Desdichado
Hero
Gothmog just asked me what I thought of this book in another thread, and rather than hijack, I thought I'd start a new one. I've only had it for a few hours, but I've spent much of that time reading the new entries in Armies of the Abyss, and Legions of Hell sections of the book as well as going through the Hordes of Gehenna pages. The order of those sections is alphabetical, so the demons are first, then the daemons, then the devils.
The art is top notch. There are some new artists for most of the new creatures, and a very few of the old creatures redone, and some of them are downright spooky. In general, I'm finding that the demons, new and old, are the vilest, nastiest creatures in existance, making The Book of Vile Darkness seem more like an animated Disney movie by comparison. As an example, the irecundia is a supermassive, Godzilla-like demon that spends all of its time sleeping in "the darkest pit known in the Abyss" unless a cadre of balors gathers one to devour friend and foe alike. (CR 28) The Vessel of Orcus, on the other hand, is a fitting challenge for low-level adventurers that should completely freak them out -- made as a vaguely humanoid "bag" of stitched together faces, and stuffed with maggots that swarm all over opponents to burrow through their flesh should force Sanity checks by default. Or the absolutely gross vilisemen; demonic oozes made from semen expelled during fornication and carrying the latent spawn of "potential children." The description of that thing was genuinely disturbing.
Legions of Hell got the fewest new creatures, as near as I can tell, although it did get a new character, (CR 19) Abigor, the Grand Duke of War. One of the more interesting ideas is the Exiled, Paladins who failed after a lifetime of goodness and wander in temporary (although as long as millenia) banishment in Hell. Iblis is considerably bulked up as a powerful warlord on the First level of Hell (CR 40) yet independant of its hierarchy.
The daemons I'm still digesting. They are perhaps the least like yugoloths, or old-style daemons of the three fiends, and the cosmology of Gehenna as presented here is much more compatible with the Book of the Righteous than with a more standard D&D cosmology (not that it's not still fairly transferable.) The daemons, in nature, are essentially all about temptation, something that devils and demons (perhaps surprisingly) seem to do very little of. Gehenna is broken out into seven realms, one for each of the seven deadly sins, and each ruled by some daemon lord and it's servitors.
Some of these are not very evil, IMO, and their write-up is more about what they spend their time trying to trick people into doing rather than what a typical adventurer (or what have you) would be doing with one. In other words, they're more interesting from a cosmological standpoint than from an adventure hook standpoint.
That said, some of them could still be used very easily, and some of the ideas were just as devious and warped as what Erik Mona wrote in AotA. The Companions of Malice, as a mercenary company of creatures that are vaguely reminiscent of the monsters in Aliens combined with slake-moths from Perdido Street Station (although much more straightforward in their combat approach) are a favorite, as is the confithish, a cretaure that swallows victims whole, devours their souls, and then accretes their bones on its back, growing ever larger as it devours more souls. The evil twin template is an interesting idea -- someone who falls too far to pride so that they don't see any of their own evil at all and imagine themselves as pure as they ironically commit who knows what kind of atrocities has a, well, evil twin version of himself rip itself out of his body, which then runs amok. That one, at least, was an adventure seed waiting to happen.
I also liked the gluttony creatures; they were very flavorful and nasty in their abilities. The Lust creatures, particularly the impregnators -- beings of pure lust denied normal pleasures by virtue of the fact that they are created to be asexual, were disturbing.
All in all I'm quite pleased with the new creatures, and the facelift (mechaniclly, in most respects) given to the older ones is nice, although not essential, in my experience. I guess how much you want this depends on how much you like to face PCs off against the unadulterated evil of fiends, and how much you really like the prior two books. Also, if you're a big Book of the Righteous fan and for some reason haven't picked up the other "book of fiends" volumes, I'd think this book would be great, as it expands that cosmology considerably, while also giving you some great foes that really fit that paradigm.
