OSSR: The book of VD

[Count Arioch the 28th]

This is me contributing to this board instead of my usual threadshitting. You're welcome.



The Book of Vile Darkness was released in Octobor of 2002. It was a divisive little piece of work; people either loved it for the wealth of information, plot-hooks, and DM goodies it contained, while others decried it for the "Evil is Ugly And/Or Gross" ideal the book espouses. Blame Gygax for that one; D&D has been shaking that stigma for decades, and considering the hawt dwarves and dragonboobs in 4E I doubt that trend is going anywhere.

I believe all of those are true. It's a great DM resource and a generator for ideas, and it's also needlessly gross in a lot of places. Furthermore, despite the grossness the book has some of the best artwork in 3E. Moreover, unlike its competition the Book of Erectile Dysfunction Exalted Deeds, there are no furries to be found within the book.

I'll be going through the book and talking about shit that catches my eye. If you are easily disgusted by manchildren with retarded sexuality and an obsession with Metal speaking frankly about the most METAL book in the 3E library, then you're a giant diaper baby. Everyone else adjust your faces, because I'm about to rock them right off.

[Rawbeard]

Book of Erectile Dysfunction Exalted Deeds

This is kind of funny, since the thread title made me think of the Book of Venereal Diseases.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Introduction!

Mostly standard "What you'll find, overview of the book, etc.", but there's some decent advice on this page. The Book of Vile Darkness is for DM use only (Honestly I wish more books had that), that being fucked up only has an impact if sometimes you're not fucked up because you get desensitized to it, and there's lots of kind of wussy apologizing from Mr. Cordell saying he's not a bad person. (Note: I don't think imagining severing a unicorn horn and then anally raping someone with it to make a fancy teleport trigger is something normal people come up with...)

Chapter 1: The Nature of Evil

Mood Music

The chapter starts with a FUCKING METAL piece of art. Some awesome dude with a mutilated face is totally pwning someone while airing out his balls, as if to say he showed up to battle ready to kick ass and give a fuck, and he's fresh out of fuck.

Look at his balls. LOOK AT THEM!

Then it goes into alignment discussion which makes my eyes glaze over. It gives details about alignment and paladin restrictions, and much like Joe Kickass McBall up there, I find myself likewise unable to give a fuck about it. There's a description about evil acts (some of them are things that players do all the time, like theft and murder.) Note that this book states that even creating mindless undead is an evil act (except it doesn't treat the subject with the same completeness as Frank and K did in their necromancy guide).

Next they talk about fetishes and addictions. They try to define cannibalism as gaining pleasure from eating sentients (which would make the Donner party not evil, and make the various RL funeral rites that involve eating the dead to be not-evil, but Jeffrey Dahmer would have been evil because he got off on it. I'm sure people here can pick that to pieces on an ethical level but I'm actually okay with that definition). The rest? Not so good. Psychopathy is more likely to turn you into the guy that draws pictures of dicks with his own shit on the walls of public restrooms than make someone into a murder-addicted monster. Anyone who either likes getting spanked or likes spanking in the bedroom is evil. Cutters are evil, but I'm okay with that because fuck cutters. Bestiality is defined in a way that I'm not sure what the fuck they're saying. I'm sure there's already some way to determine bestiality that's clearer:

Yeah, I'm using the ponified version. Rarity's sexier,

Next are some "Vile Gods" that no one gives a shit about. The core deities have a god of slaughter, a god of murder, a god of sneakier murder, and a god of tyranny. Aren't those vile enough already? Not to mention all the demon princes, devil lords, and other already very evil things you can worship. I'm not sure why The Xammux couldn't be an extremely unethical branch of the church of Boccob (who allows Neutral Evil clerics, so he's obviously not going to get pissed if you discover something through vivisection).

There's some vile races that don't make any goddamn sense. The idea of the Vasharans is interesting, but they're written a little TOO self-destructive in my opinion. The idea of a completely coherent, yet completely evil society has lots of pull in fantasy, but these guys aren't it. There's freaking dark sun halflings again as well. I don't care, and neither should you.

