Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement) [Hardcover]

Richard Baker (Author), James Jacobs (Author), Steve Winter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2005

An art-filled sourcebook about aberrations in the D&D world.

Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations takes a comprehensive look at the most bizarre monsters of the D&D world, and the heroes who fight them. It provides detailed information about beholders, mind flayers, aboleths, and other popular aberrations, while also introducing several new aberrations. In addition, this book provides new rules, feats, tactics, spells, and equipment for characters that hunt aberrations. Extensive story and campaign elements and flavor information add interest and dimension to playing or fighting creatures of this type. The book itself features a prestige format, with heavy use of art throughout and a full-painted cover.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

RICHARD BAKER is a senior designer for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. His most recent roleplaying game design credits include Complete Arcane™ and Monster Manual™ v.3.5. Richard is also the New York Times bestselling author of the novel Condemnation.

JAMES JACOBS is the associate editor of Dungeon® Adventures and has also published numerous articles in Dragon® Magazine. His most recent credits with Wizards of the Coast, Inc. are co-authoring Races of Faerûn™ and Frostburn™.

STEVE WINTER has worked on numerous products as editor, designer, developer, and manager. His most recent credit with Wizards of the Coast, Inc. is Monster Manual™ II.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast (April 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786936576
• ISBN-13: 978-0786936571
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #405,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Aberrations on the loose!, May 11, 2005

By 

Peter Craig "Pete" (Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement) (Hardcover)

Lords of Madness is the third book in the series which started with Draconomicon, and continued with Libris Mortis (the two previous books are not needed to use this book). The book describes the aberrations, one of the most intriguing, evil and alien type of monster in the D&D multiverse.

The book describes the great races, like mind flayers, beholders and aboleths (each has its own chapter with their ecology, way of life and thinking, special feats, and an example location ready to be thrown into any campaign), as well as some new aberrations (in monster-manual format). The DM has all the info needed to make his aberrations unique. No longer will the players encounter "a beholder" in the dark tunnel, but a beholder that has this and that special feat, this or that subtype, with classes, etc.

Most part of the book is for DMs, but there is also a chapter filled with goodies for players (aberration-hunters). (This also means that most players will not want to buy the book, it is enough to ask the DM to have a look at it before play...)

The book is altogether well written, and contains great ideas to make aberrations more fearful opponents, and also gives the players the opportunity to prepare against the aberration menace.

The lowpoint of the book is the monsters section which contains lot's of monsters previously published in older products, and are just updated to D&D 3.5. This is something anybody can do him/herself. More really new monsters would have been better...

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Deep but narrow, January 2, 2006

By 

AvalonXQ - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement) (Hardcover)

This book gives remarkable and useful information on the few species it covers. If an Illithid- or Beholder-centered campaign might inspire you, or creating an encounter or two with them in mind would flavor your campaign, go for it.
The most disappointing thing about the book is that it does not reproduce information for monsters listed in other books, so to fully use the information it provides would involve having not only the Monster Manual and Expanded Psionics Handbook but also the Fiend Folio as well as setting-specific books. Unless you have a pretty complete library, you're going to find a number of monsters mentioned and dealt with that you don't have the details and stats for.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good specialty book, December 28, 2005

By 

Mark Metz "werkshop" (Madison, WI, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement) (Hardcover)

While I didn't enjoy this book as much as Libris Mortis, the content was excellent and several feats/spells/classes are very useable. The alienist PrC is perhaps the most interesting, if a bit labor intensive to play. Each monster detail chapter (beholders, grell, flayers, tsochar, aboleth, and little slaver guys that I always forget their name) has an adventure headlining the monster from that chapter, and are average or better in my opinion...great for side treks or one-offs. The book really does have everything you could want from a hardcover creature 'Type' supplement.

I give it a 4 because I think some of the art should have been better, and there are typos and grammatical errors that should never make it to print (but we're used to that). Often the new material (feats/spells) are only applicable to aberrations, so great for speciaization, but not always helpful in a campaign. Another problem is that the material is very specific yet vague at the same time. E.g. they'll say that aboleths have knowledge dating back to the dawn of existance, but then don't go into it, saying that no aboleth would share this info. Dieties get the same tease, e.g. this god is great and powerful but little is known about him...