4E Demonomicom

I liked that they managed to cram in so much earlier stuff, but I didn't like how many pages they had to spend retconning things awkwardly into a structure they weren't originally designed to fit into. I mostly shook my head and thought, "Well, that isn't quite as good, but I guess it works." The incubi and that race of mutant stone succubi aren't quite as good as the succubi, incubi, lilitu, alu-fiends, and succubus queens of 3e. Deciding that the Blood Rift from 3rd edition Forgotten Realms is the same as the Grand Abyss was an elegant way to deal with the relatively impoverished multiverse of 4e, tying things together without losing much, but it still wasn't, in my opinion, quite as good as having three different yugoloth planes. More and bigger isn't always better, of course, but more and more varied sandboxes to play ground does seem more useful. And the Blood War was a generator of plots that is sorely missed. The quite cool apocalyptic talk of the Queen of Chaos returning every thousand years doesn't begin to make up for its loss (particularly because you could easily have both).

I was disappointed that the book was mostly a rehash of 3e's Hordes of the Abyss, covering realms that have already been covered so many times before. Having read through the whole thing at the store, I'm a bit sad that I'm not sure it's worth it to me to buy it for the sake of the little bit of new lore in it.

I wasn't outraged by it, but no matter how much I've accepted the new cosmology, there just wasn't much new material to like. What little there was seemed good. I like the new yugoloth city, and the new demon lady of ruin.

I've long since stopped worrying about them contradicting previous canon, no matter how beloved. It's kind of an enjoyable game to see how they'll twist and reinterpret things next. It's also somewhat amusing to see them contradict themselves even between different 4e products, like how Eclavdra was exiled and undead in Underdark but a mighty exarch of Lolth in Monster Manual 3.

You seem a trifle overly cynical, Anime Fan. Do you think all opinions are derived from people identifying either as "purists" who will automatically reject everything new or whatever you call the other camp who automatically prefer all new things to older things? Hopefully it's more complex than that. I think there are a lot of people here who judge everything on its individual merits - for example, Kobold Avenger, who's adopted a lot of 4e concepts into his game but retained 2e/3e concepts in other respects. If you're implying otherwise, I think it might be taken as a bit insulting. I try to look at each idea and analyze, as best as I can, how much potential it has.

To go on a total tangent, I just bought a PDF copy of Necromancer Games' City of Brass book (which was much, much, much cooler than I ever dared hope), and it has a few ideas at variance with D&D canon - a mystical bridge connecting the floating city of Brass to a bazaar outside the city walls, a conflict between the Cult of Lucifer (presented as an exiled former King of Hell) and the Lords of the Nine, and a new paraelemental plane located at the junction of the planes of Fire, Earth, and Air (or, depending on your point of view, perhaps at the junction of the planes of Fire, Magma, and Smoke). I'm trying to figure out right now whether these things are cool enough to be worth incorporating or if they're better off being ignored - right now, I think they all make the cut, though I'd definitely use the City of Brass map that appears in 2e, 3e, and 4e above the Necromancer Games map, and simply plug the new city locations in where appropriate.

I suppose it's a matter of what you expect a new book to be for. Should it be for reintroducing the same concepts over and over again for new generations of gamers (perhaps introducing some adaptation decay each time, although I think Hordes of the Abyss mostly improved over the previous Planescape incarnation), or should each one tread entirely new ground? Most of us will probably agree that the answer should be somewhere in between, but where the sweet spot is will probably remain a matter of opinion.

As much as I like seeing Planescape elements still living and breathing in new supplements (and Demonomicon had plenty of them), I'd rather see something new that grabs me the same way Planescape once did than just to see Planescape remixed over and over. I have little use for nostalgia (that said, a 4e Planescape Player's Guide that reintroduced the factions and leftover Planescape character races would be peachy keen).

My favorite 4e books at this point are The Plane Below and Underdark, both of which hit the sweet spot for me. Both honored previous editions without spending any time rehashing them. None of the adventure sites and settlements in those books appeared in previous editions to any significant extent. They were both hugely imaginative and worth getting.

Monster Manual 3 was 90% rehash (hardly any of the monsters were new), but the fluff seemed fresh and creative. Might be worth getting.

