Seventy years ago, the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune defeated its rivals in a bloody civil war following the death of the god of humanity, bringing order to the war-torn nation of Cheliax—but at a price. Now the imperial bureaucracy enforces devil-worship as the state religion, and the common people bow their heads in perpetual servitude to the dark lord of Hell. Fortunately, Cheliax still has heroes: crusaders and revolutionaries motivated by glory, honor, greed for the throne, or hatred of what their land has become under the infernal thumb of Asmodeus.
This Pathfinder Companion describes the nation of Cheliax, its diabolical capital of Egorian, and its shadow-haunted former capital of Westcrown. Inside you’ll also find new character traits, magic items, spells, combat feats, and Chelish NPCs suitable for cohorts or contacts. This book is perfect for use in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path, set in the city of Westcrown, or any adventure taking place in a nation of devils and decadence.
Written by Jonathan H. Keith, Colin McComb, Steven E. Schend, Leandra Christine Schneider, and Amber E. Scott
Each bimonthly 32-page Pathfinder Companion contains several player-focused articles exploring the volume’s theme as well as short articles with innovative new rules for social, magic, religious, and combat-focused characters, as well as a persona section detailing helpful NPCs and traits to better anchor the player to the campaign.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-191-6
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Cheliax, Empire of Devils is a solid entry in Paizo's line of Player's Companions for Pathfinder. The nation of Cheliax provides a far different feel than that of most fantasy, as it's a land where the rulers have openly made pacts with the devils! It's a dark and oppressive place to live, and one wrong word can bring the Inquisitors to one's door. I've read about several different areas in Golarion, and Cheliax is one of the most interesting and original. Cheliax, Empire of Devils contains the following:
* A map of the city of Westcrown on the inside front cover. The map isn't particularly good or detailed, and one doesn't see any cartographic talent at work.
* A twelve-page overview of Cheliax. This is one of those all-too rare occasions where the history of a fictional land is actually quite fascinating! This section a lot of useful information on the culture of Cheliax, as well as its leadership, perception of neighboring countries, organizations (such as the famous Hellknights), and even a few paragraphs on the arts scene(!). Some of this will naturally be more useful to GMs than players, but it was still done well.
* A two-page description of Egorian, a major city in Cheliax. There's a brief overview of the different districts of the town, but this was fairly bland.
* A two-page description of Westcrown, Cheliax's former capital before the pact with demons was made. As with the discussion of Egorian, there's not a lot of detail here and the material is probably of more interest to GMs.
* A section titled "Social" that contains brief one- or two-line descriptions of how the different core classes are perceived in Cheliax and then several new traits. This may be the most useful part of the book for PCs, and it's done well (if short).
* Four pages on "Magic & Spells", introducing several new magic items and spells. Good flavour links them to Cheliax.
* Two pages on "Faith." Purely descriptive, but good as far as it goes.
* "Combat", another two-page section. This is chock-full of feats, but contains an interesting sidebar on battle slang and one new weapon.
* Four NPCs detailed (with descriptions, pictures, and full stat blocks) in a "Persona" section. This would be really useful for a GM, but (apart from maybe integration into a backstory) of little value to players.
* The inside back cover has a map of Egorian. It's better than the map of Westcrown, but still falls a bit flat.
A word about the art: oddly, the cover art is much worse than the interior art! There's some absolutely gorgeous artwork inside (see pages 20 and 26 for examples).
Overall, this is another of Paizo's early entries in the Player's Companion line wherein they still hadn't found the right distinction between material for players and material for GMs. That being said, it's a good book and I'd recommend it.
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.
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.
Ok I will see if I can do one in the next few days. i will talk about what is in each chapter and how big each chapter is etc. I have done several reviews for 3pp PFRPG stuff. A lot of Rite Publishing, 4 Wind Fantasy Gaming and Super Genius Games being who i have reviewed the majority of their stuff.
