Crothian
First Post
Elder Evils
Campaign plots can be difficult to come up with. Especially one that has a clear theme and set of goals as well as a bit of a mystery about what is going on. Most modules and books are about the short term. Unless it is one of those few mega modules most only take about a few game sessions and then it becomes time to move onto the next one. Elder Evils takes the view of giving basic out lines to campaign long themes and adversaries allowing a DM to fill in the in between and details.
Elder Evils is a third edition D&D book from Wizards of the Coast. It is written by Robert Schwalb who knows evil and knows how to disgust players. I have seen both first hand. Elder Evils is a typical sized book that came out in the later days of third edition. It is about one hundred and sixty pages long, hard cover book, and done in full color. The art and layout are pretty good, but the meat of the book is the Elder Evils themselves.
The book is a mix of high level threats. They pretty much range from challenge ratings of sixteen to twenty. There are three creatures I noticed with a challenge rating of over twenty. I think this is one of the failings of the book. This was the perfect way to really support higher then twentieth level of play with these elder evils. Some of them just do not seem to be as powerful as they should after the great build ups they get. It would have been nice to at least have one chapter on an Elder Evil that was specifically designed to handle the epic levels of play. It says in the book Evil to Challenge the Gods but if one sees these stats and compares them to the god stats of other books the gods are not worried in the least.
An Elder Evil is a creature of great power that if released or allowed to come to a campaign world will bring about the end of that place. These are creatures that in their own way usher in an apocalypse. There are nine such creatures presented in the book and each on is given its own chapter. Each chapter is easy to read and follows the same basic formula. The Elder evil’s back ground is giving along with its goals or its ways to destroy everything. There is a basic time line starting with low challenge ratings and working its way up showing the signs of danger increasing as things get more and more dire. There are important non player characters described with ways to use them. Each chapter ends with a short adventure that can be used to have the player characters meet and hopefully defeat the Elder Evil.
Reading all of the Elder Evils back to back and they do sort of run together. Yes, one wants to freeze the world where another might want to turn everything into and undead creature but the differences just do not seem as important as the end result always being the same. It would have been nice to see a charismatic Elder Evil or something that could charm or get the world to follow it willingly instead of all the destruction. I would have liked a little more variety in the Elder Evils.
Two of them are of particular interests since they have more familiarity with D&D players. The first is the Worm the Walks. It is the what I think final nemesis in the very well received Age of Worms adventure path ran in Dungeon Magazine. I have not had any experience with the adventure path but a side bar in the chapter does address it. The chapter was not written to contradict the adventure path the side bar says and can be used to have more adventures and ideas with it. Of course that adventure path is not needed to use the material in the book.
The other one and of great enjoyment to myself when I read it is Zargon. This is a reference to the old module the Lost City which was the first module I ever owned and also the first I ran. Of course this is a more powerful version since the module was made for character of first to third levels. There are many familiar elements borrowed from that module and it made this chapter an enjoyment to read. If only there was a suggested way to use that module along side this or as an introduction of sorts. That would have been cool bonus for the people that have access to it.
Over all the book is pretty solid with very useful ideas to have a theme and monsters that can potential destroy a world. The background and goals of the creatures are much more important then the stats making this book useful for other editions of the game. It is not a book that a lot of it can be used at one time however as each of the nine elder evil chapters is basically an out line for its own long running campaign.
Campaign plots can be difficult to come up with. Especially one that has a clear theme and set of goals as well as a bit of a mystery about what is going on. Most modules and books are about the short term. Unless it is one of those few mega modules most only take about a few game sessions and then it becomes time to move onto the next one. Elder Evils takes the view of giving basic out lines to campaign long themes and adversaries allowing a DM to fill in the in between and details.
Elder Evils is a third edition D&D book from Wizards of the Coast. It is written by Robert Schwalb who knows evil and knows how to disgust players. I have seen both first hand. Elder Evils is a typical sized book that came out in the later days of third edition. It is about one hundred and sixty pages long, hard cover book, and done in full color. The art and layout are pretty good, but the meat of the book is the Elder Evils themselves.
The book is a mix of high level threats. They pretty much range from challenge ratings of sixteen to twenty. There are three creatures I noticed with a challenge rating of over twenty. I think this is one of the failings of the book. This was the perfect way to really support higher then twentieth level of play with these elder evils. Some of them just do not seem to be as powerful as they should after the great build ups they get. It would have been nice to at least have one chapter on an Elder Evil that was specifically designed to handle the epic levels of play. It says in the book Evil to Challenge the Gods but if one sees these stats and compares them to the god stats of other books the gods are not worried in the least.
An Elder Evil is a creature of great power that if released or allowed to come to a campaign world will bring about the end of that place. These are creatures that in their own way usher in an apocalypse. There are nine such creatures presented in the book and each on is given its own chapter. Each chapter is easy to read and follows the same basic formula. The Elder evil’s back ground is giving along with its goals or its ways to destroy everything. There is a basic time line starting with low challenge ratings and working its way up showing the signs of danger increasing as things get more and more dire. There are important non player characters described with ways to use them. Each chapter ends with a short adventure that can be used to have the player characters meet and hopefully defeat the Elder Evil.
Reading all of the Elder Evils back to back and they do sort of run together. Yes, one wants to freeze the world where another might want to turn everything into and undead creature but the differences just do not seem as important as the end result always being the same. It would have been nice to see a charismatic Elder Evil or something that could charm or get the world to follow it willingly instead of all the destruction. I would have liked a little more variety in the Elder Evils.
Two of them are of particular interests since they have more familiarity with D&D players. The first is the Worm the Walks. It is the what I think final nemesis in the very well received Age of Worms adventure path ran in Dungeon Magazine. I have not had any experience with the adventure path but a side bar in the chapter does address it. The chapter was not written to contradict the adventure path the side bar says and can be used to have more adventures and ideas with it. Of course that adventure path is not needed to use the material in the book.
The other one and of great enjoyment to myself when I read it is Zargon. This is a reference to the old module the Lost City which was the first module I ever owned and also the first I ran. Of course this is a more powerful version since the module was made for character of first to third levels. There are many familiar elements borrowed from that module and it made this chapter an enjoyment to read. If only there was a suggested way to use that module along side this or as an introduction of sorts. That would have been cool bonus for the people that have access to it.
Over all the book is pretty solid with very useful ideas to have a theme and monsters that can potential destroy a world. The background and goals of the creatures are much more important then the stats making this book useful for other editions of the game. It is not a book that a lot of it can be used at one time however as each of the nine elder evil chapters is basically an out line for its own long running campaign.
