, this really seems like filler, about 15 pages of it. Then we get to some better material - four different mercenary companies. Again, we get some NPC writeups with each, but these have something of a story to fit into, and don't seem like character concepts a player or GM could whip off quite so easily.

10. Prestige Classes

By and large, these are pretty good. All of them are 10-level prestige classes. Just as is the case with the regular classes, most of these are variations in one way or another on fighters and the like. There are a few monk prestige classes (Initiates of Shattered Steel, and Unseen Hand) but there's not much here for spellcasters.

A lot of them are actual mercenary forces (following the idea that prestige classes represent the training received by members of special orders in your game world): The Assemblage Undine, Clan Kallin, Dune Runners, Exiles of the Burning Road, The Fifth Column, Goridin's Knights, the Initiates of Shattered Steel, Order of the Sanguine Knights, Soldiers of the Blackened Road, Unseen Hand.

Others are not: Bone Warrior, Clan Champion, Fanatic, The Grey Walkers, Legacy, Man-At-Arms, Partisan, Personal Champion, Skirmisher, Slayer, Spellslayer, Stalwart Defender, Urban Defender

I like most of these, but one of them really stands out as highly problematic: the Legacy. Legacies are dedicated to defeating a vastly powerful demon, monster(s) or organization. The problem with them is twofold: all their abilities are centred around this opposition, so a legacy character will either be very powerful (fighting his legacy foe) or not (at all other times). In addition, the writeup talks about how "legacies who destroy their legacy foe (or who leave the class) may multiclass as normal." But what about all the abilities the character gained as a legacy? Without the legacy foe to contend with, all of a sudden the character's abilities as a legacy become useless! The legacy prestige class might be useful for an NPC, but it seems too flawed for a PC.

11. Magic Items

A bunch of different magic items. AEG adds some new magical weapon types: I particularly liked Invisible, which makes the weapon itself invisible. Now you could create a weapon like "Selar's Invisible Blade", from Roger Zelazny's "Dilvish the Damned" stories. Others include Ancient (particularly strong) and Focused (capable of holding and delivering a touch spell). There are also specific magic items like the Armor of the Sun, Glass Dagger, and Sword of Acarra, and a couple of artifacts.

12. Monsters

This chapter starts by describing new beasts of burden (which also get references in the Equipment section) - the large, flying, Bulgrif, the bad-tempered, three-horned Grollok, and others - including War Elephants! The rest of the book is largely devoted to different varieties of monstrous bipeds - Desert Orcs, Ridge Goblins, Banshee Trolls, and so on.

If my comments on these last two chapters seem a bit sparse, let me note that they seem fine, but I think it's more important to move on to some general comments about the book as a whole.

Opinion

First, I think the book suffers from the problem of having too many cooks - who didn't talk to each other. There are nine new races and 10 new classes in the book, but none of the NPCs in the book use them. There are a bunch of new weapons in the equipment chapter, but again, none of the magic items are any of these types.

Secondly, I think the book does exceedingly well on one level, and almost totally fails on another. It is largely a collection of new races, classes, and equipment. I think it's an excellent general sourcebook for d20. But the title of this book is Mercenaries, and as a sourcebook on that subject, I think it falls flat on its face.

Yes, a lot of the classes are militaristic and could well apply to mercenary characters or campaigns, and the mercenary organizations and prestige classes will be good features to plug into a mercenary campaign. But the actual content which I consider to actually discuss mercenaries and mercenary campaigns - the subjects for which this book is supposed to be "the perfect resource" - total just 25 pages.[1]

Here, I admit that I am excluding things that I consider fluff, like the section on gods for mercenaries, and the random mercenary creation tables.

Cynically, perhaps this book should have been called More Stuff for d20. Classes, races... stuff sells books. Maybe not that many people are going to want to play in a mercenary campaign, and AEG ensures a successful product by largely providing a general sourcebook.

Perhaps I came to this book with an expectation not held a goal of the authors: I see mercenaries as primarily members of a military unit, even in fantasy, not individual sell-swords. I'm thinking here of books like Sheepfarmer's Daughter (The Deed of Paksenarrion, Book 1) by Elizabeth Moon, the Black Company series by Glen Cook, and Memories of Ice by Stephen Erikson. (There: I've mentioned some relevant fantasy novels, something the book doesn't do.)

