Lords of Madness

[Cynical Cat]

The short version: If you want to add some Lovecraftian style horror to your D&D game, it is quite good. If you don't it isn't the book for you.


The long version:

The book is all about aberrations and their place in your campaign.

Chapter 1: General talk about aberrant focused campaigns. Useful, but not spectacular.

Chapter 2: Aboleths. All the monster sections have anatomy diagrams which are quite nice and summaries of what kind of magic items they can wear with their weird bodies. Feats, magic, a prestige class and backgroud detail are added. Emphasis on the fact they remember a time before there was gods. Overall: good.

Chapter 3: Beholders. Nothing really new if you are already knowledgable about beholders. A few feats and the beholder mage prestige class.

Chapter 4: Mindflayers. Mostly a recap of other material and upgrading 2nd edition stuff to 3.5. Good. Major change: The mind flayer origin has been altered. Their multiverse spanning empire was at the end of time. Facing some terrible disaster, they hurled back in time. Then they enslaved the Gith while trying to rebuild their empire and their empire collapse. I wasn't too happy with this change at first, but it grew on me. The potential over empire of the future is more frightening than the lost and never to be reclaimed empire of the past.

Chapter 5: Neogi. Not much new, but a good section.

Chapter 6: Grell. Intelligent hunters from a world with different physical laws. They go from just another monster to a sinister menace. Excellent.

Chapter 7: Tsochar. A new race, a mass of sentient snake like strands that meld together. They are capable of inhabiting bodies and travel by gates from their really nasty world. When they inhabit a body they choose to either parasitize it or ripe out and replace the central nervous system. I like the bastards.

Chapter 8: New monsters. Sort of. Some of them are new and some of them are critters we have seen before, albeit some of them were back in the foggy days of 2nd edition. Ulitharids, Hive Mothers, Directors, Gas Spores, Half-Farspawn, and Sithilars all make appearances. Definitely usefull.

Chapter 9: PC stuff. Anti-aberration feats and prestige classes, aberrant blood feats (for the Lovecraftian crossbreeding touch), some new spells, ancient and evil gods, the Fleshwarper prestige class (grafts, grafts, grafts), and some new grafts. Good stuff overall.

[frigidmagi]

Anything on aberrant focused cults?

[Cynical Cat]

Anything on aberrant focused cults?

A little. The beholder entry contains some stuff on beholder cults, for example. Some of the prestige classes (Fleshwarper) and feats (Aberrant Blood ones) are quite appropriate for cults. The grafts section is also quite handy for cults.