Packed with new game mechanics and ideas.
Legacy of Damnation
Written by Brian Schoner
Published by Paradigm Concepts
www.paradigmconcepts.com
ISBN: 1-931374-22-8
Stock Number: PCI 1108
128 b & w pages
$24.99
Legacy of Damnation is a new sourcebook not only for the Arcanis setting, but for any d20 fantasy game. Broken up into three chapters, it includes role playing notes for characters with evil outsider blood, ranging from half-friends to tielflings to dark kin. The first two are well known to most players, but the latter, the dark kin, are native originally to Arcanis and are the result of having some outsider traits resurface in the character after generations of normal children.
Interior layout is standard two-column format. Text is spaced enough to be easy on the eyes, but doesn’t appear to be wasteful. The price per page count ratio seems about right, as most $19.99 supplements these days run at 96 black and white pages. Editing could’ve used another round as a few sentences contain extra words, but it didn’t effect readability.
Interior art is hanlded by a wide variety of talent, including Bobby Breed, Matt Dixon, Paul Herbert, Scott Johnson, PatLoboyko, Bradely McDevitt, and one of my favorites, Scott Purdy. Because of the nature of the book, we get to see a lot of infernal forces in action. This includes the half-page illustration on 26 of various fiends charging an unseen foe, to some unknown horror looking through cracked walls on page 66.
As this book is useful to GMs and players, it includes broad notes not only on the playerable types, such as dark kin and cambions, but also general notes on demons, devils, night hags and other outsiders. These notes are brief and general enough that they can fit into most campaign settings with little to no alteration.
In the player vein, it includes a break down of how the different tainted races tend to gravitate towards the different core classes. For example, bards tend to rely on their charm, but most tainted tend to lack that ability. On the other hand, most tainted have superior physical attributes, making them good fighters and their dark heritage tends to make them mighty berserkers, making them perfect barbarians.
Notes on how the dark kin fit into Onara, the campaign setting or Arcanis, are broken down by country. For example, the people of the Pirate Isles, including good old Freeport, often use dark kin’s night vision to continue their raids and operations even at night, making them dangerous indeed. The Elorrii on the other hand, have no native dark kin and tend to treat them like they do all humans. On one hand it’s good because their not being judged for what they are, but on the other hand, as the Elorrii don’t treat humans that well in the first place, it’s not that great a boon.
In addition, it includes the Sealed Lands. This landscape is a miniature hell on earth where demons, devils, and other creatures, were imprisioned by the Godswall. It’s a nifty little setting that while originally in Arcanis, could be easily put into any setting. Imagine if you were playing in Eberron and instead of the Mournlands, the GM decides that whatever destroyed the old nation there, brought the Sealed Lands to the setting? What if Elminster in the Forgotten Realms got drunk one too many times and tried to summong something really big? There are a few notes included on how to incorporate it, but in essence, if you have any part of your campaign world that’s not been explored, or has an impassable barrier, that’s a good spot to put the Sealed Lands.
The Sealed Lands were created during a demonic rampage in Arcanis history. A great ruler of people went to challenge the leader of the infernal armies, which were made up of demons, devils, and monsters never before seen (a good chance to include stuff that doesn’t fit standard cosmology like the outsiders from Iron Kingdoms), and when those horrors cheated in a contest between the First Emperor and the Devil King, something responded by trapping those creatures. They could no longer teleport out and any death suffered here would be a true death.
The section detailing the peoples of the sealed lands is broken up by region. For example, under the Lordship of Iron, we get the capital, population, (of both infernal and mortal), government, overlook of the region, and then specifics. The Lordship of Iron has cities like Vengeance, Angol, Muul, Sarasta, and Vethen, each one with it’s own city stat blockand information on the industries, and ruler. Each city takes a bit of personality from the ruler. For example, in Sarasta, there is a religious movement of Penitents, while in Muul, some whisper that the slaves have resorted to cannibalism due to their ruler’s strict adherence to rationing, regardless of what happens to the food and whose fault that was.
Their leader, Uhxbractis, is a mastermind who decided that he had to find something to keep the monsters busy least they turn on him for his failed bid. He allows opposition to live simply because it gives his minions something to do and occupy their time.
Of course the opposition doesn’t quite see it that way. Because of the location and the events of the infernal invasion, several different cultures were trapped with the demons. These include the Riders, a race of horsemen who’ve mastered a new mount, the hell horse, and look to be based loosely on Mongolian raiders. The Haina Empire, founded by Khitani soldiers who were hunting demons during the time of the Godswall rising.
By insuring that not all locations in the Sealed Lands are controlled by demons and devils, the author has made this a viable gaming location. Characters can attempt to avoid the lures of Pleasance, a city controlled by erinyes and succubi, or seek shelter in Bastion, a city ruled by Xabal, the former Patience of Sarish, a being whose powers once far outclassed any of the demons until he used them in a manner he was never supposed to in order to help the humans trapped behind the wall.
