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Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations
An art-filled sourcebook about aberrations in the D&D world.
Lords of The Book of Aberrations takes a comprehensive look at the most bizarre monsters of the D&D world, and the heroes who fight them. It provides detailed information about beholders, mind flayers, aboleths, and other popular aberrations, while also introducing several new aberrations. In addition, this book provides new rules, feats, tactics, spells, and equipment for characters that hunt aberrations. Extensive story and campaign elements and flavor information add interest and dimension to playing or fighting creatures of this type. The book itself features a prestige format, with heavy use of art throughout and a full-painted cover.
Lords of The Book of Aberrations takes a comprehensive look at the most bizarre monsters of the D&D world, and the heroes who fight them. It provides detailed information about beholders, mind flayers, aboleths, and other popular aberrations, while also introducing several new aberrations. In addition, this book provides new rules, feats, tactics, spells, and equipment for characters that hunt aberrations. Extensive story and campaign elements and flavor information add interest and dimension to playing or fighting creatures of this type. The book itself features a prestige format, with heavy use of art throughout and a full-painted cover.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2005
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64 people want to read
About the author
Richard Baker
84 books226 followersA best-selling author and award-winning game designer, Richard Baker is known for his novels in the Forgotten Realms setting and his work on the Dungeons & Dragons game. His Realms novels include Condemnation (book 3 of the War of the Spider Queen), the Last Mythal trilogy, and the Blades of the Moonsea trilogy. He is currently working on a new military-themed science fiction series centered on the character Sikander North; Valiant Dust, the first book in the new series, debuts in November 2017 from Tor Books.
A native of Ocean City, New Jersey, Rich graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 and went on to serve as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy. When he's not writing fantasy or science fiction, he works in game publishing. He's the founder of Sasquatch Game Studio, a small game company based in Auburn, Washington.
Rich currently resides in the Seattle area with his wife, Kim, and their daughters Alex and Hannah. His interests include gaming (naturally), history, hiking, racquetball, and the Philadelphia Phillies.
A native of Ocean City, New Jersey, Rich graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 and went on to serve as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy. When he's not writing fantasy or science fiction, he works in game publishing. He's the founder of Sasquatch Game Studio, a small game company based in Auburn, Washington.
Rich currently resides in the Seattle area with his wife, Kim, and their daughters Alex and Hannah. His interests include gaming (naturally), history, hiking, racquetball, and the Philadelphia Phillies.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 9, 2015
The system of types and subtypes introduced in third edition made a lot of things pretty simple. Ranger favored enemies, exactly what a protection from evil spell protected you from, bonuses and penalties being applied consistently--overall, I think it was a nice change. But occasionally, you run into something that doesn't quite fit. What exactly is a "fey" other than someone who likes nature, and why aren't elves fey? Isn't "native outsiders" a contradiction in terms? And, relative to this book, what is it that unites all aberrations into a single type?
The biggest complaint I have after reading Lords of Madness is that I still don't know the answer. It's not coming from weird and terrible other places, because the neogi and the beholders don't fit that. It's not having psionics, because only the aboleths and the mind flayers have psionic types. It's not having tentacles, because the neogi and the beholders don't have tentacles. It's not being able to take over people's minds, because the grell can't do that. It's not inducing madness, because this isn't Call of CthulhuCall of Cthulhu]]]. Basically, I don't understand why "aberration" is a unified category instead of a dumping ground of all the old legacy monsters that were weird and gribbly. That's not really the book's fault, but it starts out with "what is an aberration?" and never provided a satisfactory answer.
That said, the information inside is mostly pretty great. I'd like Lords of Madness for the mind flayer section even if the rest of the book is terrible because it introduces my favorite origin story for them ever--they're from the future, from the Last Empire at the end of the multiverse. Eventually, in the face of some terrible catastrophe, the elder brains linked themselves into an enormous psychic gestalt and hurled a remnant of their species into the past, where they had a second chance to get things right. To crush all other species, eat their brains, and extinguish the sun. There are the makings of great villains.
The second-best chapter is probably on the aboleth, about how their own great empire was in the past, when the world was a sea of muck and slime and little other life existed. Furthermore, things are cyclical--the aboleth are old enough to remember a time before their empire, to an empire behind that, and another behind that, stretching back into the past in an endless series of domination and downfall. But they are patient. They have always regained their power before, and every aboleth has the racial memory of its forebears, so they know that it's only a matter of time. The cities of the humans and the elves will fall, just as the cities of their predecessors did, to the extent that no one remembers their existence. But the aboleth remember.
