Mythic Monsters: India brings you an incredible collection of insidious enemies and allies from the robust and marvelous legends and lore of India, from mountaintop monasteries and river shrines to denizens of the deepest jungle and the blasted badlands, ranging from CR 3 to 25. Some natives of India are benevolent spirits, like the wise and regal guardian naga or the brave and fierce garuda bird-folk, or are creatures of the wild who prefer their privacy and are dangerous only if provoked by intruders, like the wily water naga and the headless kabandha cyclops. The legendarium of the subcontinent is replete with dangerous and deadly spirits, of course, most famously the rakshasa, ranging from the tiny and treacherous raktavarna to the mighty maharaja, but also the elusive asuras, from the cunning triparasura masquerading as lucky idols to the three-faced upasunda, the beatific masters of deadly perfection, and the savage and serpentine aghasura. These enemies may engage in physical brutality and slaughter, but some prefer secretive and subtle seduction and sedition, like the sinister spirit naga and the ghostly bhuta whose very touch is corruption. As if a dozen existing monsters were not enough, the brand-new pisacha is a shapechanging spirit of anger and anguish, hungering for the suffering of mortals but placated by feasts in its honor. In addition to the featured creatures, we bring you special rules for creating mandalas to ward off the spirits, magical offerings to appease them, and a simple system for luring your monstrous enemies to the table with a feast of food!
The Mythic Monsters series from Legendary Games brings you dynamic and exciting mechanics alongside evocative and cinematic new abilities that really help creatures live up to their flavor text, whether they are creatures of real-world myth and legend or creatures born out of the RPG tradition itself. These creatures can work just as well in a non-mythic campaign as they do in one that incorporates the full mythic rules, as you can throw them at your jaded players who think they've seen it all or know the standard monster stats as well as you do. That look of surprise and "What was THAT?" will warm any GM's heart.
This all-new 28-page supplement by Jason Nelson, Loren Sieg, and Jeff Lee is a terrific complement to the Mythic Monster Manual, with over 220 mythic monsters and an awesome array of monster-focused abilities, feats, and more for your Pathfinder game! Pick up both books today and Make Your Game Legendary!
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This installment of the Mythic Monsters-series clocks in at 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page ToC, 2 pages introduction/how to use, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page inside of back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 17 pages of raw content, so let's take a look!
The pdf's supplemental material this time around contains magic items - greater and lesser offerings of placation, which can be used to attract and place outsiders and undead that subsist on flesh, making them lethargic for a while. We know the concept from mythology and the representation via the rules works well - two thumbs up! We don't stop there, though - we get brief and concise rules for creating warding manadalas of varying effects, which can be used as optional foci for spells - kudos, though I frankly wished we got more: The concept deserves further exploration. Speaking of which - while similarly brief, I found myself smiling from ear to ear while reading the section called "Cooking Encounters" - you probably know it from our own legends, but quite often, a carefully prepared meal can be the way to defeat a monster. A quick and easy break-down of these rules is included herein. Solid, but once again, an aspect that may deserve further space allotted to it.
All right, as always, we get a variety of mythic creatures, the first of which would be the Aghasura at CR 13/MR 5 learns a whole set of abilities that centers on creating an illusion and camouflaging itself, making the unfortunates it digests potentially not even aware of their grisly fate - nice one! The CR 3/MR 1 triparasura (should be tripurasura, right?) gains a suggestion SP that can be enhanced via mythic power. One of its abilities is missing an italicization. Decent one, but LG has done low CR/MR-critters better. At the same CR/MR, the ratavarna rakshasa is permanently hidden and may generate vicious delusions. Really cool
The CR 11/MR 4 Upasunda gets a whole slew of cool new tricks - not counting as grappled when grappling, ki-based counters and several monk-like abilities - rather nice one! At the same CR/MR, the mythic kabandha gains several bardic abilities - and a unique way to dispatch it, straight out of the lore of legends. Very nice! Once again at this power-level, the CR 11/MR 4 garuda now have abilities that represent their hostility towards naga, the power to emit powerful gales as well as the option to assume a primordial form. Oh, and they can generate healing amrita. Nice one!
The next one is the Bhuta at CR 13/MR 5 and I have not seen that one's amazing artwork before. It is an amazing example of how to make a mythic creature closer to myths: These guys can generate bhuta milk, which may heal...but also generate rather horrific effects and they can use lesser geas and geas to force others to kill.
Let's move on to naga-kind, with guardian nagas at CR 12/MR 5 being the first: These fellows gain a stalwart defense-boost and can bellow forth fear-based challenges and defend their domain versus intruders. At 1 CR and MR less, the spirit naga may lace its spells with poison and becoems basically a magical ambush predator via the new abilities gained. The water naga (CR 8/MR 3) gains a level of control over water and all mythic naga-builds gain a level of shapeshifting capabilities.
The Rajput Ambari is amazing: CR 8/MR 3, cool flexibility upgrade to the war stomp and gets a spectral howdah-like entourage of spirits as well as an appropriately frightening trumpet. And the artwork is amazing!
The perhaps most well-known (at least in gaming circles) of creatures is next, the rakshasa, and we begin with the mighty CR 25/MR 10 maharja rakshasa. Vorpal crits. Illusrory doubles. Full enslavements. An ability called "orgiastic revel" (no, it's not explicit, but oh boy, cool!) and the ability to psychically enslave others as well as an array of SPs - a deadly and amazing beauty of a boss!
The new creature herein would be the CR 5/MR 2 pisacha an outsider that can feed on the anguish of dominated victims being forced to commit horrific acts. Oh, and nasty: Creatures thus forced to act against their convictions actually generate an effect that makes others want to attack them, beginning a vicious cycle of hatred and violence. However, at least they are pretty susceptible to positive energy... The artwork depicting these things is pretty glorious!
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good - apart from a few minor hiccups, I noticed no problems. Layout adheres to Legendary Games' two-column full-color standard and the artworks included are amazing. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. Kudos!
Jason Nelson, Loren Sieg and Jeff Lee have created a cool array of critters herein - in particular the maharaja and the rajput ambari are pure awesomeness and may validate getting this on its own. At the same time, I was slightly underwhelmed by a few from the creatures herein, spoiled as I am by the constant excellence of the series. Note that this would still have the creatures stand out in pretty much any other monster-series, so consider this to just be me complaining at a very high level. Still, I couldn't really shake that feeling, when compared to e.g. the North America or Mesoamerica-installment, that some of these have untapped potential left.
Anyways, I'm rambling - this is a very good offering of monsters, well worth 4.5 stars, rounded up for the purpose of this platform.
Loren Sieg's offerings of placation are truly inspired, straight from the myths themselves.
Jason Nelson
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Thanks for the great review, Endy! I was delighted at how this one came out, and always like to expand the Asian RPG playground beyond China and Japan. There's some really neat stuff in this book, and I *love* Michael Jaecks' cover illustration too!
Thanks for the great review, Endy! I was delighted at how this one came out, and always like to expand the Asian RPG playground beyond China and Japan.
Now we just need to see Mythic Monsters of Southeast Asia. Though with the nagas and whatnot in here, it sounds like we're already halfway there.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
