BEINGS from BEYOND: Angels, Devils, And Demons Reimagined for Fifth Edition by Ben Evans is a new 5th edition supplement released by DM Guild. I received an early copy before the holidays last week and have spent quite a bit of time with it. It takes time to read the contents carefully.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m preparing to run a “Shadow of the Demon Lord” campaign and am already immersed in demons and demon lore. BEINGS from BEYOND couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
I also have to say that I love the aesthetics of this book. It has a very “old school” feel and is full of black and white sketches that go well with this style of supplement. The font choice also enhances the aesthetic of this old-school RPG book, but it’s still perfectly readable.
So without further ado, let’s take a look at our upcoming appendix for angels, demons, and devils: Beings from Beyond.
A quick disclaimer
The review copy I received is not the final version of the product. Most of the content of Beings from Beyond is included in the review copy. However, the formatting is not completely completed. Also, some tables and additional stretch goal rewards were not included.
What is BEINGS from BEYOND?
When I first saw the Kickstarter page, I expected this to be a big bestiary with lots of demons, angels, etc. Needless to say, I was surprised that wasn’t the case. In fact, there aren’t many ready-made creature stat blocks.
Although this book focuses entirely on these three types of creatures, it does not focus solely on the creatures themselves. Instead, it focuses on how each of these three types of organisms operate. For example, what is hell and how does the devil operate?
It provides not only the building blocks for creating amazing angels, demons, and demons, but also tools for creating campaigns revolving around any or all of these creatures.
This book has a fair amount of lore to read through for each of these types of creatures. I think that in itself is great information, but it is by no means the focus of the supplement.
Tables, tables, and more tables!
The majority of BEINGS from BEYOND’s content revolves around rolling on tables to determine specific outcomes. However, the variety these tables create is amazing.
There are tables for plot hooks, fortresses, creatures, afflictions, weaknesses, actions, and frankly everything else you could think of to play a D&D campaign that revolves around angels, demons, or demons.
With just a few rolls of the dice, you can create an army of demons with a leader, a spire of hell, and a reason to invade the world. This means you can focus your remaining preparation time on other parts of your campaign, such as worldbuilding and NPC creation. The same goes for demons and angels.
create your own creature
What’s interesting about BEINGS from BEYOND is that there are a lot of different creatures that you can create. Yes, the creatures that appear in this book are basically created by you, the reader.
To create a creature, you can browse through a series of tables and generators to create unique creatures, or you can simply roll the dice and see what you create.
For example, to create a demon, you can start with three different basic demon stat blocks: Hungering (CR 5), Ravening (CR 10), and Devouring (CR 15). Each of these stat blocks has base values such as ability scores, skills, resistances, and basic attacks. However, they will be gaining profane abilities to give them flavor and new mechanics.
Blasphemy abilities are special attributes or actions of demons. The various creatures in this book each have some kind of randomized attribute or ability that alters their playstyle and gives them unique abilities, but not all of them are called profane abilities. .
I noticed that some of the descriptions for these abilities were a little long. However, they do not feel that they have a lot of unnecessary fluff inside them. This may be because the version you received was not fully formatted.
Made for D&D 5e, but adaptable to other systems
There’s no denying that BEINGS from BEYOND was made for D&D 5e. Whenever mechanics are mentioned in the book, D&D 5e is mentioned.
That being said, specific mechanics are usually only listed if they generate a creature or something that the player character interacts with on a mechanic level. This is an important part of the book, but by no means the only part.
Tables used for world-building and role-playing are usually completely system-agnostic. If you want to generate a hellish spire, you can generate a hellish spire and make it compatible with any game system.
Although the Creature Generator is full of D&D 5e-specific mechanics, there is a large amount of explanation about creature ecology, behavior, etc. that I thought would be valuable for those who use the Generator in another game system. It’s a great way to generate ideas and explanations.
Additional content
In addition to chapters on angels, demons, and demons, there are also five appendices that add related content. Some of these are role-playing oriented and are good for coming up with ritual names etc on the fly.
But my favorite section is the one that adds two new tables full of options for Demonic Madness, a new type of affliction similar to D&D 5e’s Madness condition. Although these are specific to demons, I think you can utilize these for other types of creatures and encounters in the game as well.
There is also an appendix containing three new spells. One of these is a 1st level spell, and the other two are wizard, sorcerer, or cleric cantrips. In fact, I’m not a big fan of this whole thing. Other than the “Opening of the Third Eye” cantrip, where you can see random and obscure factoids, the spells seem a bit too tailored.
However, if the Kickstarter reaches the £3000 level, the spell appendix will be expanded (currently up to £300 away). I hope this section will be improved a bit more in the future.
In any case, it’s only about two pages of appendices out of over 135 pages of content.
Final thoughts on BEINGS from BEYOND
BEINGS from BEYOND is a fun D&D 5e supplement for dungeon masters who want to dive deep into angels, devils, fiends, or all of the above. Every time my campaign starts trending in one of these directions, I see myself getting a ton of mileage off the tables in the book.
You can purchase a PDF copy of the appendix for $12.33, which I think is a reasonable price considering the content of the appendix and the quality of the artwork.
This book is clearly aimed at 5th Edition D&D in terms of creature mechanics, but I found it easily translatable to other systems. Plot hooks, lore, roleplaying tables and sections don’t require any tweaking on the GM’s part to make them work outside of D&D.
I think BEINGS from BEYOND is worth the price of admission. This book has great beauty and lots of quality content that you’ll want to read over and over again thanks to all the tables and generators in the book.
