I received the Diablo 2: Diablerie and I thought I post my opinion of the book here.
The book is divided into 6 chapters. Character Creation, Equipment, Spells, Magic Items, Monsters and a small sample adventure.
Chapter 1 made a few changes to how the characters are made which in my opinion is uncalled for. They allowed the characters to advance up to 25th level as opposed to the traditional 20th level which is an arbitary change which should not have been done. The necromancer and the sorceress are both very weak classes whose abilities quickly lose usefulness except for a couple of spells which are very good. (the spells are also accecible to D&D wizards and clerics which allows some of the spells to be used in other D&D games.) With some houseruling some of the melee classes could be used and offer some interesting abilities. There were many things which I felt were unnecessary like the reprinting of the skills and feats from the Players Handbook. (a shortened version, to reprint the whole thing would take up too much space.)
Also they try to recreate the mana system of Diablo 2 and fail completely. They should simply have made certain special abilites once a day powers instead of requiring charisma checks which make a certain ability unusable for the rest of the day when a charisma check is failed after having used the ability in battle. I object to the inclusion of mana potions and think that spellcasting should have simply been spells per day without any possibility of replenishing spells already cast through mana potions.
The creators of the book did not seem to understand that pnp rpgs are different from crpgs.
Chapter 2 is a section on equipment which I thought was also poorly done. They tried to import the Diablo 2 system of equipment durability which was again unnecessary. They should have simply kept the D&D system of item hardness and hitpoints etc. As far as the weapons themselves, a wide variety of weapons are available although whether they actually see any use is a different thing. Some people may like the options and the variety though.
Chapter 3 is a section of spells which again I thought was poorly done. First most of the spells will never see any use and the majority of sorceror spells were from the school of evocation in a failed attempt to create a Diablo 2 like blaster. The necromancer spells were equally pathetic with the exception of a few curses which are definitely very useful and will probably see much use in battle. The necromancers summoning spells were in general terrible along with his poison and bone spells which were also weak and the summoning spells quickly lose usefulness while others simply suck from the beginning.
Chapter 4 is about magic items which in my opinion is probably the worst chapter in the whole book. It presents a random magic item creation process which is definitely not suited to D&D due to the impossibility of getting a specific magic item as opposed to whatever the dice specify. The price and the abilities of the magic items are also not suited to D&D, the majority are gamebreaking and underpriced.
Chapter 5 is probably one of the best chapters in the book with the exeption of a few monsters like the megademon. (an inferior form of balor.) Most of the monsters will definitely see use and they will definitely provide interesting choices for a DM to throw at his players and I have to say that most of the monsters are also very cool so I'm sure they will add to any campaign.
Chapter 6 was a sample adventure which was unnecessary.
The book does not develop the role-playing aspect of the D&D game, it lacked any information on the campaign setting. It provided little to no information on how to actually run a campaign set in the world of Sanctuary. (the name was also changed to Khanduras. Also without reason unless Sanctuary is a continent.) It seems that the authors of the book spent no time actually working out the details of the Diablo 2 world which definitely has tremendous potential as a campaign setting for pnp rpgs.
Overall if you can get it cheap it does provide some interesting things but it is only worth it if you buy it cheap otherwise your money can probably be better spent elsewhere.
