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Elder Evils
High-level threats for your Dungeons & Dragons (R) campaign.
Elder Evils provides DMs with 160 pages of truly wicked threats to challenge high-level heroes. Each "elder evil" described in this nightmarish tome comes with a detailed description, stat blocks for the elder evil and its minions, tips for how to incorporate the elder evil into any D&D campaign, adventure seeds, and maps of the elder evil's lair (complete with encounters and room descriptions). The book also provides guidelines to help DMs create their own unique elder evils as worthy campaign villains and endgame encounters.
Elder Evils provides DMs with 160 pages of truly wicked threats to challenge high-level heroes. Each "elder evil" described in this nightmarish tome comes with a detailed description, stat blocks for the elder evil and its minions, tips for how to incorporate the elder evil into any D&D campaign, adventure seeds, and maps of the elder evil's lair (complete with encounters and room descriptions). The book also provides guidelines to help DMs create their own unique elder evils as worthy campaign villains and endgame encounters.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published December 18, 2007
1 person is currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Robert J. Schwalb
123 books40 followersRobert J. Schwalb, a writer and award-winning game designer best known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons, got his start in 2002 and has never looked back. He has designed or developed almost two hundred gaming books in both print and digital formats for Wizards of the Coast, Green Ronin Publishing, Black Industries, Fantasy Flight Games, and several other companies. Some of his best-known books include the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, Player’s Handbook 3, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, Grimm, and Tome of Corruption. Look for Robert’s first novel in late 2011.
What does Rob have to say?
Fresh from my second go at college, all flushed and giddy for having graduated Magna cum Laude with special honors, I was ready to start writing fiction for a living. Reality didn’t waste any time intruding on my grandiose dream. The need for a steady job—beyond peddling liquor at the now closed Esquire Discount Liquors—became evident when the student loans clamored for repayment. Carpet, tile, and hardwood sales would be my future for a time. A friend ran a store in town and offered me a job. My previous careers had been selling men’s clothes, fast food, and then extended warranties. Flooring was none of these things so I jumped at the chance.
I was terrible. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had a degree in English and Philosophy. Flooring customers don’t quite get pre-Socratics humor. I stuck it out though and supplemented my income by selling liquor a few days a week. I got to chat up the regulars at the liquor store who happened by for their thrice-daily pints of Kessler/Skol/Wild Irish Rose. It seemed my fate was to join many other Philosophy majors and do nothing with my training.
However, one night, I ran across Mongoose Publishing’s open call for book proposals. I thought about it for all of 3 seconds before working up my first pitch. A little under a year later, my first book, The Quintessential Witch, hit the shelves. When I wrote the Witch, 3rd edition rules for Dungeons & Dragons were still new and fresh. The d20 system was gathering steam and gaming entered something of a renaissance as companies were created just to feed the insatiable appetite for all things D&D. There were probably more companies than there were writers and thus it proved a perfect time to break into the industry.
Now I was no stranger to gaming. My Dad introduced me to board games when I was very young with Wizard’s Quest by Avalon Hill. Then I discovered Conan, Dune, Gor, the Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and so on. My interest in fantasy kept growing so when my neighbor offered me Tracy and Laura Hickman’s Rahasia for a quarter, I happily paid. That little adventure changed my world forever. I didn’t have the rules and had no idea what I was doing. I was hungry and figured out enough from the adventure to design my first roleplaying game. “Passages” became popular in my class for a week or two. We’d play during study hall or recess.
My Dad noticed and when he went off to a publishing convention (he worked for a famous Bible publisher in Nashville), he talked with a TSR rep, who I imagine might have been Gary Gygax. My father told him that I was designing my own games, so the TSR fellow, in a deft and generous move, gave him a stack of books and adventures. I had everything but the rules of the game. Luckily, a trip to the bookstore and meeting my soon-to-be Dungeon Master Landon, put the Red Box in my hands and my first character in my imagination. Creating the character was far less interesting than talking about comics, yet when we broke out the dice the next week and played the first game, I was hooked for life.
This all happened at a time when conspiracy theories about Satanism gripped the nation. Certain members of my family bought into the hype and thought my soul was in peril. So I stepped into a much wider world of RPGs. I played everything I could. Top Secret, DC Superheroes, Gamma World,
What does Rob have to say?
Fresh from my second go at college, all flushed and giddy for having graduated Magna cum Laude with special honors, I was ready to start writing fiction for a living. Reality didn’t waste any time intruding on my grandiose dream. The need for a steady job—beyond peddling liquor at the now closed Esquire Discount Liquors—became evident when the student loans clamored for repayment. Carpet, tile, and hardwood sales would be my future for a time. A friend ran a store in town and offered me a job. My previous careers had been selling men’s clothes, fast food, and then extended warranties. Flooring was none of these things so I jumped at the chance.
I was terrible. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had a degree in English and Philosophy. Flooring customers don’t quite get pre-Socratics humor. I stuck it out though and supplemented my income by selling liquor a few days a week. I got to chat up the regulars at the liquor store who happened by for their thrice-daily pints of Kessler/Skol/Wild Irish Rose. It seemed my fate was to join many other Philosophy majors and do nothing with my training.
However, one night, I ran across Mongoose Publishing’s open call for book proposals. I thought about it for all of 3 seconds before working up my first pitch. A little under a year later, my first book, The Quintessential Witch, hit the shelves. When I wrote the Witch, 3rd edition rules for Dungeons & Dragons were still new and fresh. The d20 system was gathering steam and gaming entered something of a renaissance as companies were created just to feed the insatiable appetite for all things D&D. There were probably more companies than there were writers and thus it proved a perfect time to break into the industry.
