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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Book of the Damned (PFRPG)

3.40/5 (based on 16 ratings)
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Book of the Damned (PFRPG)
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Abandon All Hope!

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:

Hero Lab Online
Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Rulebook Subscription.

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Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

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3.40/5 (based on 16 ratings)

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Five Evil Stars for a Five Star Evil Book!

5/5 —

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!

crappy overall

2/5 —

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.

Mostly flavor for DMs, little use to players

1/5 —

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.

Reprints and Bad Artwork

1/5 —

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.

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Liberty's Edge

Thanks Kalindlara! Sounds very spotty. Maybe in a year or two we can have a Manual of the Planes/Great Beyond hardcover. Maybe they haven't done one of those yet because of the past RPG/Campaign Setting separation and now that that's gone, maybe it opens up the possibility to put the planes in hardcover and on the PRD. Who knows. One can hope.
Silver Crusade Contributor

I couldn't say. You'd have to ask Mr. Jacobs about that. ^_^

His Answer:
"We haven't announced one yet. Until we do, even if we are working on one, I wouldn't be at liberty to reveal it here."
Liberty's Edge

Thanks. That does sound nice. I also vaguely recall a comment by someone else, maybe Wes or Sutter or someone, that sounded very veiled and vague and made me (perhaps in overly hopefulness) think that a planar hardcover could be in the future someday.

I do think such a thing is long overdue and I'm surprised we haven't had one by now, as planar adventuring is such a staple that we got one in 3.0 and then *again* in 3.5.
Paizo Employee Creative Director
14 people marked this as a favorite.

With the change in our rulebook line to openly embrace and include world content (AKA include content about the Great Beyond), the possibility of a big hardcover book like the one Samy is asking for moves from 'Nope, can't do it" to "Maybe, would folks be interested in a book like that?"

All I know is I need a map when I get stuck in the Maelstrom more than I need to get out of Hell. ;)

But in any case, I STILL want this book!!
Liberty's Edge
James Jacobs wrote:
"Maybe, would folks be interested in a book like that?"

Absolutely. I am *MUCH* more interested in setting books that detail places than statblock books for more monsters. Planar adventuring is a big part of my RPG heritage, and there just doesn't seem to be a lot of PF support for it yet. An Inner Sea Planes hardcover (or whatever it would be called) that was more flavor and cartography than bestiary and statblocks would be a day one buy for me.

Contributor
10 people marked this as a favorite.
James Jacobs wrote:
With the change in our rulebook line to openly embrace and include world content (AKA include content about the Great Beyond), the possibility of a big hardcover book like the one Samy is asking for moves from 'Nope, can't do it" to "Maybe, would folks be interested in a book like that?"

YES. YES WE WOULD.

;)
4 people marked this as a favorite.

I'd totally pick up a copy. (And write for it... assuming that Todd won't have a full hardcover-length turnover prepared for you by tomorrow morning.)
Silver Crusade Contributor

That said, this topic probably deserves its own thread (rather than hijacking this one).
Contributor
5 people marked this as a favorite.
Isabelle Lee wrote:
I'd totally pick up a copy. (And write for it... assuming that Todd won't have a full hardcover-length turnover prepared for you by tomorrow morning.)

If I was lucky enough to be picked for such a project, let's just say that I don't start pharmacy school until August, and even once I start, that's the sort of select project that I would make time to contribute on in whatever capacity I could either on my own or in collaboration with awesome people I've written with before.

The amount of material I have written on spec already for some planes that's nowhere but my desktop at this point is rather prolific. But I'll shut up and not hijack the thread more.
Kalindlara wrote:
Samy wrote:
Is there a book that addresses the geography of these planes? I don't really know what they're like. I know in the old days there used to be nine levels to the Hells and 666 layers of the Abyss. Is there a PF source to these sorts of things, or do I need to fall back on 3e Manual of the Planes?

There's an article about the various rifts of the Abyss in Pathfinder Adventure Path #76: The Midnight Isles. As for Hell, your best bet is probably Hell Unleashed. There's also the 3.5-era Pathfinder Chronicles supplement The Great Beyond, but it's old enough that I wouldn't consider its contents irrefutably canonical.

That said, for home campaigns, I wholeheartedly support filling in the gaps with the Manual of the Planes. In my opinion, it's one of the absolute best Third Edition books. ^_^

The Great Beyond is mostly flavor/setting info, so I doubt much has changed. Though some is pretty bare-bones, since it's a pretty small book that covers, well, everything.

It should give at least an accurate image of the wider shape of the planes. Much more so than Manual of the Planes at least- PF cosmology deviates from D&D in *major* ways.

The Maelstrom and Abyss are by-far for the largest planes, for example, with the Abyss basically being a series of rifts that surrounds everything.
Silver Crusade Contributor
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Firstly, remember that flavor and setting info can be subject to change as well. (There's at least one element in the original book that, I strongly suspect, would not appear in a revised copy.) As an example, the hardcover Book of the Damned corrects the name for the female demigoddesses of Hell.

