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This is a tough one. Taking advantage of the "no minimum print cost" factor of the PDF format, DRAGON'S HOARD is a mini-supplement for D&D only 13 pages long, focused on a very specific topic: one dragon, and his loot. It's hard to dig into the nuances and faults of something so very simple; strictly speaking, it either works or it doesn't. DRAGON'S HOARD works, and it's hard to be too demanding of a supplement with such a negligible cost, but it does suffer from a lack of any real hook. If you need a dragon or some nifty magic items, or both, then it's worth the buy, but it's really only useful for that.

Demrellkull is an old Red Dragon who, like most of his kind, sits in the darkest caves atop his vast hoard of riches. He gets most of his treasure from the bold yet stupid folk who set out to kill him. He's given a full stat-block, followed by a run down of tactics. Round 1 starts with him casting invisibility on himself, and it gets uglier from there- he's got an Intelligence score of 20, so the DM is advised to take his time and think about the dragon's moves before making them. He seems an appropriate challenge at CR 20, but I can't really confirm this without playtesting.

Unfortunately the dragon seems to be the least essential part of this. Demrellkull doesn't have much of a background or a "hook" as adversaries go: he's your standard ultrapowerful hellmonster without any real personality. The tactical advice is useful, but you can cook up a dragon of his power level just from the Monster Manual. He's not badly done, mind you, but a strong characterization would've made him a truly compelling villain.

The hoard itself is where things start to get interesting. There's the standard assortment of coins and gems, and a few minor items, but the Major Items are genuinely unique artifacts, with the kind of detail that Demrellkull himself lacks. The Sorrow of Endless Winter is an ice-generating sword forged in a dark monastery a hundred years ago; the Slaver's Brand is the branding iron used by a now-dispersed orc tribe, with some interesting residual powers. The Scimitar of the Unbroken Path hails from a vanished island civilization. These are useful hooks which also happen to be interesting reading. Finally, there's a spell, "Martyr's Immolation", tied to the Sash of Embers. The name isn't fully accurate since you would normally use it to set someone else on fire, but as pyrotechnic spells go it's at least distinctive.

The book does have a solid layout, with PDF bookmarks used well as a quick index. There's also a Quick Reference Sheet for Demrellkull which is useful. I have to dock points for the cover, though, which looks rather ugly and over-digitized at any level of magnification. (At 100%, the reprint of the OGL is close to illegible, but it's nothing you can't read in every other third-party OGL or d20 product in existence.)

You see my dilemma here. It may be unreasonable to demand much more from this product than what it does, given its length and price. At the same time, I wonder if it couldn't have accomplished more in the same space. Something that would make it leap out at me, something that would really jog my imagination and get me to thinking rather than setting it aside and saying "well, it could come in handy later." This is a solid product, and it does what it set out to do. If you have a couple of bucks to spare, you could do worse. I just wish I could say more than that.

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