As long as mortals have feared what awaits them after death, the threat of damnation has loomed. Powerful fiendish lords rule the deepest, darkest reaches of the Great Beyond: archdevils, demon lords, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and more. Such is the power of their evil that even angels cannot resist it—when one servant of Heaven cataloged all the evil in existence in the Book of the Damned, Heaven's judges doomed him to exile, appalled at what he had wrought. And now you hold those horrors in your hands!
Pathfinder RPG Book of the Damned explores the evil planes and their fiendish rulers as they exist in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an open playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era.
Pathfinder RPG Book of the Damned includes:
Descriptions for dozens of archdevils, demon lords, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and other fiendish divinities, including the foul boons they grant to their most devoted followers.
Explorations of otherworldly fiendish realms, including the infernal reaches of Hell, the death-haunted expanses of Abaddon, and the nightmare depths of the Abyss.
Several brand-new monsters to fill out the ranks of all 11 of the fiendish races, from sinister classics such as demons and devils to new favorites like asuras and sahkils.
New blasphemous rituals, magic items, powerful artifacts, and spells to arm your villains with or for heroes to discover and defy.
Three fiend-focused prestige classes, ready to vex and terrify adventurers who dare stand against their plots.
An extensive collection of in-world excerpts from the sinister pages of the Book of the Damned itself.
... and much, much more!
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-970-7
Content Advisory Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Book of the Damned deals with many dark and intense concepts. The topic of demons and devils is not for everyone, nor is exploration of the themes these fiends embody and the practices they demand of their worshipers. You should make sure that your game group is comfortable with the contents of this book before using them in play—if even one player is uncomfortable with including some of the concepts in here, you should set those portions of the book (or the entire book) aside and focus on other plots for your game. Buyers should beware that the content of this book is not appropriate for all ages, and parents especially are encouraged to review the book before buying it.
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Paizo's Book of the Damned does the nigh unthinkable in the increasingly politically correct gaming industry, in that it is filled with truly evil beings that commit hideous and offensive acts upon the universe. This book collects the best selling Book of the Damned series from Paizo and adds new parts here and there. If you have the previous books, it is still worth getting this for the new material, but your mileage may vary.
I absolutely love how much this book triggers people! I'd expect nothing less from a product called "Book of the Damned." The art is absolutely gorgeous, the lore is evocative and the evil contained within will help you unleash the hordes of heck on your unsuspecting players - and they'll thank you for it.
It's sold out now, so if you see a copy somewhere, snatch it up! This will be a much sought after collector's item for years to come.
Thank you for treating your customers like adults, Paizo. Every toolbox needs evil toys and this book helps fit that bill!
first 2chapters are horrid, the art is garbage. Last 3 chapters steadily grow better. I'd write more and have, but this stupid program keeps deleting my reviews! Therefore, PM me if you really want to know.
I would not recommend this book to anyone except DMs who wanted a lot of deep flavor text on evil gods, evil planes and evil outsiders. The vast bulk of material is stuff that the DM can read in order to form a more coherent world view inside his head, but much of the material is such that it is not only useless to players mechanically, but even further, it is even difficult to convey to players flavor-wise.
Of the 280+ pages, about 120 (so almost half the book) is spent on detailing evil gods that were too small to receive full writeups in previous products. Gods like Baphomet, Dispater, Kostchtchie, Lamashtu, Mephistopheles, Moloch, Nocticula, Orcus, Pazuzu and Szuriel receive two-page writeups -- about 50 in total, covering about 100 pages. The other 20 pages in this section offer two-page writeups for 10 groupings like "Asura Ranas" and "Daemon Harbringers", giving brief detail to groupings gods even smaller than those who merited full two-pagers per individual. This section is essentially useless to players, but the DM can make some use of it for players by building cults that worship these guys and positioning them as enemies that have some of their background fleshed out thanks to this book. Having said that, spending almost half the book to detail the obscure gods of the guys who are going to be sword fodder for the players in three combat rounds? I think a hardcover slot could have been used for something much more useful.
