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If you feel that a game of dungeon delving isn't complete without a few monsters being overcome by the player characters, or vice versa, and you are bored with the monsters given in the Monster Manual, then you could do far worse than pick up The Tome of Horrors. For an extremely reasonable price ($29.95) you get over 400 monsters to use in your d20 System game.
That's a lot of monsters. Most of the monsters were taken from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st edition and converted to the Third Edition of the game. The conversions are mostly done by Scott Greene, and it's quite clear that Scott knows his monsters well. The preface to the book notes that almost 300 of the monsters are 1E conversions, over 25 compiled from various Necromancer Games products, and there are over 100 entirely new monsters.
Appearance and Artwork
The book is a quite attractive hardcover, even though the pages are black and white. There are 24 interior artists credited with working on the book, so there are a variety of different drawing styles. I found some of these styles more effective than others, as you might expect. The formatting is normally quite clear, although there are times when the stat-blocks of the monsters split onto two pages, or the text does very weird things to avoid the artwork. Some of the latter cases are quite awful.
The front and back covers of the book are made up to look like a tome of dark secrets, which is a nice touch. The spine has the title of the book printed in extremely clear lettering - unfortunately the title isn't quite so clear on the front cover.
There is a problem with some batches of the Tome of Horrors: an inferior glue was inadvertently used on the spine, with the result that the pages of the Tome might fall out of the book. Necromancer games were quite appalled by this discovery, and have instituted a replacement scheme - if your copy of the Tome proves to be defective, you should visit Necromancer Games' website: www.necromancergames.com for details on this scheme.
What's Inside?
With regard to the contents of the Tome of Horrors, it has a large number of monsters. That probably understates the matter.
The monsters are arranged in alphabetical order, with some entries being references to a monster listed in an appendix. For example, the Foo Dog entry has "See the Templates Appendix, under Foo Creature."
Pages 4 to 285 cover most of the monsters in the book, from Adherer to Zombie, Juju. Some of the monsters are inspired, some are terrible. I quite like the Skull Spider, an original creation of Erica Balsley, which is basically a spider that lives in the skull of its victim - seeing a walking skull is one of those nice little moments I enjoy inflicting... sharing with my players.
Of the monsters that are terrible, it seems that is mostly this is because they're conversions of 1E monsters that weren't that inspired in their original version. The ultimate example of this is the Flumph, a lawful good floating jellyfish that really doesn't have much going for it at all. "Flumphs are small, very strange creatures that spend their days floating along looking for food and water. They are non-offensive and only attack when actively hunting for food." Huh? Why bother?
However, there aren't really that many flumphs in the book - the vast majority of the monsters are extremely useful, especially for people who want to convert an older edition adventure for use in a 3E game.
The converted monsters in the Tome of Horrors are generally closer to their 1E roots than those that Wizards of the Coast have converted in their 3E books. This can be seen as both a virtue and a flaw; in some cases, the 1E version of a monster really wasn't that well balanced or inspiring, and the WotC conversion is superior. However, in some cases the reconceptualisation that WotC have done with a monster has changed it utterly, and thus isn't that useful for people who prefer the older monster. There are quite a few cases when both versions are good, and either may be used to challenge and confound your players.
An example of the problems with the Tome conversion style can be found with the Groaning Spirit or Banshee. In the WotC version, she's been changed from a 7 Hit Dice monster to a 26 Hit Dice monster of CR 17 - a truly legendary threat. The Tome of Horrors keeps here as 7 HD, with a CR of 7. Unfortunately for the Tome, her ability to wail is likely to slay most of a standard 7th level party - and as it's a death effect, they need resurrection, not raise dead to counter that effect. The wail ability and her challenge rating are too far out of synch. The result is a monster that some times is hardly any challenge at all - with only seven Hit Dice, and at other times destroys the party. Hmm.
The counter to this is a compatibility issue when you convert old modules - the new banshee just wouldn't fit.
WotC are not immune to the problem of monster powers, but the WotC designers do tend to be more conservative than the Tome designers are about such matters. I generally prefer the more conservative approach.
