Denizens of Avadnu
By C. D. Bennett, Alexander Marsh Freed, Robert J. Gallagher, Michael A. Mumich, Jason Rosenstock, and Jeffrey J. Visgaitis
Inner Circle Games product number INC 1000
224 pages, $39.95
A little over a month ago, I received an email from Jeffrey Visgaitis, asking me if I was interested in reviewing his company's monster book,
Denizens of Avadnu (part of Inner Circle's "Violet Dawn" campaign setting). He wasn't deterred by my reputation as a stat-block nitpicker; quite the contrary, he was confident that his guys had put together a solid book of monsters, and wanted to put it through the "John Cooper road test." While some other projects have kept me from reviewing this product as quickly as I would have liked (mostly proofreading jobs from companies whose products I've reviewed in the past!), I finally finished up
Denizens of Avadnu last night and am now ready to post my review.
As always, I'll start with the cover.
Denizens of Avadnu sports a full-color painting by Jason Rosenstock (one of the book's authors!), depicting a large, dragonlike monster shooting flames at a band of adventurers. You might be forgiven to think at first (as I did) that this was some sort of mutated black dragon - the coloration is about the same, and the creature sports a pair of forward-curving horns reminiscent of those of black dragons - but the monster's five eyes and multiple spikes/spines would make this quite a mutant indeed! (Having now read the book cover to cover, I can state pretty confidently that the monster is in fact a "xxyth," one of the more important (in terms of history) creatures in Avadnu's pantheon of outer planes creatures.) At first, I was a bit put off by the painting's overall darkness - not in tone, mind you, but in actual hues - but the xxyth entry actually makes a point of the creature's chaotic shape; it's often difficult to tell just where a xxyth's body begins and ends. So, while I might have preferred a bit more light on the subject (if nothing else, so we could see more detail on the xxyth and the people fighting it), I have to give Jason credit for adhering to the creature's written description, something that really appeals to me (and ticks me off to no end when artists get it wrong). Also, the bright yellow of the xxyth's breath weapon makes a nice contrast to the overall darkness of the piece, and one that draws the viewer's eyes smack-dab to the xxyth's head, where its weird eye setup stands out and attracts notice: these "Denizens of Avadnu" are not your run-of-the-mill monsters!
The interior illustrations consist of 8 artists providing 119 full-color illustrations and 28 monochrome illustrations. These run the gamut from a few that didn't particularly excite me (the rather bland-looking, three-horned, goatlike ubu on page 169; the rather silly-looking "umber hulk/hooked horror crossbreed, with leg-spikes and hooves" haklaa on page 64) to several pieces that would have made excellent cover paintings in and of themselves (the "tasked" [one of the templates in the book] human riding a spined styracosauruslike beast on page 156, with burning skies behind him; the bald, tattooed skarren sharpening his blades as he stands astride a partial skeleton in the desert on page 137; the zeidian ranger with his parallel-bladed swords in each hand on page 215). All in all, I'd have to rate the artwork as a whole as much, much better than average - even the monochromatic pieces have a nice, unified feel to them: they look like sketches from a naturalist's sketchbook, complete with notes in a fantasy language (that was an excellent touch, by the way!). Best of all, nearly every creature got its own illustration (most of the few exceptions were when a pair of related monsters - usually an advanced version of a standard creature - had to share a single illustration among themselves, as with the Duogoth and Duogoth Nest Guardian). I also noticed at least one instance where the illustration for a monster whose stats were on an odd-numbered page was on the even-numbered page preceding it, but since that helped fill out the even-numbered page and left enough room for all of the relevant information on the odd-numbered page, everything worked out well with maximum use of space. (For those interested, it was the crystal reflector on pages 36 and 37.) And while there were a few instances where the illustration did not exactly match the description of the monster in question (the darlith was missing the tentacles it should have around its mouth; the karg's claws should be black; both narga illustrations show it with antlers, not the "single, twisted horn" in its description; air swarm creatures should have feathered wings, not batlike wings), the vast majority of the illustrations were
very close to the descriptions. The vast number of full-color paintings was a bit of a surprise to me, especially coming from a company I admit to never having heard of before! Well done job, guys!
Before moving on from the artwork, I also wanted to point out the fact that the first and last (blank) pages of the book, as well as the inside front and back covers, are purple. This was a clever touch for a book detailing creatures from the
Violet Dawn campaign world.
