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Post by Relthar on May 29, 2006 13:36:13 GMT -5
WotC has posted the table of contents for the book here: www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060529aLooking it over it has several things of immediate interest to me. 1) A new listing for Yeenoghu (hopefully better than the one in the Book of Vile Darkness) 2) Demonic Aspects 3) Making Epic Demon Lords These alone will put it very close to the top of my to-get list. ;D
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Post by Jona on May 29, 2006 19:22:24 GMT -5
Mmmm that may be one I'll grab as well, if just for the Demonic Roles.
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Post by Relthar on Jun 1, 2006 23:23:32 GMT -5
Reading EnWorld threads about this book has led to some disturbing news. The CRs of the demon lords are being lowered to appeal more to campagins that don't go into epic level play. So they are lower than what is iin the BoVD. The rules presented for making Epic Demon Lords had better be more than a side paragraph in this case.
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Post by Relthar on Jun 6, 2006 10:58:19 GMT -5
Some excerpts from the book have been posted here: www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060605a The mature nabassu is CR 15, which is about right. They are nasty. I think the stats are the same as in the Maure Castle adventure, but with a slight bump in CR. Apparently I should have toned it down a bit more. Yeenoghu is listed at CR 20, but even so he is formidable. I'll have to do a comparison with his stats in the BoVD. The background information for him now mentions the Doresain (King of the Ghouls) by name, showing some consistency with what was presented in Libris Mortis. It also mentiones the Maure family explicitly. Not that anyone reading the Maure Castle adventure could come to any other conculsion as to who their mysterious patron "Y" is. This makes me very happy, and helps shed some other light on things. Just this little bit is quite useful to me. I will definitely need this book as a resource for the campaign. The Poison Healer feat is interesting. Great for making those truly hardcore "I can stand up to anything you dish out" types. I haven't read the description of Pazunia yet, but so far the preview has proven extremely useful.
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Post by ronjeremyjr on Jun 18, 2006 21:53:43 GMT -5
I've been leafing through this everytime I've been in a bookstore this past week & I've come to one conclusion.....I will not pay full price for this book....ever. Don't get me wrong, I will eventually add this to my large collection, however I feel some of the changes were just flat out nerfings of previously existing baddies. For those I'll keep with the BoVD. The newer additions I did like and I liked some of the other monsters they added in the book too. I haven't spent too much time on the history/background info on the areas of the abyss or the magic/items/artifacts. Seeing this book in person makes me eternally grateful for Amazon.com & birthdays where I get it cheaper or don't pay for it at all. Kind of like Magic of Incarnum....I liked it but I wouldn't buy it for full price (I got it for christmas instead...thank you Jessie).
Now what I want is Eberron. Bring on Secrets of Xen'drik!
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Post by Relthar on Jun 26, 2006 21:51:15 GMT -5
I found a couple of posts by Erik Mona and James Jacobs (two of the main authors of this work) on EnWorld that add some new insights on the power level of the demon lords. The thread they are from can be found here: www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=163867&page=8&pp=40Erik Mona: James Jacobs:
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Post by Relthar on Aug 25, 2006 10:01:26 GMT -5
I finally got this from Amazon a couple weeks ago (thanks to a $10 gift certificate), and having read through the parts of greatest interest to me, I am pleased with it.
The Demonic Roles section was quite informative, coupled with a little sidebar on "6 truths about demons." For the combat-oriented Demonic Roles, a general multi-round treatment of what they might do. I also found the little chart for each role about which roles specific demons fit (either well, interestingly but not designed for it, or not so well) handy. Demons are, if nothing else, chaotic, and can't be easily pigeon-holed into definitive roles all the time.
The stats on various demons I only glanced over, except for the nabassu. Comparing it to the stats originally published for it in Dungeon #112 (Maure Castle), they bumped its CR to 15, and removed what I considered its nastiest and potentially abusive ability: automatic summoning of either 2d4 bodaks, 1d4 abyssal ghouls, or a blood fiend. I think the version in FC1 is more accurate for its CR.
The Demon Lords I also skimmed over, except for Yeenoghu and one other that relates to this campaign. While the treatment this book gives each demon lord's cultists, followers, etc. isn't nearly as long as the BoVD provided, it does cover more of them. Again, the information that relates directly to what I am running was quite helpful in filling in some blanks for down the line.
There weren't any PrCs (thankfully), but there were feats. The abyssal heritor feats I found interesting. They are similar to the Eberron shifter feats in that the more you have, the more powerful they become. Some of the feats here will see use in the future on appropriate NPCs. There's also the spells, but I didn't really sit down and pour over them. Some are 3.5 updates form the BoVD, the rest look new. I was more interested in the revision done to Yeenoghu's domains; they make more sense now. I will be using these new domains for Yeenoghu's clerics from now on (time to revise Yug-Anark).
I think the best chapter overall in this book is the last one. It covers the history of the abyss, its inhabitants, the various ways to get around, and a multitude of layer descriptions (including Yeenoghu's). There is definitely some good stuff for me to work with. I don't know how much I'll use (time will tell), but I still like having it available.
One of the more important charts in the book is at the end. An index of demons by CR, with updated CRs for demons that originally appeared in the MM2 and Fiend Folio. Checking how they revised one of them in specific (the maurezhi), I can see why they did this. The maurezhi, at least, had a CR far higher than its abilities warranted.
I've added this book to the list of approved material for the ToSC game, and updated the list on Realms Gate. Given that most of the information in FC1 is more geared towards the demons than heroic PCs, I have marked it "GM permission only!" (unlike the BoVD which is all "NPC only.")
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