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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2193644" data-attributes="member: 1129">Aberrations Take OverLords of Madness, the Book of Aberrations, brings details to some of D&D’s strangest and most potent monsters including aboleths, beholds, mind flayers and grell. It includes all the standard new mechanics a reader would expect like monsters, feats, spells, and prestige classes, as well as enough information and encounters to last the GM months of time.The book is written by Richard Baker, James Jacobs and Steve Winter, but uses a lot of older material updated for the 3.5 version including material by one of my favorite writers, Bruce Cordell. The book weights in at 224 full color pages for $34.95, making it very competitively priced. Art ranges from some of my favorites like Wayne Reynolds, Michael Phillipi, Dan Scott, Wayne England and Ron Spencer, to some whose art I could really be without like Dennis Crabapple and Chuck Lukacs. Overall the art is strong because even D. Crabapple’s art, which normally I don’t like at all, works well when dealing with the freakish nature of aberrations. Editing could use another round. Anytime you see a page XX reference, you know that another round of editing was needed.The book is broken into nine chapters. The first chapter starts off by defining what an aberration is and introduces us to the Codex Anathema, a book written by Iphegor using the Ebon Mirror, heavily influenced and telling of the Mythos touch. In short, while all aberrations don’t have one history or one nature, they are often related by being from reaches far beyond mortal men, from being before the dawn of time or from the far ends of time. From being from the dreams or mere fleshy cast offs of Elder Gods, or even created at the hands of wizards and moved beyond those beings ability to control. For those looking for ideas on what makes an aberration tick, the chapter provides forty adventure ideas, quick rules on how encounter levels should be tweaked for aberrations, and what style of play is good for using these monsters, including epic level recommendations and using psionics. The advice isn’t in-depth and isn’t going to be enough to carry a GM through all plots and points of using an aberration, but it is more than enough to get a GM started on what makes an aberration different from normal monsters. About the only thing missing from this section, is a breakdown of aberration advanced per the Monster Manual with some explanation as to how to make your own creatures, advance them and provide details as to why it’s an aberration as opposed to an outsider.The next chapter, The Deep Masters, starts the in-depth look at aberrations, once race at a time. Included are general introduction, anatomy, including external and internal, how the creature thinks, it’s life, including diet, variants, game material (prestige classes, feats, and magic), as well as religion, language, relation to other creatures, lairs, minons, cities, and characters. Each section ends with a mapped out encounter including details on each encounter location noted on the map.Included are the following monsters:The Deep Masters: The Aboleth. The terrifying thing about these monsters is that they were masters of the world long before man or even elf rose to any sort of prominence. They are given details including the Elder Evils that may have spawned them and some conversion notes on how these monsters might fit in a campaign using Cthulhu mythos. The Eye Tyrants: Beholders are detailed here, including their creation by the Great Mother and their unstable minds that can only work together when under a greater creature known as a Hive Mother.The Mind Flayers: The illithids and their terrible origin as masters of a doomed far future prime material plane, are brought into the campaign with more details. The different brands of illithid are detailed, including the undead Alhoon and Vampires, as well as how the illithids keep fresh brains in supply.The Slave Takers: Ah, one of my old favorites from my Spelljammer days, the neogi are introduced as traders whose basic tenant is that they will own everything. The details of their slaveholding culture are detailed, including how one master can own several slaves, including other neogi, and in essence, owns all the slaves that his slave neogi owns, even if that’s other neogi who have their own slaves. An interesting chapter that continues the winks at the Spelljammer setting that the others hinted at with flying ships that ‘may’ be able to traverse the worlds. The best advice for dealing with neogi is only do so from a position of overwhelming strength, or be prepared to become a slave.The Eaters bring more detail to the Grell than I’ve seen in previous products. I’m sure somewhere in my library, including various issues of Dragon, that the Grell probably have an ecology article or so out there, but this one provides ideas on how to use them in combat, and what a typical lair looks like.The Wearers of Flesh or the tsochar, are another creature I don’t recall seeing too much information on. These things are various tendrils of independent life that link together to form a greater creature that in turn, burrows into creatures it’s size or larger and controls them. One thing that stands out for the tsochair is that they are one of the most religious of the aberrant races, venerating Mak Thuum Ngatha, the Nine-Tongued Worm.The material selected for inclusion in their own chapters is fairly decent. While some like the neogi and grell have been updated to 3.0, this is the first time I remember seeing them in a 3.5 product as their stats are fully replicated here and updated. I wouldn’t have minded seeing a whole chapter or more on the Far Realm itself, but hopefully that becomes another book for another time. One of my favorite chapters is Eight, New Monsters. See, the previous chapters all gave alternatives and variants, but don’t provide the game stats in those chapters. This chapter covers all those strange beasts and more. For example, under Beholderkin, we have the hive mother, director, eye of the deep, overseer, and spectator. While not a beholderkin, another old favorite, the gas spore, is updated.One of my favorite monsters here though, isn’t a specific creature, but rather, a template. The half-farspawn brings madness to any creature that the GM wishes. Slightly more powerful than