GVDammerung
First Post
Title - Champions of Ruin
Publisher - Wotc
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 157
MSRP - $29.95
Rating - 3 Stars
Reviewer - Glenn Vincent Dammerung aka GVDammerung
In the interests of complete disclosure, I am not a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms. I own a bunch of Forgotten Realms material spread over all editions. I have run campaigns in Waterdeep, the North, the Dalelands, Sembia and in Tethyr but Faerun has never been a favorite setting of mine all the same. Still, every so often a Forgotten Realms title comes along that gets me genuinely excited, a product that I think to myself, “Maybe this is the one that will really make the Realms something special for me.” Or that, I think, “Even if I don’t plan on using this in the Realms, this is going to be so cool, I will adapt it to other settings.” Champions of Ruin was one such book.
What’s Inside
Introduction. Champions of Ruin begins with an introduction looking at “philosophies of evil.” This is a nice overview of different varieties of evil - Ends Justify The Means, Better to Reign in Hell . . ., etc.. While abbreviated, it is still nice to have these archetypes clearly set out for reference.
Chapter 1 - Races. Chapter 1 describes at length three evil races. The Draegloth are half-fiend, half-drow. The drow have been overexposed to such a degree that it is hard to get too excited about revisiting them but the Draegloth are well done for all that. The Extaminaar are humans corrupted by yuan-ti blood, House Extaminos to be exact and hence the name. The yuan-ti are becoming almost as overexposed as the drow but the Extaminaar are very nicely presented; if you are going to do yuan-ti half blood humans, this is a good way to do it. Lastly, we have the Krinth, who are half human and half fiend from the Plane of Shadow. This is less cool than it sounds. We just did half fiends with the Draegloth.
The Extaminaar are clearly the keepers of the three races presented, particularly as they can be used to advantage with material in the Serpent Kingdoms sourcebook for the Realms. The others - not so much. Drow are overdone and so are half-fiends, so the Draegloth are hurt right out of the shute. The Krinth suffer from too much stuff - half this, half that and shadow stuff to boot. Cool? Not so much. They feel forced.
Chapter 2 - Tools of Evil. Herein, we find new feats, spells and magic items.
The feats are the usual mix of the mostly flavorful stuff, the mechanically useful stuff and impedimenta that have no business taking up a feat slot. I particularly like Snatch Trophy, which as a free action lets a PC carve off a piece of a fallen foe as a keepsake, coupled with Bloodsoaked Intimidate, that lets a PC make an Intimidate check against an adjacent opponent who witnessed the Snatch Trophy. Of course, these feats need to be house ruled into one but that’s easy enough to do. Add in a decapitation option on the fallen foe, or maybe just the Mortifying Attack feat, that renders those witnessing your death attack shaken for 2d4 rounds, and you’ve got something very flavorful indeed. Tasty.
The spells are, for the most part thematically appropriate but don’t really sing. The exception are the epic spells that have some really nice ones. Cataract of Fire. Diluvial Torrent. Necromantic Singularity. Okay. I’m getting myself exited here and need to move on. Good epic spells!
The magic items are what you might expect - nothing great but not bad - with one exception. The Gray Portrait is an artifact that prevents its owner from suffering negative levels, ability drain and aging. The catch is that if the picture is destroyed, all the harm the picture protected the character from is immediately visited upon the character. Of course, this is inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, most recently reprised in A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the highlight of the film actually. A very nice touch here indeed.
Chapter 3 - Prestige Classes. Inevitably, we have prestige classes. They are:
Black Blood Cultist (10 Lvls) (a rage using type)
Justice of Weald and Woe (10 Lvls) (an odd combination of assassin, rogue and ranger bits)
Night Mask Deathbringer (10 Lvls) (a stealthy, shadowy, unnerving killer)
Shade Hunter (10 Lvls) ( a roguish trap avoider)
Thayan Gladiator (10 Lvls) (a fighter type who hurts you when he hits you while avoiding getting hit)
Vengeance Knight (10 Lvls) (fighter type who reflects back magical attacks with a save)
The Deathbringer is the star of the show in terms of both flavor and abilities. The rest are familiar in concept if not execution. The real disappointment is that none of the PrCs got really EVIL. Nasty? Yes. EVIL? No. In this respect, Champions shrinks from presenting the really bad, bad guys. It kinda wimps out. Even moreso than the Book of Vile Darkness. This is PG rated evil.