Now I was no stranger to gaming. My Dad introduced me to board games when I was very young with Wizard’s Quest by Avalon Hill. Then I discovered Conan, Dune, Gor, the Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and so on. My interest in fantasy kept growing so when my neighbor offered me Tracy and Laura Hickman’s Rahasia for a quarter, I happily paid. That little adventure changed my world forever. I didn’t have the rules and had no idea what I was doing. I was hungry and figured out enough from the adventure to design my first roleplaying game. “Passages” became popular in my class for a week or two. We’d play during study hall or recess.
My Dad noticed and when he went off to a publishing convention (he worked for a famous Bible publisher in Nashville), he talked with a TSR rep, who I imagine might have been Gary Gygax. My father told him that I was designing my own games, so the TSR fellow, in a deft and generous move, gave him a stack of books and adventures. I had everything but the rules of the game. Luckily, a trip to the bookstore and meeting my soon-to-be Dungeon Master Landon, put the Red Box in my hands and my first character in my imagination. Creating the character was far less interesting than talking about comics, yet when we broke out the dice the next week and played the first game, I was hooked for life.
This all happened at a time when conspiracy theories about Satanism gripped the nation. Certain members of my family bought into the hype and thought my soul was in peril. So I stepped into a much wider world of RPGs. I played everything I could. Top Secret, DC Superheroes, Gamma World,
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 4, 2013
Very nice 3.5e book. Not for PCs since it's full of both flavor and campaign composition material. Several different examples throughout so it's useful for more than one campaign hook by itself. My brother picked this up at resale and gave it to me - I would have probably bought it anyway if I found it on a bookstore shelf. Lots of tips, mechanics and nasties to give your PCs a hard time as well as the added dramatic punch for a BBEG.
November 24, 2024
I tend to measure an RPG book based on what ideas it sparks for campaigns or adventures.
Some books do very little to create a sense of dynamism or excitement. Many are dry or present uninteresting threats. Some, however, go above and beyond, creating an array of interesting campaign hooks that simply demand to be used.
Elder Evils, true to its name, defines various ancient, malevolent deities or powerful monsters that have the ability to end the world, in one way or another. Each one offers something slightly different, a threat along a different axis, and as such there must be at least one in here for most campaigns to end with a bang. It is hard to pick a favourite - Atropus, of course, the great undead moon, is a classic. But Father Llymic, "The Alien Thought Made Flesh" also appeals. Can't dismiss Ragnorra either - she is perhaps my favourite. An aberration of positive life energy that mutates and corrodes everything she touches. First appearing as a red comet in the sky, when she crash lands, she begins to mutate all life on that world. As players journey closer and closer to the epicenter of her presence, they see the world changing more and more horribly. The earth itself grows pustules and warts, and all around them living things warp and change. Undead flee for their (un)lives as life itself appears to triumph over all... rampant, disgusting life. A final battle against Ragnorra is beyond tense as she attempts to fuse with the planet itself, to make her presence irreversible...
I would love to use each and every Elder Evil one day. Hopefully one day I can use at least one :)
Some books do very little to create a sense of dynamism or excitement. Many are dry or present uninteresting threats. Some, however, go above and beyond, creating an array of interesting campaign hooks that simply demand to be used.
Elder Evils, true to its name, defines various ancient, malevolent deities or powerful monsters that have the ability to end the world, in one way or another. Each one offers something slightly different, a threat along a different axis, and as such there must be at least one in here for most campaigns to end with a bang. It is hard to pick a favourite - Atropus, of course, the great undead moon, is a classic. But Father Llymic, "The Alien Thought Made Flesh" also appeals. Can't dismiss Ragnorra either - she is perhaps my favourite. An aberration of positive life energy that mutates and corrodes everything she touches. First appearing as a red comet in the sky, when she crash lands, she begins to mutate all life on that world. As players journey closer and closer to the epicenter of her presence, they see the world changing more and more horribly. The earth itself grows pustules and warts, and all around them living things warp and change. Undead flee for their (un)lives as life itself appears to triumph over all... rampant, disgusting life. A final battle against Ragnorra is beyond tense as she attempts to fuse with the planet itself, to make her presence irreversible...
I would love to use each and every Elder Evil one day. Hopefully one day I can use at least one :)
May 14, 2019
This already rather messy edition begins to fall apart completely at higher levels, and unfortunately Elder Evils is all about high-level play, so it's rather marred by that association alone. But it has a lot of good and flavorful ideas, and plenty of it would be well worth converting to more robust editions.
November 3, 2022
Fun to read but most of these will never be used due to the insane difficulty levels.
April 7, 2016
Grandes ideias para adversários realmente cósmicos, Elder Evils apresenta uma galeria de criaturas que podem surgir a qualquer momento para destruir mundos inteiros! A grande sacada do livro é analisar como um Mal Ancestral surgiria, sugerindo "sinais do Apocalipse" que põem civilizações em pânico e iniciam campanhas épicas que se decidem cara a cara contra seres que são quase divindades!
March 26, 2010
Great book with great endings for your campaigs.
The ones that thrilled me the most were Atropus, The Leviathan and Pandorym. I won't say what they are here so players won't know it before the DMs, but be aware... They're awesome!!!
The ones that thrilled me the most were Atropus, The Leviathan and Pandorym. I won't say what they are here so players won't know it before the DMs, but be aware... They're awesome!!!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews