The Colossal Creatures Bestiary (PFRPG) PDF

4.70/5 (based on 3 ratings)

Our Price: $4.99

Add to Cart
Facebook Twitter Email

The best monsters are big. Really, really big.

Within these pages, you will find 82 creatures of colossal size, from CR 1 all the way to CR 26 (as well as a CR 33 and CR 40 monstrosity): straightforward enemies like the bearhemoth and sharknado, nuanced complexities like the draconic abomination and dreamer's nightmare, pushovers like the rusted colossus and pastorix, and megabosses like the tribunal wheel and harbinger of time. You'll find animals, constructs, dragons, swarms, spellcasters, angels, brain eaters, kaiju, dimension hoppers, living siege weapons, and really big raccoons. In fact, you'll find every type and CR in the game.

Need a colossal creature for an epic battle at any level? You'll find it in the Colossal Creatures Bestiary.

This bestiary contains 81 colossal creatures, including:

  • Dragon Molt: The discarded molt of a great wyrm, animated and given purpose.
  • Etherworld Fisher: An ethereal jellyfish who taunts and traps its foes through dimensional rifts.
  • Grave Blob: A mobile mass grave with death on his many brains.
  • Harbinger of Time: A CR 40 apocalypse-bringer, who grinds the world to dust under the inevitable march of time.
  • Kongimus Rex and Dracozilla: The King Kong and Godzilla of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (forget about that silly tarrasque).
  • Tribunal Wheel: A CR 33 judge, jury, and executioner of epic proportions.
  • Yuggothian Shambler: A floral weapon of war for the hideous mi-go, complete with laser beams and spore launchers.

Product Availability

Fulfilled immediately.

Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

PZOPDFZENCCBE


See Also:

Average product rating:

4.70/5 (based on 3 ratings)

Sign in to create or edit a product review.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

4/5

This massive bestiary clocks in at 91 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial,1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 87 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

All right, so there are a couple of things to note from the get-go; number one would be that this bestiary, if the page-count and low price point was not sufficient indicator enough for you, does not feature original artworks. I mention this because I know that it’s relevant as far as creatures are concerned for some folks; the interior artwork is a blending of b/w stock art and public domain pieces. As someone who always values content over shiny visuals, I have no issue there. Where I do take umbrage, though, would be that this huge tome lacks any bookmarks. Yep, almost 90 pages of monsters, no bookmarks, which means that printing this will be seriously the best way of using this tome.

All right, that out of the way, the CRs within range from 1 to the lofty heights of CR 40. Let us start going through the creatures, shall we? The book starts off with the Amgohran, massive turtles, ostensibly children of world-turtles. They are magical beasts with, obviously, armored shells and the ability to collect energy and use it to self-buff – kinda like a lite-version of gathering energy. Interesting one, and certainly more interesting than the more mundane CR 6 turtlehemoth. After this one, we get the 7-winged celestial angel (cue Savior Sephiroth-theme), an angel that has an overwhelming aura and the ability to emit blinding light and fire volleys of holy beams – at CR 25, these are essentially angelic war-machines.

Apocalypse men (CR 6) are tainted men, failed transmutation experiments, who now, grotesquely misshapen, roam the countryside, consuming magical energies. This makes the critter absorb energy that fails to penetrate their SR, and may fire deadly blasts. With a smile, I read about the CR 20 Arachnacthonus – a stony-carapaced, massive spider with magma churning underneath. Dark Souls, anyone? With an earthquake-ish aura and the ability to trail fiery magma, this one looks very cool, and they do get AoE melee attacks with their jumps. The doomweb, in comparison, is a more regular type of spider.
Want a massive caterpillar? Azure worm, and if you want it a bit more magical stuff, Doomworm – poisonous skin, corrosive blood, abilities to fire electricity.
There are a couple of “-hemoth”-versions of regular critters. Need a bear so large it can’t effectively use its muscles (ability score reference not properly capitalized)? You can check out the bearhemoth. The behemoth is covered in sticky honey (which may require universal solvent or copious amounts of water) to free weapons stuck to it. Its buzzing is deafening, and it carries an aura of bees. Beetlehemoths are less interesting – they only are immune to “cones, lines, rays and magic missile spells” – that’s not how that’s supposed to work. A) Why not other AoE-effects? B) Spell-reference not properly depicted in italics. C) Should probably reference force effects instead. Similar things can be noted about the reflective scales of the CR 25 Dracozilla. And yes, I’m aware that these verbiages are based on the Tarrasque’s carapace. That one isn’t as precise as should be either. There btw. also is a King Kong-ish critter herein, the Kongimus Rex.
Boarhemoths can charge better. Okay. The camelhemoth’s spit, oddly, is a touch attack. At this size? That should be AoE, right? Ettihemoths are oversized ettins. Kinda lame. Flytraphemoths are CR 12 colossals flytraps – would have been cooler with some pheromones or the like, or some representation of being faster when striking than one would expect from a creature of this size. Griffohemoth are oversized griffons. That’s it. Gughemoths…bingo, are ginormous gugs. There are also Hippopotamuhemoths (try saying that 5 times fast…). You’ve got three guesses what a hydrahemoth does. Jellyhemoth are more interesting, having a unique representation of their tentacles – they don’t AoO, but cause damage at the end of the turn. Small operation, but I liked it. The manticorehemoth is, bingo, a colossal manticore. Obsidian gargoyles also fall into the category of oversized monsters. Guess what an octohemoth or an owlbearhemoth is? Yep. The latter has a brutal hatred of arcane spells, which is a nice angle – if it saves, it’ll be very angry. Owlhemoths, with animal telepathy and true seeing, represent another oversized creature that I considered to be interesting in its representation within. Scorpiohemoths are oversized scorpions. Shambling mountains are oversized shambling mounds, and sharkhemoths – bingo, oversized sharks. Much cooler here: We do get *drumroll* stats for the SHARKNADO!! (CR 18, fyi!).Wyvernhemoth and yetihemoth do what you’d expect them to.

I enjoyed seeing Hokkamus, Patriarch of Waterfowl here – CR 12. An animal with stench and a putrid plumage, it can clean itself to modify its stats, akin to having two different modes. Nice. I also very much enjoyed the iron-bark tree with its gold/mithril/adamantine/withered variants – there is some mythological resonance here. Having had the chance to walk once under the majestic sequoia, I loved that we get a CR 14 sequoia treant – even more so when I saw their explosive cones and ability to quickly lift targets to dangerous heights.

Also interesting would be the CR 21 braghummor, a kind of addition to the neh-thalggu lifecycle, who enhance their impressive abilities the more thralls they have enslaved. Aboleth mindmothers follow a similar paradigm – basically an elder brain-like thing, just for aboleths. The Cr 24 yuggothian shamble, with its heat rays, consistent of mindless fungal drones, was a winner here that positively surprised me.

Colossal beheaded are pretty much what it says on the tin, and they do come with some variants. Crystalbacks are massive humanoids with crystals on the back and resonance powers, including a mage’s disjunction, which is pretty cool and makes these deadly. Ocean elementals are a pleasant surprise – more than just an overblown water elemental, they sport extremely corrosive salt water, storm auras and the like – nice! Pyrrhan, the living conflagration, is another winner – with brutal novas, recharging meteor swarms and the ability to counter cold damage, these are brutal and cool.

What about a battering ram on spider’s legs, shrouded in perpetual silence? Yeah, this is what I’m talking about! Very cool! Compared to that, the colosogog smoke demon is less impressive. It is brutish and has an aura of smoke. It’s deadly and tough, but not very interesting at this level. Dreadnoghtus dinosaurs are generally cool but at a speed of just 20 ft., they’re more a hazard for lower level PCs than a creature, which is also enforced by not being too fast. There also is btw. an even larger T-Rex, the megarex. Low-level (CR 6) failed experiments to make draconic creatures. Speaking of draconic remains – what about constructs made from shed draconic molt? Cool. The earthen host is a taken on the elemental dragon, with auras of acidic vapors. Speaking of dragon – Ryujin, the 5-headed dragon gets a CR 26 statblock herein.

There is a CR 19 incorporeal nightmare with a massive array of SPs, but personally, I liked the duster more – a CR 8 hellish butterfly that can evaporate water and desiccate targets, all while clad in nightmarish illusory hellscape. Dypthera are less planar in angle – poison and tornado are the angles here, and we get two stats here – the second is for the larval stage. There also are lurkers in the depths. While we’re on the subject of magical beasts – what about a fish that can instill visions of lost civilizations, the immortal lurker in the deep? And what about the creature that mimics whole lakes with its illusions? The latter is interesting in that it gets to attack ALL creatures in range with 3 pseudopods. Yes, it has that many.

Etherworld fishers are ginormous jellyfish that can manifest their tentacles in the physical world and drag targets to the ether, including a rift aura. This is mechanically more complex and interesting than I expected it to be. I also liked the massive fenrin, a CR 9 wolf – that enjoys hunting in packs. Ouch. Nannuraluks are cool – mountain-sized bears with brutal roars and the ability to shake off rocks from their fur in devastating shard sprays. Thankfully, these apex predators hibernate for a long time… There also is a representation of a massive monkey mob.

I also liked the furnace mother – it’s something dwarves would make: A gigantic, heat-radiating smithing construct in the shape of a dwarven woman, with smoking wounds and the like. I did enjoy the CR 3 rusted colossi, once grand warmachines, now pitiful remants of the magic might of empires past.

At CR 1, graveblobs are massive ooze-like masses of corpses, which is pretty cool, though it could have used a few more HP – it’s slow, has atrocious AC and bad atks (-5), and I love the idea of a level 1 Colossal critter, but as written, it’s easier to kill than many CR 1 foes. Shrine oozes are clever – these can trick divine casters, making their magic less reliable, and consume the unwary. Greeneaters are massive oozes that can deforest whole woods or destroy the harvest, consuming vast amounts of vegetation. Gurggs, abyssal, sentient oozes get sprays and can turn into waves – I really liked this one – I tried it out, and it works surprisingly well, making for a damn cool ooze-boss for high-levels! Kudos! Puddinghemoths are less interesting – basically oversized black puddings. Same goes for pyrelights, save that these are oversized will-o‘-wisps.

While we’re on oozes – here’s a surprise: The highest CR creature, the CR 40 harbinger of time? It’s an ooze. With a cube-form and multiple devastating auras, it reminded me of Yadis, the super-boss of Final Fantasy 9 – in a good way. As an aside – with aging auras and the like, this is a great creature to use in conjunction with Everybody Games’ “Childhood Adventures” and age-modifying options. Just as an aside. Hungry clouds are also conceptually cool – and once more, they’re a ooze! Some really gems for our slimy friends herein!

Jotnar are trolls grown too large by their regeneration, while pastorix are basically living fey hillocks. Less benevolent, the shadowman is not only the title of one of my favorite Selofan-tracks, it’s a fey shaped as a wispy boulder with human legs – weird and unique...and has surprising staying power for a fey. Procyron are a nice notion – basically, a colossal scavenger, drawn to metropolises or kaiju rampages, it carries the lyssavirus, has a gaze attack and may generate darkness. The stormghost ship does pretty much what it says on the tin, and does so well, drinking life and sporting an aura of both lightning and despair. Speaking of storms – a lobster-tailed humanoid shrouded in a thundercloud, red lightning dancing around? Yeah, stormswimmers are weird in the right ways. Torthen, the lightning bird, would be another storm-themed being, this time around focusing on wind, thunder and electricity bursts. Titankarps are CR 22 ship-wrecking karps. When the gods are angry, they may send forth a swarm titan – massive conglomeration of insects, capable of consuming not only flesh and bone, but thoughts as well. Unicornicopia (kudos for the atrocious pun – love it!) are colossal unicorns that, bingo, can generate food to alleviate famine etc.