Despite the fact that the book talks about this in Chapter 5, it's not much of a campaign resource in this regard. There's little discussion of the players' role as part of a larger a mercenary unit[2], how to organize one, or unit makeup (fighters are fine, but they'll be a lot happier with clerics to heal them, and a wizard or two to deal with enemy wizards). There are few adventure hooks related to the element of the contract itself: adventures derived from the fact that the characters are mercenaries, aside from being people willing to take on morally dubious jobs for money.[3] What if, as Chapter 5 mentions the possibility, the players are Lawful or Neutral Good mercenaries? Finally, the organizations in the book seem much closer to guilds than actual mercenary companies; they don't fight as a unit, but hire out apparently small numbers of their members.

Despite these personal beefs, I realize that not everyone will approach this book in the same way, and I can't deny its qualities as a general sourcebook, either.

[1] Here, I count 8 1/2 pages in Chapter 5, and 17 pages in Chapter 8.
[2] Do the players have the same moral values as their commander? What happens if, sworn members of a mercenary company, their commander signs the company up for duties they have a personal objection to? Come to think of it, I don't think the issue of oaths of loyalty raises its head in the entire book.
[3] Assuming the characters or company is loyal to their contract, what happens when it turns out the employer understated the task at hand? Or a seemingly simple job escalates into something much worse, like ordinary guard duty in a city that becomes racked with full-scale riots?

Rating

As a general sourcebook, Mercenaries is great. I'd actually give it a 5 for substance and a 4 for style.

As a sourcebook on mercenaries, I'd give it a substance rating of 2, and a style rating of 3.

Overall, then, as I am trying to be objective about my own view of the material, and considering the material actually presented, rather than its intent, I give it a 4 for substance, and 4 for style.

