Lords of Madness Stuff (Update: Some folks have it!)

[ajanders]

Ooohhh

Strictly a D&D book?
I always wanted to see how beholders would cross over as a D20 Modern/future race of really unpleasant aliens...particularly the Great Mother if you revved her up her max hit dice.

"Captain...that moonlet has a mare that appears to be a central eye."
"Just a trick of the albedo, helm. Continue on."
"Captain, sensors indicate the moonlet is now looking at us with a central eye the size of a mare."

 

[Turjan]

This books sounds intriguing. I guess I have more of a soft spot for aberrations than I originally thought .

It seems that much of the criticism comes from how short the paragraph about illithids is. How long is this section? Does it have enough information for someone who never read the Illithiad?

Anyway, the Aboleths, Neogi and Grell alone seem to be worth the purchase . And I'm happy that they don't mix the aberrations with infos about archfiends - there's enough material about the latter out there, and I don't use them.

 

[Shade]

- Gilabrin

That's a typo...it's the good ol' cildabrin.

Other monsters spread throughout the book:
-Aboleth variants: amphibious aboleth, uobilyth (aerial aboleth), stygian aboleth
-Elder Orb
-Neogi, Adult
-Neogi, Spawn
-Neogi, Great Old Master
-Neogi Variants (dwarf neogi, defiler, slavemaster, sorcerer)
-Grell (plus philosopher and patriarch--grells with class levels)
-Tsochar
-Tsochar variants (noble)

 

[Treebore]

Too much concentration on the stars of the "Aberrations" classification, for $35.00 they could have given a lot more about a lot of other Aberations. The aberation blooded feats and some of the PrC's are pretty interesting ideas. Even a couple of spells are cool. I still think they could have easily padded this book with a lot more aberrations, but what is in here is pretty good.

I think Draconomican and Libris Mortis were done better.

 

[Shade]

Thus far, it seems much better organized, more inspirational, and just overall more useful than Libris Mortis. I doubt any books in this series will ever match the Draconomicon, though.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I'm a sucker for feats and prestige classes. This, I'm gonna have to check out...

 

[demiurge1138]

I think that this is the best D&D book of 2005 so far. I'm quite a ways through it (I'm on the tscori chapter), and I'm really enjoying all of it. The aboleth insights are really cool, because that monster's a bit tricky to run after all (illusions and aquatic? uh-oh). The illithid information covers a lot of ground already done in the Illithiad, but I really like its alternate illithis history (they're not creatures with an empire in the distant past - they're creatures with an empire in the distant future, and they're trying to make sure that their rise to power goes smoothly). The beholder stuff is fun, as is the grell. And the neogi chapter made me want to use them, something neither the 2e Monstrous Compendium or the 3e MMII did.

Overall, very little "crunch" in this book. Only one beholder PrC, only one aboleth PrC, a few feats for those two, a couple little tidbits for the rest of them, a few new items, and a scad of new aberrant horrors. I'm OK with that.

And Mouseferatu is right- it feels more like a "Races of -" book than a Draconomicon or a Libris Mortis. But that's because the link between aberrations is only a slight theme, as opposed to more unified abilities, society, anatomy, etc. I think it's a good thing.

Demiurge out.

 

[Ryltar]

Got LoM in the mail this morning, and I must say, I'm very impressed. While the book doesn't reach the high standard set by the Draconomicon, it (at least) equals Libris Mortis (which, by my standards, was quite good).

The Chapters detailing the various aberration types are extensive, but to the point, and provide nice flavor. IMO, they could have cut down a little on the various "additional" monsters, because ... well, after having seen the nth variant of "tentacled, slimy worm-thing", it gets somewhat old. OTOH, almost all of the descriptions fill a certain niche and scream for using them in an adventure. The PrCs are nice in that they provide some anti-aberration flavor for each class. I was less impressed by the aberrant feats, though. Some of them just scream broken (the aberrant wildshape thingy), while others are somewhat boring.

WotC is doing a great job as of late, concerning the modularity of their books. The inclusion of Psionics content as sidebars and alternate statblocks is just what I need.

The art, overall, is great. There are some ugly pieces in there (guess who's responsible: yep, Crabapple's back), but to make up for that, the WAR and Wayne England art is nothing short of stunning. My favorite pieces were the alhoon (by WAR) and the illustration on p.123 by Michael Phillippi.

There's some botches in the editing (again), though. One should think, that using the search function once to filter out the "page XX" references would be possible, but apparently it's not. Still, nothing that detracts overmuch from enjoying this book. I'm looking forward to John Cooper's review of the statblocks, though .

Although there are a lot of minor issues with this book, I think it is a great resource for DMs (less for players) looking to run an aberration-based or planar campaign. Four out of five stars, or something like that.

Oh, and on a side note ... diaglo must have been involved in writing the chapter on aboleths, because on p. 15, it is stated that:

All else in the world is a pale imitation of their primal perfection.

 

[Gez]

*Since they did that, I wonder how they can say there is no open content in the book. GMs are in the srd.

There are no open content in the Monster Manual, as well. There are only two WotC books to date with open content: the Monster Manual 2 (the last two creatures, borrowed and updated from Creature Collection 1), and Unearthed Arcana.

The fact that some of the content of the MM is also in the SRD should be considered as an anecdotical coincidence. WotC owns the right for the Giberring Mouther, they are perfectly allowed to put it as closed content in the MM and in LOM, and as open content in the SRD.

 

[painandgreed]

I'm normally a crunch heavy guy but was quite happy with this. What I want to know is with Spelljammer references all over the book, how long till we get a Spelljammer book?