Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Book of the Damned (PFRPG)

Yeah, honestly, I kind of want Folca to be statted up just to try and kill him sometime. Quite the horrific entity...kudos, Todd!

I don't know fellas. Folca seems like a pretty cool guy that likes candy and pulling pranks on children. He's basically Jack Skelelington, and everyone loves Jack Skelelington.

Disregard my rambling, book was at the store today!

What's the actual street date of this book?

It looks like it's shipping from Paizo. The PDF is available today. But, online sources are saying Oct 10. My FLGS that I get my PF stuff from usually sets the books on the shelf the day they get it, even if it's before the street date, and when I inquired about it, they looked at me funny.

Anyway, my long winded point is, I have a business trip next week, and was hoping to see the book on the shelf so I could take it with me. So, now I'm wondering if I should plan a book hunt while on my trip (I'll have a rental car, whoooo!) or if I should just order direct and have it waiting when I get home in a week....

I suppose I could just snag the PDF for now, and can read it on the plane on my Surface...

Which two feats do people keep talking about?

Favored Prestige Class and Prestigious Spellcaster from Paths of the Righteous. The former is really nice too.

The former really helps with those level thingies.

Favored Prestige Class and Prestigious Spellcaster from Paths of the Righteous. The former is really nice too.

Thank you.

Np :3

I must say I love most of the new artwork. Not sure about some but on the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Oh and Ravana is baller.

Trying to decide if I want the PDF of this book. I'm running Jade Regent and I have some subplots involving Pazuzu. Is there much information on Pazuzu?

If I type Pazuzu three times do I-

THIS ONE BELONGS TO ME NOW

Seriously though, what did they write about me?

Lord of the Wind Demons,

They had a nice picture of you in fight mode.

And a cute lil' altar and statuette!

True that, Mister Daigle. I just figured he'd like to see his own image on display, not someone else's. :)

SOLD!

And going forward, let's move on to other topics anyway, like discussing what's in the book.

I'll start!

How did people like what we did with the Kytons, be it the first reveal of their demigods or the revelation of the name of the entire race of them as "velstracks"? That new name is something I've been pushing for us to do for a long time, since what these monsters are in Pathfinder has diverged SIGNIFICANTLY from their much more limited role in D&D. They are, in many ways, a brand new caste of outsider, and now that they have their own name, I feel like they can finally move on.

Special thanks to Wes for finally coming up with a great sounding name in the first place after many years of me poking and prodding him to do just that! :-D

It was surprising, but not unwelcome. I will likely continue to refer to them as Kytons since that's what they are ingrained in my skull as, but it adds a bit more depth to the race, and makes Kaikyon a bit more noteworthy in the process,

OH! One other thing! What did folks think about us putting a huge section of in-world excerpts from the Book of the Damned at the end of the book? That was a tough decision to make; it sets up a big swath of the text as flavor only, and we tried to make it easy to read while keeping the "in-world" look of it. I hope it works! I'm pretty delighted with how it turned out, in any event.

If you made and entire book that was nothing up the in-universe excerpts of the Book of the Damned that we haven't seen, I'd be first in line to buy it. Excellent call.

If by in-world excerpts you mean the parchment-looking pages that discuss creation from Asmodeus' POV which we saw before in the three splatbooks but now expanded and all in one place, then yeah, that's one of my fave feature of this book.

Diabolist feels like a bit of a nerf. The addition of boons is neat, though the alignment restriction, loss of spell level, and change of the imp from a companion to a familiar definitely feels weaker than the original...

It's gonna be a bit of a pain reworking Kaltessa Iyis...

Considering that spellcasters are bit of "game changers", I think its fair that spellcasting prestige classes give a little less spell levels :P I mean at max level they can still cast those level 9 spells anyway, it doesn't make them much weaker just because they can cast it one time less without a feat.

Basically I think you are making big deal out of something that not everyone even considers a problem.

The main problem I see with the lost level is that you access higher level spells one class level later. Considering the power curve of spells, that is a pretty big disadvantage

Which is why it takes 2 feats (not only one) to make up for it

I hope these changes will not make the new Diabolist a mostly NPC PrC when it was previously something of interest to many players, myself included

EDIT : no more Companion ? That was the selling point of this PrC to me. Losing that and the spell level means I will never envision playing one now :-(

You guys do realize that fiendish boons are really really powerful right?

