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Review Summary: This is a solid product that will appeal to gamers enjoying monster manuals and GMs wanting to actually scare their players. However, it kind of left me wondering.
Legions of Hell is a d20 monster manual by Chris Pramas. Published by Green Ronin in 2001 and retailing at USD 14.95, it allows the GMs to enrich their campaign setting with some of the most horrific demons ever seen in fantasy. It doesn’t limit itself in presenting the fiends though (the most weak ones, as stated in the book). It also provides a minor description of Hell, the place where the souls of Lawful Evil mortals go when they die. Three new prestige classes are described in Appendix 1, Balan’s Jackal, the Mountebank and the Plaguelord. GMs not allowing their players to play Lawful Evil characters will obviously not use them in their campaign though. Appendix 2 discusses about fallen celestials, while appendix 3 gives information on the angelic choirs and a summary of many of the important fallen celestials.
What you get: For your hard cash you get a soft cover, 64-page book. No typos were spotted in the text. The fonts used are small (probably ‘10’) so there is plenty of material in these pages. The demons are presented in the standard Monster Manual format.
The strong points: Although obviously not a DnD product, inevitably a comparison is to be made with older DnD (pro-d20, mostly Planescape) manuals describing demons. This one wins by far. Although the ideas are not innovative they are presented in a fresh manner; the book reeks of evil. Some of the demons have a certain domain, like Vuall, the Duke of Pleasure, or Furcas, Duke of Rhetoric. While this reminded me of In Nomine, it is a good way of giving the demons an actual agenda above the casual ‘(s)he is a demon, (s)he wants to do evil’ story. Their descriptions are more than fair, providing a small history and minor incidents in the case of the more powerful denizens of the pit.
The art in this product compliments the text in the best manner possible. I found the most ugly picture to be the one in the front cover. It is not surprising that some of the drawings invoke a cthuluseque feel, like the Soulsniffer or the Painshrieker; this is a Green Ronin product whose Freeport series marries CoC in a fantasy background.
The weak points: The book states that it is the first in a series of monster compendiums, its subtitle is ‘Book of fiends, volume 1’. I had the constant feel that something is missing from the book. The amount of information provided is high indeed, but still it seems foggy, as if not everything is on the right place. It gives the impression that it was not designed as a monster compendium but as a clone between an accessory to Hell and a compendium ( I admit I have never read Pramas’ previous ‘Guide to Hell’ under the AD&D logo). As an accessory it fails, as a compendium it is definitely above average.
I suppose this has to do with the fact that it is not exactly a book of fiends: it is a book of fiends according to the idea Pramas has about the multiversal Hell (note: I do not like the multiversal Hell). In that sense, the fiends are strongly linked to one another and one’s schemes affect the other’s plans. The fact that this is again the Hell of the multiverse gives a bizarre feel to some of the fiends in the book like Krotep, Pharaoh of Axor. If your campaign never had an equivalent of the Egyptian civilization, Krotep, supposed son of the Egyptian god Set (another denizen of Hell), would have some trouble fitting in.
The other thing I didn’t enjoy is the common practice of naming demons with demonic names from the Christian tradition. Demons that are described in the Bible or other books gain a totally new agenda while retaining the same name. It doesn’t feel neither right nor scary for game purposes, especially because the book provides this unifying theory behind the origins of Hell and its denizens. This assumes that the whole multiverse has this same Hell. I don’t like it, but maybe it’s just me.
The answer to that is simple; remove what you don’t enjoy. There are many people though who don’t have enough time to ponder on the changes and so this kind of product would be very interesting but of limited use. I will use some of the demons with the stats provided, but I am afraid that most of the background stories (not necessarily the agendas) will have to go. Hell has to suit my campaign, not my campaign Pramas’ Hell.
Conclusion: Although it seems I spent more time on the weak points than the strong ones, the product is solid. If putting scary demons in your campaign is a necessity, it is a good purchase. It will also appeal to people enjoying old Planescape, the idea of Baatezu, the eternal conflict between good and evil and the nine layers of Hell. And that’s exactly why I was left wondering: I enjoyed Planescape; why do I have trouble with this product?
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The 2012 re-examination: A solid product that can be easily mixed with other products of the 3E era to produce your desired demonic result. Reading it a few days back, I had once again this quaint feeling of something being amiss. Let's blame it on my fondness of Planescape and leave it at that, because Legions of Hell passes the test of time with ease.
