Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils II

[Messageboard Golem]

Drawn from historical references the world over, this compendium offers hordes of beasties that any fantasy game would be loath to see come at them! A follow-up to the acclaimed Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils released last year, this tome features all new demons and devils with an updated look, format and feel that gamers have asked for. This hardcover d20 accessory is everything that gamers have asked for -- over 100 different demons and devils referenced for easy play in any fantasy campaign.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils Volume II
Fast Forward Entertainment
224 b & w pages
$29.99

In comparing The Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils II to the first book, I can honestly say that Fast Forward has gotten better. The layout, text, and even stats are better than the first book, but not perfect.

The book is arranged in alphabetical order with the name of the creature, it’s type, the stat block, description, combat, deity notes, if any, and ‘crunch’ pieces like spells, magic items, and prestige classes. Fast Forward, it appears, has decided to join the game of crunch and that’s okay with me as there are never enough PrCs to satisfy. It’s too bad the book is arranged alphabetically though as there are many mythologies hit upon ranging from Greek and Christian to Javanese and Mayan. It would’ve been nice to flip to a section of Greek monsters and them contrast them to monsters from African folklore.

There are numerous individual lords with descriptions of them as gods and individual monsters making them dual purpose. GMs needing to flesh out a campaign where demons and devil lords can grant spells will be in for a real treat while other GMs must mesh this material with their own setting. These beings range from lords of armies like Lerai, a commander of thirty legions of ‘tanar’ri’, to Raiden, the Japanese god of thunder and lightning. In terms of CR, they range from 5 to over 20, as in the case of Raiden. Strangely enough, one of the most powerful figures, Sargatanas, a demonic mercenary general, isn’t provided a domain or attributes as a deity, but rather, is merely a powerful CR 24 foe! The unique beings here present a nice range of power from lowly CR levels to higher ones and in each case they are provided with role playing notes so that lower level parties may still have some interaction with these creatures.

Not all of the creatures are of divine nature though. Some like the Raiju, are monsters that can be thrown at lower level parties as this cat like demon is CR 4 . The Catabolignes are gopheres of powerful wizards while the chargrin are demons that feed off sorrow and frustration. Not all of the non-unique creatures are weak though. The Daityass are from Hindu myths and are powerful creatures with plenty of hit points, attacks and power enough to defeat even a near Epic level party. A good selection of lower powered creatures, but one that pales in contrast to the number of unique individuals within the book.

Those looking past the monsters will enjoy the magic items, spells and prestige classes. Some of these are simple things like the feathers of the Guecuba. Each one allows a single use of the feather fall spell. Of course most players will flip to the PrCs and see what they can strive for. Because most of these PrCs serve an outsider power, they’ll probably be inappropriate for players but great for NPCs. You have you’re choice of the Peacebringers ,the servants of Aamon, the Shadowhands or “sjenka dati”, the servants of Aitvaras, or the Death Legionnaire, powerful fighting servants of Akikel, among others. Each class comes with background, requirements, stats, skill points and abilities per level. The Death Legionnaire is actually a 20 level class and is missing it’s skill points per level but is otherwise complete with special abilities.

In terms of what I would have liked to see more of, an explanation of the stats and the deity part. If you use the creature as a deity, the stats might make sense for a possessed avatar or a minor minion, but even with challenge ratings of 18-25, they are weak in comparison to official stats for avatars and gods. Some GMs may rule that other evil gods are actually providing the power for the clerics of these entities but it becomes a decision then of which devil and demon to pick for god status and which to ignore.

In terms of art, each creature is illustrated in a tarot card like border and this time, and not all of the illustrations to not appear to be old badly scanned images. Most of them are fairly good like the one of Aeshma, a fallen angel upon his skeletal mount and Hantu Penyardin, a demonic vampire and his victim on a full page spread. Others though, are still in need of touch ups like Catabolignes, Chagrin and Eligor. These illustrations are either old clip art or new art designed to look like old clip art from Dover. The layout has the one-inch margins on the top and bottom but the page identifiers cut into the text a bit due to the horns surrounding the page number.