I thought it was worth the money, I liked this one a lot.
then is it safe to ask for a decent review of each section??
Is this a rhetotical question? It is the supreme tome among all the books Paizo has published so far! After all, doesn't it detail the mightiest empire that has ever existed on Golarion? On these maginificent, red-and-black pages is revealed the Full Glory of our nation, our beloved Majestrix, and the shining faith of the Almighty Asmodeus!
Do not hesitate to buy it, or I will send my imp servants to steal your underwear! ;P
I thought it was worth the money, I liked this one a lot.
then is it safe to ask for a decent review of each section??
Is this a rhetotical question? It is the supreme tome among all the books Paizo has published so far! After all, doesn't it detail the mightiest empire that has ever existed on Golarion? On these maginificent, red-and-black pages is revealed the Full Glory of our nation, our beloved Majestrix, and the shining faith of the Almighty Asmodeus!
Do not hesitate to buy it, or I will send my imp servants to steal your underwear! ;P
FYI, yeah its been out fora while, its just that the Gaming shop down the street never seems to have it....
SO i cant look at it to decide on whether its worth me getting.
I thought it was worth the money, I liked this one a lot.
then is it safe to ask for a decent review of each section??
Is this a rhetotical question? It is the supreme tome among all the books Paizo has published so far! After all, doesn't it detail the mightiest empire that has ever existed on Golarion? On these maginificent, red-and-black pages is revealed the Full Glory of our nation, our beloved Majestrix, and the shining faith of the Almighty Asmodeus!
Do not hesitate to buy it, or I will send my imp servants to steal your underwear! ;P
they once told me when I aksed a question on another product of theirs,( same question, different item) was that they had no plans at the moment.
NOW, imo what could be a good idea, ( not sure on its cost affectiveness) would be to take the older material and combine them into a hard back book.
IE: combined APs like the one that had the drow in it in one and the rortl in another, the stand alones all in a different book)
id say the races of golarion book 1, but the only ones out are elves, dwarves, gnomes,halfling, orcs.
the only one OoP is elves I think.
and with goblins and humans on the way...... I don't see this doable at the moment
OK, thank you for the information. Seeing as it is unlikely that Paizo will be selling this in print again (for a long while at least) I will be looking elsewhere (more likely Amazon) to buy this one. Thanks again.
There are a small handful of non-mint copies here.
The description of non-mint products seems really scary. :) I don't need it to be perfect, but 'bent' can mean a lot. I am tempted though. Does anyone have experience with the non-mint ones?
I ordered a couple of non mint products from Paizo and I honestly couldn't see any difference when they arrived. This does not mean that all non mint products are like mine, but I think they'd be honest enough to describe them as something other than just non mint if they were, say, mangled by house cats or something.
Most of the non-mint copies I've seen for sale are in the "corners dinged and bent" category, though obviously that's not a guarantee of how your non-mint copy will arrive.
Probably not, at this point. If you want a print copy, your best bet is probably looking for one on the secondary market (ebay, game stores, etc.).
We have no current plans to reprint this title.
Thanks for the speedy reply Erik. I did look at amazon.com and ebay (but its been a couple weeks) and the prices ranged from - hang on to your wizard hat - $60 to $221. I kid you not. On Amazon it was all 3rd party sellers not amazon itself.
UPDATE: Right now on amazon.com I see 2 used for $650 and 2 new at $950. Hey, I'm a new and avid fan of Paizo and Pathfinder but that's a bit much for this initiate :)
Oh, thank-you for that and thanks for mentioning the pdf... I'm kind of a hardcopy kind of guy but will definitely pick up this pdf!
Yeah, I know what you mean, I love actual books, but then on the other hand I don't have a van to carry all my Pathfinder books to games, not to mention with all my other RPGs plus novels I read (I am a book packrat!) I'm like totally running out of room in my house for all these books. So, PDFs are nice to be able to load up all my books on my laptop to take to games.