The next 40 pages cover evil planes like Hell and Abyss. This, I think, is one of the more useful sections in the book, because at higher levels, players and campaigns are often going to be venturing into these environments, so getting more detail on them is very good stuff, and the DM can really use this as very concrete setting material for adventures. I actually wish that the art budget from the entire first section had been put into this section, because getting lots of cool images to use as visual aids to show players when they venture into a plane would have been extremely useful to me as a DM. Unfortunately, this is the smallest of the book's four sections, showing a big disconnect between what Paizo thinks we need and what I feel I need.
The third section is essentially the crunch section. Feats, domains, magic items, prestige classes and stuff like that. 95% of it is useless to players, and essentially exists just for the DM to build bad guy statblocks that the players are never going to see. There's a few occasional things that the players can use, like the Moon and Rivers subdomains, but by and large this section is useless unless you are the sort of DM who gets enjoyment out of building statblocks for your bad guys.
The fourth section is called a bestiary, but don't think it's like the Bestiary books simply presenting statblocks -- it has that too, but only about 14 of its 40 pages are statblocks for new monsters. The larger part of this section is flavor descriptions going over existing outsiders (like six pages for devils, six pages for daemons and six pages for demons) and giving them more flavor than existed previously. It's...not useless, I suppose. Some of the evil outsider flavor can be useful for DMs to flesh out encounters between evil outsiders and players. I guess this would be my second favorite section of the book, after the evil planes section.
Finally there's an appendix that presents excerpts from the in-world Book of the Damned in replica-like format as if you were reading the actual book. Kind of neat as a novelty but I didn't feel I got much use out of it.
So essentially there's five sections -- Gods, Planes, Crunch, Bestiary and Excerpts. Gods and Crunch are mostly only useful to build the bad guys of the campaign. Gods is more flavor side, Crunch is more crunch side. But I seriously question the decision to devote over half a hardcover to material that is mostly just useful to build the guys that might be dead in three rounds. My dislike for this decision is a big reason why I only give the book one star. Planes and Bestiary are more useful sections, but they are only about 80 of the book's 280+ pages. Bestiary is about as big as it needed to be -- I don't need any more flavor or statblocks that were presented there, so I wouldn't have wanted to see that section expanded further, but Planes could have and IMO should have been expanded far more. I could have used much, much more detail on the adventuring environments that I as DM could present to players.
Overall I just feel like this book was a big misstep and mis-gauge in what is useful. At least from my personal perspective -- other DMs may disagree. And it's miscategorized -- this book should have been in the DM-focused Campaign Setting line like Inner Sea Gods, to which it is sort of an evil sequel, rather than in the core line where, IMO, books should be more player-useful.
I should add one exception. This book could be really useful and worth its price if you are running an evil campaign. In that case, all the evil gods stuff and evil crunch stuff will actually be player-useful, which rockets the utility of this book upward. If you are running an evil campaign, I would actually consider this a four-star book.
The best thing about the new Book of the Damned that can truly be said to be original to it, is the completed list of obediences. The rest of the material consists of reprints from the prior Books of the Damned, or retcons to that material that create new problems. As seems to be the usual case, the demons and the devils take the lion's share of the material, while the daemons, despite theoretically being among the Big Three of the fiendish races, are left to language in comparative obscurity; minor demon lords receive longer write-ups than in prior books, and Asmodeus' Queens of the Night get full write-ups for the first time, but among the deamons the Horsemen and the Horsemen alone receive any attention.
Perhaps the worst thing about the book however, is the artwork. While there are a few good, new pieces, usually marking the spaces between sections, most of the individual portraits of the archfiends are reprints from prior books or stunningly ugly (or in the case of the archdevil portraits from Bestiary 6, both).