Another concern in a similar vein is even the most powerful of these creatures tend to be weaker than their official brothers in the Book of Vile Darkness and the Tome of Horrors. It’s difficult to imagine, for example, Orcus being worried about Abduxuel, a CR 18 demon lord.


The editing needs a bit of work. “Buy sacrificing themselves…” Probably, meant to be by. Dreaded words that I notice cropping up a lot like “Of course” used often. Other mistakes are common. Take Grant Familiar, a spell granted by Aamon, a devil. “should the demon demand anything of the familiar…” that should be devil. How about when reading on Eurynome, the eater of the dead from Greek Mythology? Under his description, where his physical appearance and history are noted, it mentions that he is proficiency with all weapons and armor. Why? Shouldn’t that be under the combat section? Another thing the book lacks is an index. How can you quickly look up magic items, monsters, spells and other goodies unless you flip through the whole thing? A CR table would’ve been nice too. Some of the CRs seem off too like Akikel probably isnt’ a CR of 8 but probably closer to 12 or more with his massive damage reduction and SR.

If Fast Forward can improve the art, editing, and utility of the series, the next book may actually be a four- star rating. If they can do that an add a CR listing and an index with other goods and keep the OGL to one page, maybe one day in the far future, a 5!

In closing, the book provides more of the first but is better and offers more tools for the GM to incorporate these elements into his own game.

 

[Voadam]

How are the stat blocks for using them as critters? I think I remember their being some issues about that in the first one.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The stats seem to be better but I'd still playtest a bit more before throwing them right in the campaign. For example, I mention Akikel being CR 8 but I would peg him a little higher.

 

[Psion]

Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, Volume II

The Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, Volume II is the sequel to the original Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils by Fast Forward Entertainment. The books provide game statistics and descriptions of creatures from mythology and folklore.

A First Look

The Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, Volume II is a 224 page hardcover book priced at $29.99. This is a similar size and format to the previous volume, and is reasonable in comparison to the rest of the d20 market.

The cover of the book appears to be a photograph of the visage of a statue of a mythical horned being filtered to give it a fiery appearance.

The interior is black and white. The art varies widely in quality. There are also some average quality ink illustrations as well as some well done full-page pencil sketches by Jennifer Meyer. The book relies less on woodcut and other public domain illustrations, and there are no ink drawings as bad as the worst ones in the first volue. Overall, the production standards for the interior art and layout have improved somewhat over the first volume.

The interior text density is also an improvement over the first volume, generally using denser fonts, and using similarly thin margins. All creatures take up at least a page of text, and some take up more. There are some editing gaffes, such as the notorious "page xx" error, some table formatting being marred by drifting column entries, and some spells missing class/level designations.

A Deeper Look

The Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, Volume II contains game information for a variety of creatures from real folklore, along with extensive background information introducing each creature to the campaign.

The beginning of the book provides a few sneak peeks of information later in the book, as well as a few pages of interesting plot hooks that the GM can use to involve the creatures described later on in the book into a game.

After the original Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, I thought that classical concepts that would translate into demons and devils would be too well mined out to allow for another volume. However, FFE managed to gather quite a variety of creatures. A great many of the creatures are drawn from the 72 spirits imprisoned by Solomon, or fallen angels from Abrahamic traditions and/or from Milton's Paradise Lost. Other concepts are drawn from Aztec, Assyrian, Armenian, Egyptian, Hindu, Japanese, and Zoroastrian traditions, among others.

As with the original volume, many of the more significant creatures have statistics and description to allow their use as a deity, such as clerical domains and details on the religion of the followers. Although this really provides an intriguing use for some of these creatures, many of the creatures are very weak for creatures that would claim the power of deities unless you run a low-power game. As a side note, the "small god" rules from Fantasy Flight Games' Spells & Spellcraft would make a nice adjunct to this book, as it provides special rules for clerics that receive abilities from less powerful creatures such as these.