the psuedonatural creature, also included, it allows a GM to make anything more horrific.One of the things I was disappointed about with the psuedonatural creature is that it used the same example, a hippogriff, with the same art. I can see why it’s included, but it seems lazy to include the same monster and cheap to include the same art.I was a little puzzled at several monsters that were left out. For example, while I enjoy the worm like psurlon, where are the Kaorti, those who seek to warp the world to that of the Far Realm or their mutated servants, the rukanyr? It’s a strong chapter and includes a lot of information to digest in relation to the previous chapters but to be honest, I’d rather they got rid of chapter nine, a useful section for players, and went wild on the updates and information on the Far Realm.Speaking of which, chapter nine, The Aberration Hunter, is great for players looking to customize their characters to stand strong against these monsters and provides the GM with organizations and other tools to include the new mechanics.  It starts off with some combat advice for players to handle the big thing, aboleths, beholders and mind flayers, and then moves onto discussion of the unh8uman gods like Tharizdun, Ilsensine, and Ghaundaur among others including holy symbols illustrated by Wayne EnglandThe section on feats is a bit strange in that it includes several general feats perfect for hunting down aberrant monsters, but also a new type of feat, the aberrant feat. This in essence turns the character partially into an aberrant and it all starts with aberrant blood, providing a moderate bonus to a skill check, and grows from there. For example, if you take bestial hide, you get a natural armor class bonus of +1 for every two aberrant feats you possess. One of the weirdest feats is a meatmagic one, Ocular spell, where the caster takes his knowledge of beholders and holds a spell in his eye for up to eight hours. The spell takes up a slot two levels higher than the spell’s actual level and the spell is chanced to a ray with a range of 60 feet and now only effects the creature struck by the ray, requiring a ranged tough attack.The prestige classes are a combination of those found in The Complete Adventurer and Races of Destiny, in that they are longer than PrCs in older books, but not all the information, like the organizations, are described with the PrCs, rather, that information coming latter. Information included is background, becoming that PrC, entry requirements, class features, how to play the PrC, including combat, advancement, and resources, how that PrC fits into the world, NPC reaction, lore, that PrC in the game, and adaptation, because several of the PrCs here have indirect ties with Greyhawk as the core setting of the game.Classes include the divine spellcaster the abolisher, a druid whose love of the natural world pits him firmly against any and all aberrant monsters. The Darkrunner is a traveler of dark underground haunts whose darkvision, (a requirement for the class), continues to expand, as well as learning new secrets of the stone like tunnelport, using dimension door once per day or tremorsense.For those looking for a new style of villain or just a really eccentric NPC for their campaign, the fleshwarper fits the bill. These wizards master the art of grafts and gain a graft reserve they can use instead of experience points, in addition to continuing to gain spellcasting ability and ‘Elder secret’, where they take an ability of an aberration and apply it to themselves. For example, Secret of the Beholder gives them a +4 racial bonus on Search and Spot checks and they can’t be flanked.For those looking for a way to get the characters into the whole fighting aberrations, the Keeper of the Cerulean Sign is a good place to start looking. Most hail from the ranks of bards, continuing to gain spellcasting ability and banemagic against aberrants and a special magic item, the Cerulean focus. These individuals often use adventurers to fight against their monstrous foes and are keepers of hidden lore. Perfect for the campaign that needs a mysterious benefactor.Some will seek more martial methods though, and the Sanctified Mind and Topaz Guardian, one perfect for a character with at least a little psionic power, and the former perfect for paladins seeking to turn their skills against abberant monsters.In terms of new magic, the spells are arranged by class and level, and for arcane spells of wizards and sorcerers, by school. For clerics, most of use to GMs of players of evil characters, we have new domains like corruption, force, hatred, madness mind, and vile darkness, updated from the Book of Vile Darkness. The spell section here isn’t wide but does cover things like Invoke the Cerulean Sigh where aberrants suffer effects based on the difference between their hit dice and the caster’s level to invoke magic, where magic can function in an antimagic or dead magic area. Very handy for fighting those pesky beholders. The book ends with Defenders of Humanity, including the Circle of the True, an organization most often using abolishers, the Darkrunner Guild, known for using, yes, the Darkrunner PrC, the Society of the Sanctified Mind, a group that uses, yes, sanctified minds, and the Topaz Order, “A militant order of crusading clerics, fighters, paladins and monks.” Each section includes brief background and a sample member with background and game stats.The editing in the book could’ve used another round. I would’ve enjoyed seeing more details in terms of combat ideas and mechanics on the top three, aboleth, beholders, and mind flayers, as those creatures are some of the most common that can be encountered.Overall, the book is a wellspring of ideas. It’s player focus is almost tacked on at the end and the book would’ve been stronger for GMs if more details on the gods and Elder Evils were provided, along with more updates of 3.0 aberrations. The guilds included in the player section, along with the sample NPCs and lairs provided earlier though, make this a book that can be run almost right out of the book. The templates and new monsters insure that the GM will never run out of creatures to throw against his players and the fact that the Far Realm doesn’t receive extensive coverage gives me hope that perhaps we’ll see a book on the Far Realm in and of itself in a future book.</blockquote>

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