Secondly, I'm quite familiar with the differences in the two cosmologies. (It's why we don't have my precious Carceri, Gehenna, or Beastlands anymore.) That's why I used the term "fill in the gaps" - if you need to send the PCs to somewhere in the Outer Planes, the Manual of the Planes has a wealth of locations one could draw upon. And much of its content can be worked into the Pathfinder setting - one could easily decide that the missing planes of the Great Wheel are all floating in the Maelstrom as well.
Dark Archive
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So will that multi headed gargoyle demon lord get new pic or use one of his old ones? I like his first pic more than second one because second one is bit over designed while first was nicely simple and elegant.
Kalindlara wrote:
Firstly, remember that flavor and setting info can be subject to change as well. (There's at least one element in the original book that, I strongly suspect, would not appear in a revised copy.) As an example, the hardcover Book of the Damned corrects the name for the female demigoddesses of Hell.

Sure, but there's a big difference between renamings (for obvious reasons) or filling in blanks, and changes in the structure in significant ways. I don't know any of the latter- the closest would be the addition of outsiders not-yet-invented.

Quote:


Secondly, I'm quite familiar with the differences in the two cosmologies. (It's why we don't have my precious Carceri, Gehenna, or Beastlands anymore.) That's why I used the term "fill in the gaps" - if you need to send the PCs to somewhere in the Outer Planes, the Manual of the Planes has a wealth of locations one could draw upon. And much of its content can be worked into the Pathfinder setting - one could easily decide that the missing planes of the Great Wheel are all floating in the Maelstrom as well.

At that point you're talking about pretty major changes.... which, hey, is a perfectly fine thing to do with your game, but I'd call that more making a hybrid cosmology.

Personally I'd limit older material to grabbing specific sites and such.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
With the change in our rulebook line to openly embrace and include world content (AKA include content about the Great Beyond), the possibility of a big hardcover book like the one Samy is asking for moves from 'Nope, can't do it" to "Maybe, would folks be interested in a book like that?"

*Looks at username*

Yeah, I'd buy that in an instant. Especially if it was you, Wes, and Todd as the primary writers.

Yes I would be interested in a Planar hardcover with setting specific material. Does a thread need to be started with wants and expectations or is that too far off and counter productive at this point...and time of year. ;)
Paizo Employee Creative Director
11 people marked this as a favorite.

It should absolutely move to a new thread, but for what it's worth, the demand for such a book is (and has been for a long time) pretty obvious. Demand for a book like this and others like it is, for me, one of the PRIMARY reasons I've been pushing to scuttled the "world-neutral" aspect of the rulebook line, so that we can open up our offerings to include a wider range of topics like this in the line.

Doesn't mean a planes book is on any schedule, though. We've got lots of topics we want to cover!

In any case, yes, let's move this aspect of the discussion to another thread and focus back on Book of the Damned here.
Silver Crusade

So about them Phistophilii...
James Jacobs wrote:

It should absolutely move to a new thread, but for what it's worth, the demand for such a book is (and has been for a long time) pretty obvious. Demand for a book like this and others like it is, for me, one of the PRIMARY reasons I've been pushing to scuttled the "world-neutral" aspect of the rulebook line, so that we can open up our offerings to include a wider range of topics like this in the line.

Doesn't mean a planes book is on any schedule, though. We've got lots of topics we want to cover!

In any case, yes, let's move this aspect of the discussion to another thread and focus back on Book of the Damned here.

Thanks for the reply. :)

I'll start a new thread when I get a min. ;)
6 people marked this as a favorite.
Rysky wrote:
So about them Phistophilii...

They make excellent targets for slashes from burning scimitars. All those contracts! They go up like flash paper in a furnace when you burn them, and the look those devils get on their faces when their precious, precious words go up in smoke? Priceless.

Silver Crusade
3 people marked this as a favorite.

Nice.

They're also sexy as hell.

I am really looking forward to getting boons and obediences for the Dark Lords.
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Rysky wrote:

Nice.

They're also sexy as hell.

Eeew... gross.

Silver Crusade
Shensen wrote:
Rysky wrote:

Nice.

They're also sexy as hell.

Eeew... gross.

:(

Silver Crusade
2 people marked this as a favorite.

So about them Succubi...
Dark Archive

But Rysky we all know there is nothing sexier than a sweet talker, and there is no better sweet talker than an apostate devil :P
4 people marked this as a favorite.
ulgulanoth wrote:
But Rysky we all know there is nothing sexier than a sweet talker, and there is no better sweet talker than an apostate devil :P

Only because there aren't any yugoloths in Golarion. ;)

1 person marked this as a favorite.

What about Erodaemons?
1 person marked this as a favorite.
King of the Crosstrade wrote:
ulgulanoth wrote:
But Rysky we all know there is nothing sexier than a sweet talker, and there is no better sweet talker than an apostate devil :P
Only because there aren't any yugoloths in Golarion. ;)

You tell them, Shemmy.

