The Slayer's Guide to Demons
By Alejandro Melchor
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 0023
128 pages, $19.95
The Slayer's Guide to Demons is the fourth of the 128-page "super-sized"
Slayer's Guides, following previous books on Dragons, Undead, and Giants. Compared to those three others, it definitely comes in fourth place.
The cover, however, is excellent. John Hodgson (or possibly Jon Hodgson, as I've seen his name spelled both ways now...) has done up a really good-looking bit of cover art featuring a long line of menacing demons. They may well all be of the same basic demon race, but each one is slightly different from the others, whether it be horn placement or number of horns, batlike wings or lack thereof, nose structure, and so on. This is entirely appropriate for a race exemplifying the concept of chaos - you would expect demons to be a bit different from one another. Still, the heavy use of red in the painting, not only in the demons' skin but in the misty background, is a fitting palette for a book on demons. I was also pleased to see that the book's title does not obscure anything important.
The inside covers this time are devoted to maps of the mini-adventure included within the book, and while I prefer seeing maps there instead of advertising, I greatly prefer seeing a Chris Quilliams anatomical drawing on the inside front cover. I really missed it this time around! I hope future
Slayer's Guides will return to the Quilliams tradition.
The interior artwork was surprising, both in its scarceness - only 20 black and white drawings, by 10 different artists - and its general poor quality. When the artwork wasn't just out-and-out poorly done (as per the two undead demons on page 27, done in with a "scratchy" look to it, possibly by Gillian Pearce if I'm deciphering the initials correctly), it was of a strange, inappropriate style (like page 58, the worst vrock picture I've ever seen, done by Marcio Fiorito, whose work I usually enjoy), or just downright incorrect (like the two-armed marilith demon on page 12, or - best of all - Rick Hershey's picture of 5
devils on page 33). Yes, that's right, they put a picture of a barbed devil, a bearded devil, a bone devil, a horned devil, and an imp in
The Slayer's Guide to Demons. Oddly enough, my favorite picture in here is Eric Bergeron's naked succubus found on page 24, and I'm usually just amused by the prevalence of "nipple art" in Mongoose books.
The book is split up into the following chapters:
- Introduction: explaining the "Slayer's Guide" line of books
- Demonic Physiology: demonic traits, demonic essence, the power of demonic names, their use of souls, the minds of demons, and sleeping demons
- The Abyss: general characteristics, layers of the Abyss, encounter charts, a random Abyssal Layer generator, and several sample Layers (the Wasteland of Gates, the Elemental Wastes, the Swarming Jungle, the Dead Lands, the Shadow Fortress, the Ashen Waste)
- Demonic Society: leadership, gangs and hordes, demon families, archdemons, demon lords, the nameless ones, and the relationship between gods and demons
- Methods of Warfare: demonic tactics (against devils, celestials, other demons, and mortals), reinforcements, essence manipulation, and the demonic arsenal
- Demonic Cults: the cult's formation, blood and soul sacrifices, and demonic investitures
- Roleplaying with Demons: 3 demon-related prestige classes (Cult Leader, Demonologist, Herald of the Abyss), 18 demonic feats (some for use by mortals, some for demons), 9 demon-related spells, binding demons into magic items, and roleplaying possession by a demon
- Scenario Hooks and Ideas: 13 adventure ideas
- Twilight's Haven: 7-page mini-adventure
- Creatures of the Abyss: 23 new demons, 2 new demon lords, 5 unstatted nameless ones, and 5 demonic templates
When writing this book, Alejandro Melchor had to make some important decisions. Some of them I agree with, but some of them just make me scratch my head and wonder, "What was he thinking?" (To be fair, some of the decisions may not have been Alejandro's to make, but may well have been made for him - the artwork, for instance, but more on this later.) Unable to use the term "Tanar'ri," Alejandro came up with the phrase "the Brood of Tanar," a brilliant substitution. Then, he also decided that the suffix "-'ka" meant "Brood of," so "Tanar'ri" became "Tanar'ka." Okay, I could live with that: it's pretty easy to mentally convert "Tanar'ka" to "Tanar'ri." Then, when it came time to create the hosts of new demons for this book, he not only created new Tanar'ka demons, but three new demon families, the Broods of Van'g, Jar'taska, and Nuyul.
