Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils 2 (D20 System)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Is there justice in this world? How can ANYONE let those fools at Fast Forward games near a d20 again? This book, much like it's predecessor, is a piece of garbage.

Why? All the monsters, sorry 'demons and devils', are EXACTLY like each other. The writers managed to scrape up a few more peasant-scaring beasts for us to hate...

And lets take on the description. Best in the industry? These people are possibly the WORST writers I have ever had the misfortune to read. No, Monte Cook and Skip Williams are the best. Not some pathetic third-party company wasting paper! Acclaimed? Who the heck are you asking? No gamer I met would even touch the books with a ten-foot halberd! How can someone 'loath a beastie' when the thing is so horribly unbalanced it can't attack with out the DM having to fudge a die roll. Everything gamers could've asked for? Who the heck are you talking to? The gaming club for the blind and midly retarted?

ARGH! Stay far, far away from ANY Fast Forward game! One or two, the Encyclopedia of Demons and Devils series is plain AWFUL!!!!

3rd party D20 stuff has never impressed me anyway, but seeing this abomination sinks the industry to a new low. The first one was a bad enough book, but the sequel...let's just put it at PAINFUL. Avoid this book like the plague and maybe we can start to show 3rd party developers that they're going to have to come up with better material than say "The Ultimate Quintessential Legendary Tome to Female Half-Dwarven Half-Thri-Kreen Ninja Paladins"

After reading the other reviews here I felt compelled to add my two cents. This book is NOT as terrible as made out to be! It has two glaring problems: poor editing (paragraphs cutting off partway through an unfinished sentence and TONS of grammatical errors) and artwork that ranges from the passable to the truly terrible and often does not seem to match up with the textual descriptions at all. These problems prevented it from getting a five star review. However, as a reference for anyone running a campaign with devils and demons, this book is invaluable. Almost every entry is a unique, major demon or devil and includes information on his/her worship on the prime material plane, including the spell domains followers gain access to, often a description of major figures in the cult, and descriptions of the cult's aims. This alone is tremendously helpful, because the player's handbook and DMG contain a mere handful of generic evil deities to pit your PCs against. Even the exceptional Book of Vile Darkness gives you a small fraction of the evil deities that this book contains. The fact that these demons and devils are drawn from real life mythology is a plus; type in the name of one of these bad boys into google and you can get a whole host of plot ideas; many are contained in the Goetia, and many online references contain the entire text of this medieval book of demons, including the seals that you have to draw to summon them! Drawing devils and demons from Egyptian, Japanese, Persian, etc., sources also lends unique flavor to these creatures, which is a good thing in my mind because I find the devils and demons available in the official literature to be terribly generic and bland. As for the comments of one of the other reviewers that the creatures are so unbalanced that you could not pit them against PC's without fudging dice rolls, that is simply not true. If anything, many of these devils and demons are given a relatively higher CR than the devils and demons found in the monster manuals, fiend folio and other "official" sources. Compare an ultraloth from MMIII with its CR of 13 with many of the unique devils found herein; if you want an example of an unbalanced creature, the ultraloth should be the poster child, with 170+ HP, Spell resistance of 25, damage resistance 15/good, damage resistance 10 or total immunity to pretty much every kind of energy attack, teleport, invisibility, wall of fire and more at will, a hypnotic gaze attack, a quickened ray of fire that shoots 3 4d6 touch attack rays as a free action three times a day (!) and to top it off the ability to cast symbol of death and binding three times a day. Binding only even allows a savings throw if you have 9+ HD, even then it has a DC of 26 given the ultraloth's caster level of 18, and binding PERMANENTLY renders a pc totally unplayable minus some seriously heavy duty magic to undo the effects! An ultraloth could easily dispatch most of the CR15-17 creatures in this book, and the ultraloth is "official" game material! As always, use common sense before you pit one of these monsters against your PCs, but a DM looking for inspiration for evil cults to give a truly unique flavor to a campaign should look no farther. This book is a treasure trove of material.