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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Viktyr Gehrig" data-source="post: 1231804" data-attributes="member: 9249">I don't really know who wrote what in the book. The only parts I did care for where, as you mention, the psychic venom, the diseases, and the drugs. For the most part, for the book's promises of personal horror and the examination of evil, I found it to be flat and uninspired. Most of the "evil" was centered on cartoonish service to dark powers and pointless grotesquerie-- it reminded me of nothing quite so much as the Tzimisce Handbook d20. I don't need a handbook on splatterpunk and gross deformities, and in my opinion, there are already quite enough options for serving evil powers in D&D: Clerics of evil deities, the Blackguard, and various other PrCs spring to mind.  I had been hoping for something more mature-- such as ideas on why people become evil, especially in service to what began as good causes. I wanted to see some measure of how far a character might slip, and the consequences thereof. My main problem with the Book of Exalted Deeds is that it is, as billed, the counterpart to the Book of Vile Darkness. There's a good amount of space devoted to celestial hierarchies, and new kewl p0werz for Good characters, but no real discussion of what makes people Good, or what might make them so especially good that they stand out above other heroes. It was the Dudley Do-Right to the BoVD's Snidely Whiplash, in a game that is already pretty heavily biased towards clear-cut, melodramatic conflict between good and evil.</blockquote>

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