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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 2011300" data-attributes="member: 2013">The Book of FiendsGreen Ronin224 pages, hardback, black and white interior$34.95For an explanation of the scoring given below, please visit <a href="http://www.cooleys.org/ogc/scoring.asp" target="_blank">http://www.cooleys.org/ogc/scoring.asp</a>Executive Summary: The Book of Fiends is at once a collection and an expansion book; it is an exhaustive look at creatures and classes from the "lower planes" and includes the 3.5e updates of "Armies of the Abyss" (CE demons) and "Legions of Hell" (LE devils), as well as adding a new section that covers the Neutral Evil daemons ("Hordes of Gehenna").  It is mostly a creature book, though new domains, base classes, and prestige classes are covered, as well as some rudimentary planar cosmolgy/history lessons.Adaptability 8Most campaigns probably have some amount of "outsider" activity in them, and the Book of Fiends provides you with evil outsiders in droves - from every alignment and for every power level (from CR 1 to 20+).  Of course, in a game where outsiders are rare or non-existent, a book full of outsider isn't that helpful, which is the only reason I could find for knocking down the adaptability score.Balance 9Green Ronin has always been excellent at providing well-thought-out and balanced material, and this is no exception.  There are no glaring errors in the creature stat blocks, and the domains offered seem balanced.  I have some slight reservations about the Thaumaturgist class presented here (a class based on worship of/pacts with a dark power), but they are minor.Clarity 10With excellent, if a bit "dark" and "horrorpunkish" art, there is little difficulty understanding what the creatures presented here look like.  The background section (that includes history as well as cosmology for each race) does a good job of setting up the various creatures and their place in the fiendish societies, and each creature's entry makes clear its purpose and motivations.  The special abilities of the creatures are well-defined and nicely spelled out, making them easy to adjudicate as well.Focus 9Along with exceptional clarity is a pretty good sense of focus.  This work is all about evil - specifically evil outsiders and the planes they inhabit.  The history and cosmology of the planes is appreciated, and the book's "monsterbook" focus is fairly tight - in fact, I especially loved the treatment of the daemons and the way two or three daemons were assigned to each of the "seven deadly sins" - including some twists on the classic themes of the sins that took me by surprise.  I understand why the prestige classes and base class were included (to capture the feel of humans that choose to deal with and serve the fiends), but feel that such an inclusion just didn't quite sit right with me; I felt the focus was towards creatures native to the lower planes, and adding in a little section on creatures native to and living on the prime material was a slight - SLIGHT - blur of the focus.  Others might disagree with this assessment.Granularity 9Monster books usually have pretty good granularity - you can just pick up one monster and drop it into your campaign.  This book is no exception.  Prestige classes, et al, are also easily lifted "whole cloth" though in the case of the thaumaturgist, you also have to lift (or rename) the powers he worships, which knocks the granularity score down because the assumed cosmology may require some slight tweaking to integrate into a campaign, thus precluding a perfect score here.OGC 8Names and stat blocks and combat descriptions of creatures (but not physical descriptions), prestige/base classes and their associated abilities are all OGC.  It's a pretty generous designation, and allows for easy re-use of the creatures; it's not "all OGC" but it's certainly more than enough to be easily useful with few headaches.Originality 9Demons, Devils, Daemons, et al are not exactly the most original of concepts in and of themselves.  Green Ronin's take on them, however, is.  As I mentioned before, I think the favorite part of the book (for me) was seeing the "seven deadly sins" transformed into creatures representing them.  The cosmological note that all prime material creatures cast "shadows" onto Gehenna (home plane of the daemons) and that the daemons both tempt primes with the sin to which they are associated and do the book-keeping that tracks of all of the sins committed - perhaps at having made some sort of deal with the celestials - was a beautiful touch... the daemons know all the dirt on you because they are the ones "with you" all the time (and they're not afraid to use that to remind you of how awful you are, mister all-too-righteous paladin)!Presentation 10Hardcover, with lots of clear illustrations, the presentation in this one is very nice.  It would have been nice to have color, of course, but the B&W is effective and does not detract from the book in the slightest.  The layout is clean and things don't get in the way of each other.Price To Content 5This was a hard one to adjudicate because quite a bit of the book is simply reprinted material and anyone who owns Armies of the Abyss and Legions of Hell is not going to be happy to pay again for the same material (albeit updated to 3.5e).  It probably rates a 2/10 for those folks, because it's very expensive given the amount of new monsters and new material.  It's probably an 8 or 9 of 10 to those who DON'T own those books, however.  There's a ton of material here - enough to basically run and populate the entirety of the lower planes - so those who don't already have AotA and LoH can't complain.  I split the difference and gave it a 5.Wow 8I was wowed by AotA and LoH when they first came out, so it's not exactly fair to knock this for not "wowing me" with those parts again.  After all, it's hard to "wow" on the second time around.  The daemons, however, did "wow" me (as noted by my commentary above); I was constantly thinking, "nice twist" or "I could use this" or "cool."  There was nothing that I absolutely had to throw in my campaign right away, though, so it can't get a 10.  I think an 8 is fair.THE FINAL WORD:If you don't have AotA and/or LoH and you run a campaign with any evil outsider activity at all, run - do not walk - and get this book.  If you do have AotA and/or LoH, you might want to peruse it to see if it's worth the cost... either that or buy it and try to hock your AotA and LoH copies.  In my opinion, it's a great buy... as I mentioned, this can be your comprehensive sourcebook to the lower planes and you really don't need much else.  If devils, demons, daemons, evil, and so on are not your cup of tea, but you like monsters, you might consider picking it up and raiding it for ideas anyway - maybe convert the monsters herein to magical beasts or something.  Any DM with an interest in the outer planes really should get a copy of this book.TOTAL: 85 (B) -- Four stars</blockquote>

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