Also, like I said, at high levels one or two less spell levels/slots for level 9 casters doesn't really matter much, you still wreck the days of your enemies. I'd say its even more balanced than just non multiclassed caster :P

You guys do realize that fiendish boons are really really powerful right?

No we don't. At 10th level they're really minor -- either one 3rd level spell, two 2nd level, or three 1st level. That's almost trivial for a 10th level caster.

The second and third rank fiendish boons *can* be good, but only sometimes -- often they're junk. And by the time you get them, you're 13th or 16th level, which means that even the good ones are usually pretty "meh" in the context of a high level character.

Doug M.

You guys do realize that fiendish boons are really really powerful right?

Also, like I said, at high levels one or two less spell levels/slots for level 9 casters doesn't really matter much, you still wreck the days of your enemies. I'd say its even more balanced than just non multiclassed caster :P

If the option of playing a Diabolist becomes far less interesting (including but not limited to power level) than the standard caster, why not just play the standard caster ?

After all, even a standard caster can be fluffed as having sold his soul to devils for his power :-)

I loved the Companion of the old Diabolist because it opened so many opportunities (even beyond the Diabolist class itself, since the mechanism could be refluffed). I am sad to see such an interesting innovation disappear to join the rank and file of the Divine/Fiendish boons' mechanisms.

I have not yet been interested enough in the latter to envision playing one such class, as opposed to the old Diabolist

Extra spells is always nice, and you're forgetting the boon you get for performing the obedience in the first place.

The lat I checked the fiendish boons were actually really good.

Is there any rhyme or reason to which lesser fiendish powers got 1/day boons and which got the 2/day boons. It seems weird that the weakest tier of devil grants more boons than the strongest kyton.

I believe with the Malebranche, which are tasked with conquering worlds, their whole thing is that they are meant to be worshiped, so there stuff would be more appealing. They may be weaker CR wise but they have more resources and empowerment from Hell in regards to their mission.

Extra spells is always nice, and you're forgetting the boon you get for performing the obedience in the first place.

The lat I checked the fiendish boons were actually really good.

Yeah, I'm not sure if they have actually checked them through <_< Like Beliel's 3rd sentinel book is uber great if you ask me.

And I don't really buy it that one more spellcasting levels is worth it more than abilities you get from prestige classes. Like I said, I've seen max level dragon disciple sorcerer and they still get tons of spells and are kind of horrifying at what they do. Heck technomancer is awesome even with losing one spellcasting level I can attest to that too after I allowed my IG party's wizard to retrain few levels to technomancer.

1) The first-tier fiendish boons -- the ones a Demoniac or a Diabolist would get at 10th level -- are all pretty useless. They all follow the same pattern (three 1st, two 2nd, or one 3rd level spell). For a 10th level character, that's legitimately underwhelming.

1-a) If you're a full caster, the least bad boonsets are those that include situationally useful utility spells of the sort that you wouldn't normally memorize or learn.

1-b) This is slightly less worthless for spell-starved classes like the sorceror and the oracle. It would also be less bad for non-full casters (bards, etc.) except that these classes would be crazy to take any of these PrCs to begin with, so never mind.

2) The second- and third-tier fiendish boons are ALL OVER THE G+$$%*N BOARD. Seriously. They range from almost completely worthless to really quite good. I'm not sure if there's some complex balancing going on here (this deity has an awesome second tier power but everything else is crap; this deity has weak higher tier powers but an easy Obedience) or... what, exactly. But comparing the higher tier powers against each other gives wildly divergent results.

3) That said, very few of the higher tier powers can be considered "good" in the context of "this is something you get at either 13th or 16th level". There are a few that are no kidding, hands-down good -- someone mentioned Belial's third Sentinel power and yeah, that would be on the list. But it's not that long a list.

Rysky wrote:

Extra spells is always nice, and you're forgetting the boon you get for performing the obedience in the first place.

The lat I checked the fiendish boons were actually really good.

Yeah, I'm not sure if they have actually checked them through <_< Like Beliel's 3rd sentinel book is uber great if you ask me.

And I don't really buy it that one more spellcasting levels is worth it more than abilities you get from prestige classes. Like I said, I've seen max level dragon disciple sorcerer and they still get tons of spells and are kind of horrifying at what they do. Heck technomancer is awesome even with losing one spellcasting level I can attest to that too after I allowed my IG party's wizard to retrain few levels to technomancer.

I did check them and I agree with Doug's take on them (ie, all over the place). I hope differing opinions are still allowed here

To get back the lost spellcasting level, you need to acquire 2 feats.

The first one brings some value but is not likely to be taken on its own IMO. I would put it in the same category as Combat Expertise

So this missing level is valued by the PDT somewhere around 1.5 feats. This does not sound inconsequential to me

Now that it's out, I'm curious about people's favorite boons. As a category, I liked access to creature abilities- templates for werewolf and worm that walks, and specific abilities for succubus.

CorvusMask wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Extra spells is always nice, and you're forgetting the boon you get for performing the obedience in the first place.

The lat I checked the fiendish boons were actually really good.

Yeah, I'm not sure if they have actually checked them through <_< Like Beliel's 3rd sentinel book is uber great if you ask me.

And I don't really buy it that one more spellcasting levels is worth it more than abilities you get from prestige classes. Like I said, I've seen max level dragon disciple sorcerer and they still get tons of spells and are kind of horrifying at what they do. Heck technomancer is awesome even with losing one spellcasting level I can attest to that too after I allowed my IG party's wizard to retrain few levels to technomancer.

I did check them and I agree with Doug's take on them (ie, all over the place). I hope differing opinions are still allowed here

To get back the lost spellcasting level, you need to acquire 2 feats.

The first one brings some value but is not likely to be taken on its own IMO. I would put it in the same category as Combat Expertise

So this missing level is valued by the PDT somewhere around 1.5 feats. This does not sound inconsequential to me

Well yeah, of course different opinions are allowed. We aren't getting here to "You aren't allowed to disagree with my disagreeing!" territory here, I hope? xD

Anyhoo, either way, I don't think its really much different from how you lose spell levels when you multiclass otherwise.(Like Eldritch knight isn't much affected from spell levels lost from fighter levels and such.) Heck it brings prestige classes more in line with other forms of multiclassing, 'cept that now you can spend feats for that too.

The Razor Princess' Sentinel 3rd boon is pretty awesome.

I do think that the change of the imp from a companion to a familiar is probably the biggest nerf. I mean, I don't really see the reason to tone it down. These tend to be NPC prestige classes rather than player prestige classes, so it makes sense to make it something that'd make for a boss fight. That's a bigger issue, I think, than just missing out on a spell level. I mean, an end boss NPC has probably got enough wishes to pick up that slack. I guess I'm just a bit annoyed because making Kaltessa Iyis current rules-compliant might take some work. I think I just react poorly to rule changes in general 'cause I get used to things being a certain way. That's a me thing more than anything else.

I also have some general confusion. Like, for the Fiendish divinities if we want to use the ISG classes, it's supposed to raise the entrance requirements... does that apply for the ones that already had ISG stuff? Asmodeus, Lamashtu, Mahathallah, Cyth-V'Sug, and whichever archdevils got them already? I dunno. I guess with Lamashtu I could figure that because she has two different sets of Evangelist boons you could have them be separate things. I dunno.

I do like the Soul Drinker changes, though. The boons are definitely a big plus and now they can be something other than spooky item factories.

Also, now that we have Trelmarixian's boons I can make a stat block for Malefactor Tryfilion!

The imp companion of old was powerful but... cumbersome... rules wise. I think imp familiars are a better fit for what imp's roles should be, and now, you can make an imp mauler familiar that's medium sized... :P

(DHTBIFOM - if they come as regular familiars it's good to go for mauler archetype... if they count as improved familiars that lose 'speak with your own kind' then I guess we're out of luck on that one... :P)

I also have some general confusion. Like, for the Fiendish divinities if we want to use the ISG classes, it's supposed to raise the entrance requirements... does that apply for the ones that already had ISG stuff? Asmodeus, Lamashtu, Mahathallah, Cyth-V'Sug, and whichever archdevils got them already? I dunno. I guess with Lamashtu I could figure that because she has two different sets of Evangelist boons you could have them be separate things. I dunno.

If you use the Inner Sea Gods boons and not Book of the Damned, use the rules as detailed in Inner Sea Gods.

If you use the boons detailed in Book of the Damned, use the Book of the Damned requirements, since the Book of the Damned boons skew more powerful (which was the original intent for boons, since you get them at higher level anyway).