I also liked the tsochar, who are basically a combination of the puppetmasters and the Strangers from Dark City. They come from a world on the far end of the universe, build magical gateways to reach new places, and take over people's bodies in pursuit of personal power and magical knowledge. They can either take over the living, controlling their behavior through pain, or inhabit the dead and devour their organs for sustenance. I also like the note about how they can't actually hurt each other in their natural forms, since their skin is too hard for their claws to scratch, so as a result they're surprisingly polite and civil among themselves even when scheming for power.
There's chapters about the neogi, grell, and beholders, but those didn't stand out to me as much. The neogi are basically just spider ferengi, grell are neat but basically just monsters, and I've always thought beholders were silly. Though I do like how the ultimate mark of a respect is for a beholder to address another by its own name, since every beholder thinks it's the most perfect being in the universe.
The end of the book has a section on new feats, most of which are designed to by taken by aberrations and provide slime or tentacles or other gribbly bits, and a bunch of prestige classes that I barely remember even though I read them in the last few days. The most memorable one is the Keeper of the Cerulean Sign, and that's only because it's an obvious ripoff of the Elder Sign with no obvious reason why it should affect all aberrations because, again, there's no coherent reason why "aberration" is a classification. The bestiary just reinforces this. The best part is the "illithidae," the bits of ecology from their homeworld that they managed to bring with them that are now found near mind flayer settlements, which are obviously a unified ecology. But cildabrin are just giant scorpions, elder eidolons are golems built by ancient civilizations, the shadow creatures should be outsiders, and I just can't take cloakers seriously as any kind of society at all. They're clearly just DM screwjob monsters like the lock lurker or the piercer. You put on the cloak you found in the dungeon? Hahaha, surprise! Pretending they're some kind of extradimensional threat is an insult to legitimate extradimensional threats.
And that lack of any unifying theme is why Lords of Madness is a mixed bag for me. None of the efforts to explain what an aberration is hit for me, and only about half the information inside was anything I cared about. But those bits which were interesting were very interesting, and the book is pretty good for the mind flayer- and aboleth-related parts alone.
The biggest complaint I have after reading Lords of Madness is that I still don't know the answer. It's not coming from weird and terrible other places, because the neogi and the beholders don't fit that. It's not having psionics, because only the aboleths and the mind flayers have psionic types. It's not having tentacles, because the neogi and the beholders don't have tentacles. It's not being able to take over people's minds, because the grell can't do that. It's not inducing madness, because this isn't Call of CthulhuCall of Cthulhu]]]. Basically, I don't understand why "aberration" is a unified category instead of a dumping ground of all the old legacy monsters that were weird and gribbly. That's not really the book's fault, but it starts out with "what is an aberration?" and never provided a satisfactory answer.
That said, the information inside is mostly pretty great. I'd like Lords of Madness for the mind flayer section even if the rest of the book is terrible because it introduces my favorite origin story for them ever--they're from the future, from the Last Empire at the end of the multiverse. Eventually, in the face of some terrible catastrophe, the elder brains linked themselves into an enormous psychic gestalt and hurled a remnant of their species into the past, where they had a second chance to get things right. To crush all other species, eat their brains, and extinguish the sun. There are the makings of great villains.
The second-best chapter is probably on the aboleth, about how their own great empire was in the past, when the world was a sea of muck and slime and little other life existed. Furthermore, things are cyclical--the aboleth are old enough to remember a time before their empire, to an empire behind that, and another behind that, stretching back into the past in an endless series of domination and downfall. But they are patient. They have always regained their power before, and every aboleth has the racial memory of its forebears, so they know that it's only a matter of time. The cities of the humans and the elves will fall, just as the cities of their predecessors did, to the extent that no one remembers their existence. But the aboleth remember.
I also liked the tsochar, who are basically a combination of the puppetmasters and the Strangers from Dark City. They come from a world on the far end of the universe, build magical gateways to reach new places, and take over people's bodies in pursuit of personal power and magical knowledge. They can either take over the living, controlling their behavior through pain, or inhabit the dead and devour their organs for sustenance. I also like the note about how they can't actually hurt each other in their natural forms, since their skin is too hard for their claws to scratch, so as a result they're surprisingly polite and civil among themselves even when scheming for power.
