Like other Hero NPC books, NKM features characters that for the sake of convenience are based in the company’s “Hero Universe,” so just as Conquerors, Killers and Crooks features villains from the now-famous Champions setting and Predators features several villains from Dark Champions’ fictional Hudson City, Nobles, Knights and Necromancers has its default setting in Hero’s “Turakian Age” High Fantasy world. I only mention this because while the Fantasy HERO or Turakian Age books are not strictly necessary to use this sourcebook, the spellcasters in particular are designed with two points in mind: First, their spells use the default FH magic system with each spell organized by school and each school requiring its own Skill Roll; these are listed mainly in the Fantasy HERO Grimoire and Fantasy HERO Grimoire 2. Spellcaster write-ups list spells like so: “Shadow Eyes (FHG 113)” which means that the Shadow Eyes spell is described in the Fantasy HERO Grimoire on page 113. Second, these characters, like other Turakian NPCs already written, operate under that sourcebook’s “house rule” that the Real Cost of spells written in the Grimoires is divided by 3 to reflect the power of magic in that setting. The divisor isn’t applied in the Grimoires but is applied to all spells here.
Chapter One: Lords of Evil is the “masterminds” chapter. While one of these master villains is just a tougher-and-smarter-than-usual Orc chieftain, the others are an ambitious king with an ancient heritage of wizardry, a master vampire who also happens to be a powerful mage (which among other things, means he can use magic to walk around in daylight) and the evil-but-patriotic spymaster called “The Lord of Spiders.” (The latter character greatly reminds me of Enabran Tain from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.) This selection provides challenging threats for all levels of play, with the Lord of Spiders allowing a focus for games that center on espionage and diplomacy more than combat.
Chapter Two: Fiendish Organizations focuses on threats that have more of a “group” identity, including organizations that are just small teams or “together” only by virtue of being lieutenants of the “Big Bad” Kal-Turak. More amusing is the team of Zelatar’s Blades, who first came together on the same side in a tavern brawl. After the brawl, a hooded stranger accosted them with an offer to investigate a great treasure. So they killed the stranger and took his treasure map.
Chapter Three: Solo Adversaries provides a list of miscellaneous characters. Some of these are connected to other characters in this book, others are mentioned in other Turakian Age books, and a couple are arch-mages who were prominent enough to have invented spells with their names (like ‘Vasdeferen's Venereal Vexation’ or such). A couple of these “adversaries” might be friendly contacts. Most of them will not be friends of the PCs. What’s interesting is that they’re not necessarily enemies, either. Sa’akiv the Red Necromancer, for instance, is certainly evil, but he’s also a scholar who is willing to share what he knows. He is not out to conquer the world, and if you leave him alone, he’ll leave you alone. It should be noted that unlike Predators and some other Hero NPC books, NKM does not contain an index or reference chart of NPC stats.
NOTES
Well, I said that the other books in the Fantasy HERO series are not strictly necessary to use this one, but if you’re using the spellcasters, you *do* need the Grimoires to know what their spells are so you can figure out how best they’re used in combat, even if you want to convert these character ideas to a different game system. So this might limit the book’s utility somewhat.
One of the factors that needs to be considered when assessing the “threat level” of these NPCs is the magic items they have in their possession, which are technically not in their point total but do contribute to their combat efficiency, in some cases more than others. It touches upon the subject of what sort of magic items the PCs in your game will have. While traditional pre-D&D fantasy stories had their magic swords, Elf-crafted goods and the like, it was D&D that set the standard for everybody and his uncle having a magic item, something that naturally developed in fantasy MMORPGs and culminated in the extremely mercantile World of Warcraft, where higher-level characters need to have a certain standard of “gear” just to stay competitive. The thing is, Fantasy HERO doesn’t use “drops” or random treasure charts to reward magic treasures, leaving that decision totally up to the GM. This is mainly intentional; no Random Magic Items Generator could possibly come up with every item that could be imagined, and moreover, giving a PC a new magic item is like giving him a new spell or superpower: It makes the character more powerful, and the GM has to figure out if that new power will unbalance the game or lead to “arms escalation.” For one thing, the PCs get their magic items mainly by killing monsters and “evil” NPCs, so if you use the NPCs in this book, and the PCs kill them, they will get their items.
That is, unless you say the item expires with the death of its owner, it needs to be destroyed or given to the Crown, etc. But that sort of ruling is arbitrary to say the least. So how many magic items should the PCs have? There’s no clear answer.
This is one of the things that turns some people off to HERO, especially in designing a fantasy magic system: The GM *has* to consider the little details that are just assumed or built in to other game systems. But by the standard of Nobles, Knights and Necromancers (based in the Turakian Age setting) the author implies that the setting is one where magic items of moderate power are not uncommon, especially among spellcasters, and NPC adventurers with a few hundred Experience Points will probably have more than one. In this respect NKM provides the Fantasy HERO GM a certain service in giving some idea what kind of equipment experienced threats will have, and what kind of equipment PCs should have if they face such NPCs directly.
SUMMARY
Style: 3
Like I said, not bad as much as “odd.”
Substance: 4
Nobles, Knights and Necromancers gives the GM a LOT of NPCs with colorful backgrounds and story ideas, in addition to a benchmark of what “typical” Fantasy HERO characters are supposed to look like.
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