Mercenaries
Mercenaries Capsule Review by Chris Camfield on 05/08/02 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty) The perfect* resource for playing mercenaries and running mercenary campaigns?* Product: Mercenaries Author: Noah Dudley, Andrew Getting, Travis Heermann, Jeff Ibach, Mike Leader, Mike Mearls, Jim Pinto, Eric Steiger, John Baxter Stringfellow, Douglas Sun Category: RPG Company/Publisher: AEG Line: d20 Cost: 29.95 Page count: 256 Year published: 2002 ISBN: 1-887953-58-2 SKU: AEG 8511 Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Chris Camfield on 05/08/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	"Money is the only goal worth dying for; mercenaries know this, and have learned profit from their wisdom. This sourcebook is the perfect resource for playing mercenaries and running mercenary campaigns." - the back cover blurb of Mercenaries The product Mercenaries is the latest topic-specific volume for d20 from AEG. It purports, as the quote above indicates, to be the perfect resource on the subject. How well does it stack up? Let's take a closer look. The book itself is a 256-page softcover volume, with a less-than-glossy cover (which feels like it might be a bit tougher than your average softcover; time will tell). The cover itself is a handsome green with a picture of a warrior - presumably a mercenary - carrying a large warhammer over one shoulder. The interior is well-laid out, in two-column format. There's a certain amount of watermark artwork used, but not to distraction, and the book is easy to read. The interior artwork (all in black & white) is of a generally good standard - there isn't much that makes me cringe, but on the other hand few of the pieces really floored me. The editing is good but not perfect - for instance, the writeup of the Fifth Column prestige class sometimes make reference to the Unseen Hand, another prestige class included in the book. A rundown of the various chapters of the book: 1. Races Details the following non-human races: Aradan (rat-people) Ashemi (an old race with vestigial wings, that are dedicated to fighting evil) Bael (proud and greedy traders) Drallocs (subterraneans who hire out as mercenaries to the overworld, but must keep their skin covered or burn) Lahryk (small, civilized reptilian race, settled around desert oases) Magirn (a small, strange race having its origins in the familiars of dead spellcasters) Makall (another reptilian race hailing from the desert, great natural hunters and trackers) Taranuhl (a very rare race, closely resembling humans, with retractable spurs and a lust for blood) Uldrath (a race of large bestial bipeds, well-disposed, however) I liked these in general, but with some exceptions: the Aradan didn't strike me as particularly original. I quite like the Drallok motivation for adventure (to acquire political power in their society, they must literally buy it), but they take 1d4 damage per minute their skin is exposed to direct sunlight. If that's necessary to balance their abilities, I think it's quite bad; such a weakness is far worse than Superman's for kryptonite. The Magirn struck me as quite odd: spellcaster's familiars tend to be animals, and the explanatory text says the Magirn are "no longer precisely animals", but the Magirn don't resemble animals at all: they're "small bipeds somewhat resembling gnomes." Explanation, please, AEG! The Taranuhl seem quite nasty, and would make for good villains (even if retractable spines/fingerblades/claws are not exactly original) I'd note, though, that the book says their favoured class is "Bounty Hunter", which doesn't appear in this book. 2. Classes These are new base classes: Alchemist (able to create alchemical elixirs with the effects of spells Guardian (failed wizards who combine force of arms and spells) Guerilla (similar to fighters or rangers, but gaining weak sneak attacks, and trap-setting and other related abilities) Hunter (again, similar to fighters or rangers, but with an emphasis on hunting and surprise attacks) Legionnaire (specialized in heavy armour and formation fighting) Mercenary Ranger (a customizable ranger variant, possibly with or without spells) Myrmidon (fighters using spells without somatic components) Nomad (see below) Scout (receives "Sniper shot" bonuses akin to sneak attacks with ranged weapons only, plus some abilities related to their role) Tattoo Mage (imbue themselves with permanent tattoos that control a spell) The Nomad requires something of a longer explanation. They get a lot of skills, primarily centred around living by one's wits, and a smattering of different abilities:they can hide small weapons easily, carry a lot and with great endurance, gain a few bonus feats, et al. They may subscribe to a nomadic system of honour, whose principles are accountability, paying one's debts, hospitality, and (more of a cultural element) the telling of tales. This is all quite fitting and elicits a "cool!" response from me, but I wonder if this isn't veering a little too much in the direction of 2nd edition kits. There is some obvious repetition in these classes. The Guardian and Myrmidon are both in concept to a fighter-wizard. The differences are somewhat subtle: the guardian is closer to a wizard (wearing only light armour, and being able to gain a familiar, as well as being able to gain the ability to use magic items as a wizard, and a special ability to empower a weapon as if it was magical). The myrmidon, on the other hand, has a more restricted spell list which does not include any with somatic components, so they can cast spells while wearing heavier armour. They also get a slightly larger number of bonus feats (6 vs 5) with a wider choice available to them. There is much more repetition in the "alternate rangers": the Guerilla, Hunter, Mercenary Ranger, and Scout could all fall into that category, although the Scout shares no abilities with the standard ranger, except being able to be sneaky. However, they each take a different approach, and I admit to liking them all. Those people who dislike the standard 3rd edition ranger get a lot of alternatives here. 3. Skills This short chapter (8 pages) is a gem. It mainly details new uses for existing skills, a few specific to mercenaries, like using Appraise to review a contract, or Diplomacy to renegotiate one. Others include Hide Background (Bluff), Mimic an animal cry (Wilderness Lore) and Puzzle-solving (Concentration). New Craft and Profession