Trine said:
Time to add my two cents (or more).
First of all, I don't really care how they statted out the archfiends and such. I'll look them over and use the stats if I like them, but I won't lose any sleep over it if I don't.
Amen. I started this thread to share the vile wealth and people have gotten hung up on one chapter out of eight.
What I'm more interested in is the entire book. How useful do the feats seem? Is there anything especially cool about them? I read the initial review, but I'm definitely interested in seeing other people's opinions about the whole book. I've (personally) gotten bored with all of the people griping about how the archfiends were statted.
As I've mentioned before, there are several feats that allow one to metamagic their spell-like abilities a certain number of times per day. While fairly useful and deadly for demons and devils, PCs with spell-like abilities could get milage out of these too.
The Deformity feats are a nasty collection, with the prereq of the Willing Deformity feat. Deformity feats include making your hands into claws, putting out your own eye or cutting a hole for a third to
see invisibility for a certain amount of time per day, scarring your face into a hideous visage, or starving or gorging yourself for stat change.
There are a couple feats that mark you as belonging to dark powers. Evil Brand lets all know your soul belongs to darkness, and other evil creatures respect or are in awe of it. Thrall to Demon and Disciple of Darkness are for those that have a Demon Lord or Archdevil as a patron (they gain some luck bonuses to their rolls a certain number of times per day).
So, for a couple of questions about the spells too. What kind of spells were in the book? Straight-out damage your opponent spells? Hunt-down your opponent spells? Make your opponent cry like a sissy girl because he's so scared spells? Make your opponent freak out and want to beat you down even more because you went after their loved one spells?
The spells run the gamut. There are direct damage spells, not so direct damage spells, summoning spells, utility spells (one that summons a bag of torture instruments, for example), it has some of everything.
Also, what kinds of penalties and restrictions (as were mentioned in the initial review) are associated with the spells? Temporary ability damage to yourself when casting, etc.
Yes, several spells, the Corrupt spells, have temporary ability damage costs. Corrupt spells are also not inherantly arcane or divine, so anyone can cast them and they become a spell of that type when cast. Also some spells require the caster to be diseased, drugged, or a demon, devil, fiend, or undead to cast it. Others require the caster to be standing in a particular place, or require a soul as a component.
What else? Oh yeah. Other opinions on the equipment found in the book. Are the trapped armors being really mean to your players (effectively taking away possible gear for their use/selling at a later point), etc? Do the traps have to be found through magical means or can a Rogue use their Search skill to detect them? Details please.
The trapped armor and equipment can be mean. Some of it destroys the item in question, some doesn't. And they're all essentially traps, so if a rogue is looking, they can be disabled.
Other trapped items include the spring needle in sword hilt. If you pick up the sword without switching a special latch, you get a poison needle in the hand. One is an axe that has detaching heads if a switch isn't flipped. And then the aforementioned fire-trapped armor.