The art is top notch. There are some new artists for most of the new creatures, and a very few of the old creatures redone, and some of them are downright spooky. In general, I'm finding that the demons, new and old, are the vilest, nastiest creatures in existance, making The Book of Vile Darkness seem more like an animated Disney movie by comparison. As an example, the irecundia is a supermassive, Godzilla-like demon that spends all of its time sleeping in "the darkest pit known in the Abyss" unless a cadre of balors gathers one to devour friend and foe alike. (CR 28) The Vessel of Orcus, on the other hand, is a fitting challenge for low-level adventurers that should completely freak them out -- made as a vaguely humanoid "bag" of stitched together faces, and stuffed with maggots that swarm all over opponents to burrow through their flesh should force Sanity checks by default. Or the absolutely gross vilisemen; demonic oozes made from semen expelled during fornication and carrying the latent spawn of "potential children." The description of that thing was genuinely disturbing.
Legions of Hell got the fewest new creatures, as near as I can tell, although it did get a new character, (CR 19) Abigor, the Grand Duke of War. One of the more interesting ideas is the Exiled, Paladins who failed after a lifetime of goodness and wander in temporary (although as long as millenia) banishment in Hell. Iblis is considerably bulked up as a powerful warlord on the First level of Hell (CR 40) yet independant of its hierarchy.
The daemons I'm still digesting. They are perhaps the least like yugoloths, or old-style daemons of the three fiends, and the cosmology of Gehenna as presented here is much more compatible with the Book of the Righteous than with a more standard D&D cosmology (not that it's not still fairly transferable.) The daemons, in nature, are essentially all about temptation, something that devils and demons (perhaps surprisingly) seem to do very little of. Gehenna is broken out into seven realms, one for each of the seven deadly sins, and each ruled by some daemon lord and it's servitors.
Some of these are not very evil, IMO, and their write-up is more about what they spend their time trying to trick people into doing rather than what a typical adventurer (or what have you) would be doing with one. In other words, they're more interesting from a cosmological standpoint than from an adventure hook standpoint.
That said, some of them could still be used very easily, and some of the ideas were just as devious and warped as what Erik Mona wrote in AotA. The Companions of Malice, as a mercenary company of creatures that are vaguely reminiscent of the monsters in Aliens combined with slake-moths from Perdido Street Station (although much more straightforward in their combat approach) are a favorite, as is the confithish, a cretaure that swallows victims whole, devours their souls, and then accretes their bones on its back, growing ever larger as it devours more souls. The evil twin template is an interesting idea -- someone who falls too far to pride so that they don't see any of their own evil at all and imagine themselves as pure as they ironically commit who knows what kind of atrocities has a, well, evil twin version of himself rip itself out of his body, which then runs amok. That one, at least, was an adventure seed waiting to happen.
I also liked the gluttony creatures; they were very flavorful and nasty in their abilities. The Lust creatures, particularly the impregnators -- beings of pure lust denied normal pleasures by virtue of the fact that they are created to be asexual, were disturbing.
All in all I'm quite pleased with the new creatures, and the facelift (mechaniclly, in most respects) given to the older ones is nice, although not essential, in my experience. I guess how much you want this depends on how much you like to face PCs off against the unadulterated evil of fiends, and how much you really like the prior two books. Also, if you're a big Book of the Righteous fan and for some reason haven't picked up the other "book of fiends" volumes, I'd think this book would be great, as it expands that cosmology considerably, while also giving you some great foes that really fit that paradigm.
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Thanks for the rundown though. I remember seeing the pic of the Vessel of Orcus, the vilisemen, Abigor, and some other various critters that looked really cool (for some reason, a female nude winged hag is standing out in my mind, chasing some people). This is one of the two books I have been most looking forward to for the last year (along with Conan). And if the old LoH and AotA are any indication, this book ought to make BoVD look like a Winnie the Pooh coloring book. 
I'm SO wanting this book.