As for the book's layout, there's a credits page, a table of contents (including an alphabetical listing of all the various sidebars of new spells, magic items, and such scattered throughout the book, a helpful addition), a one-page introduction, five pages of creature background material (the Voidspawn subtype, 6 new skills, and 21 new feats), 208 pages of new monsters, a 4-page section on various changes that were made to some of the
Monster Manual monsters for their Avadnu equivalents (purple worms, for instance, are called "underworms" on Avadnu, and are segmented, light beige in color, and entranced by singing), and closes with new
summon monster and
summon nature's ally tables, a list of creatures by type and subtype, and a list of creatures by challenge rating. While reading through some of the new skills, I realized I had seen some of them before, which threw me for a loop until I realized that I had seen them in monster entries in Expeditious Retreat Press'
Monster Geographica: Underground. (There was at least one monster in there with ranks in the "Autoheal" skill, which was first presented in
Denizens of Avadnu in 2003. So that clears that up for me at last.) The new skills and feats all seem pretty well thought out, and there are a few monsters in the book taking full advantage of many of them, which was nice to see. I think I can figure out the origins of at least one of the new feats, too: "Earthmoving Blow" reminds me of many a scene in an
Incredible Hulk comic book (in the old "Hulk smash puny humans!" days), where the Hulk would pound his fist on the ground and send soldiers flying in all directions.
As for the layout of the monster pages, I was going to say that Inner Circle took a page from
Monster Manual III and used sidebars detailing where each monster can be found in the game world (in this case on Avadnu, naturally), to ensure that each monster's write-up finishes up at the end of a page - but then I realized how stupid that would be for me to say, as
Denizens of Avadnu came out a year before WotC released
Monster Manual III, so it looks like it was the other way around! In any case, I'm really fond of this decision, as it ensures that each monster begins at the start of a new page, making it that much easier for the DM to use. Of course, it would have been nice if there was a map of Avadnu somewhere in the book, as without it, none of the "On Avadnu" sections are all that useful. (I suppose it would help if you had more than just
Denizens of Avadnu from the "Violet Dawn" series, but that's all I have to go from, and not knowing where all of these places are kind of bugged me.) Oddly enough, each creature's actual stats are in white print on a black background, despite the fact that the rest of the text is black text on a splotchy tan background. There's nothing wrong with this; it just struck me as odd. (Perhaps it's an anti-Xeroxing step, so you won't want to eat up all your ink if you try photocopying pages. I honestly don't know.) I also noticed that whenever there was a stat block entry that wasn't being used - say, a vermin's "Feats" or the "Special Attacks" line for a monster with no special attacks - they just deleted the whole line rather than just put in a "-" like is customary. While I suppose the argument could be made that this saves some space, I much prefer that the line remain; I'd rather know for sure that the creature doesn't have the item in question than wonder if this was an oversight on the part of the authors. (This is especially true with Skills; I can tell from reading a monster's description whether there should have been a "Special Attacks" or "Special Qualities" line in the stat block, but that's not always the case with Skills, and even with those creature types that don't often get skills - oozes, plants, constructs - there are always exceptions. (Treants, for example, get skills as if they were fey.)) In any case, this pretty much boils down to personal preference, and I won't ding Inner Circle for each time they left out a "Level Adjustment" or anything. It was a nice touch to put each creature's Challenge Rating number in a stylized shield display off on the side of the page (and templates got a "T" instead of a number), but I found it odd that none of the templates in
Denizens of Avadnu have a sample templated creature. That's pretty much an industry standard, and it seemed an unusual (and disappointing) omission. (Okay, technically, there's one sample templated creature, but that's just because the advanced version of the tulgorth is a normal tulgorth with more Hit Dice than normal and the "aszevara" template applied to it.) It also might have helped to have the creature's name in the header (along the outer edge) or perhaps sideways on the outer edges of the page, to help the reader when he's flipping through the book to find a particular monster. Finally, it might have been a good idea to separate the different adventure ideas with bullets; as written, each paragraph is a different adventure hook, although that's not obvious at first.
This wouldn't be a John Cooper review if I didn't point out the mistakes that I came across in the monster stats and write-ups during my one-time read-through. With the standard disclaimers that I in no way guarantee that this is a complete list of errors, I recommend making the following changes:
- p. 13, Alaihar: Bite attacks should be at +16 melee, not +15 (+12 BAB, +1 size, +3 Str). In the Full Attack line, claw attacks should be at +11 melee, not +10 (+12 BAB, +1 size, +3 Str, -5 for secondary attack). (Also, and this isn't a stat block problem, the creature's illustration doesn't match its description - the tail should be 5 times the length of the body!)
- p. 15, Arageld: There should be an Open Lock listing under Skills, as the creature gets a +2 racial bonus to this skill. I admit that I didn't break down the skill points spent, but I'd be willing to guess that this should have been just an "Open Locks +2" (+2 for the racial bonus, no modifier for a Dex 11, no skill points put towards the skill).