There's a list of basic personality traits for villains which was a good help to me back when it was written (My writing skills were sub-par back in the day, and I had trouble writing any sort of villain other than your typical Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain who is evil because fuck you that's why). Then we get into sample villains. The Dread Emperor is a 20th level spellcaster who carries around an entourage of enslaved children on chains. These children let him cast spells with no ASF, gives him free meta-magic effects, and other things I'm sure I'm forgetting. Here's the catch: The Dread Emperor is relatively harmless if left alone (he gates into town to sell magic items he's made, and doesn't actually bother anyone if not provoked). If provoked, he has no problems mobbing the PCs with Mass Charmed bystanders, dropping Meteor Swarm and Maximized Corrupted Fireballs in the middle of populated areas, and killing thousands with collateral damage. That is so fucking METAL.




Next we have a cute couple: A Medusa Cancer Mage and a half-orc Vermin Lord. She's got a talking gut tumor, he's covered with bugs. Also, the half-orc gets hard thinking about being petrified by the Medusa, and plans on drugging her so she can make him hard (huh huh huh, huh huh). Alright, I'm having trouble making that not sound lame.

The demon dragon sucks by itself, but the idea it presents is fascinating: A demon possessed him, and while controlling him forced him to take a highly addictive drug until he became addicted to it. The demon arranges for a dose to be delivered once per day. If the dragon fights the possession, the demon's like "Fine, but you gotta find your own Luhix from now own. Oh, and withdrawal will probably kill you". Said dragon could probably make his fortitude saves to throw it off anyway, but imagine if that was done to someone who didn't have a great will save? Yeah, that's fucking evil and could make for an interesting NPC. Just a different one, not this one.

Sample vile places includes a snorefest of a haunted forest (Note: in D&D forests are either haunted or enchanted, usually both), and a goblin tribe that invented a way to create super-mutant goblins. A cool idea, but I'm not sure why that's "vile", because goblins do that sort of thing in normal, non-vile games.

[Guyr Adamantine]

Sample vile places includes a snorefest of a haunted forest (Note: in D&D forests are either haunted or enchanted, usually both), and a goblin tribe that invented a way to create super-mutant goblins. A cool idea, but I'm not sure why that's "vile", because goblins do that sort of thing in normal, non-vile games.

Because evil is ugly, and getting uglier is evil-er.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Chapter 2: Variant Rules

The chapter start artwork? I don't have words. A heavily pregnant, beautiful (from the waist up anyhow) drider is caressing a bound elf with two hands and holding a sacrificial dagger in the other. The piles of similarly bound corpses leave no question to what will happen to the bound elf. (I'm not linking to this artwork, because boobs. Her breasts are kind of pointy and I'm pretty sure that boobs don't point upwards like that, but other than that it's a great piece, even if it rustles my jimmies on several levels. )

First up is possession. A demon can possess a being or an object. They can boost, hinder, or control a being. They can apply a curse or enhancement to an item. Other than the obvious plot of demons possessing people, this lets DMs give lots of magic items and enhancements to the bad guys without having it drop as treasure. You know, in case they really hate their players. (Note: I have used this on occasion).

Sacrifice can do lots of cool things based on a knowledge: religion check. Buffs, Wishes, Dark Craft points to make magic items, all sorts of cool stuff! Although one might argue why as the DM you can't just say "The evil priest's ritual gives his minions +3 to hit and damage" instead of fiddling with DC's and crap. Seriously, this is a DM only book, you can just DO that. Although I suppose it would be good is as a DM you're not good at eyeballing bonuses.

There are expanded effects for Bestow Curse (one that gives the target ED! HAH! Wait, is that really that much of a hinderance?). Some of them are hilarious. I like the one that makes one type of monster invisible to you. Set up magical traps that cast Bestow Curse and makes whatever you and/or your minions are invisible to the PCs for mischievous mayhem.

Diseases add some cheese to the game. Most of them are pretty hardcore (and some of them I don't know why are considered "vile"), but Festering Anger and Vile Rigidity are worth mentioning. They give bonuses at huge, not-worth-it drawbacks: Festering Anger gives you a cumulative +2 str, -1d3 con every day but requires a will save to keep yourself from attacking someone pissing you off, while Vile Rgidity gives you +1 natural armor every day, but every day past the second gives you -2 dexterity until you die from it. I'm so glad that there isn't some sort of PrC that makes you immune to the negative effects of diseases because that would be just silly.