I loved the prior Books of the Damned and wanted to like this book. In the end though, what little new material there cannot compensate for the book's faults, and the bad quality art makes it actively cringe-inducing to look on. Save yourself the money and buy something else.
Yep, it's a practical if watered down (marginally) example of his longstanding flavor element of having placed bits of himself into his own servitor caste and harbingers like a latent, lysogenic virus. Of course the sensory bombardment is arguably driving him bonkers. :)
*wonders if Luthorne will be doing his usual crunch section...*
Well, I wasn't really planning on it, since a lot of it is just obediences, but if you'd like...
Book of the Damned Rules Elements:
Artifacts:Book of the Damned (major), Book of the Damned (Apocrypha) (major), Book of the Damned (Daemonic) (major), Book of the Damned (Demonic) (major), Book of the Damned (Diabolic) (major), bilious talisman (minor), Ihystear (major), wheel of worlds (minor)
Contracts: Pact of Blood-Taking (CR 5), Shadow Coin Bargain (CR 11), Vow of Heartrime (CR 13), Curse of the Ever-Soul (CR 20)
So, would it be safe to call this the Pathfinder equivalent of the third edition BOVD? Cause I'm definitely getting that kind of feel here.
Also, what is Kunkarna the Rakshasa immortal. I ask because I used to play smite, and Kumbakharna was one of my favorite characters in that game.
Kunkarna:
Kunkarna - also known as the Dream Warrior - is a powerful psychic entity who seems to spend most of his time using said powers to project his spirit outside of his body as a transluscent entity with multiple heads.
So, would it be safe to call this the Pathfinder equivalent of the third edition BOVD? Cause I'm definitely getting that kind of feel here.
Is this the PfRPG's equivalent to BoVD? Yes and no. This is a book about the evil entities of the planes of the Pathfinder multiverse, and their servants, and while the old BoVD certainly had quite a bit of that, it was focused first and foremost on crunchy rules content for evil PCs and NPCs, not flavor and setting and worldbuilding.
The Book of Vile Darkness was a 192-page book with maybe 60 or 70 pages of fluff and flavor, and the other 120 or so all taken up by prestige classes and new rules and feats and spells and whatnot.
The Book of the Damned is a 288-page book with about 40 pages of dedicated "crunch" content, along with the Obediences and Boons scattered throughout almost every other section of the book.
Both books have about 16 pages worth of new monsters, though many of those in the BoVD are just updated or newly converted to 3e from previous incarnations of D&D. All of the ones in the Book of the Damned are brand new to PfRPG as far as I am aware.
(Edit: update on the Book of the Damned pagecount. 288, not 256.)
Also, geez, many really disturbing fiendish demigods and almost demigods in that list ._.; Even Zepar is featured? I'm almost afraid to ask what his obedience is, but it can't be worse then Folca's I guess, so umm, yeah, what it is?
The Apocrypha are, essentially, the various notes and scraps of Tabris's work. They serve as a source of power for those seeking mastery over outsider types other than the primary three - kytons, asura, demodands, and so on.
The Apocrypha are, essentially, the various notes and scraps of Tabris's work. They serve as a source of power for those seeking mastery over outsider types other than the primary three - kytons, asura, demodands, and so on.
The demodand parts are written on coffee house napkins, aren't they?
Also, geez, many really disturbing fiendish demigods and almost demigods in that list ._.; Even Zepar is featured? I'm almost afraid to ask what his obedience is, but it can't be worse then Folca's I guess, so umm, yeah, what it is?
Spoiler:
Find a corpse, take it apart, put it back together in a new and interesting way.
Oh yeah, almost forgot about that. And now I really want campaign setting books for titans/gigases(and not just because I want to plan year ahead were my party could find fitting titan if I continue certain ap after final boss in order to destroy one artifact. Totes not just because of that.)
BTW, out of curisioty, does this book reprint anything from Hell Unleashed? Like details on plane inside the book or the research rules for using Book of the Damned as "library"?