- p. 38, Culkma: The Combat section says that these creatures attack with their tails first, yet the stats show the tail sting as a secondary attack. Which is correct? If the Combat section is correct, swap out the bite and tail sting attacks in both the Attack and Full Attack lines.
- p. 48, Droth'yar, Shard: With HD 3d8+12, average hit points should be 25, not 29. AC should be 21, not 19 (+5 Dex, not +3). Touch AC should be 14, not 12 (for the same reason).
- p. 50, Duogoth, Nest Guardian: With HD 12d8+72, average hit points should be 126, not 129. Also, and this is admittedly very nitpicky, "Diehard" should come before "Endurance" in the alphabetical listing of Feats.
- p. 56, Flame Soul: With HD 8d12 plus 5d8+3, average hit points should be 77, not 83 (or 81 if you give a maximum 1d8 for the creature's first level as a monk). Grapple should be at +15, not +11 (+7 BAB, +4 Str, +4 Improved Grapple feat).
- p. 62, Grimvole, Grim Master: With HD 14d10+98, average hit points should be 175, not 179.
- p. 67, Hertiza: These creatures are described as insects, yet they have "dozens of tiny double-jointed legs." That would make them arthropods, but not insects - insects, by definition, only have six legs. Also, a hertiza can use Improved Grab on a Large or smaller creature, and this must occur before it can use its symbiosis special attack, which transforms the hertiza and victim into a kenzasa. However, the kenzasa template says it can be added onto creatures of size Small and larger. Which is it? "Damage" has ratings listed for kenzasa of up to Colossal size, but a hertiza can't even use Improved Grab on a Colossal creature. Technically, as written, the only possible kenasa would be those from Small to Large size, no matter what the Damage ratings say. I don't think enough thought was put into this particular mechanic!
- p. 119, Oozecrawler: Bite damage should be 1d8+5, not 1d8+7 (it isn't its sole attack, so it doesn't get the 1.5 times Strength bonus).
- p. 124, Planar Grimalkin: Flat-footed AC should be 20, not 16 (it retains its +4 Dex bonus when flat-footed due to Uncanny Dodge).
- p. 158, Threneghul: Flat-footed AC should be 26, not 24 (it retains its +2 Dex bonus when flat-footed due to Uncanny Dodge).
- p. 213, Zeidian: Weapon Focus (longsword) should be annotated as a bonus feat.
That's 12 monsters with at least one error in their stat blocks and/or stat blocks contradicting their write-ups, out of a total of 130 monsters with stat blocks given (ignoring the templates for now), or a less than 10% rate - not terrific, but
much better than the average monster book (or at least those that I've seen lately). Fortunately, as you can see by the list above, in many cases the sole error was just a few hit points off for the racial average, something that wouldn't affect play very much at all, so for the most part Jeffrey Visgaitis was right to feel so confident in his monster stats and write-ups.
I am going to ding him on a couple of other points, though; while not actually stat-block errors or mechanical errors in the monsters' write-ups, there were a few factual errors presented in the descriptions. For example:
- The darnu (on page 43) is described as an albino, yet it has dark blue eyes! True albinos have no such pigmentation, even in their eyes; it's normal for an albino to have pink eyes.
- If a doomweaver reproduces asexually only once in its lifetime, and only lays one egg, then the doomweaver population can never grow in number - and you have to wonder how there was ever more than one in the world to begin with!
- The finest beastmasters take years to train a mokara, yet "training a mokara takes six weeks of work" - which is it?
- The Head-Butt feat on page 136 (under the Skarren entry) mentions that only skarren and skareth can normally take the feat, yet the book doesn't get around to mentioning what a skareth is until page 214, when we learn that skareth are a subrace of the zeidian. That might have been worth mentioning sooner!
- I didn't count this as an actual stat-block error, but why is the "Skills" line in the Wretchling entry above the "Saves" line instead of below the "Abilities" line?
- If, as the subtype states, zha'lari are reptilian, then they don't have "exoskeletons" - reptiles have vertebrae, while creatures with exoskeletons have no internal skeletal system. You either have one or the other, not both!
