Book of Hell: Any thoughts?

[Psion]

Originally posted by JoeGKusher:Nope, not me, Joe. I was told that Mongoose is currently rethinking their review policy, and they haven't sent me anything for months. (It's a pity, too, because I can't find several of their books in my local gaming stores, Book of Hell and Book of the Planes being two I've been particularly looking for.)

If you are interested in The Book of Planes, I can offer a few thoughts. Overall, I like it, in part due to the fact that I like Hanrahan's imaginative writing style (I also loved some of his ideas and prose in Book of Dragons and in the campaign idea chapter he contributed in in Sorcery & Steam.)

Some of the Book of the Planes is redundant with Manual of the Planes, in that it repeats staples like the elemental planes and transitive planes, though it took them in different directions and added new hazards and sites. (I was especially tickled to see one of my favorite planar site ideas from the pages of Dragon revisited, theorizing on the origin of ioun stones.)

The outer planes are all new. Though they have the same general theme of many of those in other settings (heavens, hells, etc.), many of the takes are all new. For example, the Courts of Law, are ironically, a land of continual change, as inhabitants and items are continually refined into a more perfect state. (Incidentally, inferunus here is described in brief, and I like what I saw, but Book of Hell has a different author.)

One of my favorite outer planes is the creepy Mal, which is the site of an ancient race slumbering until once again the Malites spill forth into the universe.

Mechanics are interesting. Planar organaizations are included, and mechanically each is represented by a feat and a 3-level class. I like this appraoch much better than the 10-level class, which I consider too all encompassing for these types of orgnaizations. The 3 level classes add some useful abilities but don't take over the character concept.

Planar mechanics and magic mechanics are also interesting in that they shine a light where Manual of the Planes does not. Planes are assigned planar traits from 0 to 20 (or -10 to +10) covering things like gravity, life, elemtal traits, magic, and so forth, with a number of possible "quirks" not directly defined by the numbers. The magic mechanics relate to this; the planecrafting spell lets you change a suitable plane by a suitable amount (for example), and the Punch shift metamagic feat lets you reach planes more easily than the accessibility trait normally allows.

Hmmm... perhaps I ought to put that up as a mini-review.

 

[Voadam]

I bought it and I'm a little disappointed. Not because the book's material is bad or anything, but it does not fulfill what it sets out to do, imho.

Mongoose advertised it saying that it's easy to incorporate in your campaign, using all the well known devils and so on.

So does it have anything you could use to flesh out the existing devil hierarchy, stuff directly on Baal, Belial, Asmodeus, etc.? Or just relegate them to a footnote as ruling a portion of "Hell" and being part of the hierarchy they set up here.

 

[Mytholder]

Some of the Book of the Planes is redundant with Manual of the Planes, in that it repeats staples like the elemental planes and transitive planes, though it took them in different directions and added new hazards and sites. (I was especially tickled to see one of my favorite planar site ideas from the pages of Dragon revisited, theorizing on the origin of ioun stones.)

I think that's from the 1st ed Manual of the Planes, but I could be wrong. Yeah, it was a shameless lift - er, homage. I just love quirky magical physics like that (for those who don't know what we're babbling about, it's the idea that ioun stones come from the border of the Earth Plane and the positive energy plane).

Cheers for the mini-review, by the way. Glad you liked it.

(Incidentally, inferunus here is described in brief, and I like what I saw, but Book of Hell has a different author.)

Adrian 'I'm so scary I pee darkness' Bott did Book of Hell, but we did swap a few ideas back and forth. The intent is that Book of Hell can be plugged into the Book of the Planes easily, but they're both standalone.

As for the topic of the thread - I'm obviously biased, since I work for Mongoose, but I think Book of Hell is good stuff. There's some great prose and good ideas in there, especially if you want to bring infernal politics into the game. (It's also got a devil building a giant cannon to nuke Heaven - you've got to give him points for effort.)

If you've read the LUCIFER comics or SANDMAN, that's a good first approximation of the Hell in Book of Hell.

 

[tassander]

well, voadam, as I said, The Book of Hell does not concern itself with Baator, at all. It describes a completely different plane that only with some major tweaking could be included in the standard cosmology.
so, short answer: no.

 

[John Cooper]

I do recall seeing a link on the Mongoose messageboards to a page of artwork from the main artist of The Book of Hell.

Here it is: http://www.metautomata.com/zenobite/galeria/bokk_hell/hellbook.htm

It looks very impressive.

 

[Gez]

The Books of Planes and of Hell aren't in the review database...

 

[Turanil]

Would the Book of Hell fit well with Beyond Countless Doorways ? I mean: adding just another plane, except that this one would be extremely detailed.

 

[Richards]

I don't see why it wouldn't.

Johnathan

 

[Toll Carom]

For my money, you really can't do better than Green Ronin's Book of Fiends . Between that and WotC's existing material, you should be good to go.

--
CAS

 

[Psion]

For my money, you really can't do better than Green Ronin's Book of Fiends . Between that and WotC's existing material, you should be good to go.

Are you referring to my original post? That's sort of off point. I have BoF and it's very nice, but really has very little to do with whether or not BoH will be useful to me.