[imager]http://www.goodman-games.com/images/GMG4320CoverLarge.jpg[/imager]The
Demon Hunter’s Handbook is a sourcebook of character and campaign options for d20 fantasy gaming with a focus on battling evil outsiders. The book is written by Patrick Younts, author of some of the better books in Mongoose’s Quintessential series such as Quintessential Sorcerer and Monk, as well as a series of PDFs under the RoninArts baner. The book is published by Goodman Games.
A First Look
Demon Hunter’s handbook is available in both print and PDF formats. This review is based upon the print format book, a 96 page perfect-bound softcover with an MSRP of $19.99. The electronic format is available at the usual outlets (here at the ENGS, as well as RPGnow and DriveThruRPG) for what I’m currently seeing as $8.39.
The cover of the book has a dark green hue. The cover plate is Thomas Denmark. The cover depict a woman with sword, shield, and an oddly distinctive “hat with a buckle on it” striding away from the corpse of a huge demonic creature.
The interior is black and white. The pages have a grainy grey watermark (not unlike the classic “Ruins of Undermountain” books) with a watermark like a summoning circle. Interior artists include Alex Kosakowski, Doug Kovacs, Claudio Muniz, Matt Morrow, and Mikolaj Ostapiuk. For having five artists, the artwork of the book looks surprisingly consistent. The artwork uses lots of pen-and-ink illustrations with bold lines and hatched-shading. This gives the book a gothic feel appropriate to the topic. Some of the art has a style similar to Scott Purdy’s, who I have come to favor for this sort of thing.
A Deeper Look
The book is logically arranged into five chapters:
Characters (including races and classes),
Demon Hunter Abilities (feats, domains, spells, equipment, magic items),
The Campaign (campaign advice, ideas, and adventure seeds),
Organizations, and
Allies & Enemies (creatures).
New races include the aasimar (okay, I’ll get to that in a sec. . .) and steward archon. A steward archon isn’t exactly an archon in the traditional sense. It’s a mortal who has been infused by the essence of an archon who willingly parted with some of their essence to empower mortals against demons, who are otherwise usually bound to their heavenly realm. In essence it’s a “substitution race” like the
elan of the
Expanded Psionics Handbook. This race earns Patrick a small tip of the hat from me for not using the tiresome out of assuming that any two creatures that move can breed.
The aasimar here is similar to the one you know and love, but there is a variant “demon bane” aasimar. The idea is that the parent of the aasimar, a little like the idea of a steward archon can give over a portion of their essence to give them abilities for focussed on fighting demonic outsiders.
A brief section covers the existing core classes; there are no new core classes (though there are some variant rules for clerics). Instead, each class is covered with a short discussion of how they can fit the role of a demon hunter, possible character concepts, and recommended character options to optimize them in such a role. (As a side note, it casts the bard in an interesting role of being a keeper of lore who might be able to identify abilities and weaknesses of outsiders. Though this works, the concept suggests that Wizards of the Coast’s
Heroes of Horrors, with its
archivist class, might be a good resource for the sort of campaign outlined in
Demon Hunter’s Handbook.
The cleric variant is the
planar cleric. The planar cleric differs from the standard in two ways. First, they are required to take either
righteousness or
purity domain, new domains in this book. Second, they receive an ability to turn or rebuke evil outsiders instead of undead. This is not a straight up conversion; there are a few tweaks. Mainly, you only
banish outsiders of HD that would be destroyed under the standard turning rules; you need 4 time the HD of a creature to destroy it.
A curious bit is that the turning evil outsiders mentions a rebuking option like evil clerics receive, but this does not make too much sense given the domain requirements. I don’t see
righteousness or
purity domains as being appropriate for evil planar clerics that traffic with demons.
There are four prestige classes for demon slayers in the book, intended to capture some of the common archetypes associated with such a campaign. The author admits that they are specifically balanced for demon-hunting campaigns. The classes are:
- Bound spellcaster is an arcane spellcaster who takes on the essence of a demon in order to try to better combat the fiends. They have slowed caster level advancement, but take on qualities of half fiends and gain benefits against fiends.
- The preserver is intended for druids, and represent those who have received nature’s blessings to guard against the corruption of demons. The class trades a few caster levels for numerical bonuses against fiends and the ability to change into or summon creatures with the celestial or half-celestial template.
- The righteous sword is a bit more classic a concept, a holy warrior who takes up arms against evil. The class has slowed spellcasting progression, but gains the ability to enhance their weapon further against fiends and act as a bastion of goodness, inspiring those around them.
- The former cultist is well, a former member of a demonic cult, who know uses his knowledge against fiends. The former cultist seems to be principally aimed at rogues. The class has some rogue like abilities, though some replaced with abilities in sniffing out and resisting demons.
The
Demon Hunter Abilities chapter contains more discrete character options like feats useful in the fight against demons, new skill uses, new domains (
Exorcism, Purity, and
Righteousness), spells, equipment, and magic items. In addition to the individual items, there is a sizeable section of new rules on exorcism and possession. The rules herein assume that most demons have the capability of possession, though weaker demons take an extremely long time to effect possession. The rules make exorcism a taxing challenging process that does not boil down to a single roll. The exorcist, in addition to needing a healthy
knowledge (religion) score to perform the rites, must have a steady fortitude.
The third chapter is the classical campaign advice chapter. The topic of “demon hunting” may not seem all that unusual for a d20 fantasy game; demons are classic villains, after all. This chapter sort of outlines the sort of changes this modestly more specific campaign focus would require. In this vein, he addresses both mechanical concerns and the feel of the game. Several example hooks are also included, with for city and rural, intrigue and action based options.
The
organizations chapter includes a few sample organizations, but the bulk of the chapter is not about samples, but walking you through the groundwork of an organization allied with or opposed to demons. Organization type, size, and resources are addressed, with guidance on the game impact of each of these choices.
The
Allies & Enemies chapter contains new creatures and NPCs. Except for the template, the creatures are all demons, though guidelines for using them as devils instead are included (both in terms of mechanics and behavior.) The demons range from the lowly
sin eater to the unique
corrupt king. I found the
sin eater to be a better take on the concept than the
corruption eater in Heroes of Horror; when the
sin eater eats “corruption”, it’s not a good thing. It more or less “harvests” corruption, which siphons off the strength of the victim like a parasite.
Also, a quick nod for actually using open game expanded psionics content in one of the NPCs.
Conclusions
The
Demon Hunter’s Handbook takes a subset of the fantasy gaming experience and provides support for running a more focused campaign around it, both in terms of mechanics and in terms of flavor/idea support. Younts does a good job of tying the two ends together.
Some of the mechanics and ideas could be used in a more contemporary game. The author spells out pretty clearly (and accurately) where he feels that the balance does not fit the core game assumptions, though his prescriptions are a little vague.
This book would work well alongside Wizards’
Heroes of Horror supplement in a demonic-infested horror campaign. The plane of
Palpatur from Malhavoc’s
Beyond Countless Doorway would also be a good fit for the material herein.
Overall Grade: B+
-Alan D. Kohler