The game statistics for the creatures is generally an improvement over the first volume, with special abilities that seem more workable. The save DCs of most creature abilities are done correctly in most cases, with the exception of some spell-like abilities. However, like the first volume, the creatures in this volume have some outlandish CR values. For example, Akikel is a fallen angel with 15 hit dice and the spell casting ability of a 12th level sorcerer, in addition to impressive ability scores, magic items, and summoning abilities, but is only CR 8. Another problem that plagued the first volume that reappears here is that many skill totals and maximums do not follow d20 system guidelines.

Finally, other than the rather precise guidelines, a few creatures fail some rather common sense adaptations. For example, in the description, Belphegor is described as a cunning crafter of weapons, but has no craft feats or skills.

One thing that this volume tries that the first volume did not is the introduction of prestige classes and spells for followers of some of the creatures. The spells are in most cases acceptable, though some cases a bit powerful, such as some spells that disallow saves at low levels. At best, the prestige classes are almost acceptable; the shadowhands prestige class of followers of Aitvaras is playable as is but uses nonstandard base attack bonus advancement.

Most of the remaining prestige classes are far worse. For example, death legionnaire devoted to Akikel is flawed in several ways. It has requirements like a prestige class but has 20 levels like a base class. It's base attack bonus progresses at +1 per level, but for secondary attacks it follows a haphazard pattern vice the standard "1 attack per +5 over +1." The class gains a carapace ability that, but instead of listing a natural armor bonus, uses the obtuse and clunky mechanism of listing an "equivalent armor" type. The class gains a bonus feat for every level of the first 11 levels except for 3 levels that the class gains other abilities, which is way faster than a fighter gains feats. Finally, the class uses nonstandard save advancement. Other classes have similar flaws, but this class is the worst.

Conclusion

As with the first volume, Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, Volume II has some great idea content. GMs in a mood for something a little different (something more "authentic") in feel than the standard d20 system fiends could possibly draw a lot of ideas from this books. The production values and creature statistics are modestly improved from the first volume as well.

However, while the idea of making prestige classes for followers of some creatures is interesting, the implementation is disappointing, as most of the prestige classes are badly flawed. Further, there are minor flaws in implementations of any of the creatures, which hampers the book's effort to bring this rich variety of concepts to the game.

- Alan D. Kohler

 

[Psion]

Heh... funny, Akikel was the one that stuck out to me as being a bit low, too.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer, d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality Radio

Sizing Up the Target
Demons & Devils II is a hard cover published by Fast Forward Entertainment and is the second of a series dedicated to fiends from the Netherworld. The authors include James M. Ward, Dale Donovan, Kevin Melka and Tim Brown among others. The cover is a faux-tome of what looks to be an ancient Greek statue of Dionysis made to look like a demon by William W. Connors, who also handles the interior art along with Jennifer Meyer and Troy Parker. The book is 224 pages long and is available for $29.99.

First Blood
This is a combination Monster Manual/Deities and Demigods tome. Listing Demons and Devils taken from real mythology and given a playable form. Some of these have very brief monstrous descriptions, while others are demi-gods or extra-planar beings on a par with gods.

These powerful creatures have an extensive history, detailing their church, artifacts, unique spells and, in some cases, prestige class followers. Beings such as the tanar’ri, Maskim, whose followers can qualify for the prestige class of Soulsworn, provided they are chaotic evil, possess the necessary feats and have give their soul to Maskim via the Makimite soul steal spell. He has also developed the unique spells of Lavaskin and Rockswimming.

Others, like Hantu Penyardin (a tannar’ri) is the Malaysian demigod of vampires while Akikel (a baatezu) is one of the fallen and a chief lieutenant of Satan leading armies of the damned in the Blood Wars, his followers are Death Legionnaires and he has a half dozen unique spells like the Wings of War.

