Champions of Ruin; Expectations vs. Reality

[SHARK]

Greetings!

I recently picked up Champions of Ruin. The book of villains and villain organizations and stuff for Forgotten Realms. I think it is pretty cool. It has monsters, characters, organizations, and on and on. They delivered what I expected them to deliver. What do you think? Have you used stuff or creatures from the book? How has such material and ideas contributed to your game?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Li Shenron]

How different is Champions of Ruin from Lords of Darkness?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Award-Winning book IMO: The first FR3E book I didn't like.

Not enough evil in this book about evil. Compared to Lords of Darkness and the Book of Vile Darkness, this seems too tame. Feats like "Dirty Rat" and "Coward"? Ooh, how evil. The other books had examples where people were bound tightly with wire (so it cuts them on every movement) and had cast Otto's Irresistable Dance cast on them. They had drugs and rules for addiction. They had spells that induce painful death by thorns or harms not the target itself, but its dearest love. They had PrC's like Soul Eater or Cancer Mage. And Lords of Darkness had almost 30 evil organizations.


The Elder Evils where a joke. Nothing against "player characters should be the heroes and be able to defeat everything", but that's not how the Realms work - and not how the book worked, either, since we did have creatures in the book with CR's beyond 30. No, the EE's stats don't even begin to live up to their supposed power.

There were also several really weird errors. I'm not talking about "they had +12 when it should have been +13" or something, but weird stuff like using "epic wizard" as level even when this mechanic isn't used any more.


No, Champions of Ruin didn't live up to my expectations at all.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

One thing i always thought they should do when detailing elder evils, arch-fiends or celestial paragons, is to list thier powers and then say okay if you want your 20th level pc's to fight them boost them to 30 HD, if you want them to kill a god where looking at 60-80 HD (from ones ive made up 100 HD is more than likely to have the BAB, Saves and HP to last against the divine.)

 

[Shemeska]

One of the few 3e FR books that I haven't purchased. Given the overlap with BoVD and 'Lords of Darkness' I waited till the book came out and I got reviews from others. I'm glad that I waited.

The stuff on the evil organizations is pretty good, but again there's overlap with the prior 3e book. The stuff on evil characters was more or less BoVD 'lite' for FR, and while it wasn't bad it wasn't as good as I might have hoped.

And then there's the part that ticked me off: beings that the deities of FR fear and run from, the Elder Eternal Evils, and they clock in around CR 20something. And the design intent, right from the source, was that they were given such stats explicitely to make them targets for PCs. Otherwise it wouldn't be easy for level 20 PCs to kill them. Duh! These are beings that have existed for eons and who deities are afraid of, and yet they're given watered down stats for a completely metagame purpose. That's terrible. And it lost a sale.

The flavor itself for the EEEs was good and well written, and it even reinforces the mystique of those beings that even the deities fear, one of whom may eventually end the world. And then they ruin it to cater to powergamers who view them as big walking XP values. *sigh*

If not for that I might have eventually bought CoR, but I won't support a design decision that I so strongly disagree with.

 

[d20Dwarf]

How different is Champions of Ruin from Lords of Darkness?

CoR is a player-oriented book. While there is a ton of info for DMs in there...the multitude of statted NPCs is probably the most praised part of the book...most of the writing focuses on how to play evil in the Realms. The organizational writeups, for instance, focus on what it's like to be a member of the group, rather than just presenting adventure hooks and more DM-type info or lore. Instead of "who leads the group and what are they up to" it's "ok, how could my 3rd-level wizard join the group, and what would he do while in it?"


EDIT: Hey SHARK, welcome back, we missed ya! Glad you enjoyed the book.

 

[d20Dwarf]

One thing i always thought they should do when detailing elder evils, arch-fiends or celestial paragons, is to list thier powers and then say okay if you want your 20th level pc's to fight them boost them to 30 HD, if you want them to kill a god where looking at 60-80 HD (from ones ive made up 100 HD is more than likely to have the BAB, Saves and HP to last against the divine.)

Isn't that implied by the normal rules, though? You're always free to change anything you want for your game.

The flavor itself for the EEEs was good and well written, and it even reinforces the mystique of those beings that even the deities fear, one of whom may eventually end the world. And then they ruin it to cater to powergamers who view them as big walking XP values. *sigh*

Let me ask you this, are you saying you wanted us to present stats for the EEE at CR 70 or 80 or so? Or are you saying they should not have had stats at all?

I'm happy you liked the flavor text and background material for them D), which, really, is all that's necessary for a game in which they are meant to be the most powerful beings in the universe. But for games in which characters might want to encounter these monstrosities, it's necessary to have stats that allow that sort of interaction. Thus they are "only" CR 21-28 (which apparently every peasant could destroy with a hoe and some gumption ).

What possible reason is there for statting out CR 80 creatures?

 

[JoeGKushner]

I'm enjoying it and found that the ratio of crunch is very good for my game.

 

[Kanegrundar]

While I haven't gotten a chance to use any of it yet, I'm happy with it overall. It's pretty crunch heavy, which it's really a plus or minus for me, but the fluff is fairly good as well. It's nowhere as evil as the BOVD or even Lords of Darkness, but it does have some good hints on the implementation of an evil campaign that won't completely disintegrate after a couple of sessions. (That has been my experience anyway. )

Kane

 

[GVDammerung]

Not enough evil in this book about evil. Compared to Lords of Darkness and the Book of Vile Darkness, this seems too tame. . . . The Elder Evils where a joke. . . .
No, Champions of Ruin didn't live up to my expectations at all.

Perfectly put, IMO. Evil should be E*V*I*L. Not ::evil::