Adversaries and Allies in Baldur's Gate is a fantastic companion product to Hoard of the Dragon Queen as the party visits Baldur's Gate or for any campaign that goes into any city big or small. The approach here is simple... take the stat blocks in appendix B of the Monster Manual as well as Volo's Guide and generate a character back story for the party to encounter.

There are six non-player characters and each has a personality, a motivation, a quote to use as an opening line, a couple of trinkets/treasures, and a suggested Baldur's Gate activity.

Let's see how it works...

• production value is excellent - this is a well designed and laid out booklet that is visually stunning. Each character background has a suitable portrait and the information is provided in an easy to read format.
• product utilization is excellent - I love the idea as a DM of having a goto background for NPC character interaction. Each character is setup as both an adversary and an ally so that you, as the DM, can pick how that character is going interact with your party. Somedays you might need a pesky wizard and other times your group can use a little help.
• monster/character adaptation is excellent - each character is provided with a suggested template from Wizards' source material - either the NPC Appendix B of the Monster Manual or from Volo's Guide to Monsters. There's typically three suggested levels - very low, low, and medium CR stat blocks as published by Wizards.
• product pricing is excellent - although it only has about a dozen pages of content, at pay what you want with a suggested $0.50 for the publication, this is a discount steal!

Additionally, there's a table of hirelings by neighborhood in Baldur's Gate which provides a bit of flavor for character interactions by neighborhood. It's setup in 20 rows so it's easy to roll a d20 and pick a random person/shop. As an example - if your players ask what's in the shop across the street you'd answer depending upon neighborhood... in the Wide you might find a Weaver, in the Outfitter Staging you'd find a Wheelwright, in the Lower City you'd find a Shipwright, and only in the Upper City would you find a Wine Merchant.

My nitpicks... I'm a bit surprised with the accolyte and the priest NPC stat blocks in the Monster Manual, that there wasn't an entry for a cleric type character that can either doom or heal the party. Also, I really like the suggested NPC stats from the Wizards source material but would have liked it even more if it gave me the page number for quick reference.

Overall this is a nice supplement to Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I was able to pull Jaris out as a NPC - they play cards with him at an inn near the northern gate and find out the next day that's he's part of the merchant wagon train heading north to Waterdeep. I've put a few of the others on wagon guard duty in my notes and if some later interactions come up I'll have them ready to go.

Rick Anderson

PS - LMAO... Make Baldur's Gate Great Again says the Lich!