[Neomi]

By "catch", I believe that Dundee meant that you can't expect to use an evil artifact of such great power without suffering some kind of drawback... afterall, from your description, "Abdul Al Azred died a horrifying death".

Such an item as proposed above would certainly be overpowered and would require a few sacrifices. For example, permanent or cumulative loss of CON (as with the claw of Kazgarath in BG1, I think) or WIS would be appropriate. Even loss of CHR or a reputation drop could be expected.

You could also limit it by giving the book a set number of random uses (like the deck of many things) or a chance that upon using the book, the user suffers 10d10 piercing damage (as being torn apart by invisible claws) and the book disappears.

As far as the other features of the book: from the description, I kept thinking that the book would allow you to summon demons of various types. You could probably work it out so that you had a certain percentage chance of getting a glabrezu vs. a fiend vs. a greater demon lord (extremely rare, of course).

It also occurred to me that you could use the Book of Infinite Spells as a model, where turning the page gives you a random necromantic spell type (and occasionally a demon-summoning spell).

Finally, I think that adding 100 to lore is a bit over the top. Maybe 20 or 30?

It's actually a very intriguing artifact for an evil necromancer. Good luck with the development.

[ 09-01-2004, 06:22 PM: Message edited by: Neomi ]