That was not so smart. While I applaud the creation of new "families" of demons, somebody needed to take Alejandro aside and figuratively slap him upside the head for those names. First of all, just because the previously-established demon family name "Tanar'ri" has an apostrophe in it, doesn't mean that
all demon names need apostrophes in the middle! He came up with a logical explanation for that damn apostrophe in "Tanar'ri" (even if he had to change the "-ri" to "-ka"), so if he followed his own pattern his new demon families would have apostrophes in them anyway. So why did he (and why did the editor allow him to) throw in additional apostrophes in the demon family names? Really, why is "van'g" a better name than "vang?" (For that matter, just how is one supposed to pronounce "van'g?" Or worse yet, "van'g'ka?") Nuyul I have no problem with, even in its Nuyul'ka form. But come on: Jar'taska'ka? I have quite a problem stretching my mind around the concept of a scary creature whose name ends in "caca." Perhaps I'm just lacking in imagination, but when I try to picture a band of Jar'taska'ka ravaging a human village, instead of picturing the panicked commoners fleeing in fear, all I see is them snickering at the demons and making "caca" jokes. Alejandro's fascination with apostrophes carries over to the names of his sample Abyssal Layers (Ic'vnigh, ruled over by the archdemon I'tkk'chavni; T'klith, the heart of Van'g'ka power) and one of his new demons (jar'ugr).
This one was undoubtedly out of Alejandro's hands, but I found it astounding that of the 25 new demons and 5 demonic templates statted up in the largest chapter of the book, there is not a
single picture. Not one. I cannot recall a
Monster Manual section of a monster book that did not have a picture of most (if not all) of the new creatures presented. I was also disappointed to see that there were no sample creatures given of the new templates, as has been the standard in the d20 industry for as long as I can remember. (Sorry, Alejandro, but unless the editors removed your sample templated creatures for space reasons, this problem
does get laid at your feet.) And one of the templated creatures (the damned soul) is hardly a template at all, given that the base creature's Hit Dice automatically becomes 2 HD (no matter what it was before), its BAB is fixed at +2, it loses all Special Attacks and Special Qualities (but gains some new Special Qualities), and loses all of its prior Skills and Feats. Why is this not just a creature instead of a template? Finally, the Half-Demon template is nothing more than the Half-Fiend template with new possibilities if the fiendish parent was a non-Tanar'ri demon (in other words, if it was a van'g'ka or jar'taska'ka), but at least Alejandro's up-front about that in the template description.
While I'm grousing about the new monsters, now would be a good time to point out I find it odd that the teradrozu (a much better demon name, in my opinion) "are wizards by vocation," yet advance by Hit Dice rather than by character class. So apparently even a 24-HD teradrozu is a 6th-level wizard. Weird. Also, here's an interesting description of another new demon, the yavodai: "the yavodai's small neck is part of a very long neck that can shoot out with incredible speed." I'm willing to bet that's supposed to be "the yavodai's small
head."
This brings up another point: the proofreading in
The Slayer's Guide to Demons ranks up there with some of the worst I've seen in a Mongoose book. I suppose if I throw out a statement like that I'd better be willing to back it up with some examples, so here goes:
- p. 8: "...harvest the essence of their minions' in order to perform vile workings of magic." No apostrophe needed; it's "minions."
- p. 8: "those who speaks their name" should be "those who speak their name"
- p. 9: "Along the Greater name, the True name is the ultimate verbal component of a fiend's aura." That should be "Along with the Greater name..."