Also, I think I asked this before, but now that some people have access to the book, does the book actually go into about "Sacred Apocrypha" aka bad things celestials and good deities have done that book of the damned in lore apparently has? I'm still salty considering even Chronicles of the Righteous artifact statblock mentions it having "unsettling truths" about good outsiders, I mean seriously Paizo, give a break to good guys :' D I'm bit confused about why they are good aligned if writers keep insisting they have a dark side
I once had an idea for a magical item which was a pamphlet written by a Diviner that was actually ghost written as a joint effort by Geryon and Sifkesh. The Pamphlet identifies Iomedae as Aroden's murderer, and that the act condemned humanity to a slow and inexorable decline. Although the Pamphlet is false, because it was written by Geryon anyone who reads it or a copy of it will believe its true. When it was initially released it caused chaos and nearly destroyed Iomedae's entire religion, but eventually the combined forces of Ghenshau and Zohls were able to stem the Pamhplets spread and help free those enchanted by it. All the copies were burned except for the original (which is a minor artifact) which was sealed away at a magical library guarded by worshipers and good aligned monsters of both Empyreal Lords (Can you say Dungeon crawl for evil PCs?)
The Apocrypha are, essentially, the various notes and scraps of Tabris's work. They serve as a source of power for those seeking mastery over outsider types other than the primary three - kytons, asura, demodands, and so on.
The demodand parts are written on coffee house napkins, aren't they?
I always thought the Kytons were written on human skin served at coffee houses for Kytons...
So, would it be safe to call this the Pathfinder equivalent of the third edition BOVD? Cause I'm definitely getting that kind of feel here.
Is this the PfRPG's equivalent to BoVD? Yes and no. This is a book about the evil entities of the planes of the Pathfinder multiverse, and their servants, and while the old BoVD certainly had quite a bit of that, it was focused first and foremost on crunchy rules content for evil PCs and NPCs, not flavor and setting and worldbuilding.
The Book of Vile Darkness was a 192-page book with maybe 60 or 70 pages of fluff and flavor, and the other 120 or so all taken up by prestige classes and new rules and feats and spells and whatnot.
The Book of the Damned is a 288-page book with about 40 pages of dedicated "crunch" content, along with the Obediences and Boons scattered throughout almost every other section of the book.
Both books have about 16 pages worth of new monsters, though many of those in the BoVD are just updated or newly converted to 3e from previous incarnations of D&D. All of the ones in the Book of the Damned are brand new to PfRPG as far as I am aware.
(Edit: update on the Book of the Damned pagecount. 288, not 256.)
288 pages? Man alive, Paizo really went all out on this one. I know Todd Stewart James Jacobs did a probably large job, but who else worked on this monolith?
288 pages? Man alive, Paizo really went all out on this one. I know Todd Stewart did a huge job, but who else worked on this monolith?
This book is a collection of the three previously-published softcover books of the damned.
Wes Schneider wrote the first 64 page book (Hell and archdevils)
I wrote the 2nd 64 page book (Abyss and demon lords)
Todd Stewart wrote the 3rd 64 page book (Abaddon and horsemen)
For the new content (which amounted to well over 64 pages, since we didn't reprint information from the previous 3 books that has already been reprinted in hardcover format; namely, all the monsters), the new authors (and what they wrote) are...
