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Wandering the crowded floors of my local gaming store I stopped to peruse the "D20" section as I had heard Savage Species just came out. After picking up my copy of that I was surprised to see a book I’d heard nothing about. It held the Sword and Sorcery label and bore the title "The Tome of Horrors, A Folio of Fiends Malevolent and Benign". That tag line struck a chord deep in my being, recalling my younger days and my first purchase of the Fiend Folio. This caused me to hesitate a bit, I imagined poor quality, overly grainy artwork and a heap of creatures whose use I always found somewhat limited. Despite my misgivings I picked it up, and (obviously) purchased it, despite the weighty $29.95 price tag. This is my first review so, please, be kind.
The Tome of Horrors is a 325 page hardcover volume published (via Sword and Sorcery Studios and Necromancer Games labels) by White Wolf. It is, as stated on the cover, a tome of fiends malevolent and benign (however I’ve never met a benign fiend, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt) containing over 400 monsters for your 3rd edition campaign. The cover follows the pattern established by Wizards of the Coast with the core rule books, in that it gives the impression of an old tome, bound in some sort of exotic animal hide with a symbol in the center (in this case a demonic skull motif). The binding appears stable and should stand up to typical game-table abuse.
The interior is black and white with a 1" gray margin, decorated with arcane symbols. The text density is good and there are ample illustrations (I can’t note any creature that does not have an associated illustration). The artwork quality varies from outstanding (see Ogre: Half Ogre) to mediocre (see Elemental Dragon: Water Dragon). At 325 pages (not counting two pages of advertisements in the back) the book represents a pretty good value compared to other products in the D20 line, Deities & Demigods, for example, carries the same price tag and comes in 103 pages lighter. Add to this the pure density of this book, the layout is reminiscent of Wizards of the Coast’s Monster Manual, jamming as many creatures as possible in the space given.
What do you get? Well you get nearly every creature that Wizards of the Coast left behind. All those myriad of baddies from the original Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, Monster Manual II and even a few stragglers from the ill-fated Monstrous Compendium line and published adventures. You also get a handful of original creations from Scott Greene. All of these entries have been updated and revised for 3rd Edition and are ready for you to drop into your campaign. While I haven’t had the time to actually run a game using any of these entries I did take the time to compare relative power levels with existing sources and the Challenge Ratings appear to be accurate. A few old standbys from have been reclassified as Hazards (The Hound of Ill Omen and the Bookworm) but they are still found right where they should be. The chapters are arranged alphabetically with some key words thrown in to let you know exactly where a chapter begins and ends (example Chapter F states that it contains "False Spider to Frost Man").
Where are the freaking Templates? Don’t worry! There are a handful of templates in the back for those template lovers amongst us, a full dozen of them to be exact, complete with numerous examples. Many of these templates are taken from pre-existing monsters, the Wolfwere for example is now represented by the Therianthrope template, Foo Dogs, by the Foo Creature template, etc… I think this expands on the usefulness of these creatures and allows a DM to throw some unexpected curves at players. Yeah that innocent donkey pulling the farmers cart is actually an Asswere (the Therianthrope template applied to a donkey, one of the examples provided) that has been terrorizing the village. You want a template to make animals "Dire" you got one of those now too, "lookout is a Dire Vole!"
Appendices: Along with the template appendix there is also an Appendix of Animals and a separate appendix for Snakes (why these weren’t just placed with the animals is beyond me, but it does have some nice poison information). The final appendix is a Challenge Rating table, which lists all the creatures in order by challenge rating (a page reference included in this table would have been nice).
The Downsides: It can’t all be sweetness and light, yes this book does have some room for improvement. As I said above the art quality is inconsistent and the way the text sometimes wraps around the art, leading to some odd formatting errors. Page numbers would have been nice on the Challenge rating list, just to make reference that much quicker. While the Preface states that Wizards of the Coast will not reprint information contained in the Tome of Horrors, I have already found this to be erroneous. The ToH has an entry for Orcus, which can also be found in the Book of Vile Darkness by Monte Cook (there are a couple other examples as well, this one just stood out the most in my mind). Text for each entry is short (much like WotC’s Monster Manual) giving you a very brief description before launching into technical details. A bit more "color" text and information on the behavior and habits of monsters would be nice (one of the few things I liked about the 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendium binder was the Ecology entries).
Overall: I give this book a 3 (Average) for style, the artwork, while inconsistent has enough good to even out the bad, the layout is common for D20 standards and the text is useful, if somewhat slim, it falls well into the standard set by WotC. For Substance however I must give the Tome of Horrors full marks, it is absolutely jam-packed with creatures, templates and hazards, the information is useful, especially to those of us who have been playing D&D for years. I could now dust off my copy of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and with much fewer tweaks, run it as a 3rd edition module (Vegepygmy’s CRs range from ½ (Commoner) to 6 (Chief)). I feel it’s a fine addition to the shelf of any DM, no matter what his campaign world.
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