- p. 9: "were unravel" should be "were unraveled"
- p. 10: "serves many purposes and express in many ways" should be "serves many purposes and is expressed in many ways" (That's two errors in one sentence!)
- p. 11: No period at the end of the last sentence in the "Soulforging" paragraph
- p. 13: "How can creatures enter, leave, or travel through the layers of the Abyss." Being a question, that sentence should end in a question mark.
- p. 17: "in a twice-cursed ruins" should be "in twice-cursed ruins"
- p. 24: "more commonly items" should be "more common items"
- p. 27: "His head, the skull of what could easily be a horse, enveloped in thick black smoke, little balefire flames shining deep inside its eye sockets." Um, this is not a sentence.
- p. 27: "Uruhz, dresses in fine garments..." That comma doesn't belong there.
- p. 31: "For species like the all of the Van'g'ka..." doesn't need that first "the."
- p. 39: "summoning is not a request for assistance, but command obedience" should be "summoning is not a request for assistance, but a command for obedience"
- p. 46: "examins" should be "examines"
- p. 74: "the demon my try to break free" should be "the demon may try to break free"
- p. 92: "the firs wave" should be "the first wave"
- p. 94: "flexible tai" should be "flexible tail"
- p. 100: "the writhing tendrils that form the demon's body can twirl into a 2d4 tentacles" should be "the writhing tendrils that form the demon's body can twirl into 2d4 tentacles" (no "a" required before 2d4)
- p. 106: "Nuyul'ka are have psionic powers" should be "Nuyul'ka have psionic powers"
- p. 106: "feed of" should be "feed off"
- p. 106: "These demons are 1-foot long from mouth to the tips of their tails..." but later in the same paragraph we learn that they have "...no apparent eyes, mouths, or any sensory organ." (Granted, this is an editorial problem rather than a proofreading error, but I thought I'd throw it in here anyway.)
- p. 111: "casteless demons littler the Abyssal landscape" should be "casteless demons litter the Abyssal landscape"
- p. 120: "When Gatekeeper that with a bite attack" I'm guessing should be "When Gatekeeper hits with a bite attack"
- p. 120: "to all sort of" should be "to all sorts of"
- p. 127: Another problem the editor should have caught: "'Archdemon' is a template that can be applied to any outsider creature of the demon species..." but later it informs us "The creature's type changes to 'outsider.'"
Okay, enough harping on that subject. Let's move on to other topics, like the phrase (found on the back cover) "This product utilises updated material from the 3.5 revision." Technically, this is true: I
did see some 3.5 stuff in here. However, I saw much more 3.0 stuff: spells (
endurance,
polymorph self,
polymorph other), creature types (beasts), and monster statistic formats (no Base Attack Bonus or Grapple stats).
Again, I seem to have been focusing on the negative aspects of the book more so than the positive, and I don't want to give the opinion that there's nothing positive to be found within. On the contrary, the spells, feats, and prestige classes are all appropriately "demonic," and the monsters - while some of them are just downright weird - do provide an opportunity to spring some unknowns onto the unsuspecting PCs. I also liked the fact that the mini-adventure used a bunch of the new monsters: this was a much better idea than using any of the demons from the
Monster Manual. After all, you can get adventures using the
MM demons just about anywhere; better to put these new ones to good use. And while the maps provided lack the gridwork and scale (as is typical of Mongoose maps), their larger size makes them much more user-friendly. The fiction interspersed in the various chapters is well-done, telling an ongoing story that manages to be relevant to the current demonic topic at hand.
Overall, anyone buying
The Slayer's Guide to Demons is going to get some new material to spring on his players. I just wish there were accompanying pictures of the new monsters, and an index (I know in a few weeks I for one won't remember that the various uses for demonic bone powder is in the "Methods of Warfare" chapter). I don't think the book has slipped all the way into "Poor," but I'd rate it at no higher than "Average." I can only hope that future volumes will have a little more effort put into "polishing" them before they're sent to the printers.
