Diablo II -- D&D books

[Omote]

I've gotten my use out of Diablarie and To Hell & Back. Mostly we play Diablo II RPG when there is nothing going on and we just want to beat the crap out of some monsters! The Treasure tables to get a bit sick with mucho powerful stuff, but hey, that is part of the fun of Diablo!

........................Omote
FPQ

 

[Psion]

I always dug the variety of creatures like flaming skeletons and goat headed demons, as well as the nifty little random item generator. I tried some spells from it in my take on teh undead domain, but some proved overpowered. Other than that, they books are pretty low utility. I certainly don't see ever playing a Diablo campaign.

They really sort of missed an opportunity there. Pull out the DII booklet you have there and read some of the backgrounds of the characters. Likewise, take a look at the cinematic sequences there. There is actually some deeper roleplaying potential there. But instead, they chose to make a hack-n-slay fest game out of it that the computer version of the game does better. Talk about not playing to your strengths!

 

[Kanegrundar]

I have had both (I recently picked up Diablerie again) and I have to say that while it's not WotC's best work, it's easily usable. The item generators are great. Sure, you can get that occasional overpowered item, but it's very rarely a game-breaker. (I'd acutally say never a game-breaker, but I've heard some horror stories.) The critters are good if you need some good melee fodder.

Overall, not the best, but if you can find them cheap (which you should be able to if you look around online) they are worth the money.

Kane

 

[Suldulin]

'tis too bad that wotc did a poor job with converting the diablo world into an rpg, there are hints of a more interesting world beneath the game that could have been greatly expanded upon to make an actual world/campaign setting book in of itself. But all they did was try to convert the compter game straight to pen&paper :\

 

[Voadam]

The 2e one was far superior.

The 3e spells are more balanced than the 2e ones were though.

The 3e one the paladin powers don't quite work and the amazon has things like improved crit at 1st level. The necromancer and sorceress are like D&D spellcasters but a bit more powerful (d6 HD more powers, etc.)

I really like the warrior class design concepts where you pick class appropriate powers every level from a broad group with better powers available at higher level, but the mechanics execution were just not done well. The barbarian is probably the best of the bunch.

The monsters don't have as many as the 2e one and poorer descriptions on top of it. Also a bunch more should have been illustrated, they even left out a bunch that were illustrated in 2e.

The whole tone of the thing is overpowered Hack and Slash with no cool world mood as presented in 2e.

Similar base weapons such as a bastard or greatsword do more damage in Diablo than in D&D.

The magic items don't follow 3e conventions, no creation rules and the gp costs are linear for improvements instead of exponential. They are very cool but they were all there in the 2e version, there is no conversion to 3e. Very surprising since it's adjective powers seems to have mechanically inspired a lot of the 3e magic weapon and armor power rules.

the 2e Diablerie II book was great, the 3e diablerie was a serious disappointment after the quality standards set in the 2e one.

 

[Camarath]

I'll see if I can dig up the classes I converted and post them, if you are interested (I converted the Barbarian and Amazon without issues, although my Paladin conversion feels a little too powerful).

I would love to see them if you would not mind posting them.

 

[diaglo]

Damn, and here I thought this was going to be a thread on "Diaglo II -- D&D books". Now that would make an interesting d20 franchise.

i still have a GQ article with an interview with the creators of Diablo/Warcraft.

it has the chick on the cover painted in gold from the Markie Mark remake of the Planet of the Apes.

nice backstory to their old D&D days.

yeah, i own the computer games. but since i play the pen & paper version of D&D didn't see a need to buy (though i've read them) the Diablo pen & paper games.

 

[Sado]

What company published the diablo books?

 

[Ron]

What company published the diablo books?

Wizards of the Coast. I've seen them and I was far from be impressed.