Other aspects of Evil is a mixed bag. Dark Chant lets undead give themselves extra turn resistance which can be useful. There's the Dark Speech, which breaks the game in a different way than the Words of Creation in the Book of ED (This one turns swarms of insects into arbitrarily powerful sorcerers for some reason. This... got nerfed sometime in 3.5 when swarms of insects numbering in the thousands was something you could find without DM fiat. Personally, I think turning monsters that the DM plays when he hates you into allied archmages is fair play, but I run a livelier and more robust game than most). There's a type of weather that cuts of divine spellcasting, which makes me rage. CUTTING OFF DIVINE SPELLCASTING IS NOT EVIL! There are totally clerics of Nerull and Erythnul and Lolth and Scarossar [lol no] out there that are doing very evil things with their magic, and cutting them off would be good (or at the very worst neutral). This book doesn't make the glaring "All gods are good LOL" bullshit that the OTHER mature book makes, but you see it creep in from time to time.

The chapter ends with flavor text describing lasting effects of evil in places. Good to mine for ideas, because that's something that is really common in fantasy.

[fbmf]

I'm so glad that there isn't some sort of PrC that makes you immune to the negative effects of diseases because that would be just silly.

Enlighten me.

EDIT: Please tell me its not Cancer Mage...

Game On,
fbmf

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'm so glad that there isn't some sort of PrC that makes you immune to the negative effects of diseases because that would be just silly.

Enlighten me.

EDIT: Please tell me its not Cancer Mage...

Game On,
fbmf

I am forgiving if a game designer hasn't read every single book out there and someone later comes up with a gamebreaker using a bunch of them. It is less forgivable when the combo is within the same book...

[John Magnum]

The description of Cancer Mage on the FR wiki (I don't have a copy of BOVD handy) just says it's immune to "the effects of diseases", only specifically exempting cosmetic stuff as effects which Cancer Mages ARE susceptible to. It doesn't let you selectively be affected by only the good stuff and none of the bad stuff.

ETA: Other sources are saying that "a cancer mage suffers no ill effects of diseases", so, fuck me, it really is bustedly selective like that.

[Thymos]

It's the cancer mage.

[K]

The Xammux is the god of evil doctors, or evil hospitals, or perhaps the whole evil medical profession. Their temples have all of the things that you'd find in a hospital.

[K]

The description of Cancer Mage on the FR wiki (I don't have a copy of BOVD handy) just says it's immune to "the effects of diseases", only specifically exempting cosmetic stuff as effects which Cancer Mages ARE susceptible to. It doesn't let you selectively be affected by only the good stuff and none of the bad stuff.

ETA: Other sources are saying that "a cancer mage suffers no ill effects of diseases", so, fuck me, it really is bustedly selective like that.

The BOVD says "no negative effects" and you still get the disease.

So it's not a stretch to say that you get the good stuff if you encounter one of the diseases like the one that gives you natural armor.

[hyzmarca]

The Cancer Mage can also give his diseases an intelligence score and communicate with them, so at level 5 he could just ask his Festering Anger to give him the strength bonus.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I've been playing a "freaking Dark Sun halfling" in Crypts of Chaos. And boy howdy- that Dark Speech. That's some awesome shit. The CHA/CON penalties for two of the abilities are nicely limiting, but the one power where you get to whisper to an object and halve its hardness seems exploitable. Somehow.

[squirrelloid]

The Cancer Mage can also give his diseases an intelligence score and communicate with them, so at level 5 he could just ask his Festering Anger to give him the strength bonus.

Why must you remind me of these things!

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Chapter 3: Equipment

The chapter opener shows a big fat dude with pierce nipples preparing to torture a bound captive nearby. [Note: being either really fat or really skinny is vile according to the chapter after this. That's 95% of the D&D population right there...]. Gross, but I have to say it's a good bit of art.

The book has rules for torture, which is something that the core book lacked. Torture gives a bonus to your intimidate check, but a torturer gets -3 to their sense motive to tell if someone's lying to them while being tortured. Then it lists various torture methods (historical sticklers will feel their jimmies rustle as the book lists torture methods that technically weren't used in real life, iron maidens and pears of anguish have no records of even existing prior to traveling 18th century carnival sideshows).