The second most potent critter herein is another favorite of mine – The Tribinual Wheel, a CR 33 instrument of divine punishment and law, a true world-ender that is full of unique abilities.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good on a formal level – I noticed a couple of formatting hiccups. On a rules-language level, the pdf is surprisingly good; not always perfect, but considering how many people worked on this, solid. Layout adheres to a two-column b/w-standard with b/w-artworks taken from stock resources or public domain, and the pdf has no bookmarks, which, as mentioned above, is a serious detriment to the book’s immediate usefulness.

This book if the work of a lot of authors: Jeff Gomez, Jason Owen Black, Matthew Carroll, Kim Frandsen, Wojciech Gruchala, Scott Janke, Joshua Hennington, Matt Kimmel Jacob W. Michaels, Nikolaï Samarine, Joe Smith, Maria Smolina Jeffrey Swank, Robert Thomson, Margherita Tramontano, Jarryd Webber, Mike Welham, Landon Winkler. If you’ve been paying attention to who writes your critters, you’ll notice quite a few veterans here, and it shows – this book contains a lot of truly awesome and amazing gems. Particularly, to my surprise, the oozes get quite a lot of truly cool critters here, and the super-bosses are awesome. The magical creatures also manage to often evoke a mythological resonance, a sense of belonging, and there are also quite a bunch of creatures that do unique things.

At the same time, this book also contains A LOT of “oversized xyz”-critters that don’t gain anything but size and power. In a couple of instances, these were executed better, but there were plenty of these critters that fell flat for me. Similarly, the classic kaiju-takes did not exactly impress me, to put it mildly.

So, how do you rate this? Well, as a whole, I consider this to be a mixed bag with some filler, but also some true gems – and usually, I’d frankly round down due to the lack of bookmarks. HOWEVER, considering the very fair price point, I will instead round up from my final verdict of 3.5 stars. This is worth getting for the gems that you can find within this book!

Endzeitgeist out.


Awesome Massive Monsters!

5/5

This book contains 81 colossal creatures, ranging from CR 1 to CR 40, and covering every creature type. The table of contents also lists the creature's CR and type, so you know something about the beast before even turning to it's page, which I feel is a nice touch.

Creatures range from the reanimated dragonskin of the Dragon Molt to the falling-apart Rusted Collossus, from the haunting Stormghost Ship to the massive Titankarp, from the undead pile of the Grave Blob to the time-crushingly powerful Harbinger of Time. No matter what level your players are, there's always a giant monster that you could work in and throw at them.

My main complaint about this book would have to be the pictures - rather than having artwork depicting the creatures, each creature is accompanied by stock art of something similar - a butterfly for the butterfly monster, an hourglass for the Harbinger of Time, flowers for the massive plant that is the Yuggothian Shambler - which is unfortunate, as the pictures in a bestiary are a great way to see the monster, especially since descriptions only go so far.

Overall, the book carries a fantastic selection of massive monsters, so I rate the book 4.5 stars (rounding up to 5 as ratings here don't do half-stars), and look forward to the chance to throw some of these things at my players.

Disclaimer: I won a free copy of this book.


I wish I had more colossal figurines!

5/5

I love it! Not only are all of these incredibly creative, but they provide opportunities for players to fight colossal creatures from a fairly low level, certainly lower at least than the official pathfinder bestiary monsters would ever allow. Any product that gives me an opportunity to pull out my WotC colossal red dragon figurine is an A+ in my book. I might even re-skin some of these for a Shadow of the Colossus style campaign. If nothing else, the Harbinger of Time creature alone was worth buying this book in my opinion.

5 stars out of 5!


Community & Digital Content Director

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Now available!

Shadow Lodge

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Thanks Chris! We had 18 authors work on this piece, and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. It's a colossal one!

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Really exciting to see this one hit the site so quickly. Fun team to work with. If you like huge (no huger than huge!) creatures, this is a great place to find them.

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Yay, it's out! It was awesome to see this come together, and I'm thrilled I got a trio of monstrosities in here.

I hope everyone enjoys the book!

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Great team, great fun, and a great product! Hope everyone gets a kick out of it!

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Being one of the contributors to this may leave me biased, but seeing the work of everyone else was inspiring and some really cool monsters came out of it. (Some wacky ideas in between too, that turned out great).

