Oh, that wacky Green Slaad! With his big smiling face and hand extended as though he's pleased to meet you, he appears more like a giant reptilian used car salesman than a terror of the Elemental Chaos. Still, all told it's not a bad sculpt, just a little too cartoonish to be exactly what I hoping to find.
What's not to love about this big, ugly Lovecraftian horror? It's a good sculpt of a Chuul, which can conveniently stand in for any sort of large horrific monstrosity. Good for D&D/Pathfinder, but equally useful if you're playing Call of Cthulhu. A solid buy, no matter how you slice it.
My DM used this figure to represent a mysterious antagonist who expended a great deal of effort in protecting his identity. By the time the campaign wrapped, we would groan every time the figure was placed on the table.
Do not, however, take our distress as a sign that YOU should avoid this figure. The sculpt is simple but effective, and the paint job is dark and ominous. He makes a great villain, or darker arcane hero. All around, a great figure.
Flimsy, lacks detail and looks different from all of the Kuo-Toa miniatures previously released. There's honestly not much to like here, although I suppose that the price isn't too bad.
The sculpt details are middle of the road, and the paint job is uninspiring (both in terms of quality and the fact that WotC can't seem to decide what color their kobolds are, leading to groups that look completely out of place together). On the other hand, it's a neat concept for a mini, and I like that his outfit sets him apart from the other kobold miniatures, thereby making him a clear contender for the leader of that group of kobolds that has ambushed your PCs. Add it all up, and three stars seems about fair.
This mini is a big guy made of rock, perfect for stony giants and big-ass elemental types. The sculpt is good, and the paint job brings it home with shading and highlights. I'm pleased to have this mini in my collection.
Why is a Huge monster selling for $3.50? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that no one in the history of the gaming has ever thought to themselves "I really wish that I had an Armored Guulvorg miniature." It's a monster that no one ever uses, and they included it as a Huge Common. That means that if (like me) you purchased multiple packs from the Against the Giants set, you probably ended up with half a dozen of these, when ONE would probably have been more than you'll ever use. Wizards really should have used that treasured Huge mold for something more iconic.
The only thing that saves this mini from the dreaded single-star rating is that it's not actually a bad sculpt or paint job. I just feel bad for the artist, pouring his talent into a mini that will never see use on a game table.
Man, just LOOK at that sculpt! That pose says "I'm a dragon, and we both know it, so let's not pretend like I'm not better than you." This is what a large dragon is supposed to look like. The paint job is not terribly inspiring, but it doesn't distract from the sculpt, so I'm pleased with the mini.
The darkmantle never gets much love, but it's a good go-to for low-level ambush monsters, and it's suitably alien that my dungeons have always had a place for them. With that in mind, I'd like to send a little love in the direction of this miniature. It's a good sculpt, well shaded and easy to identify, and you can pick up a few of them for CHEAP in order to fill out that first-level dungeon.
Yup, it's a giant frog, all right. This mini is less intimidating than it is silly looking, but for all that, it certainly conveys that it is, in fact, a giant frog. WotC asked their artist to sculpt a giant frog, and that's unambiguously what he gave them.
Your game might not need a giant frog. If that's the case, skip this mini, because there's not much else that this could be. On the other hand, if your game DOES need a giant frog, then you've definitely come to the right place.
This figure has a solid sculpt, with some small detail and shading that the picture above doesn't really do justice. It can also handily double as a wyrmling white dragon, which increases its utility to me by a substantial amount.
The PFRPG Bestiary is a useful, well-organized and attractively illustrated book. I have no regrets about purchasing it, and would recommend it to anyone trying to make up their minds as to whether or not they should buy it. Having said that, there are some areas where it disappoints, and I do hope that the Paizo staff keeps them in mind for future releases.
As other reviewers have mentioned, several of the iconic D&D monsters did not make the transition into the Bestiary. This isn't particularly distressing to me, but I do wish that there were some Pathfinder-specific monsters to fill in the gaps. When one mentions the mind flayer or the beholder, any canny roleplayer will know that the subject is D&D. Given the creativity of the Paizo staff and the worthiness of the Pathfinder setting, I would have expected the Bestiary to contain a number of monsters capable of calling Pathfinder immediately to the minds of gamers.
Unfortunately, the Bestiary seems short on creatures designed to "brand" for Pathfinder.
My only other disappointment was the lack of any information regarding the role that each monster plays on Golarion. The Pathfinder setting is wonderful, but the Campaign Guide was focused mostly on the ways in which the PC races have influenced the world; I had hoped that the Bestiary would have shown some of the ways in which Golarion was influenced by the presence of the monsters contained within.
In summary, the Bestiary is a "workhorse" of a book. Definitely useful and certainly well-constructed and beautiful, but it doesn't exactly bring anything especially new to the table.
Years ago, when running a long-running D&D campaign, I spent a couple of long and boring days scouring the internet for suitable NPC images, re-sizing them so that they were more or less uniform, printing them up and then gluing them to backboard that I then laminated. At the time, I thought to myself that any thoughtful game company could make things much easier on GMs like myself by putting out a series of portrait cards.
Well, it's been nearly ten years since I had that thought, and the cards are finally here. These portrait cards meet the high art standards that I've come to expect from Paizo (which should be no surprise; all of the art was taken from existing Paizo products). I can't wait to get my hands on the next set.
Congratulations to the Paizo staff; they have a product here in which they can take pride.
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