Next are execution methods. I was under the impression that Drawn and Quartered involved taking successive organs and burning them in front of the condemned, this version is a bit tamer (note that getting your intestines torn out only deals 5d6 damage on a failed Profession: Executioner check. A 5th level character is expected to survive that when they do out and do their day job.)

Next are boobytraps in armor and equipment (no reason why this is in the Vile Darkness book, as I can honestly see good aligned gnomes leaving trapped equpiment laying around their tombs to discourage muderhobos from rummaging through their graves).

Alchemical items mostly kind of suck. Except for the aforementioned unicorn rape horn that casts Word of Recall (dafauq? Was any of that really necessary?), and a stone that causes people to be shaken with no save.

Drugs are here, and according to some of my drug-using associates the rules seem pretty solid. Which means they probably aren't. Basically, they all give a good effect which goes away quickly, a bad effect that lasts until healed normally, and some sort of weird effect from an overdose. Also, many are addictive (and some cripplingly so). Seems like something one could reverse-engineer and have a lot of different kind of herbal and alchemical cures for things (the petals of the Red Lotus cures The Shakes, but it gives you diarrhea. And taking too much makes you shit yourself to death. Or something less stupid than that). I had a player that played a drug addict every time he played D&D. He was an odd sort, but was at least interesting to game with.

There's a long list of new poisons, and a list of a NEW poison called Psychic poisons that deal damage to mental scores instead. Also it infects people that use divination or mind-affecting attacks on a specific target. That's actually a pretty cool idea, there aren't a lot of defenses against divinations in particular. It's not quite enough to prevent scry and die tactics, but it's a neat idea.

Evil material components all have a small chance of making a type of spell awesome. Some are really good to keep around, many aren't worth the expense. Digging around could find an evil spellcaster a neat trick though.

[K]

I've always been a bit fuzzy on why tearing the hearts out of the living personifications of evil to boost your spells fell into the "evil" category.

I mean, it's gross, but they are demons/devil/yugoloths and those guys deserve worse. I really have no moral problems with a being a planar binding guy who calls those guys up from their respective Lower Planes for the express purpose of getting ganked for power.

And heck, bits of evil outsiders are soooo cheap. By a certain level, the 20 GP for a single Yugoloth brain is literally an expense smaller than my daily bar tab or snack food budget, so the only reason that you don't save your slots and not harvest your own yugoloths is because you can't find a supplier.

Even more fuzzy is liquid pain. I mean, it is made from great pain, but it also is an alchemical item with a GP cost and so supposedly can be made by your friendly neighborhood alchemist without strapping anyone to a rack (maybe he puts bugs under a magnifying glass or something to make it). I'd certainly make scrolls out of liquid pain under those conditions instead of using my precious XP.

Heck, I might just be a spellcaster who runs a hospital for the liquid pain run-off.

This section also solidifies the ease with which you can destroy souls (cast any spell). Considering that evil souls become powerful evil outsiders in the Lower Planes and/or empower evil gods and/or can come back with several kinds of magic, I can't really see a problem with destroying them. The fact that you can get power for doing that is just a bonus.

A special shout-out to the chart with prices for body parts. Not only is it totally 2e with its monster butcher list, but it also means that any PC who has those parts can make cash by selling them off. A wereboar can just shave his nutsack and make 7 sp, and that's kind of metal.

[Red_Rob]

Jesus, those body part prices are insane. Who the fuck is going to kill a Yugoloth, go to the trouble of extracting it's brain undamaged and then turn around and sell it for 5 measly gold pieces? Likewise who goes to the trouble of killing a metallic DRAGON and sells it's heart for 7gp?

[Darth Rabbitt]

Keep up the good work, Count!

Book of Erectile Dysfunction Exalted Deeds

This is kind of funny, since the thread title made me think of the Book of Venereal Diseases.

I'm pretty sure that was intentional.

Except for the aforementioned unicorn rape horn that casts Word of Recall (dafauq? Was any of that really necessary?)

I would imagine that you would be interested in raping people with unicorn horn dildos.

A special shout-out to the chart with prices for body parts. Not only is it totally 2e with its monster butcher list, but it also means that any PC who has those parts can make cash by selling them off. A wereboar can just shave his nutsack and make 7 sp, and that's kind of metal.

