This is a great tool for fleshing out a party of villains or just "other groups of people" in the world.
At its core, the author has basically built some mixed parties according to the PHB rules and then rolled them into monster stat blocks with appropriate CRs. They all have basic backgrounds including Ideals/Flaws/Bonds.
Some Pros:
- This is a lot of effort I don't have to do!
- Good mix of races, genders and classes. Even the "Drow" party has a Duergar and a Drider.
- No one is carrying magic items, so you don't need to account for their possible acquisition by players.
- Working bookmarks at the front of the book.
- A really nice appendix listing offensive spells by CR. This is a good tool for "leveling up or down" the various casters.
Some Cons:
- There's no art, obviously this is due to the free nature of the product, but I'll note it here.
- There are limited write-ups on each party. You get two paragraphs of brief party description and then a paragaph describing each party member. What you don't get is any background on how they came together, how they work together, how they fight together, etc.
- No magic items... yes it's on both lists. The downside is that no one's background is connected to "a thing", they are all like PCs that grew to some high level but never acquired any loot that would inform how their character grew.
- Formatting by Homebrewery is reasonable but kind of plain. There's no good use of headers or footer, it's just kind of one giant document. There's no "print-friendly" version available.
To hit the 5-star level, the product just needs that extra "spit and polish". More meat about the parties, some options with magical items and ideally some art. With all of those pieces, this would be a product worthy of a print run.
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