skills include Explosives (using "dracotechnics"), Trapmaking, and Detonator. I like having some rules addressing the setting of traps, and the inclusion of explosives is very satisfying to a fan (such as myself) of Steven Erikson's military-fantasy Malazan Empire novels. The chapter closes with a page and a half on stealth, and how to reduce the amount of die-rolling that it can require. This seemed fairly sensible to me; then again, if you don't use much stealth, or like the system as it is, this bit of the book will be rather useless to you. 4. Feats There are far too many feats (more than 70) for me to detail here. Some are apparently corrected versions of feats originally published in AEG's book Dungeons. Since I don't have that book, I don't mind. The feats range from Armor Focus (providing a bonus point of AC in the armor category of your choice) to Contortionist, Light Sleeper, Rabble-Rouser (the ability to raise a group of temporary followers), to School Focus and Thick Skull. I think the feats in general are good, although some of them raise possible alarm bells in my mind. Improved Sneak Attack, for instance, increases the die size of sneak attacks (from d6 to d8, for instance), which seems very nasty for a single feat. Blood Lust is similar to the Barbarian's rage ability; should feats duplicate class abilities? 5. Description So, here we are on page 69, and finally Mercenaries begins to actually discuss mercenaries: the sort of people they are, how mercenaries of varying alignments might generally behave, negotiating contracts, mercenary work, and various related parties: the law and law-enforcement, heroes, villains, contacts, suppliers, and so on. Then, rather oddly, the chapter closes with a 2 3/4 page section on religion. To be precise, it describes new gods - mostly deities that mercenaries might worship, like Astal the Sell-Sword King, Grimaldi the Wagefarer, or Manahr, Lord of Sea Battles. These deities certainly don't make up a full pantheon on their own, although some are related to each other. Finally, out of place but at least included, we get age, height, and weight tables for the races introduced in chapter 1. 6. Equipment Lots of stuff here: money-changing, new weapons and armour, new rules for specially-forged items (weapons of laminated or with serrated edges, and dwarven-forged and elven-forged armor), dracotechnics (explosives, you may recall), adventuring gear, chariots(!?), special clothing, mounts, tattoos, etc. Some of it is definitely filler. Combined equipment tables including both new and standard equipment are reasonably useful, but there are some useless short entries (to paraphrase, "a future AEG book will talk about Guilds", "see the DMG for information on hirelings") and a list of all magic items under 4000gp, including ones from previous AEG books. Speaking of contacts, they were mentioned briefly in Chapter 5. Here we find a list of the price of contacts, but it would seem that the price of friendship is not cheap. In fact, it seems to have been subject to massive overinflation. To whit, the cost of befriending an individual ranges from a barmaid for 25gp, town guard for 250gp, or bishop 1000gp. Well, maybe the last is appropriate, but when good meals cost 5 silver a day, why would making friends with a barmaid cost 50 times that? And making friends with a town guard ten times that!? Keep in mind, this is just the cost to know somebody well. It's twice as much for them to be willing to go out of their way for you, and three times as much if they'd ever break the law for you. Fortunately, not very much space in the book is devoted to this. 7. Spells Lots of spell lists. These lists include references to all the AEG-published spells and what book they were in, which is nice in the case of rather full lists like those for alchemist elixirs. But the lists for Bards, Rangers, and Paladins, comprised only of AEG's spells, are not very useful to someone who only has Mercenaries, except as advertisements for AEG's other books. And then we have a 12 1/2 page listing of cleric domains, both AEG-published and standard. I appreciate having these new domains, but that many pages is an awful lot. Of more importance are the previously-mentioned alchemist list, and the lists for tattoo mages and myrmidons. (Guardians use the standard wizard/sorcerer spell list.) And then we get new spells, something over 40 of them, generally interesting. 8. Mercenaries Here we have systems for finding and hiring mercenaries, pay rates and negotiating salaries, morale, and a system of skirmish combat rules, followed up by tables to randomly create mercenary NPCs, and 100 mercenary adventure ideas. The skirmish combat rules look reasonably good; they collect groups of up to 10 individual troops into units, with special rules for handling their attacks and taking damage, but these are basically an addition to the standard combat system, so should work just as well as regular combat does. A note of interpretation: I presume that units' attacks of opportunity operate on the same basis as their regular attacks, rather than being resolved individually, but that should have been made more clear. The pay rates, on the other hand, seem to be totally insane. A mercenary who was a first level warrior would earn 40gp/day, or 10 if hired by a larger group like a caravan or army. So, such an individual hired for a 3-month campaign, assuming he survived, would earn... 900 gp!? Perhaps it's worth noting that the Dungeon Master's Guide lists rates for mercenaries (p149), ranging from 2 to 6 silver pieces, for individuals ranging from a 1st level warrior to a 2nd level warrior acting as a leader. 9. Mercenary Companies This chapter starts with some different types of mercenary specialists (e.g. air rider and archer) and two examples of each. To be blunt, this really seems like filler, about 15 pages of it. Then we get to some better material - four different mercenary companies. Again, we get some NPC writeups with each, but these have something of a story to fit into, and don't seem like character concepts a player or GM could whip off quite so easily. 