Go beyond goblins with an army of fantasy’s most fearsome foes! Bestiary 2 presents hundreds of different creatures for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Within this collection of creatures you’ll find undead dragons and mischievous gremlins, shrieking banshees and unstoppable titans, the infamous jabberwock, and so much more! Yet not all these monsters need to be foes, as new breeds of otherworldly guardians, living shadows, and vampires all might take up adventure’s call. In addition, new rules for customizing and advancing monsters and an expanded glossary of creature abilities ensure that you’ll be prepared to challenge your heroes wherever adventure takes them!
The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 is the second indispensable volume of monsters for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and serves as a companion to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.
The 320-page Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 includes:
More than 300 different monsters
Creatures both new and familiar, drawing upon the best-known beasts of legend, literature, and Pathfinder RPG adventures
Challenges for any adventure and every level of play
Hosts of new templates and variants, including simple templates for on-the-fly creature customization
Numerous lists of monsters to aid in navigation, including lists by Challenge Rating, monster type, and habitat
New rules for creating and running high-level menaces
Expanded universal monster rules to simplify special attacks, defenses, and qualities
New familiars, animal companions, and other allies
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This book so far has been my favorite purchase of ALL of my RPG books.
I don't know if I can explain the fervor I have for this book but I will try.
So first of all there is the cover, the ever feared Jabberwock(y) of Lewis Carroll legend. Having a tough SOB (CR23) on the cover is the best way to start things off I think. Lets me know im in for a ride with this book.
While the first Bestiary was the standard array of Monsters we have all come to know and love through years of them being reprinted for games the Bestiary 2 is where Paizo took off on its own with a whole slew of new monster and just general new ideas for monsters. A handful of new extraplanar monsters of various alignments were added such as The Aeons, Qlippoths and Daemons all have decently written history and offer a lot of inspiration for using them in games.
The two things I love best about this book are as follows.
One: New dragons, and not just more "coloured or metal" dragons, but a new type of dragon altogether: Primal Dragons. These bad boys have probably the best art in the whole book (magma, im looking at you) and they make for a nice change from the everyday.
Two: The art, while the art in Bestiary 1 is GOOD, its not near as sharp, crisp, and detailed as this book. The colours, the textures, the everything, all done very well. You will not be disappointed when looking through this book.
Looking through the PDF of Bestiary 2, I find myself remembering the days in the 1980s when I'd sit in the back of the mall bookstore and leaf through the various gaming tomes I couldn't possibly buy all of.
Crystal Dragons, Aeons, and several others in this book remind of that golden era, when DMs had such a wide variety of unusual (and often new-age-y) creatures at their disposals, they couldn't possibly ever use them all.
Sure, some of the creatures are a little odd, but on the other hand, the vast variety will lead to some adventurer groups with a far different list of encountered monsters than the norm.
I personally can't wait to spring the Dullahan (aka Headless Horseman) and Animate Dream on my party!
Not as extensive as the first, yet the same price...
I do not mind the creatures in this book, but it does get less use than my other bestiary. However it still has the same problem as the first also. The use of generic rules for a creature type. For an actual hardcover book to be useful in a game (for creatures) you MUST be able to have all rules for the creature on the one page. The use of rules based on a type of creature that you need to leave the creatures page to reference is irritating and a waste of in game time.
Please fix this problem. I understand that constructs all have similarities but I need the rules on each constructs page to reference. Not have to skip to the end of the book to see if they have something relevant when they need it.
I find some of the artwork choices dubious and some of the stat-blocks clearly don't hold up under close examination.
Also only about a third of the creature content is of current use/interest to me.
BUT, all that said, in a book this size at this price that third of content is the right side of value for money for me, and there's enough variety here in the creatures that I don't personally have much time for that I'm certain most of them will appeal to a fair portion of the audience amongst other readers. This is a follow-up bestiary - and like most such works it faces the challenge that most of the decent staples of fantasy have already been covered in an earlier work, inviting the editors to try and diversify to give everyone a bit of what they might want...
Warts and all this is a pretty spiffing book, and I would cautiously recommend it.
I give it a rating of four stars.