As for the proofreading, I was overall impressed, although there were a few mistakes that got past Jeffrey (in his role as "layout and typesetting" guy - he sure wore a lot of hats in the production of this book, as he's also listed as the project manager/art director, one of the authors, one of the artists, "conceptual art," and the creator of the "Violet Dawn" logo!). Among them are a few instances where a space broke a word into two ("th e," "amas sed"), missing words ("they thought would" should have been "they thought
they would"), doubled words ("can can" instead of just "can"), one really weird sentence that's surely missing more than just a word or two ("Unaccustomed to the many strange species in the jungle-began collecting specimens"), wrong words ("It creature cannot..." instead of
A creature cannot..." and "fey" used when "humanoid" should have been used), several instances of incorrect possessiveness (specifically, if a word ends in an "s," you add just the apostrophe at the end, without an "s" immediately afterward), at least one instance where a spell name was not italicized, and an extra word ("half") showing up unneeded. Still, given that this is a 224-page book, I'm impressed that that's all I found, as I have seen a similar number of errors in d20 books of 64 and even 32 pages!
Okay, so far I've focused a lot on the negative. You'll be pleased that that's it - I'm all out of negative! I'd like to spend the rest of this review emphasizing some of the many fine points about
Denizens of Avadnu. First of all, despite this being the only "Violet Dawn" book I've ever seen, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the overall "feel" of the game world. If I had to compare it to another campaign setting, I'd say it struck me as bearing some strong resemblances to the "Dark Sun" campaign. Seriously, both worlds seem to be rugged lands where survival isn't always easy (or guaranteed), where there are a ton of powerful creatures roaming around out there. Many of the individual creatures even give off a very strong "Dark Sun vibe," from many of the undead unique to the campaign world in question, to there being a super-powerful, one-of-a-kind creature at the very top of the power scheme (in "Dark Sun" it was the Dragon; on Avadnu it's Tzorda, "the Beast"). There's also the fact that most of the "animal" creature types presented never existed in the real world, which is a departure from most fantasy campaigns. Even many of the naming schemes seem similar, with apostrophes thrown in abundantly for an "alien" feel. (For that matter, you might suppose that a "violet dawn" could be caused by having a rather "dark sun," right?) Also, while there are plenty of "descriptive" monster names like the beasthound, dark wanderer, and soultrapper, there are many more with "local" names that don't mean anything particular (at least not in our language!), like the carcaetan, ossecap, teo-selarai, and xiir. I also noticed a preponderance of creatures whose names are the same in both singular and plural form: one grethell, two grethell; one xashuul, two xashuul. This goes a long way towards giving a unified feel that this particular clump of monsters all developed on the same world.
Then, of course, there's indisputably one of the most important things about any given monster book - are the monsters interesting? I'd say there are plenty of great ideas in
Denizens of Avadnu, and I envy the DM who springs some of these creatures on their unsuspecting players just to see the expressions on their faces. The very first monster in the book is an 8-foot-tall giant with a swarm of maggotlike vermin that live in tiny holes scattered throughout its coral-like exoskeleton. There are seething, hyper-intelligent oozes (the blackwater sloughs), and knowledge-obsessed undead who absorb words from all books and scrolls within 15 feet directly onto their skin, then rip off their skin when it gets "full" and lug around these homemade "books" of knowledge. I also really like the enigmatic time walkers, who exist simultaneously throughout all spans of time, and who are charged with preventing (or undoing) changes to the natural timeline; and the warding visage (a construct in the shape of a face built into a wall or door, tasked with keeping out intruders) is something any campaign world can use (it reminds me more than a little of the "grandfather plaque" from AD&D 2nd Edition). Finally, they picked a winner in having the enigmatic xxyth be the apparently "main bad guy monster race" in the campaign world (although I have to admit I groan a bit at the name). In all, Inner Circle gets high marks for the creativity behind most of the monsters in
Denizens of Avadnu.
Finally, while the inspiration might well have been merely to fill up a page and to avoid excessive white space, I was impressed with all of the little bonuses thrown in, from new spells to exotic weapons to magic items and strange, new diseases. I also liked seeing the various uses for monster parts once the monster in question has been slain. None of these seem like just filler material; they all blend in seamlessly with the monsters they relate to. I also liked most of the material that showed up before the monster listings even began: the new skills and feats are all pretty interesting, and I could see most of them being useful to just about any fantasy campaign.
I rate
Denizens of Avadnu somewhere in the range of a very high "4 (Good)" to a low-to-mid "5 (Superb)." Despite my disappointment in the lack of templated creature examples - not only is that an "industry standard," but it's helpful to envision how exactly the template spices up a base creature by actually seeing one modified - and the few stat block problems, I was impressed enough by
Denizens of Avadnu to put it into the "5" range. (Since I haven't gone into much detail about them up to this point, I'll point out here that I really liked many of the templates as well, especially the solar creature, lunar creature, tasked, and half-xxyth (and I usually get bored rather quickly with "half-" templates)). I look forward to seeing more in the "Violet Dawn" line;
Denizens of Avadnu has made me curious as to what else these Inner Circle guys can do. Based on this book, I'd say we can expect some great material from them in the future.
