Having made good use of the excellent Adaptable NPCs supplement in the past, I was looking forward to utilising this supplement and seeing what interesting statblocks and adventure hooks would be included. Unfortunately, I was left dissapointed by a product which touted itself as providing information and characters for a setting it grossly misunderstands.
Unlike the previous Adaptable NPC, this book is not setting agnostic. Instead, the book presents itself as containing statblocks for use in the Eberron setting, a dungeon-punk setting which heavily utilises thematic elements of pulp action and film noir. Those elements which make Eberron a unique setting are all but absent in this book, which reads like it was written for a vastly different steampunk or science-fiction setting.
This lack of knowledge about the setting begins on the front page, with the book stating that it provides a host of NPCs to populate their steampunk worlds, following that with numerous statblocks equipped with a wide variety of firearms, Warforged being presented in different statblocks as menial servitors or bearing vadalis dragonmarks. A number NPCs present themselves as being aligned to some entity within Mechanus, a plane which does not even exist within Eberron's cosmology.
Even the naming scheme of many of the NPCs breaks from the conventions set by the setting's many official supplements in the past. Terminology which would be better suited for a sci-fi setting such as 'Medical Artificial Intelligence' find themselves accompanying some traditional names like the Ghaash'Kala and the Deneith Sentinel. Even those are not faithfully representative however, with elements resembling powered armour finding their way into the Deneith Sentinel.
The art within the supplement is solid and bears a consistent art style, however it is once again at odds with the setting the supplement proclaims to represent. With pieces of artwork which would look excellent on the pages of a far-future post-apocalyptic setting or a space western rather than an early industrial era fantasy noir setting. Many of the characters are portrayed carrying ammo packs which look more appropriate for modern or near-future firearms and some have signal dishes and electronic communication equipment on their person or attached to them. Even less appropriate are the vehicles, with a variety of science-fiction walkers and armoured vehicles making an appearance.
Had this book not been presented as an Eberron supplement, I would state that the content within is well suited for a sci-fi campaign and is reasonably well handled. It is by no means a bad product, meeting the consistent production values in both artwork and balanced statblocks that we have seen from the previous Adaptable NPC supplement. However at the end of the day, I cannot recommend this supplement to anyone looking for something representative of Eberron, let alone as a source for characters and NPCs to use in that setting.
|