101 Not So Random Encounters: Forest Kingdom (PFRPG) PDF

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When 1d6 Owlbears just won't cut it!

It's a savage, and untamed wilderness out there your trying to explore and conquer, and for players, it's gotten nastier. 101 Not So Random Encounters: Forest Kingdom gives you more options, more creative flexibility, and more ways to just freak out your players with layered narrative encounters as they try to make themselves into Kings and Queens.

Enjoy the vine hamadryad druid who in her despair and wrath seeks to merge the primal plane of the fey with your world, though first she and the PCs must overcome a paragon olethrodaemon who spreads the seeds of pestilence about the land leaving blight and contagion in his wake. Or enjoy the remnants of a cyclopean empire, led by their last great leader as he struggles against the predations of the mortal races and the arrival of the daemons.   

Brought to you by the best-selling and critically acclaimed author Mike Welham. This plug in for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Games most popular kingdom building adventure path brings you a vaster array of new options to surprise even the most jaded of players. 101 Not So Simple Random Encounters: Forest Kingdom gives you the creative oomph you've come to expect from Rite Publishing, and it'll give your party something to remember for a long time—if they survive!

Be sure to check out the full-sized preview!

Author: Mike Welham
Cover Image: Bruno Balixa and Frederic Edwin Church
Pages: 43

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An Endzeitgeist.com review

5/5

This pdf clocks in at 48 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving us with a more than massive array of 45 pages, so let's take a look!

The 101 Not So Random Encounters-series has been a delight to read - beyond just adding certain creatures, it provides iconic creatures and NPCs, ranging throughout the CRs (in this case from CR 23 to CR 1/3). The basic, central benefit of these encounters, though, would be that they essentially tell a story that is linked, should you choose to use them in conjunction.

While the statblock of the CR 23 Vine creature hamadryad druid 8, Vessa Broadleaf, may be a glorious build, what makes this book awesome goes beyond that - she essentially is the mastermind behind the conspiracy of which the respective encounters are components and each of the individual encounters tie in with others, making this essentially a massive, huge collection of diverse encounters that, by design can be woven into a tapestry of a campaign...or a subplot thereof.

Which brings me to the second component of this pdf one should know about - the campaign-spanning meta-plot implied by these encounters ties in perfectly with Kingmaker - this is an AP-plug-in if ever there was one. Especially in Kingmaker, this makes sense - with a metaplot that takes a backseat in favor of Kingdom-building rules, the interwoven encounters, when applied to the AP, net a sense of cohesion of the metaplot that is not particularly pronounced in the otherwise great AP.

Now don't get me wrong - the massive conspiracy (which I try to avoid spoiling in this review), can stand on its own - this supplement essentially delivers enough plot to act as a whole, full-blown campaign. Now another thing I can tell you without spoiling the awesome writing, would be the fact that not all encounters belong to the same monolithic entity of an organization - rather than that, some of the creatures herein are generally opposed to one another, with an array of them serving as foils and red herrings for the true end-game of the hamadryad.

Beyond a neat assortment of cool encounters and fluff-only write-ups, we also, quite often, in fact, receive cool and relatively complex statblocks...and unique creatures. What about Mandragora swarms? Or the dread irlgaunt? What about an accelerated giant swamp eel or the Blodeunwedd with their allergen auras? Fiendish plants that collapse into brown mold? It should also be noted that a two-page appendix reprints e.g. Black Rots and Living Lakes for those not owning ToHC, making the pdf rather user-friendly.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to RiP's 2-column full-color standard, with nice borders of a thematically-fitting extract of stock art. The pdf comes with a plethora of different full color artworks that fit the theme. I have not seen any of the artworks before in other publications, so kudos for that.

Mike Welham's massive collection of encounters is perhaps the single most inexpensive, easy way to make the Kingmaker AP more awesome - and its essentially a rough draft for a whole AP in one neat book. It's functionality does not end there, though, for thankfully the ideas for these glorious encounters can easily be scavenged for just about any woodland/forest/swampy environment, taken apart - even on their own, the encounters rock. I did my very best to prevent spoiling the meat of these awesome encounters, but rest assured this collection is simply glorious - and well worth 5 stars + seal of approval . This vastly improves Kingmaker et al. and should be considered one of the best bang-for-buck-ratios to improve an AP.

Endzeitgeist out.


From CR 23 to 1/2

5/5

This book is a welcome discovery. I was surprised by not only the amount of monsters and variants inside, but the breadth of CRs covered. The first one is CR 23, and they go through and down to CR 1/2.

The monsters and enemies are the guts of this book, and their stats are either complete, or they are variants of existing monsters with added special abilities and more description. What I most approved of was the “scaling the encounter” sections, which explain what to do to drop or increase the CR.

Having gone through the book, I will be using some of these in my game tonight. I especially liked the Green Guardian Alraune, the Greater Verdurous Ooze (that sleep effect could be fatal), the Dweomercat (to deal with spellcasters), the swamp eels and green hag encounter and Yooli the fearsome owlbear scaled up in CR.

Now for my rating, I am giving it 5/5. I really didn’t like the cover art, but that is not enough to detract from the high quality monsters and enemies inside—which is why we are really here.


Webstore Gninja Minion

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Now available!

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012

Thank you, Liz!

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012

And thank you for the great review, DM Under the Bridge!

I'm glad you enjoyed the book, and I hope the encounters you chose prove to be nicely challenging for your players.


I got a copy of this and I was able to glance through t, and while I love it, I do feel a little peeved that it has a couple of monsters from the 'Book of Horrors' that don't have their stats listed. That does make some of this very fine PDF kind of difficult to use for folks who lack that book.

But that small complaint aside, it's a great piece of work with some amazing ideas.


@Eric Hinkle to fix that wrinkle, all of those monsters are available on the d20pfsrd.com.

Also here is the Free Preview


Rite Publishing wrote:

@Eric Hinkle to fix that wrinkle, all of those monsters are available on the d20pfsrd.com.

Also here is the Free Preview

Thank you very much, sir, this is helpful!

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012

Thanks for the feedback, Eric! I will include stats for monsters pulled from ToH in future Not So Random Encounters books.


Mike Welham wrote:
Thanks for the feedback, Eric! I will include stats for monsters pulled from ToH in future Not So Random Encounters books.

This would be very helpful for some of us, Mister Welham. Thanks.

By the by, any idea on where I can go to get stats for something called 'Black Rots'? They're listed on page 4 of the PDF as two of the servants of Gurble'gluk; I checked for them at the d20PFSRD site but it turned up a blank.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

They're in Tome of Horrors 4 (and originally Slumbering Tsar vol. 12), but they're hard to find as they are technically a subtype of Living Disease. CR 16 swarm that inflicts a DC 29 disease.

A full stat block would prove handy. (Sorry, I can't get it to copy over right at the moment from my PDF.)


We will have an updated appendix with these on Tuesday or Wed of next week.


Kvantum, Rite Publishing, thank you both. I'm being reminded why I like RP's stuff so much.


And I just got the updated version with the appendix. Thank you so much! I'll have to do a review in a few days.

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thanks, Eric! I look forward to your review, and I apologize for the ToH omissions in the first release.


Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop.

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thank you very much for the review, Endzeitgeist! I'm happy you enjoyed the book.

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