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

3 people marked this as a favorite.

I finally got a chance to use my long-brewing concept of a sequoia treant for this book :-)
Colossal guardians for colossal forests!


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Got to love it on 1st sight for names like bearhemoth and sharknado . . . .


2 people marked this as a favorite.

This was my first ever experience working as a freelance writer, and it was honestly amazing.

I have spent the time since we all finished writing eagerly awaiting the release of the book so I can get my copy of EPIC MONSTERY GOODNESS


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Was really happy to contribute with three monsters to this beauty.

Ideas are excellent, and variety is the key point: They may all be Colossal, you can see creatures of all types, including humanoids and plants!


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I love the colossal vision of the book which runs the whole gamut from combative godzilla types through unspeakable arcane horrors, good job team!


Will a physical book be available (POD perhaps)? How much will it cost?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

I made my dream of a colossal fighting butterfly true. Thank you for letting me write it.

Paizo Employee

2 people marked this as a favorite.

This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed building a bit of kaiju ecology :)

Cheers!
Landon

Shadow Lodge

Corathonv2 wrote:
Will a physical book be available (POD perhaps)? How much will it cost?

Right now, we don't have plans for a physical book. Sorry!

The Exchange

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I had a lot of fun working on this book, and I'm honored to have been included with so many other cool folks!

Scarab Sages Contributor

2 people marked this as a favorite.

It was a joy to work on this collection! I will be wholly subservient to its forwarding of goodness!

Maybe that's the Braghummor who's consumed my consciousness talking though...


Some of these monsters are really good but we gotta talk about the art. It is all over the place and frequently does not even remotely display what it's intended to. Like the gughemoth has one of the best pieces of artwork in the book, but it doesn't depict a giant gug. Instead it shows a humanoid horse monster with only 2 arms. Similarly the doomworm is paired with artwork of some jellyfish-like flying aberration. Less egregiously the grave blob is supposed to be a mass of connected corpses but appears to be a bunch of skulls stacked on top of each-other. Several of the images are also clearly just images of normal sized animals without anything to make them appear larger.

I plan on writing a review of this product, but do you guys have any particular reason for the art issues?


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber
Bardess wrote:
I made my dream of a colossal fighting butterfly true. Thank you for letting me write it.

Aaaaaand CART! :D


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Catching up after vacation, but I'm also excited to see this.

Who says fey can't once in a while be really big? Not me, and not the monster I contributed to this. :) I hope everyone enjoys the stormswimmer and all the other monsters here: Remember, they bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Shadow Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Alex Smith 908 wrote:
Art

Simply, we wanted to focus on the writing, and commissioning good art for 80+ monsters would mean (let's say 25$ for each monster at the very cheapest) $2,000 for art for this book. We aren't Paizo, so we would never make that money back. I wanted a colossal book filled with colossal creatures, and great writing has always been more important to me than good pictures. There's no way we could offer $5 for 80+ creatures if we commissioned art for each creature.

The focus of the book is awesome writing, creative mechanics, and great monsters. Those interested in the art of the book can look at the preview on rpg now.


I appreciate the work that went into this book and enjoy all the mechanical presentation. I just think the places where the art does not even remotely represent the described creature could have been serviced better by having no art at all.

Also the art for the gughemoth really deserved to have stats made to match the art rather assigning it to the giant version of gugs. My review should be up today or tomorrow.

Sovereign Court

2 people marked this as a favorite.

This was totally rad to contribute to- I'm excited to see the full release since there are a few monsters (Colossal Beheaded and Doomweb in particular) which I want to throw at my players for a fun Halloween game!

Shadow Lodge

3 people marked this as a favorite.

We are at two weeks as the top selling non-Paizo download on Paizo. Thanks folks!


Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, etc.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

This was a solid book. Glad you're still reviewing some PF1 products, EndZ.

Contributor

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Had a monstrous good time working on this! :P


@PFRPGGrognard: Yeah, I'll "finish" PF1 at one point. ;)

Community / Forums / Paizo / Product Discussion / The Colossal Creatures Bestiary (PFRPG) PDF All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.