Critical Hits
I’ve not yet acquired the first book of the series but this is a good companion piece to the Green Ronin books, Legions of Hell and Armies of the Abyss for those Dm’s campaigning on the Lower Planes or fiendishly invading some back water kingdom.

Critical Misses
The artwork is amateurish in places, they are going for the look of a medieval text on the same subject. Mostly they are successful but every so often a weak one comes in. Cross-referencing and gathering some of the spells and classes into a table at the end might be helpful.

Coup de Grace
This book doesn’t suffer from Fast Forward’s minimalist view on detail. These fiends are richly detailed as are their followers when applicable and their prestige classes. There is a lot of crunchy bit in this book and I am on the hunt for book I in the series.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Psion]

How can you NOT list the classes in this book as a critical miss? They were attrocious!

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

The Encyclopaedia Of Demons & Devils II is the sequel to Fast Forward Entertainment's original d20 presentation of evil spirits from real-world folklore, myth, and legend.

The Encyclopaedia Of Demons & Devils II is a 224-page mono hardcover product costing $29.99. Font and margins are fairly standard, but a horned skull used to enclose the page number invades page space on each page and causes regular areas of white space that could have been used more effectively. Each monster is illustrated in the frame of a tarot-card-like border; there has been an attempt to portray a mediaeval feel to the illustrations using woodcut-style, simple line drawings, and what look like pictures scanned in from old books - this does not work for me and I found the general quality of the artwork poor apart from the two Jennifer Meyer full-page gems hidden within the book. I found the writing style somewhat varied, reflecting the several different authors who worked on the project, ranging from poor to good. Editing quality also varies.

The Encyclopaedia Of Demons & Devils II contains 135 evil spirits taken from real-world mythology and folklore and translated into d20 terms. The monsters range in their depth of coverage from one page to four and CR's range from 1 to 30 with a good spread of CR's within this range. The monster statistics vary considerably in terms of sticking to standard monster creation guidelines - most notably, some CRs are way off. A simple example is the demon Nybras, who is given a CR 1 but has spell-casting abilities of a 6th-level sorcerer, damage reduction, spell resistance, and a few other demonic abilities that certainly make it more powerful than a Dretch (CR 2). As I looked at some of the monsters with higher hit dice, some of the CR's seemed to be more significantly out (for example a 12 HD/CR 15 monster with similar stats and abilities to a 15 HD/CR 12 monster). Stat blocks contain further minor errors.

Some monsters that have a few more pages dedicated to them are presented as potential deities, and some have prestige classes and spells attached to their section as well, designed to boost the powers of their followers. These prestige classes start in a bad way, with a 20-level class with prestige class requirements (albeit 1st level ones such as Diplomacy 2 ranks). Others have non-standard BAB and save progressions. The spells are somewhat better but also suffer from some nebulous rules on occasion.

Apart from the information within the individual monster descriptions, there is no extra material to aid a GM in finding a suitable monster for an adventure - no listing by CR, type, or anything like that, merely a table of contents with an alphabetical list at the beginning.

Conclusion
The Encyclopaedia Of Demons & Devils II is an interesting reference book on mythological evil spirits but fails too frequently to provide reliable d20 statistics and rules for the devils and demons it describes, nor are the spells and prestige classes provided for the monster-as-deity's followers created with much appreciation for the d20 rules. If you are prepared to go through the stat blocks, ignore or amend the prestige classes, and are interested in reference information on mythological evil spirits, then this might be worth the money.

 

[ASEO]

Pssst, Bruce...Bruce This company and this product sucks. Are you getting paid to leave false positive reviews of their products, or are you honestly the only Fast Forward Games fan out there.

Your credibility is plummeting with each obviously flawed review you give Fast Forward Games. How much are they paying you?

ASEO out