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Diablo II: The Awakening
YOUR PLAYER CHARACTERS ARE GOING TO HELL!
The two greatest fantasy games in history come together in a nonstop throwdown!
This action-packed epic takes the world of the Diablo II computer game and translates it into the ultimate AD&D adventure. Create AD&D heroes with a Diablo twist or use heroes from any AD&D campaign, then send them off to challenge terrors that were once only found on a computer screen. The adventure starts in Tristram, the site of the original Diablo game, where Diablo, Lord of Terror, rules a legion of demons. There, the heroes explore the mysterious Monastery -- full of dangers and challenges pulled right from Diablo but enhanced for your tabletop game!
Everything you could ever imagine for Diablo II is in here for your AD&D adventures:
- More than a dozen hellacious dungeon levels!
- Five new PC kits straight out of the computer game!
- More than 100 lethal new monsters, including dozens of death-defying demons!
- More than 100 new spells and proficiencies!
- And--get this--over 1,000,000 new magical items for the AD&D game!
The two greatest fantasy games in history come together in a nonstop throwdown!
This action-packed epic takes the world of the Diablo II computer game and translates it into the ultimate AD&D adventure. Create AD&D heroes with a Diablo twist or use heroes from any AD&D campaign, then send them off to challenge terrors that were once only found on a computer screen. The adventure starts in Tristram, the site of the original Diablo game, where Diablo, Lord of Terror, rules a legion of demons. There, the heroes explore the mysterious Monastery -- full of dangers and challenges pulled right from Diablo but enhanced for your tabletop game!
Everything you could ever imagine for Diablo II is in here for your AD&D adventures:
- More than a dozen hellacious dungeon levels!
- Five new PC kits straight out of the computer game!
- More than 100 lethal new monsters, including dozens of death-defying demons!
- More than 100 new spells and proficiencies!
- And--get this--over 1,000,000 new magical items for the AD&D game!
128 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
20 people want to read
About the author
Bruce R. Cordell
165 books123 followersBruce R. Cordell authored books for Dungeons & Dragons over the course of 4 editions (2nd Edition through 5th Edition D&D). These days, he’s a senior designer for Monte Cook Games, LLC designing Numenera , Gods of the Fall, and The Strange. Also a novel author, his credits include several titles set in the Forgotten Realms. Bruce’s tenth novel, Myth of the Maker, is just out from Angry Robot Books:
http://brucecordell.blogspot.com/2017...
http://brucecordell.blogspot.com/2017...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 29, 2013
I admit, I'm a sucker for Christian peripheral mythology. By that, I mean the various ranks of angels and demons, the eternal war between Heaven and Hell over souls, bargaining with demonic powers and trying to outwit the Devil, and everything in that vein. Because of that, I love the background of the Diablo universe. Mixing psuedo-Christian metaphysics in with a traditional fantasy universe, so you have fireball-hurling sorcerers fighting against demonically-corrupted mortals and warriors empowered by angelic aid to strike down demons? Sign me up. A book that detailed the background of Sanctuary and gave us some information about Khanduras and Westmarch, explained the beliefs of the Priests of Rathma and the Disciples of Zakarum, the extent of the Aranoch Desert and why the druids split from the tribes of Arreat, and everything else that is touched on in the games but that the format doesn't allow them to deal with would be amazing. The world the Diablo games take places in isn't super-big, so this shouldn't take that much space.
That is not this book.
Diablo II: Sanctuary is an attempt to take a mashup of the Diablo I and Diablo II computer games and literally translate them into a tabletop format. That means it's primarily focused on going out into the wilderness or down into the dungeons, fighting huge amounts of monsters, and looting their bodies for treasure. The book has a huge series of charts for rolling up the vast amount of random items that the Diablo games are famous for, "over 100" monsters that exist only to hurl themselves into vicious combat with the PCs, sets of spells for the five classes from Diablo II (and a note that the Diablo I warrior and rogue are represented just fine by the basic fighter and thief) and proficiencies for the powers that aren't really spells, and a fully mapped-out dungeon under Tristram for the PCs to descend into the fight the hordes of the Burning Hells.
The elephant in the room--or in the book--is that Diablo already exists, so what's the point?
Are players really going to want to run through the same dungeon multiple times, even if the monsters are randomized using the wandering monster charts and the quests are randomized using the random effects tables given under each quest? How many players are going to stand for the GM randomly rolling for treasure every time they smash a barrel or search a body, as the book suggests? Sure, the GM can make all the rolls beforehand, but that just puts the annoyance all on one person.
All the unique monsters have names, but how are the PCs ever going to learn their names? Why would anyone sit through minute after minute of rolling on random tables when they could just play Diablo II and let the computer handle everything in a flash? Why does Vancian casting still exist here when they went to so much effort to copy other elements of the computer games, even adding proficencies with pseudo-magical effects and cooldowns to limit their usage? Why do Paladins and Amazons have to spend one proficiency every 3 levels (i.e., almost all the proficiencies they get) just to maintain their powers, thus not letting them buy any new ones? Why does the book contain text about literally training mobs, with percentage chances that their friends will realize that waiting around to be slaughtered one by one is incredibly stupid? And how many combats will the players want to sit through when it's them vs. 20 bad guys, all of whom have special attacks or multiple attacks. One dungeon level will probably take multiple sessions to clear out--in the computer game, you can do it in 15 minutes.
Basically, this book doesn't do anything that the computer game doesn't do better. It's trying to exactly replicate the experience of playing Diablo in a tabletop RPG setting, but a lot of the elements just don't carry over very well.
Also, the editing is terrible. The book is riddled with missing words and copypasta, like when we learn in the paladin entry that amazons use the Paladin/Ranger xp table, or that books found as treasure increase the spell's "improvement class" that isn't listed anywhere in the rules, or that the Damned version of Hellhounds have abilites "that transcend even the Damned," thus obviously putting them into an infinite loop and making them stronger than Diablo.
The book does have some useful parts, like the range of powers on magic items, that can be stolen for other settings. The new spell paradigm of focused and thematically limited spell lists is also really good, because the basic D&D wizard with a capability ranging from "lighting a candle within a few yards" up to "literally do anything" is pretty hard to make thematically interesting because of their godlike power. It's not worth wading through all the chaff to get to those tidbits, though. Even if you love the Diablo games--perhaps especially if you love the Diablo games--give Diablo II: the Awakening a pass.
That is not this book.
Diablo II: Sanctuary is an attempt to take a mashup of the Diablo I and Diablo II computer games and literally translate them into a tabletop format. That means it's primarily focused on going out into the wilderness or down into the dungeons, fighting huge amounts of monsters, and looting their bodies for treasure. The book has a huge series of charts for rolling up the vast amount of random items that the Diablo games are famous for, "over 100" monsters that exist only to hurl themselves into vicious combat with the PCs, sets of spells for the five classes from Diablo II (and a note that the Diablo I warrior and rogue are represented just fine by the basic fighter and thief) and proficiencies for the powers that aren't really spells, and a fully mapped-out dungeon under Tristram for the PCs to descend into the fight the hordes of the Burning Hells.
The elephant in the room--or in the book--is that Diablo already exists, so what's the point?
Are players really going to want to run through the same dungeon multiple times, even if the monsters are randomized using the wandering monster charts and the quests are randomized using the random effects tables given under each quest? How many players are going to stand for the GM randomly rolling for treasure every time they smash a barrel or search a body, as the book suggests? Sure, the GM can make all the rolls beforehand, but that just puts the annoyance all on one person.
All the unique monsters have names, but how are the PCs ever going to learn their names? Why would anyone sit through minute after minute of rolling on random tables when they could just play Diablo II and let the computer handle everything in a flash? Why does Vancian casting still exist here when they went to so much effort to copy other elements of the computer games, even adding proficencies with pseudo-magical effects and cooldowns to limit their usage? Why do Paladins and Amazons have to spend one proficiency every 3 levels (i.e., almost all the proficiencies they get) just to maintain their powers, thus not letting them buy any new ones? Why does the book contain text about literally training mobs, with percentage chances that their friends will realize that waiting around to be slaughtered one by one is incredibly stupid? And how many combats will the players want to sit through when it's them vs. 20 bad guys, all of whom have special attacks or multiple attacks. One dungeon level will probably take multiple sessions to clear out--in the computer game, you can do it in 15 minutes.
Basically, this book doesn't do anything that the computer game doesn't do better. It's trying to exactly replicate the experience of playing Diablo in a tabletop RPG setting, but a lot of the elements just don't carry over very well.
Also, the editing is terrible. The book is riddled with missing words and copypasta, like when we learn in the paladin entry that amazons use the Paladin/Ranger xp table, or that books found as treasure increase the spell's "improvement class" that isn't listed anywhere in the rules, or that the Damned version of Hellhounds have abilites "that transcend even the Damned," thus obviously putting them into an infinite loop and making them stronger than Diablo.
The book does have some useful parts, like the range of powers on magic items, that can be stolen for other settings. The new spell paradigm of focused and thematically limited spell lists is also really good, because the basic D&D wizard with a capability ranging from "lighting a candle within a few yards" up to "literally do anything" is pretty hard to make thematically interesting because of their godlike power. It's not worth wading through all the chaff to get to those tidbits, though. Even if you love the Diablo games--perhaps especially if you love the Diablo games--give Diablo II: the Awakening a pass.
Displaying 1 of 1 review