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Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:23 pm Heroes of Horror

Another month, another new book from WotC. (Actually more than one new book, but I don't buy FR or Eberron books.)

Heroes of Horror is the 2nd in the D&D Genre Series. It is $29.95, 157 pages (technically 160, but the last 3 are ads), and covers (what else) the horror genre.

Why did I expect it to suck?
Not for the usual reason, general incompetence of both writers and editors at WotC, but simply because its been done. And done. And done again. And worse, done quite well. Some has been by WotC, the Book of Vile Darkness, Libris Mortis, and Lords of Madness, are all essentially horror genre books. Some has been by other people, Nightmares of Mine and Horror Hero being the top two for me. And of course it has been done fair to thorough suckitude by WotC in the past, some of the Ravenloft material being more pretentious and puerile than useful. So what I expected when I opened this was a useless, tired old rehash of stuff WotC has already sold 2-3 times in the past.
Fortunately, they managed to screw that up completely, and Heroes of Horror is mostly (over 75%) actual, real, true, new material. So right there, they get major credit. Although for me it is still somewhat of a rehash of other material I have purchased, not everyone will have such an extensive collection of horror campaign development and rules material, and they will find the first three chapters (Chapter 1: Dread Encounters, Chapter 2: Dread Adventures, Chapter 3: A Horror Campaign) to be useful and informative. The only actual flaw I would cite is the lack of more concrete examples, that also was the main shortcoming in Heroes of Battle. Of course that is compensated somewhat by the quality of the examples, particularly in Chapter 1.

And the crunchy bits?
Once again, I was shocked. Although half of the shock was mitigated by reading the preview information on the WotC site that revealed they were using the "taint" model from L5R, modified in Oriental Adventures, and repeated in Unearthed Arcana, what they didn't prepare me for was that the system was not only actively elaborated, but also improved! More, as they had stated they were not using the Ravenloft horror check model or the Call of Cthulu Sanity model, which also appears in Unearthed Arcana, what they didn't elaborate on was the alternate system they presented. In some ways it is the RL system, while Taint is near the Sanity system. But they managed to take the essence of both and create a new mechanic to encompass the effects, one that takes full advantage of the (overdeveloped) D20 D&D game system rules. And its good! That makes all of Chapter 4: Rules of Horror a major winner for me.
Chapter 5: Heroes and Antiheroes covers the player's end of the crunchy bits, and once again, I have to say it is good. (Or at least really, really Evil.) The base classes are good, the prestige classes are nice, the feats and spells are interesting. (Although at least one is excessively disturbing in its material component.) The only downside is that several feats and spells are revisions of such from the Book of Vile Darkness and Libris Mortis, and I disapprove of that. And of course there is my standard distaste for the ever-multiplying hoard of feats and spells and such in multiple books. But even that is somewhat ameliorated by the higher quality of those in this book.
The last part of this is Chapter 6: Creatures of the Night, which has two parts. First is a short section on standard creature types and their use in horror adventures. the rest is the usual collection of new creatures to slaughter. As with feats and spells, I dislike the ever expanding hoard of such, but here again, there are some intriguing critters. The Unholy Scion template in particular is worth putting up with the section. (Samwise says: Use a template today!)

Wait, you like it? But you don't like anything!
Actually, I hate most everything that isn't high quality work, and let off with mild disdain anything that is merely of acceptable quality. And in this case, Heroes of Horror manages to sate me, at least for the most part. As with Heroes of Battle, I am more disappointed that it wasn't MORE, particularly since what it is manages to actually be good. But then I'm irritating that way, and once I get something of quality I want ten times more and then some. So yes, my biggest "complaint" about this is that it was "only" 157 pages and $29.95. With the quality of the content they had going, I wish it had been 320 pages for $49.95 or something.
So yes, I liked this. Go get a copy. Make your players hate all that is Evil, and experience the horrors in trying to fight it.

Mon Oct 17, 2005 7:15 am

I had a similar reaction. I did not care for Heroes of Battle but Heroes of Horror is a substantial improvement. I particularly like the Taint rules. This will make a nice addition to the campaign.

In fact, I will go so far as to say that the idea occurs to me that it might make an interesting campaign if all (non-divine?) magic was subject to taint. If one follows the Boccob/Tharizdun hypothesis (I forget which Dragon its in off the top of my head), perhaps magic does not "fade" but becomes "tainted." Boccob's alignment becomes NE?
_________________
GVD

Mon Oct 17, 2005 7:35 am

Mon Oct 17, 2005 9:41 am

Mon Oct 17, 2005 12:52 pm

Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:34 am

Dragon #70 has the original Boccob writeup, but I think Rasgon means the article from Polyhedron #128 which is reproduced here.

Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:48 am

Wed Oct 19, 2005 5:01 am