This is probably my favorite Pathfinder product by a wide margin. In it are new spells, feats, traits, magic items, NPC statistic blocks, and just about everything you need to help flesh out adventures your adventures set in Cheliax. There are even a couple of nice maps on the insides of the covers of two major cities. It is excellent for players and GMs alike, and contains plenty of fluff along with all of the options that it presents. As Cheliax is my favorite place to set homebrew adventures in, this supplement book has been a boon. It is short, but fulfills its goal well while being reasonably priced, and I wouldn’t want to run an urban adventure in Cheliax without it.

I simply couldn’t put a review up without handing out a bit of criticism though (even if it is very little- my issues with this book are few and far in between). There isn’t a map of the actual country included, only its major cities. A few of the character options presented feel a bit on the strong side as well (Emergency Force Sphere comes to mind).

Overall this book is a near to perfect a supplement you can hope for. You won’t regret purchasing it.

One of the distinguishing factors seperating Golarion from all the other worlds is the importance of Hell as the nemesis of good. Demons this and Demon Queen of that are the order of the day in the Forgotten Realms. Now, see how just a little evil can go a very long way, exploring how a country that made a deal with the Devil fares.

Check out my full review Cheliax, Empire of Devils

This book is 36 pages long. Cover, city map of Westcrown, and ToC. Take up 3 pages.

Chapter 1 – Introduction to Cheliax and History (12 pages)
It talks about the country, the history, society, military, glossary of terms, entertainment etc. It gives a brief overview of the country, where it came from and what it is like today. It also has a section of geography of the country and talking about each area of the country.

Chapter 2 – Cities of Cheliax (4 pages)
This gives a brief overview of two of the important cities of Cheliax, the former and current capitals.
Egorian Capital of Cheliax (2 pages)
Westcrown (2 pages)

Chapter 3 – Social (2 pages)
It has a section on how most classes are seen in Cheliax and Chelish traits.

Chapter 4 – Magic (4 pages)
This chapter is about magic items and spells. There is 7 new magic items, and 7 new spells.

Chapter 5 – Religion (2 pages)
This section talks about the role religion plays, while it is mostly about Asmodeus church, it does touch on other religions.

Chapter 6 – Combat (2 pages)
11 new feats mostly combat feats and 1 new weapon.

Chapter 7 – Persona (4 pages)
5 complete NPC's with history and stat blocks. They can be used as replacement PC's, NPC's, cohorts, villians etc.

It closes with 1 page of ads with the OGL, map of Egorian and back cover.

Conclusion, I liked this one. The magic and combat sections I thought was especially well done and IMHO the best such sections for one of these books so far. The NPC's are well done, but I am meh about them. I tend to like to make my own so they are of limited use to me. The city sections give a nice vague overview of each city but I wish they had added at least one more page to each of them. The social and religion chapters are pretty much what you would expect.

The largest section is the first and I think it does a pretty good job of giving one a decent view of what Cheliax is like with enough information that you should be able to bring it to life for your players. If you are a fan of Cheliax I highly recommend this book or if you are just looking for more information about the world of Golarion. I am giving it a 4 star, I think it is a good book but could have been a bit better.

A book about the Empire of Cheliax that doesn't contain a map of the place? Yes, there are maps of the 2 main cities (quite inconsistent in their presentation) but what about the land itself? It's as if owning the Pathfinder Campaign Setting is a prerequisite to actually making sense of this book, something which is not really written in the product's description. The other problem I had is that while it presents things in Pathfinder RPG compatible format largely, there are some inconsistencies, for example a feat that still refers to the old grappling rules. Otherwise this is a good book with some interesting bits and a very nice presentation.

... I shall hereby finally decide that there is no such things as words to properly describe how satisfied I am with this product. I could give you a list of "I likes" but, really it would be a list of the books contents. Allthough I must say I am overly fond of the entire section about law/legal procedures and society structure in Cheliax - absolutely adorable.

I am planning to GM CoT soon and this certainly helped to convince me to do so... (now, how do I finish of Second Darkness fastly... looks at final book... hmm... doomsday effect... will do...)

Great work. Really. Great. Awesome. Worth 10 Stars... *searches for better rating*

Excellant, great info for players and DM's....

I found this Companion to be extremely informative. It gave a detailed description of the fundamental aspects of the Chelaxian society while still leaving room for customizing the nation to fit an individual user's needs. In addition to providing a solid background of story material, numerous new Traits, Feats, Spells, and Magic Items really gave the Compantion a solid gameplay aspect. I really hope that further Companions keep with this same level of quality.

In the last year, the fledgling Pathfinder Companion line has struggled through the process of finding its niche, with the format and content varying from issue to issue. But with this volume, the line has found its stride and the result is the best of the line so far and one of the best Pathfinder setting support volumes to date. I haven't been inspired by Cheliax to this point, but this book won me over. I finally get it.

The background information on Cheliax is incredibly detailed without giving away spoilers to players and provided me with more than enough background stories for characters I will probably never get around to playing. I also really love the new approach to the persona section, providing multiple low-to-mid-level NPCs instead of a single person the PCs might never encounter.

For players in the Pathfinder Society, you'll find that there are tons of traits, feats, spells and other goodies legal for play (at least under version 2.0 of the rules).

I sincerely hope that future Pathfinder Chronicles volumes continue the quality of content and formatting of this volume. I'd also love to see a GM secrets version of this book with all the spoilers for people running games in Cheliax. As I said above, this book made me a Cheliax convert, so keep it coming!