Amazing.

[hyzmarca]

I've always been a bit fuzzy on why tearing the hearts out of the living personifications of evil to boost your spells fell into the "evil" category.

I mean, it's gross, but they are demons/devil/yugoloths and those guys deserve worse. I really have no moral problems with a being a planar binding guy who calls those guys up from their respective Lower Planes for the express purpose of getting ganked for power.

I don't think it's the act of tearing the demon's heart out that's evil, rather it's the act of channeling the Pure Evil that the heart is made out of into your spell. Generally, when you use Pure Evil to power your magic, your spell is probably going to be tainted by Evil, and you're likely to at least eat some backwash from that.

In contrast, ripping an angel's heart out would be evil, but using a pre-ripped Angel heart to power a spell would be good, because the heart is made out of Pure Good and that would infect your magic.

At least that makes some sort of sense.

[Judging__Eagle]

No, the sacrifice is only "good" if the creature makes it of themselves.

As soon as you start using other creatures body parts because they'll be effective, it's merely pragmatism, not good.

... this does help explain why Warhammer's Baali, the Bright Wizards of the Empire, are some classification of "good", and thus can be acceptable Empire heroes.

Yes, they still have to be in the presence of injury and pain, but they scarify themselves, instead of cutting other people. Such as the priest of Kali in Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom who hearts out of people to refuel their magic mind control powers.

[K]

While I find the "evil backwash" theory to be interesting from a storytelling perspective, the moral math here really does seem to be "It's gross, and gross things are evil."

I mean, the game is honestly telling you that casting a spell with the heart of a dragon that has been allowed to harden into a gem is "evil," but wearing the skin of the exact same sentient (dragonscale armor) is not evil.

[Username17]

While I find the "evil backwash" theory to be interesting from a storytelling perspective, the moral math here really does seem to be "It's gross, and gross things are evil."

I mean, the game is honestly telling you that casting a spell with the heart of a dragon that has been allowed to harden into a gem is "evil," but wearing the skin of the exact same sentient (dragonscale armor) is not evil.

Not to mention the fact that casting spells with the heart of a Dwarf baby doesn't backwash goodness and innocence all over your spells. That's evil too. And right in this book.

-Username17

[squirrelloid]

While I find the "evil backwash" theory to be interesting from a storytelling perspective, the moral math here really does seem to be "It's gross, and gross things are evil."

I mean, the game is honestly telling you that casting a spell with the heart of a dragon that has been allowed to harden into a gem is "evil," but wearing the skin of the exact same sentient (dragonscale armor) is not evil.

Not to mention the fact that casting spells with the heart of a Dwarf baby doesn't backwash goodness and innocence all over your spells. That's evil too. And right in this book.

-Username17

Does anyone seriously believe that anybody writing for WotC, now or in the past, had any coherent idea of good and evil?

Honestly, I'm not surprised they ended up going with 'icky = evil'. Its one of the things our brains automatically jump to even though it makes no coherent sense whatsoever. (Rational thought takes conscious effort and training. I find it hard to be surprised by people defaulting to irrationality. But that's no reason to forgive them for it - if you're going to write the book of Evil, you might want to spend some serious time thinking about what Evil actually means rather than just writing about whatever comes into your head.)

[Username17]

One of the main reasons that the Book of VD succeeds where the Book of ED fails is that you don't need a coherent vision of ethics and morality in order to make something "more evil". If the thing a device does isn't evil enough, you can just have it powered by the suffering of a bunch of children you chain to it. Done. You're always going to get into stupid arguments when you try to define what the best thing to do in a circumstance is, but it's always trivial to come up with an action that is "worse". If raping and burning weren't bad enough, just mix up the order.

Granted, there are still points in this book where the reader is stuck asking "Wait, what's so bad about that?", but it's nowhere near as big a mental hangup as the Book of ED problems where they try and fail to come up with a set of things for Good characters to do and not do that makes any sense at all.

-Username17

[Starmaker]

I'm sure there's already some way to determine bestiality that's clearer:
*pic*
Yeah, I'm using the ponified version. Rarity's sexier

It bothers me that someone shopped in Rarity but did not fix the typo. Here's an improved version.