Chapter 4 - Evil Organizations. Herein are found the Cult of the Dragon (undead dragons), the Cults of the Moon (lycanthropes), the Eldreth Veluuthra (anti-human, genocidal elves), the Monks of the Dark Moon (sorcerer monks, agents of the goddess of night Shar), the Unworthy of Ilsensine (illithid worshippers) and everybody’s bad guys du jour - the Zhentarim. The most immediate problem with this chapter is that many of these groups can and should have entire books devoted to them. Others are just old hat.
The Cult of the Dragon is, in my opinion, the single coolest thing to come out of the Realms. The second edition book dedicated to the Cult of the Dragon is, in my opinion, the best Realms product produced to date. At the very least, the Cult of the Dragon should have its own book as it had in second edition. The meager section given here is just a tease.
On the opposite side of the coin are the ultra-boring and over used Zhentarim. HOOK! These guys had an entire second edition boxed set devoted to them. This is again a tease. Even while I don’t like the Zhents, if they are going to be done, I feel they should be given their own book, if only to have room to try to make them something other than dull.
The lycanthrope Cults of the Moon are clearly archetypical and filler. The same goes for Shar’s monks, minus the archetypical. Eldreth Veluuthra were cooler the first time the concept was put center stage in Birthright. The illithid worshippers are too undeveloped to know if there is anything there or not.
In sum, this chapter is a low light of Champions of Ruin.
Chapter 5 - Evil Places. This chapter presents a grab bag of evil sites. None are anything special. Again, the problem is a lack of development, as in Chapter 4. Ideally, both chapters should have covered less material in the same page count. As it stand, both chapters come across as slap-dash to too great a degree. Another low light.
Chapter 6 - Encounters with Evil. This chapter presents some example foemen. So we have -
Damian Krale - CR17 cleric of Shar
Qooql - CR16 Mind Flayer of Ilsensine
Vargo Kent - CR 16 Half-dragon evoker
Chazzar Ne - CR14 human druid
Alon - CR17 earth genasi monk
Daren Timbide - CR11 human fighter
Dorzad ain Vereet, CR14 krinth fighter rogue
Horrsin Zespar, CR 17 Extaminaar rogue
Leargath, CR 15 draegloth underdark ranger type
First off, lame name syndrome is obviously afflicting many of the NPCs. Vargo Kent? Daren Timbide? How about Bob Johnston or Sam Waterford? Way to kill the fantasy with lame names.
Second, all of these “encounters with evil” suck wind compared to Lossarwyn the Ice Lich (CR 23) who is described and stated out in Chapter 4 as a member of the Eldreth Veluuthra. Lossarwyn is altogether more interesting and he’s got a decent name too. Chapter Six comes across as a missed opportunity when you see what the authors can do and did with Lossarwyn.
Chapter 7 - Champions of Evil. The big bad guys are presented in Chapter 7. They are:
Aumvor the Undying - a CR 34 lich (with living zombie monster)
Eltab - a CR 28 demon lord (with nicely effective Thrall of Eltab PrC (10 Lvl))
Soneillon - a CR 23 succubus (with CR 21 death knight companion)
Dendar the Night Serpent - a CR 26 elder evil
Kezef the Chaos Hound - a CR 21 elder evil
Ityak-Ortheel the Elf-Eater - a CR 22 elder evil
Bazim-Gorag - a CR21 two headed uber slaad
Malkizid - a CR 27 outcast archduke of Hell
All of these guys are bad. All of these guys are to various degrees cool. There has been controversy over the low CR rating of the Elder Evils but given what was said about the low CR ratings in the Fiendish Codex Vol. 1, this low CR is at least consistent. Still, it does seem low.
Evaluation
Champions of Ruin is a solid book. It is not uniformly good but neither is it universally bad or subpar. Still, Champions of Ruin is disappointing. It does not really present evil except in a sanitized way. This is evil in theory, and maybe in practice or fact, but not in execution or presentation. PG-13 evil, not R Rated EVIL. This is much the same problem the plagued the Book of Vile Darkness. Both books talk the talk but do not walk the walk. While this can be variously excused, it remains disappointing all the same. Given that Champions of Ruin runs about evenly hot and cold in its text, it deserves no more than 3 Stars. That it disappoints by failing to fully deliver on its subject matter only confirms that rating in my view.
