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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009769" data-attributes="member: 172">Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, Volume IIThe 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 LookThe 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 LookThe 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.ConclusionAs 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</blockquote>

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