10. Prestige Classes By and large, these are pretty good. All of them are 10-level prestige classes. Just as is the case with the regular classes, most of these are variations in one way or another on fighters and the like. There are a few monk prestige classes (Initiates of Shattered Steel, and Unseen Hand) but there's not much here for spellcasters. A lot of them are actual mercenary forces (following the idea that prestige classes represent the training received by members of special orders in your game world): The Assemblage Undine, Clan Kallin, Dune Runners, Exiles of the Burning Road, The Fifth Column, Goridin's Knights, the Initiates of Shattered Steel, Order of the Sanguine Knights, Soldiers of the Blackened Road, Unseen Hand. Others are not: Bone Warrior, Clan Champion, Fanatic, The Grey Walkers, Legacy, Man-At-Arms, Partisan, Personal Champion, Skirmisher, Slayer, Spellslayer, Stalwart Defender, Urban Defender I like most of these, but one of them really stands out as highly problematic: the Legacy. Legacies are dedicated to defeating a vastly powerful demon, monster(s) or organization. The problem with them is twofold: all their abilities are centred around this opposition, so a legacy character will either be very powerful (fighting his legacy foe) or not (at all other times). In addition, the writeup talks about how "legacies who destroy their legacy foe (or who leave the class) may multiclass as normal." But what about all the abilities the character gained as a legacy? Without the legacy foe to contend with, all of a sudden the character's abilities as a legacy become useless! The legacy prestige class might be useful for an NPC, but it seems too flawed for a PC. 11. Magic Items A bunch of different magic items. AEG adds some new magical weapon types: I particularly liked Invisible, which makes the weapon itself invisible. Now you could create a weapon like "Selar's Invisible Blade", from Roger Zelazny's "Dilvish the Damned" stories. Others include Ancient (particularly strong) and Focused (capable of holding and delivering a touch spell). There are also specific magic items like the Armor of the Sun, Glass Dagger, and Sword of Acarra, and a couple of artifacts. 12. Monsters This chapter starts by describing new beasts of burden (which also get references in the Equipment section) - the large, flying, Bulgrif, the bad-tempered, three-horned Grollok, and others - including War Elephants! The rest of the book is largely devoted to different varieties of monstrous bipeds - Desert Orcs, Ridge Goblins, Banshee Trolls, and so on. If my comments on these last two chapters seem a bit sparse, let me note that they seem fine, but I think it's more important to move on to some general comments about the book as a whole. Opinion First, I think the book suffers from the problem of having too many cooks - who didn't talk to each other. There are nine new races and 10 new classes in the book, but none of the NPCs in the book use them. There are a bunch of new weapons in the equipment chapter, but again, none of the magic items are any of these types. Secondly, I think the book does exceedingly well on one level, and almost totally fails on another. It is largely a collection of new races, classes, and equipment. I think it's an excellent general sourcebook for d20. But the title of this book is Mercenaries, and as a sourcebook on that subject, I think it falls flat on its face. Yes, a lot of the classes are militaristic and could well apply to mercenary characters or campaigns, and the mercenary organizations and prestige classes will be good features to plug into a mercenary campaign. But the actual content which I consider to actually discuss mercenaries and mercenary campaigns - the subjects for which this book is supposed to be "the perfect resource" - total just 25 pages.[1] Here, I admit that I am excluding things that I consider fluff, like the section on gods for mercenaries, and the random mercenary creation tables. Cynically, perhaps this book should have been called More Stuff for d20. Classes, races... stuff sells books. Maybe not that many people are going to want to play in a mercenary campaign, and AEG ensures a successful product by largely providing a general sourcebook. Perhaps I came to this book with an expectation not held a goal of the authors: I see mercenaries as primarily members of a military unit, even in fantasy, not individual sell-swords. I'm thinking here of books like Sheepfarmer's Daughter (The Deed of Paksenarrion, Book 1) by Elizabeth Moon, the Black Company series by Glen Cook, and Memories of Ice by Stephen Erikson. (There: I've mentioned some relevant fantasy novels, something the book doesn't do.) Despite the fact that the book talks about this in Chapter 5, it's not much of a campaign resource in this regard. There's little discussion of the players' role as part of a larger a mercenary unit[2], how to organize one, or unit makeup (fighters are fine, but they'll be a lot happier with clerics to heal them, and a wizard or two to deal with enemy wizards). There are few adventure hooks related to the element of the contract itself: adventures derived from the fact that the characters are mercenaries, aside from being people willing to take on morally dubious jobs for money.[3] What if, as Chapter 5 mentions the possibility, the players are Lawful or Neutral Good mercenaries? Finally, the organizations in the book seem much closer to guilds than actual mercenary companies; they don't fight as a unit, but hire out apparently small numbers of their members. Despite these personal beefs, I realize that not everyone will approach this book in the same way, and I can't deny its qualities as a general sourcebook, either. [1] Here, I count 8 1/2 pages in Chapter 5, and 17 pages in Chapter 8. [2] Do the players have the same moral values as their commander? What happens if, sworn members of a mercenary company, their commander signs the company up for duties they have a personal objection to? Come to think of it, I don't think the issue of oaths of loyalty raises its head in the entire book. [3] Assuming the characters or company is loyal to their contract, what happens when it turns out the employer understated the task at hand? Or a seemingly simple job escalates into something much worse, like ordinary guard duty in a city that becomes racked with full-scale riots? Rating As a general sourcebook, Mercenaries is great. I'd actually give it a 5 for substance and a 4 for style. As a sourcebook on mercenaries, I'd give it a substance rating of 2, and a style rating of 3. Overall, then, as I am trying to be objective about my own view of the material, and considering the material actually presented, rather than its intent, I give it a 4 for substance, and 4 for style.