While this section does include a full page map of the Sealed Lands, it doesn’t include any up close maps of any cities or locations that adventurers could occur in. While there are numerous ideas and plots that an experienced GM can easily wield into campaign arcs, there are no called out adventure seeds or adventure arcs.
Lastly, the book includes a lot of game mechanics to augment and individualize your dark kin characters. Some of these take a nod from Arcana Evolved with racial levels while others tinker with core concepts.Because these characters are not full blown demons, their powers are minor. They are a zero level adjustment race. Starting out, they get some bonus to dexterity and constitution, some penalties to wisdom and charisma, and the ability to select two powers from a list. In addition, they can follow a bloodline. The bloodline takes the place of their ability adjustment, and they can gain another ability in the bloodline for every ability adjustment that they would’ve gained.
Blood lines are broken up into different levels. You have to have every ability of the previous level to gain the new level. Blood lines start off with some simple powers, like being able to cast chill touch once per day ever four levels, but move up to some more impressive abilities like gaining wings or treating his natural weapons as if they had the flaming property, doing an extra 1d6 points of damage per hit.
As interesting as the bloodlines are, they don’t take into account the ‘infernal’ options open to the character. Instead of taking a regular class, a dark kin can give up his normal feat and stat bonus progression and take levels in infernal warrior, arcanist or stalker, each one with its own changes to the abilities that the character gains. This are similar to the core classes their replacing in terms of bab and saving throw arrangements, but also take into account some advancements similar to Savage Species in that the character gains abilities related to his race. It’s a nice variant and allows dark kin to be highly specialized and yet different than standard characters.
To further allow customization, the new feats here have a heavy focus on making a dark kin, or one with infernal blood, more powerful and reflect more of it’s heritage. For example, you could have acid blood, a feat background feat that must be taken at first level and does 1d4 points of acid damage to all creatures in a 5-foot radius with a saving throw versus Reflex to avoid it. You can chain this feat, taking it more than once to increase the damage done and increasing the DC to save.
Other feats, like Awakened Heritage, allow the character to select an additional dark kin ability, as the initial selection is limited to two. Others, like Blood of My Brother, allow you to sense other infernal creatures. All and all, it’s a good selection of feats and augments the whole customization idea as no two dark kin characters need to anything alike.
Those looking for a way to make their dark kin unique outside of the various background abilities, will enjoy the array of prestige classes, and the new core class, Order of the Ivory Bow. Take a ranger and make it highly specialized in tracking down infernals and killing them with it’s bonded Bone Bow and you’ve got an idea of how this class works.
Some of the PrCs focus on the cultures that were in the area of the Sealed Lands before the Godswall went up, like the Black Silk Wearer. Seems that sometimes the rulers of the Haina lands are not always on the people’s side. When that happens, the Black Silk Wearer’s assassinate them in the hopes that the next leader will be more to the people’s liking.
Others like the infernal berserker or scourge, fit all too well into the Sealer Lands, the former for example, calling upon his tainted blood to slash through his enemies while the latter is a slave keeper for the infernal lords.
Other game mechanics included here are new domains, binding and infernal, as well as new spells like bone burst and flesh to ice. Most of these are combat related as demons and devils aren’t generally reknown for their ability to heal or even defend.
New creatures include the rank and file types for both demons and devils, demons having the graatzu and devils the tiagon. Even so, these individuals are still more powerful than the average soldier averaging in at a CR of 4.
In terms of game stats, no breakdown are included for movement in terms of squares, but attack and full attack entries are provided, and most stats seem okay. Not all though as a casual look through shows the hell horse, a large magical beast, has a bab of +3, but as a 4 hit dice magical beast, should have a 4. The large size doesn’t effect bab, but does effect it’s attack and full attack, which is noted incorrectly at +6 melee, when it should be +7 (4 base, 4 strength, -1 for size). I could be off there at John Cooper is the stat expert but that’s how it looks at first glance.
About the only area the book was a little weak in, is in describing the higher powers of the Sealed Lands. Yes, it’s nice to see some of the rank and file creatures, but I’d love to compare the power of Uhxbractit to Orcus. I’d love to see how the unique Caneturec, ruler of Muul, is different than say a Pit Fiend. I’m hoping that we’ll see these creatures and more in some type of Monster Manual for the Arcanis setting.
Legacy of Damination is for three different types of people. The first would be players looking for a unique character. The second would be for GMs looking to yank some game mechanics for their monsters and NPCs to augment their opposition to the players. The third is for GMs looking for a mini-campaign setting off the beaten path that offers challenges that go beyond merely looting a dungeon.