Publisher - Wotc
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 157
MSRP - $29.95
Rating - 3 Stars
Reviewer - Glenn Vincent Dammerung aka GVDammerung
In the interests of complete disclosure, I am not a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms. I own a bunch of Forgotten Realms material spread over all editions. I have run campaigns in Waterdeep, the North, the Dalelands, Sembia and in Tethyr but Faerun has never been a favorite setting of mine all the same. Still, every so often a Forgotten Realms title comes along that gets me genuinely excited, a product that I think to myself, “Maybe this is the one that will really make the Realms something special for me.” Or that, I think, “Even if I don’t plan on using this in the Realms, this is going to be so cool, I will adapt it to other settings.” Champions of Ruin was one such book.
What’s Inside
Introduction. Champions of Ruin begins with an introduction looking at “philosophies of evil.” This is a nice overview of different varieties of evil - Ends Justify The Means, Better to Reign in Hell . . ., etc.. While abbreviated, it is still nice to have these archetypes clearly set out for reference.
Chapter 1 - Races. Chapter 1 describes at length three evil races. The Draegloth are half-fiend, half-drow. The drow have been overexposed to such a degree that it is hard to get too excited about revisiting them but the Draegloth are well done for all that. The Extaminaar are humans corrupted by yuan-ti blood, House Extaminos to be exact and hence the name. The yuan-ti are becoming almost as overexposed as the drow but the Extaminaar are very nicely presented; if you are going to do yuan-ti half blood humans, this is a good way to do it. Lastly, we have the Krinth, who are half human and half fiend from the Plane of Shadow. This is less cool than it sounds. We just did half fiends with the Draegloth.
The Extaminaar are clearly the keepers of the three races presented, particularly as they can be used to advantage with material in the Serpent Kingdoms sourcebook for the Realms. The others - not so much. Drow are overdone and so are half-fiends, so the Draegloth are hurt right out of the shute. The Krinth suffer from too much stuff - half this, half that and shadow stuff to boot. Cool? Not so much. They feel forced.
Chapter 2 - Tools of Evil. Herein, we find new feats, spells and magic items.
The feats are the usual mix of the mostly flavorful stuff, the mechanically useful stuff and impedimenta that have no business taking up a feat slot. I particularly like Snatch Trophy, which as a free action lets a PC carve off a piece of a fallen foe as a keepsake, coupled with Bloodsoaked Intimidate, that lets a PC make an Intimidate check against an adjacent opponent who witnessed the Snatch Trophy. Of course, these feats need to be house ruled into one but that’s easy enough to do. Add in a decapitation option on the fallen foe, or maybe just the Mortifying Attack feat, that renders those witnessing your death attack shaken for 2d4 rounds, and you’ve got something very flavorful indeed. Tasty.
The spells are, for the most part thematically appropriate but don’t really sing. The exception are the epic spells that have some really nice ones. Cataract of Fire. Diluvial Torrent. Necromantic Singularity. Okay. I’m getting myself exited here and need to move on. Good epic spells!
The magic items are what you might expect - nothing great but not bad - with one exception. The Gray Portrait is an artifact that prevents its owner from suffering negative levels, ability drain and aging. The catch is that if the picture is destroyed, all the harm the picture protected the character from is immediately visited upon the character. Of course, this is inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, most recently reprised in A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the highlight of the film actually. A very nice touch here indeed.
Chapter 3 - Prestige Classes. Inevitably, we have prestige classes. They are:
Black Blood Cultist (10 Lvls) (a rage using type)
Justice of Weald and Woe (10 Lvls) (an odd combination of assassin, rogue and ranger bits)
Night Mask Deathbringer (10 Lvls) (a stealthy, shadowy, unnerving killer)
Shade Hunter (10 Lvls) ( a roguish trap avoider)
Thayan Gladiator (10 Lvls) (a fighter type who hurts you when he hits you while avoiding getting hit)
Vengeance Knight (10 Lvls) (fighter type who reflects back magical attacks with a save)
The Deathbringer is the star of the show in terms of both flavor and abilities. The rest are familiar in concept if not execution. The real disappointment is that none of the PrCs got really EVIL. Nasty? Yes. EVIL? No. In this respect, Champions shrinks from presenting the really bad, bad guys. It kinda wimps out. Even moreso than the Book of Vile Darkness. This is PG rated evil.