The Demons and Devils get special attention in the Tome of Horrors, with many of their unique personages being described, as well as many other sorts of fiendish creatures. Baphomet, Fraz-Urb'Luu, Orcus and Pazazu are just a small selection of the demon lords and princes given; Bael, Geryon and Lucifer are some of the Dukes and Arch-Devils of Hell that are here. With Challenge Ratings of up to 39 for Lucifer, there are plenty of challenges in the Tome for groups of all power levels.
The Tome of Horrors also brings back the fiendish groups of the Daemons and Demondands, as well as the two Slaad Lords. This is quite welcome to an old 1E player and DM such as myself.
There are a few niggling rules problems in the book, many of which have been fixed in the official errata available on the NG website; I've not found any that are really game breakers.
Appendices: There are five appendices in the book:
Animals is the first, with such animals as Deer, Foxes, and Sheep presented. There's not really much to say about them.
Templates is the second appendix, with 27 pages of templates: Abomination, Animal Lord, Beast of Chaos, Bleeding Horror, Dire Creature, Foo Creature, Skeleton Warrior, Slime Zombie, Spectral Troll, Therianthrope, Thessalmonster and Yellow Musk Zombie being the templates available.
There are plenty of examples of these templates applied to normal creatures. This is very welcome, as the example creatures can be used as normal monsters quite easily.
Poisonous Snakes is the third appendix. This is quite an interesting section, as it gives alternative rules for the poisons of many various types of snakes. For instance, the King Cobra is distinguished from the Green Mamba - the Cobra's poison has a DC of 15, and deals 1d8 Con/1d4 Str, 1d4 Con with a 1 minute onset time, whilst the Mamba's poison has a DC of 18, an onset time of 10 minutes, and deals 2d4 Con/1d6 Str, rapid distress and 2d4 Con!
Rapid distress is just one of a number of new poison effects, others include bleeding, internal bleeding and tissue damage.
I have mixed feelings about this material. Whilst the poison effects are interesting, I do feel that they make the snakes too deadly. This may be the most common flaw in the Tome of Horrors - the monsters can be quite deadly, perhaps more so than their challenge rating would indicate.
The fourth appendix lists the Challenge Ratings for all the creatures. From the Floating Eye of 1/10, up to Devil: Lucifer (Arch) of 39, a wide range of ratings is listed here. This is a useful resource. Unfortunately, NG followed WotC's lead by not including a list of monsters sorted by environment. That is something that would have been a great help in a book with as many monsters as this one.
The book closes with the Legal Appendix. The standard Open Gaming License and designation of Open Game Content is there, but NG have also given brilliant guidelines on how to use the OGL. Because many of the monsters are included with the permission of Wizards of the Coast, the copyright declarations could have become extremely long and complex. Necromancer Games have done their best to make using the monsters in the Tome of Horrors as easy as possible. This is a feature I much appreciate.
Thoughts and Conclusions
I seem to have spent a lot of time talking about the flaws I've found in the Tome of Horrors. This is not indicative of the hugely helpful resource I have found it for planning and running my games. The first time my players saw me using the Tome of Horrors they realised that their carefully memorised information from the Monster Manual was no longer of use - this alone made its purchase worthwhile!
The Tome is an excellent resource of monsters for d20 System games, primarily for the huge range of creatures it provides. It doesn't really provide you with much more than the creature's statistics - although the demons, daemons and devils do get more description to help you place them in your campaign - but the quality of the creatures as challenges for the party is generally excellent.
That Necromancer Games were able to get permission from Wizards of the Coast to convert so many of the older monsters to the 3E form says a lot for Necromancer Games' and Wizards' dedication to players of the game. It is unfortunate that the impression that NG gained from Wizards - that almost none of the monsters in the Tome of Horrors would be converted in a Wizards product for a few years - has proved to be incorrect, though I do believe that this was inadvertent and without malice on Wizards' part. Indeed, although it has given me two versions of several monsters, the overlap is inconsequential to me. In many cases they are so different, they might as well have different names.
In conclusion, the Tome of Horrors is one book of monsters I am very glad to have, providing a large range of monstrous challenges I can set my players against. If you enjoy games with more than a modicum of the Hack and Slash form of adventuring, this book is probably for you!
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