It starts with the origin of magic for humans, the first light spell cast by druids and then darkness, perverted and developed by a devil.
The story is quite grim and inky in tone, which I like, with sacrificed adventurers thrown into the blood of a slumbering devil lord and a new monster race born.
From this, the growing threat of dark stalkers, creepers and keepers is explained. The good can be sacrificed to increase their numbers, and they have a purpose--to release the ancient devil via four very specific items (hence why the dark folk are so interested and focused upon identifying and seizing magic items).
Also covered are tactics to use against them; the dark keeper is added as a new monster (I like their very useful staff), and the Darkling language is also mentioned and the difficulty in speaking it for non Darklings.
The folk make some good low level opponents, I'd pair them with devils and traps (damaged magic items ready to explode?) to really give some adventurers a hard time. Alas the terror turkey and other monsters from tricky owlbear must come first before I bring in the dark folk as dm.
I didn't really like vegepygmies much, or really use them with any frequency. This product changes that a bit.
We have a great little low cr enemy with some dr and not many weaknesses (plants). There is a story on their origins featuring for once kobolds, variant rules for vegepygmies becoming stronger in sunlight, a new mold bomb item, and topping it off the vegegyant, a huge monster that protects large vegepygmy nomadic settlements. The Gyant is pretty strong with some fine special attacks involving blasting and trapping.
The only flaws I can see are that russet mold's stats are not provided here for ease of reference, and the mentioned chieftain pygmy is not here either. Both are in Tome of Horrors Revised edition.
In summary, I enjoyed it and give it four stars. Since my players are underground and in a damn area, a vegepygmy settlement with lots of russet mold just opened up ahead of them.
A worthwhile pdf for those (old?) dms that like ropers, and for those that want to get new more deadly variants to the standard roper, on the cheap.
It opens with a story about protecting a community and rallying slaves against the roper menace. With alien gnawing horror, magical travel to places of despair and monsters plotting to expand and enslave peoples across space and time, it certainly had a Lovecraftian feel which I appreciated.
The stats for a roper are provided, and the best that this offers for our games are the six variant ropers. Some of which are very deadly and all have a tricky concept behind the variant. The puppet and mind masters are my favourites.
We also have three magic items that can be crafted from dead ropers. They are fine ideas, but the strength draining whip has a very low dc, and should run closer to the ropers actual dc since it is only usable for a short time.
Ropers are dangerous to parties that would venture underground, thus they and these new variants can be used for many games. Four stars!
This time we have a sample lair attached on to the end of the pdf. This provides a good locale by which a low level party can skirmish a gargoyle, or be attacked while checking out a seemingly deserted ruin. Given this is a solo battle and a low challenge rating for beginner adventurers, this could really work for a horror game session when the players are still green (I’d suggest level 2 all round).
The origin story really shines in this book, tying the beginnings of Gargoyles to an attempt to magically reform criminals, which explains their chaotic evil cruel behaviour and love of ambush. After finishing, I wanted to add Thyrentia to a setting, perhaps set it just prior to the fall. For those who love apocalypse settings and robot uprisings, a great turning of the gargoyle soldiers of a country could provide a fine gaming experience. The gargoyles DR/magic means that heroes will be needed to truly take them down if they are harassing a land in the hundreds.
This time we don’t have a new monster exactly, but we are provided with two variant gargoyles. One of which is an elven gargoyle skilled and dangerous at forest fighting, and very hostile to non-elven visitors.
A great pdf, close to a max 5, I will give it a 4 out of 5.
It is hard to make the skeleton interesting. They are mooks in tombs and dungeons, worrying in numbers at low level, but mostly unexciting except for their nice dex. The skeleton needs more.
This book adds a little to the skeleton, we have a story and possible campaign hook about an undead warrior smitten by love. We have the flesh stealer skeleton to make skeletons a bit more threatening up close, and we have a new alchemical item to allow players to do bludgeoning damage against skeletons on the cheap.
