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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vurt" data-source="post: 2606626" data-attributes="member: 1547">E.N. Critters Volume 5 – Interlopers from the Blasted RealmBy Joshua Courtney, Robert Lajoie, Bill Salloway and Jim E. VilandrePublished by E.N. PublishingPages: 61 + OGL + front & back coverFully bookmarkedDisclaimer: This is not a playtest review.  I did not buy Interlopers from the Blasted Realm, it was sent to me for review.For some reason, fiendish antagonists have always resonated well with me.  Maybe it’s because I inadvertantly missed the whole Planescape thing when it first came out, having taken a break from D&D at the time, until much later when Planescape Torment was released.  Further toss in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=58227" target="_blank">Sepulchrave’s Tales of Wyre</a> and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=77613" target="_blank">Shemeska’s Planescape Storyhour</a> and so now I’m left with this vague impression that demons and angels manipulating mortals to further their own unfathomable agendas somehow makes for a cool storyline.  I suspect I’m not alone in this.  So when I was fortuitously given the opportunity to review E.N. Critters Volume 5 – Interlopers from the Blasted Realm, I jumped at the chance.  Cool, I thought to myself, more demons to play with!Interlopers from the Blasted Realm is the fifth volume in the E.N. Critters series of environmentally-themed monster books.  Whereas the previous four volumes have focused mostly on terrestrial locales such as along riverbanks, within jungles, etc., this one takes a little larger leap and lands itself in a demonic pocket-plane.  Unfortunately, I have not read any of the other four volumes, and so cannot compare this work to them, or make reference to how the series as a whole is progressing.  I can only leave that to other reviewers more familiar with the product line as a whole.Following the front cover and Table of Contents, what you get is a fairly complete description of a unique demonic demiplane, and twenty-four otherworldly creatures to throw at your players.  Not all of them are fiends (that is, “evil outsiders” according to the D&D vernacular), there are also the occasional humanoid, construct, magical beast, abberation and undead thrown in for good measure.  One of the creatures is actually a template, which is applied to a fey in the provided sample critter.  The creature section is followed by tables listing them all by CR and type, as well as several pages of printable counters (front and back) for use on your battlemat.  The PDF ends with the Open Game License and the back cover.The product is bookmarked, and as well, the Table of Contents entries are all fully hyperlinked.  As previously mentioned, towards the end of the document are tables listing the various creatures by CR, type, and author.  The creatures by CR table I expect is the most useful of the three, but it would have been even more helpful had it been hyperlinked as was the TOC.  There is an almost staggering amount of raw text in this PDF, and for the most part, it is very well edited.  Issues that arise are minor, and are easily overlooked.Interlopers from the Blasted Realm is very well organized, and was designed with printing in mind.  The header and footer artwork is reasonably restrained, and in a light grey.  In addition, while creature entries take up multiple pages, they are done such that when printed double-sided and hole-punched, the entries tend to start on the left-hand side of the page and end on the right.  New critter entries tend to start at the top of their own page, with only one exception towards the end of document.  Printing notes for printing out the counters are included as well, giving advice on how to scale them properly to the 1-inch squares typically found on one’s battlemat.Creature entries are laid out in the standard format introduced by the Monster Manual way back when, breaking down the bonuses for things like AC but not the initiative modifier or skill ranks.  A picture of each creature is included.  Following a general description, combat tactics are presented, and these in turn are followed by a description of all the creature’s traits and special abilities.  For combat tactics, you get general suggestions for how the monster likes to behave, and not the round-by-round tactics as seen in some of the more powerful devil and demon entries introduced by the 3.5 revision of the Monster Manual.  In general, however, the tactics presented in Interlopers tends to be a touch more specific.  For example, the entry for the Ellinal, a creature with a fear gaze and a 10 ft. reach, explains that the beastie likes to get to within 5 ft. of its target and then level its gaze in order to take advantage of attacks of opportunity incurred when the victim subsequently tries to flee.After the combat section each monster entry has a couple of paragraphs on ecology, followed by a Knowledge (the planes) skill table.  The inclusion of a Knowledge table for each of the entries I think is a good thing.  Since these critters are new, but presumably not totally new to everyone’s campaign universe, it’s good to have pre-listed DCs for Knowledge (the planes) skill checks in order to determine what various characters may or may not know about their opponents.  The DCs from the skill checks range from about 15 to 50, and it must be noted that the designers have deliberately broken the convention of using 10 + the creature’s HD as the target DC to reveal useful information, in order to keep the tables somewhat standardized.  (i.e. The target DCs are all multiples of 5, and increase by 5.)The final section in the monster entry is where the creature’s author provides some of his notes and his rationale for giving the creature its various abilities and challenge rating.  I found this section most helpful in trying to understand how best to consider using the creature, and what kinds of difficulties my players will face if they should happen to encounter it.I’m happy to observe that the Challenge Ratings for the various critters aren’t all clustered near the high end of the scale.  There’s a nice mix, providing plenty of opportunities to throw some of them at lower level adventurers.  With CRs ranging from 1 to 22, there are fourteen in the 10-and-under category and eleven in the 11-and-above.Something I’m not particularly happy with is that the creature artwork has an almost “high-school feel” to it.  Some of it I like, while others not so much, but even the ones I do like aren’t always helpful at depicting the creature.  For instance, the Myzar’tak’s picture is a close-up head-shot, and while it appears to be suitably ferocious, it leaves me with no idea what the rest of the creature looks like.  Which would be fine if the theme of the product wasn’t chaotic demons from an alien realm that could presumably look like bloody anything!  In many of the pictures the shading is overstrong, making it difficult to identify details and perceive depth.  On the other hand, I thought the use of the colour red, both within the artwork as well as a highlight within some of the text, to be well done across the board.  It is not overused, and where it does appear it acts primarily to accent and direct the readers attention to certain features.  As well, I love the two provided maps.One problem I am having difficulty wrapping my head around in trying to write this review is to discuss exactly how good are these new monsters.  The problem lies in that the concept of a demon in D&D seems to be something with an utterly unpleasant form that has at its fingertips a set of thematically consistent resistances and special abilities with which to torment your players.  Certainly some of these beasties will likely creep out a few players in your group, but for the most part the denizens of the Blasted Realm just don’t seem, well, terrifying enough.  Maybe it’s just that too many of the creatures here remind me of monsters I’ve seen elsewhere in movies and on TV.  For instance, didn’t I see the Remains of the Fallen, an undead swarm of body parts, in that cult classic, Army of Darkness? Isn’t the Ravager just a fantasy version of the Terminator?  Maybe it’s just the artwork, but the Kzixinttra’il I found to be reminiscent of Pinhead, and the Scarrim remind me too much of the Scarren from Farscape.  It just doesn’t encourage me to want to throw them at my players.  Encountering a new demon should be a powerful experience.  To risk breaking the immersion when one of your players realizes that they’ve “seen” the new creature you’re using before somewhere else is just cheating them of their fun.Another thing that I found frustrating was my inability to pronounce the names of some of these creatures without practice.  That, and the decidedly Japanese-sounding names of the some of them seem a little out of place.  I suspect that there is a very good reason that none of the fiends with the bizarre-sounding names in the Monster Manual have more than three syllables.  On the plus side, the critters herein that do have weird names also have listed secondary, common names.  For example, the Tsuinshitakama is also known as the twin-tongue demon, not to be confused with the tongue-twisting demon.Setting those issues aside, there is relatively little wonkiness in the rules for the creatures’ abilities and statistics themselves.  I do have to question why the Endless Hunger, ostensibly a mount for another creature, the Argent Lord, has a Ride skill when it is the thing that is being ridden?  Or why is it that the Soul Slayer Sword, an adamantine weapon, has Damage Reduction X/adamantine or good.  Trying to think this through, how does a good-aligned weapon overcome the adamantine aspect of the thing’s DR?  Is it meant to be illogical or is it a typo?  But as rules mechanics issues go, that’s pretty much all that I noticed. My initial impressions of the PDF were suitably favourable.  Much good thought went into its design and layout, and it shows.  Ultimately, however, the strength of any monster book depends primarily on its critters.  And for me, the mix of creatures just seems to be a touch too haphazard for my tastes. Interlopers from the Blasted Realm is a good product if you’re looking for some new demon-type creatures to throw at your players, or if you tend to like demonic-themed supplements and support material.  However, it isn’t actually a “book of fiends”.  Rather, it’s a fiend-heavy ecology book.  The distinction is that, taken outside of their normal habitat, most of these creatures have no real sense of purpose other than to just kill things.  Which is fine for some random monster, but in my opinion, it fails to live up to the potential of what a fiend should be.  Fiends are best when they mirror some aspect of human behaviour, and jack it up to the n-th degree.  But for every “horror-” style of critter in Interlopers, there are three “hammers”, things used simply to bludgeon your players’ characters.  Of course, if overcoming “hammers” is what you and your friends tend to enjoy most during a game session, then this could very well be an advantage to the product.  For me this aspect is something of a let-down, and it doesn’t inspire me to actually use any of what is otherwise, creature artwork aside, a very well-done piece of work.Reviewed by Scott Benoit</blockquote>

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