The Plane Above was boring. Just... boring. I didn't care about any of it, positively or negatively. The two-faced god-haters were the best part, but the fact that they're pretty
much exclusively antagonists who want to kill everyone makes them of limited use. Make them neutral and not necessarily antagonistic, connect them to Aoskar and only mad at the Lady of Pain, give them an interesting culture and I would like them. But the idea of a race that hates the powers seems played out at this point, at least to me. The Athar already did that in a more complex, interesting way. The rest of the book just seemed to cover the same stuff the 4e Manual of the Planes did, while The Plane Below complimented the 4e MotP without replicating it. That is the sweet spot. I can recommend The Plane Below regardless of the considerable changes from the 3e cosmology, but I can't recommend The Plane Above. It's just boring.

I think, at this point, that it's not as simple as saying 3e or 4e is better. Both have their merits. 4e usually falls short in flavor, but it's introduced a few very cool creatures, some good spins on older creatures (especially in the Monster Manual 3) and the Shadowfell and Feywild remain the best of 4th edition's innovations. There's a lot in 4e that's worth stealing, though sometimes it takes some digging. That was true of 3e and 2e and 1e and BECMI and OD&D as well.

I haven't written Demonomicon off entirely. I did appreciate much of what was there, and I'll give it another look to see if it's worth having for me.

I thought it was interesting that where previous 4e books had blamed the existence of the Abyss exclusively on Tharizdun, this one introduced the obyriths as the devious minds who corrupted Tharizdun... and they corrupted Asmodeus too. It's more dynamic and more useful to have a set of intelligent villains than just a big dumb rock doing it. In many ways, the obyriths are the baernaloths of 4e, even though 4e also has baernaloths. The baernaloths in Demonomicon were satisfactory. They're powerful, epic creatures, which is a huge improvement over their Planescape stats. I'm spoiled by Todd Stewart's portrayal of them as evil's ultimate masterminds; these didn't do anything, as far as anyone knows, but act as bodyguards and viziers for Phraxus. If they're secretly manipulating him like a puppet on a string, as all good viziers do, the book doesn't show it.

Apparently Phraxus is the 4th edition version of Anthraxus. I guess they thought not naming him "disease-us" would be cooler, and they might be right. It was interesting that while the baernaloths were identified as having ramlike heads, Phraxus wasn't. His face is diseased and rotten, but it might be otherwise the same as a standard ultroloth.

This is another book that's written as if it takes place a century after the end of 3rd edition. The events of the Savage Tide adventure path (where Demogorgon died) took place 100 years ago in the 4e continuity. The events of Return to the Tomb of Horrors took place a century ago according to 4e's Tomb of Horrors. The ascent of Glasya to the rulership of Malebolge happened a century ago according to the 4e Manual of the Planes, and that had just happened in Fiendish Codex II. The events of Die Vecna Die! seem to have happened centuries ago (I'll call it a century), according to Draconomicon 2. And of course a century has passed in the Forgotten Realms, which might be the reason why they assume so much else has happened over a century. The only place where time seems to have stood still is Sigil, and only in Dungeon Master's Guide 2.

Rip, thank you for giving something of a review of the 4e Demonomicon. I was morbidly curious about how they handled certain topics, and how it went about either ignoring previous material, retooling it, or creating new stuff for PoLand's cosmology.

I'm actually shocked that the baern made it into the book given what struck me at times as a dismissive disdain or just ignorance by some members of the 4e design team towards some of the 2e and 3e planar material. It's really wierd to see some certain things divorced from their original context though, but honestly it doesn't bother me as much as it did since I've come to recognize that 4e isn't 1e/2e/3e (A)D&D, it's an entirely different game that just happens to recycle some of the same concepts (or their names).

And you make me seriously proud to have you say nice things about some of my stuff. Thank you very much.

And since I haven't had a chance to browse the book in a store, do any of the 'loth related things get artwork in the book? The baern? Shemeshka in the book's delve?

There's also the malgodemon, which is apparently a 'loth based on the naming pattern and association with raavastas/arcanoloths.

Oh, and nycaloths are in the MM2.

Underdark seemed sure that Eclavdra was dead, but doubtful about the means. Anime Fan's rationalization seems workable, but I'm still going to count it as a contradiction.