Cat-thulhu's page

It's a great book for generating ideas. The tables are well developed and contain a wealth of creative ideas. A quick read through the book sparked so many ideas. I often pull it out to help generate ideas in between major adventures, to flesh out NPC's, or add to dungeons. The ideas work just rolling off tables, but to make sense of most of it you'll need to add some work yourself. I highly recommend this to any GM. As for the book - having bought a few things from frog god I can say this continues the high quality production. Binding is excellent, despite having the book continually open wide there is no damage to the spine or binding. The print is quality and the covers are good thick stock (although the post from US to OZ still managed to damage the corner of the book, crushing it inwards - and that would have taken some effort)

Well the long wait is over. Has it been worth it? As Stone cold says – hell yeah! This is a fantastic addition to the Pathfinder stables. On the plus side: Monsters galore! This book offers a huge variety of monsters over a huge range of challenge ratings. Hundreds of monsters, ranging across every type and subtype on offer.

Abberations - 18, from the revamped and eager to use decapus to the brilliant ner-thalggu who answers all your brain gobbling dreams.

Constructs - 9, from the magnificent alchemical golem (bombs away!) to the reintroduced necrophidius.

Outsiders? More than I care to count, as the previous reviewer says there seems to be a focus on outsiders, but these are really well done. Personally I like the Aeon (N keepers of balance with a twist), the Qlippoth and the, now awesome Daemons – which I really need to find space for in my Kingmaker campaign, they are really well done.

5 new true dragons (6 with Jabberwock) and 4 drakes (degernerate dragons).

4 new elementals, and And the list goes on - If there is a type of subtype it is here. Quite a few creatures are redone classics from older sources (gray render, acheraiai, hellcat, crypt thing and 3 really awesomely drawn and conceptualised nightshades - nightwalker, crawler and wing), others are updated from adventure path and module bestiaries (aurumvorax, gug, rune giantm taiga) but there are so many adventure inspiring new ones in this collection as well (try the new nightshade, for example - the nightwave. And you think the movie Jaws put people off going in the water!).

As for CR, the monsters here range from the lowly ½ up to the lofty heights of 23 (although only 11 reach CR 20+, and these are mainly outsiders – except a few which are a plant (the great and terrifying Mu spore) an undead (a templated dragon similar to the dracolich)and a dragon (yeah but its the Jabberwock so it's not just a dragon!). And sure most are CR 10 or less but there are still however a huge number in the Cr 13+ area.

You also get a few race options that seem to be fine for those who like to play their monster characters - dhampir (not the bakes treat from my home land but the vampire half breed), fetchlings, gripli (very cool frog man), ifrit (not efreet but an efreet half breed), oread (half breed earth elemental), sylph (play a fey, yay, undine (rounding out the elemental half breeds with water)to name but a few (although that may be all of them). Now I personally don't encourage this but the option is there (and so many of them).

Oh, and there's also a few familiars and companions - the brownie (yay!), allosaurus, tylosaurus (go the dinosaur companions), the gar (yep a fish), the ram, hippo, 4 megafauna (giant rhino, turtle, elk and sloth), rays, the arbiter inevitable (very modron like familiar!) and more.

In terms of presentation Paizo maintain the A+ standard. Monsters are 1 page for the most part which makes referencing and using easier, as well as printing from your PDF if you just want that one monster for your session. The art is absolutely fantastic in 90% of cases – and since art tends to be a deal breaker for monster books this is a good thing. Many creatures are recycled art (somewhere around 30), but at least these were, for me, good/great art pieces. Only a handful fall short of the mark in my mind –some like blink dog and bodak not by much; others like the mithral golem, zelekhut, kelpie, imentesh krenshar and primates by a fair bit, especially the last two. But then art is very individual so I’m sure others will like these more than me. And given there are over 300 this is damned good. Some pieces such as the demons/devils/daemons, gremlins to name a few are really evocative and well done. My favourite would have to be the Brownie - although I now see them in arather more sinister light because of this.

Errors – none that really stand out (I haven’t crunched the numbers though since this doesn’t really concern me) except the two odd references already mentioned by the previous reviewer.
All in all this is a book guaranteed to please. Well thought out creatures with huge variety – what more could you need, well apart from Bestiary 3 of course.

Yet again paizo produce a set of very useful, beautifully presented and reasonable priced maps. Lets face it you get SEVEN beautiful boats for 12.99 - Sure the lighter card stock means they have the tendancy to slide around in use but all you need is a little tape on the back, or a little easy to remove blue tac under them and you won't ever need to worry about that slippin' and slidin' again.

I recieved these recently and looked forward to disapointment after all the negative hype. Honestly, the quality is lower than usual (but then paizo set a high standard really) but this is a one off by all accounts. Despite the lower quality though, it is still a great product. Excellent, if reused art that is great for all your evil NPC's. Like the faces before it this deck is great for giving your NPC's and villains a readily identifiable face. If you use them in clear sleeves then you won't even notice the problems.