Amanda Hamon Kunz (wrote the Queens of the Night and the Archdevil boons, wrote the infernal duke section, wrote the maelbranche section, wrote the Rakshasa Immortals section, the Rakshasa realm section, the worshiping fiends section for divs, kytons, asuras, oni, rakshasas, sahkils, and qlippoth, and the new demodand and the new devil and the new rakshasa and the new petitioners)
John Compton (wrote the Asura Rana section and a fair amount of the info about other fiends, and the new asura and the new qlippoth)
Adam Daigle (wrote Ahriman, wrote the Sahkil Tormentors, wrote the Xibalba section, and the new div and the new sahkil)
James Jacobs (wrote additional flavor text for demon lords and developed the whole book)
Isabelle Lee (wrote additional boons for demon lords, wrote additional content for some Abyss locations, some additional stuff for magic items and rituals, several new spells, and many of the feats, and the new demon)
Wes Schneider (wrote the kyton demagogue section, wrote the kyton realm section, came up with the new name for kytons (YAY THANKS!), and other kyton details including the new kyton monster)
Todd Stewart (wrote boons for the four Horsemen and the daemon harbingers, and the new daemon
Josh Vogt (wrote the Oni Daimyo section and the Oni realms section and the other oni info, including the new oni monster)
(APOLOGIES to anyone above who I misrepresented or forgot something you wrote!)
May someone please tell me what the obedience is for Slandrais, the daemon harbinger of obsession and love potions? And do we find out what he looks like? Personally I'm hoping he looks kind of like a shlub -- and is still dangerous.
And what's the new name for the kytons that Mister Jacob mentioned?
Wait... is Folca seriously supposed to be the daemonic harbinger of pedophiles?! I thought his purview was just kidnapping and being creepy.
Paizo will never come out and say it I don't think. But lets look at the evidence.
*His areas of focus include Abductions, Strangers and sweets (So he's literally a stranger with candy).
*He grants his worshipers the Lust subdomain.
*Then there his obedience which is under spoilers upthread.
I think the writers have come as close to saying it as they are comfortable with without actually saying it, but yeah. That's what Folca is about.
I mean when I first read up on Folca it took a few seconds for it to click with me too, it was like "Wait, there's a Daemon whose focus is on sweets? What the Hell does that... oh....OHHHHHHHH).
Now of course, its up to the GM on how explicit they want to make this based on the comfort level of their players dealing with these issues. And its vague enough that you can probably run Folca without having any reference to.... that (Like maybe he kidnaps the kids to make them into candy, like he's a patron to Gingerbread witches) But yeah, Paizo really went there. I think they wanted to make sure that it was explicit that Daemons were the worst of the worst. In which case mission accomplished there guys.
Wait... is Folca seriously supposed to be the daemonic harbinger of pedophiles?! I thought his purview was just kidnapping and being creepy.
His portfolio is "abduction, strangers, sweets" and he gives access to lust subdomain.
I'm relieved that Zepar's obedience isn't as creepy as his portfolio, assuming his portfolio wasn't toned down from "abduction, rape, transformation". Seriously, Zepar is most disturbing Infernal Duke and beats some demons and daemons with that portfolio and the implications of it
You all realise that these are fictional entities, rights?
If that is joke about being disturbed by fictional entities, then please don't make it since that is just belittling fiction if you are saying "eh, don't be disturbed by fictional stuff". Fiction is supposed to evoke feelings and emotions, so if you feel nothing after reading something disturbing, then the fiction isn't doing it's job.
Yeah, plus if you were someone who was unfortunate enough to have experienced this sort of abuse, playing in a game where one of the bad guys is a literal Demigod of child abuse can potentially tear open old wounds.
There is a reason that "Trigger warnings" are a thing. Because its not nice to accidentally hit someone's hot button and unintentionally upset them.
You all realise that these are fictional entities, rights?
If that is joke about being disturbed by fictional entities, then please don't make it since that is just belittling fiction if you are saying "eh, don't be disturbed by fictional stuff". Fiction is supposed to evoke feelings and emotions, so if you feel nothing after reading something disturbing, then the fiction isn't doing it's job.
The line between "being moved by art" and "freaking out because you believe that art represents some actual desire or will of the author or support for some kind of activity or view" is quite blurred.
You all realise that these are fictional entities, rights?
If that is joke about being disturbed by fictional entities, then please don't make it since that is just belittling fiction if you are saying "eh, don't be disturbed by fictional stuff". Fiction is supposed to evoke feelings and emotions, so if you feel nothing after reading something disturbing, then the fiction isn't doing it's job.