Chapter 4 - Evil Organizations. Herein are found the Cult of the Dragon (undead dragons), the Cults of the Moon (lycanthropes), the Eldreth Veluuthra (anti-human, genocidal elves), the Monks of the Dark Moon (sorcerer monks, agents of the goddess of night Shar), the Unworthy of Ilsensine (illithid worshippers) and everybody’s bad guys du jour - the Zhentarim. The most immediate problem with this chapter is that many of these groups can and should have entire books devoted to them. Others are just old hat.
The Cult of the Dragon is, in my opinion, the single coolest thing to come out of the Realms. The second edition book dedicated to the Cult of the Dragon is, in my opinion, the best Realms product produced to date. At the very least, the Cult of the Dragon should have its own book as it had in second edition. The meager section given here is just a tease.
On the opposite side of the coin are the ultra-boring and over used Zhentarim. HOOK! These guys had an entire second edition boxed set devoted to them. This is again a tease. Even while I don’t like the Zhents, if they are going to be done, I feel they should be given their own book, if only to have room to try to make them something other than dull.
The lycanthrope Cults of the Moon are clearly archetypical and filler. The same goes for Shar’s monks, minus the archetypical. Eldreth Veluuthra were cooler the first time the concept was put center stage in Birthright. The illithid worshippers are too undeveloped to know if there is anything there or not.
In sum, this chapter is a low light of Champions of Ruin.
Chapter 5 - Evil Places. This chapter presents a grab bag of evil sites. None are anything special. Again, the problem is a lack of development, as in Chapter 4. Ideally, both chapters should have covered less material in the same page count. As it stand, both chapters come across as slap-dash to too great a degree. Another low light.
Chapter 6 - Encounters with Evil. This chapter presents some example foemen. So we have -
Damian Krale - CR17 cleric of Shar
Qooql - CR16 Mind Flayer of Ilsensine
Vargo Kent - CR 16 Half-dragon evoker
Chazzar Ne - CR14 human druid
Alon - CR17 earth genasi monk
Daren Timbide - CR11 human fighter
Dorzad ain Vereet, CR14 krinth fighter rogue
Horrsin Zespar, CR 17 Extaminaar rogue
Leargath, CR 15 draegloth underdark ranger type
First off, lame name syndrome is obviously afflicting many of the NPCs. Vargo Kent? Daren Timbide? How about Bob Johnston or Sam Waterford? Way to kill the fantasy with lame names.
Second, all of these “encounters with evil” suck wind compared to Lossarwyn the Ice Lich (CR 23) who is described and stated out in Chapter 4 as a member of the Eldreth Veluuthra. Lossarwyn is altogether more interesting and he’s got a decent name too. Chapter Six comes across as a missed opportunity when you see what the authors can do and did with Lossarwyn.
Chapter 7 - Champions of Evil. The big bad guys are presented in Chapter 7. They are:
Aumvor the Undying - a CR 34 lich (with living zombie monster)
Eltab - a CR 28 demon lord (with nicely effective Thrall of Eltab PrC (10 Lvl))
Soneillon - a CR 23 succubus (with CR 21 death knight companion)
Dendar the Night Serpent - a CR 26 elder evil
Kezef the Chaos Hound - a CR 21 elder evil
Ityak-Ortheel the Elf-Eater - a CR 22 elder evil
Bazim-Gorag - a CR21 two headed uber slaad
Malkizid - a CR 27 outcast archduke of Hell
All of these guys are bad. All of these guys are to various degrees cool. There has been controversy over the low CR rating of the Elder Evils but given what was said about the low CR ratings in the Fiendish Codex Vol. 1, this low CR is at least consistent. Still, it does seem low.
Evaluation
Champions of Ruin is a solid book. It is not uniformly good but neither is it universally bad or subpar. Still, Champions of Ruin is disappointing. It does not really present evil except in a sanitized way. This is evil in theory, and maybe in practice or fact, but not in execution or presentation. PG-13 evil, not R Rated EVIL. This is much the same problem the plagued the Book of Vile Darkness. Both books talk the talk but do not walk the walk. While this can be variously excused, it remains disappointing all the same. Given that Champions of Ruin runs about evenly hot and cold in its text, it deserves no more than 3 Stars. That it disappoints by failing to fully deliver on its subject matter only confirms that rating in my view.