The Exchange
James Jacobs wrote:
Flynn Greywalker wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Paladinosaur wrote:

Ohhh, its in the RPG line. I'm really happy with this route.

Is James Jacobs developing this?

Nope.

In that I just finished developing it last Monday, that is. So the present tense is no longer accurate. :-P

James, a few quick questions. Will this give details including encounter tables, maps of some of the levels of these planes and more unique monsters in them? I am hoping so. I hope this builds from the existing knowledge and fleshes things out in greater details (so a GM can run campaigns or simple treks to each).

RicMTheGM

No encounter tables. Not really any maps—we talk a little bit about the planes, but the primary focus of the book is on the denizens of those planes, and the primary focus there is on the fiendish demigods.

Makes sense. It sounds like great material.i look forward to it. Thanks James.

Liberty's Edge
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Opened up the new thread regarding the Manual of the Planes here.
Silver Crusade
4 people marked this as a favorite.
Thomas Seitz wrote:
What about Erodaemons?

I love the new art they (and Lilitus) got in Bestiary 6 ^w^

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Rysky wrote:
Thomas Seitz wrote:
What about Erodaemons?
I love the new art they (and Lilitus) got in Bestiary 6 ^w^

Agreed. The new Erodaemon just looks so forlorn; and I find it amazing just how utterly creepy they made the Lilitu look by giving them that stretch of blank skin over their eyes.

Contributor
3 people marked this as a favorite.
Eric Hinkle wrote:

Agreed. The new Erodaemon just looks so forlorn; and I find it amazing just how utterly creepy they made the Lilitu look by giving them that stretch of blank skin over their eyes.

The erodaemon's expression is just so delightfully bitter. That just fits so well with them.

2 people marked this as a favorite.

It is a great piece of artwork. So too it Lilitu's.

James, will there be any info/rules on the diabolism(Not the PrC) form of worship?

I hope this is the right place for this, but with all the discussion about erodaemons (the daemonic equivalent of the succubi), I wonder -- would the Pakalchi sahkil count as the sahkil version of them? The fear that concentrate on is of failing relationships, after all.

I was just thinking about having a group composed of four pairaka divs, two pakalchi, and one erodaemon who appear as humans to slowly destroy some city state from within via manipulation, and if their multiple 'themes' seem to work together well.
Paizo Employee Managing Developer
7 people marked this as a favorite.
Eric Hinkle wrote:
I hope this is the right place for this, but with all the discussion about erodaemons (the daemonic equivalent of the succubi), I wonder -- would the Pakalchi sahkil count as the sahkil version of them? The fear that concentrate on is of failing relationships, after all.

When I designed the pakalchi, the idea was for them to fit in the same/similar CR band and "theme" as the succubus. I really wanted to deviate from the lust aspect, but I wanted to pakalchi to have some of the same tricks.

Adam Daigle wrote:
Eric Hinkle wrote:
I hope this is the right place for this, but with all the discussion about erodaemons (the daemonic equivalent of the succubi), I wonder -- would the Pakalchi sahkil count as the sahkil version of them? The fear that concentrate on is of failing relationships, after all.
When I designed the pakalchi, the idea was for them to fit in the same/similar CR band and "theme" as the succubus. I really wanted to deviate from the lust aspect, but I wanted to pakalchi to have some of the same tricks.

I'd say you did an amazing job with them. The Sahkil as a whole are some of the best new outsiders Paizo has done.

Paizo Employee Managing Developer
2 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm flattered and appreciate your compliment! I hope to do more with them in the future, but this book reveals a bit more them than we were able to do with a few Bestiary pages, so that's a good start.
Paizo Employee Creative Director
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Monkeygod wrote:
James, will there be any info/rules on the diabolism(Not the PrC) form of worship?

A little bit. About as much as there was in the first Book of the Damned. The focus of this book remains on worship of the fiendish demigods themselves though.

I am excited to see this book although it seems like it wont have much player use and is more of a DM tool. Nothing wrong with that of course its just the impression that i get. I wish this book was out already. My group is currently breaking into hell to steal back the contracts that several players made with devils. Seems like a useful book for our DM right now.
Adam Daigle wrote:
I'm flattered and appreciate your compliment! I hope to do more with them in the future, but this book reveals a bit more them than we were able to do with a few Bestiary pages, so that's a good start.

Good. I am interested in learning more of how they get along with other fiends like the daemons and divs and kytons, though I'd gotten the idea that normally the daemons were the fiends even other fiends loathed.

Also, will this book have any information on fiends like the Oni and Rakshasa?
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Eric Hinkle wrote:
Also, will this book have any information on fiends like the Oni and Rakshasa?

Yes! *fingers crossed for unlikely rakshasa bloodline for bloodrager*

The cover for this book is amazing!

Did anyone get a better picture of the Four Horsemen illustration showed at PaizoCon in the BotD preview?
Silver Crusade

Oooo!

Very nice!!

Carry on!

--C.
Dark Archive
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Good cover
#squadgoals
Silver Crusade
8 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Yep, from left to right: head of logistics, CEO, head of HR.
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