my only colmpliant is that these encounters were organized by their cr. but otherwise. such a good reference point to either steal for your villains or to pull a last second fight for your team.

Do you know how a good chef can glance into a pantry, take stock of the items on hand, and then come up with a great meal from what he saw? That’s essentially what Villains & Lairs is. Jeff C. Stevens was looking for stock art for other adventures and nothing he found matched his needs. So he commissioned art for those but hated to let the inspiring stock art he found go to waste. So he sent out a request to several creators to create personalities around those images. This supplement is the product of that collaboration. These “chefs” converged upon a single feast and we get to enjoy a smorgasbord.

Read more: https://www.nonzerosumgames.com/savage-encounters-villains-lairs/

I purchased all four of the Villains and Lairs supplements yesterday, based on... well... a hunch.

Wow, was that a good hunch.

I've only had a chance to peruse all four of them, and I will be digging in further. But this is some of the best supplemental content I've purchased yet. This stuff is GREAT, and as a DM who's getting back into D&D after a 15-year layoff - and suddenly finds himself at the helm of two different games - having this stuff available to either use, modify, or spark my imagination, is going to be invaluable. Every NPC I've seen in these guides so far has some sort of spark, or twist, or perspective that is unique/different. They're giving me all sorts of ideas. And that is awesome.

So - thank you very much for this. Money very well spent, and I will be eagerly digging through the rest of your catalog.

Very handy. I especially like the suggestions on using the NPCs in various ways: as villains, yes, but also quest-givers, merchants, etc. That makes this far more usable than I originally realized!

There is some truly excellent content here, including lots of interesting NPCs, most of whom could take on a variety of roles in either a self-contained adventure or as a more significant part of an ongoing campaign, with those roles potentially shifting over time. They represent a variety of archetypes, with some unusual and unique ideas tossed in, and come complete with a lot of story hooks. Most are connected to the Forgotten Realms setting in some way, but that is easily ignored or reskinned for whatever setting you might use as a GM. The lairs are straight-forward and well-presented. A couple of these characters will be immediately finding themselves into my campaign, with one likely to be something of a patron or sponsor who turns out to have a more sinister motive than the characters recognize at first.

Good stuff!

We had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Stevens and this amazing product on our podcast Crit Academy. Listen here. This product is a piece of golden art. The collection of villains are interesting, well developed and you're given options to introduce them not only as big bads, but also as quest givers or just information givers. Giving you great NPC's for your world with fleshed out backgrounds and some with maps for their lairs. A must have resource for any DM. Great work Jeff!

This is an amazing product that will easily find a home in any Dungeon Master's Library come and see my full review here

After reading the whole thing there is only one thought that comes to my mind. WHAT AN AMAZING SOURCE OF INSPIRATION! I have already made plans to include plenty of these villains in my campaign. My favourites are by far the Pirate mindflayer Cephelosk Vezriss and the Vampire Lady Anya but the whole product shines brightly because of the creativity and inspiration the authors had. I can safely recommend this product to everyone. 5/5.

So I love this, fully fleshed out backstories, great artwork, any magic items associated with the NPC have their own cards written on the page (mostly) and if an NPC uses a stat block the book and the page are listed in the descriptions (again, mostly).

The only thing i can for sure criticize is some of the stat blocks created for this book have errors or inconsistencies. Mostly it's due to proficiency bonuses being miscaluclated or disregarded, like a CR 6 creature having a prof bonus of +2 instead of the +3 it should or a particular skill has a bonus that doesn't make sense when applying proficiency and the associated attribute.

There are a lot of examples of this happening, some are Ameila's attack bonus, Angel's Perception, Black Rose's attack damage, anything related to Cephelosk's INT, WIS or CHA stat, The Fissures' AC, attack and damage values and his skills, Dusan Prales proficiency bonues being +6 (CR 12), Gekals' AC and damage bonus with his staff, Malaia's infernal legacy ability doesn' have a DC, Rhizoidon's Entangle has no DC and his attack bonus is off, and Voolya's skill proficiencies.

These are just a few examples, but are moslty minor issues, and most DM's should be able to fix these themselves, but maybe the creators will update these issues in the future. Again, i love this expansion and can't wait to use a lot of these NPCs in my home game!

It's 46 pre-made antagonists for your game. Exactly what it says on the box and with this many writers, it's hard to say there isn't something here for every type of DM that exists. The great thing is, they're all antagonists but they're not all villains. Each has their own goals and plots, and that might mean they do shady things but not 100% EVIL things. There's a great amount of variety in this product, I highly recommend it!