The line between "being moved by art" and "freaking out because you believe that art represents some actual desire or will of the author or support for some kind of activity or view" is quite blurred.
Huh? I don't think anyone was freaking out or accusing writers of anything. I think you are reading too much into that.
Anyhoo, I would like to point out that trigger warning is supposed to warn about content that might trigger PTSD, not "this content is offensive and might upset someone's sensibilities". <_< CrinosG sounded like they were clearly talking about PTSD yeah, but I wanted to point it out since I hate how parts of Internet has warped the meaning to refer being offended.
Yeah, plus if you were someone who was unfortunate enough to have experienced this sort of abuse, playing in a game where one of the bad guys is a literal Demigod of child abuse can potentially tear open old wounds.
There is a reason that "Trigger warnings" are a thing. Because its not nice to accidentally hit someone's hot button and unintentionally upset them.
As somebody who earns his living by, among other, triggering people so that they flip out in the courtroom, I can relate. But since this is supposed to be a game played by adult people in a consenting manner that's bound by a social contract AND victims of child abuse don't go into double digits percentage of the population, I think we're safe here. It's bad enough already that Paizo had to surrender to triggers of religious puritans, I'm fine with stepping out of Saturday Kids' Cartoon territory that traditionally was D&D and moving towards "shocking" content that RPGs first handled 25 years ago. World of Darkness did this and that and went even further, and they're still around.
May someone please tell me what the obedience is for Slandrais, the daemon harbinger of obsession and love potions? And do we find out what he looks like? Personally I'm hoping he looks kind of like a shlub -- and is still dangerous.
Spoiler:
His obedience is to cuddle up to a corpse of somebody that you used to know, or just sleep on top of their grave if you have commitment issues.
He looks like a wasp made of ashes and bloody ice with two scorpion tails.
Eric Hinkle wrote:
And what's the new name for the kytons that Mister Jacob mentioned?
Spoiler:
The actual name for their kind is velstracs. Only mortals call velstracs kytons, based off of when Kaikyton was taking a friendly scream-filled tour of the material plane for a few millennia, but they generally find the term to be rather flattering, given that she's one of their paragons of their kind.
... I love how the Daemons' stuff flip between "KILL IT WITH NAPALM" and "Awwwww" *offers hugs*
Maybe its me, but not seeing the cuddliness of a giant wasp who is the patron of Necrophiles and date rapists.
(Or are you speaking in general regarding the Harbingers? I don't have the book yet, but from what I have seen they are the worst of the fiendish Demigods).
Anyways, can't wait till the PDF comes out. Gonna be staying up late tonight so I can pick it up in the early morning.
As an entity who falls in the CR 21-25 range, Folca is perfectly killable by high level PCs.
While it's deliberately vague, I'd suspect that Folca, as a daemon, is way, way more interested in murder than pedophilia. Folca is basically It as a spellgranting quasigod, after all.
May someone please tell me what the obedience is for Slandrais, the daemon harbinger of obsession and love potions? And do we find out what he looks like? Personally I'm hoping he looks kind of like a shlub -- and is still dangerous.
** spoiler omitted **
Eric Hinkle wrote:
And what's the new name for the kytons that Mister Jacob mentioned?
** spoiler omitted **
Yeesh. :shudder: Slandrais sounds like a charmer.
And who or what is Kaikyton? Yes, I''ll be getting the PDF in a few days but a few more spoilers won't hurt me. And I'll love the work in any event.
... I love how the Daemons' stuff flip between "KILL IT WITH NAPALM" and "Awwwww" *offers hugs*
Folca, on the other hand, needs to get killed by Folgrit or Cayden "Friend to all orphans" Cailean.
I can imagine Lamashtu being willing to destroy Folca.
Now there's an idea, your group of noble PCs gets approached by the local Lamashtans, who ask for help to hunt down the sicko who's been doing... things, to the beloved get of the Mother of Monsters.
Creative Director