In the hopes this does not cause trouble:

I am kind of surprised by the second Sentinel boon for Mestama's worshippers. I suppose I expected something more 'warrior-like' given that the sentinels are (un)holy warriors; and I thought that Mestama just plain loathed males in general, and wouldn't see fit to reward one by turning them female. I do like Mestama, she feels very 'Blair Witch' to me.

I am NOT complaining; the book is wonderful and I love near everything in it. The feats allowing non-sentinel or exalteds to get those boons from a deity are pretty amazing all by themselves. I can think of a lot of characters who can get use out of them.

Jezelda is another great one, I always loved werewolves. As is Haagenti, Mazmezz (ye gods! That art! Blast you people! Pity my ideas about a jorogumo-led spider cult of old Mazzy are down in flames though), Gogunta AKA the Innsmouth Frog, and - heck, just about everyone else.

Great ideas from some of the lesser fiend race write-ups as well. I now imagine an asura cult of monks, for one thing.

One last thing, where is this picture of Vorasha the Ophidian several people mentioned? I haven't found it.

One last thing, where is this picture of Vorasha the Ophidian several people mentioned? I haven't found it.

Medusa-Mutt is on page 151

I still can't find Tabris though...

p. 255

Thank you Rysky! :)

Np ^w^

Couple of Subdomain questions:
1) Why do none of the Kyton Demagogues have the Kyton subdomain (from Champions of Corruption)? I can't think of quasi-deities more likely to give it out.

2) Why isn't the Corruption subdomain (Also from Champions of Corruption) included in the reprinted subdomains?

And a clarification question: in the Diabolist description, it says "must worship an Archdevil, Duke of Hell, or Malebranche". Does that list include the four Night Queens?

Doug M.

So there is one thing I really wonder about: So much has been told about how Tabris was banished for doing too good at his job, but considering that Chronicles of Righteous and Concordance of Rivals aren't apparently self updating books like Book of the Damned is, doesn't that imply its actually more fault of Tabris?

I mean, unless in Pathfinder's cosmology, evil is unending thing that can't be published in book without it becoming outdated while good is limited thing you can sum up in one book :P

It does seem that evil is more effective at being evil in the Pathfinder cosmology than good is at being good. Falls from grace are shockingly common compared to rises to glory. Rescuing souls from the daemons seems like a bad call. In general, good seems to be fighting a loosing battle with fewer resources and worse personal (from a power stand point not a moral one).

But, hey evil is a growth industry (TM).

It does seem that evil is more effective at being evil in the Pathfinder cosmology than good is at being good. Falls from grace are shockingly common compared to rises to glory. Rescuing souls from the daemons seems like a bad call. In general, good seems to be fighting a loosing battle with fewer resources and worse personal (from a power stand point not a moral one).

But, hey evil is a growth industry (TM).

What, one in a thousand celestials fall, but one in a million fiends rise? Yeah, growth industry.

I can see Devils having a high rate of body Dysphoria, moreso than any other Outsider, with all them being made with male bodies whereas other Outsider's genders run the gamut, in addition to misogynistic and oppressive system they live in.

I would assume that devils being depicted as primarily male is more to do with art design than the actual sex of most devils.

You can get some monstrous looking female characters, example hag but making something feminine tends to take the aggressive edge off. Most humanoid monsters are depicted as male.

A lot of art and entertain involves exploiting primal instincts and fears, it's why horror movie villains are almost exclusively male and the point of view character is a woman.

Couple of Subdomain questions:

1) Why do none of the Kyton Demagogues have the Kyton subdomain (from Champions of Corruption)? I can't think of quasi-deities more likely to give it out.

2) Why isn't the Corruption subdomain (Also from Champions of Corruption) included in the reprinted subdomains?

1) Because I didn't realize that subdomain existed, alas. And even then, I'm not sure I would have included it... I'm not a HUGE fan of the outsider race domains since I think they're too limiting. I like the domains the kyton demagogues have as is; it's more flavorful than repeating kyton over and over and over. Feel free to let all of them have access to that subdomain anyway if you want.

2) Also wasn't needed, really. I think that there's enough subdomains as-is, and often for a hardcover it's important to make some tough choices on what should and shouldn't be reprinted.

And a clarification question: in the Diabolist description, it says "must worship an Archdevil, Duke of Hell, or Malebranche". Does that list include the four Night Queens?

Doug M.

It sure does!

Eiseth is cool. :)

Eiseth is cool. :)

With you there, Thomas. Eiseth is a contender for the top spot in my Top 5 archdevils list.