There's chapters about the neogi, grell, and beholders, but those didn't stand out to me as much. The neogi are basically just spider ferengi, grell are neat but basically just monsters, and I've always thought beholders were silly. Though I do like how the ultimate mark of a respect is for a beholder to address another by its own name, since every beholder thinks it's the most perfect being in the universe.
The end of the book has a section on new feats, most of which are designed to by taken by aberrations and provide slime or tentacles or other gribbly bits, and a bunch of prestige classes that I barely remember even though I read them in the last few days. The most memorable one is the Keeper of the Cerulean Sign, and that's only because it's an obvious ripoff of the Elder Sign with no obvious reason why it should affect all aberrations because, again, there's no coherent reason why "aberration" is a classification. The bestiary just reinforces this. The best part is the "illithidae," the bits of ecology from their homeworld that they managed to bring with them that are now found near mind flayer settlements, which are obviously a unified ecology. But cildabrin are just giant scorpions, elder eidolons are golems built by ancient civilizations, the shadow creatures should be outsiders, and I just can't take cloakers seriously as any kind of society at all. They're clearly just DM screwjob monsters like the lock lurker or the piercer. You put on the cloak you found in the dungeon? Hahaha, surprise! Pretending they're some kind of extradimensional threat is an insult to legitimate extradimensional threats.
And that lack of any unifying theme is why Lords of Madness is a mixed bag for me. None of the efforts to explain what an aberration is hit for me, and only about half the information inside was anything I cared about. But those bits which were interesting were very interesting, and the book is pretty good for the mind flayer- and aboleth-related parts alone.
May 10, 2021
Some really good information in this book...sadly, much of it has been incidentally contradicted in 5e, for no real reason that I can glean. Mind flayers and beholders especially have been casually retconned which is a shame, because the backgrounds offered in this book were quite good. As is normal for 3.5 editions, this book has a lot of fluff, adding more to the feat/prestige class bloat that it grew into, but as a role playing supplement, this was pretty good
July 30, 2017
nice and useful...
December 26, 2017
I like to go back and read old dnd books for inspiration and this books sections on aboleths and illithids are some of my favorite
May 15, 2019
This one's got enough weird and aberrant shit in it, some good options and a bunch of fluff, to earn the third star.
November 3, 2022
The most exhaustive book on abberants besides the Book of Vile Darkness.
Mind Flayers are perfect villains really.
Mind Flayers are perfect villains really.
February 2, 2010
Upon re-reading this, I find I quite like the revised orgin of Illithids. I didn't previously, prefering my mind flayers to hail from the Shattered Sphere or the Far Realms, but the new past (or future) gives them a nice "at odds" with the vastly underultized aboliths.
The sections on Beholders and Gricks are kinda meh, but they're not really big on society or history, so what can you do? The new monsters, the tsochar, are excentlly terrifying. They fill the same niche as mind-devourers, but have the advantage of being a creepy-whip-jellyfish-tenticle-thing, instead of a brain with dog's legs.
The sections on Beholders and Gricks are kinda meh, but they're not really big on society or history, so what can you do? The new monsters, the tsochar, are excentlly terrifying. They fill the same niche as mind-devourers, but have the advantage of being a creepy-whip-jellyfish-tenticle-thing, instead of a brain with dog's legs.
January 30, 2020
Basic Premise: Rulebook for D&D 3.5 edition, focusing on connections to the Cthulhu mythos.
This book is all about the unnameable, unspeakable horrors that lurk in darkness. So much fun. There are great things in this book for player and GM alike. There are secret societies with special abilities and all kinds of eldritch fun. If you love the Mythos and D&D, this is a book that belongs in your game library.
This book is all about the unnameable, unspeakable horrors that lurk in darkness. So much fun. There are great things in this book for player and GM alike. There are secret societies with special abilities and all kinds of eldritch fun. If you love the Mythos and D&D, this is a book that belongs in your game library.
November 30, 2008
Mmm, tentacles! And not just any tentacles, but tentacles from beyond space and time!
I think they did a reasonable job of giving a GM enough information to roleplay abberations while still making them completely inimical to sane humanoids. Yay ceremorphosis!
Of course there are many new prestige classes and spells and whatnot, but you have to expect that in a D&D3.x book.
I think they did a reasonable job of giving a GM enough information to roleplay abberations while still making them completely inimical to sane humanoids. Yay ceremorphosis!
Of course there are many new prestige classes and spells and whatnot, but you have to expect that in a D&D3.x book.
June 15, 2009
A useful 3.5E book with plenty of tips for running an aberration campaign. Even some new monsters.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews