Mythic Monsters: Africa brings you an awesome array of marauding monsters and exotic encounters from the myths and legends of Africa, from Numidia to Zimbabwei and all points in between. These lethal legends of the mother continent range from CR 1 to 20, including serpentine foes like the agile aerialist amphiptere and the massive acid-blooded seps, and monstrous half-reptilian horrors like the shrieking kongomato dragon and the titanic tusked grootslang. African monster may be cunning hunters like the cat-serpent kamadan or the hulking amphious mobogo, but others are swift, silent, subtle, and secretive like the murderous jackalwere and the seductive living mirage. The pugwampi gremlin is the living embodiment of curses and bad luck, while the lukwata devours magic wherever it swims. Most vile of all is the perverse popobala, reveling in the sorrow and despair its predations bring. As if a dozen existing monsters were not enough, the brand-new emela-ntouka is a potent river-beast, a fish-scaled fury that charges on land with a furious bellow and hollows out its foes from the inside out with its piercing horn. Plus, we bring you an exciting array of dynamic traps and delightful magic items perfect for an expedition into the darkest reaches of the continent, beyond jungle, desert, and savannah to the farthest shore. Grab this 30-page Pathfinder product today and Make Your Game Legendary!
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. Grab this 30-page book of beasts by Loren Sieg, Mike D. Welham, and Jason Nelson today and Make Your Game Legendary!
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This installment of the Mythic Monsters-series clocks in at 30 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, 3 pages of advertisement, 1 page inside of back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 18 pages of raw content, so let's take a look!
All right, as always in the series, we begin with supplemental material - this time around, we get a total of 7 traps, ranging from CR 3 to 15 and using classics from the Indiana Jones movies: Broken lights, valuable idol, snake pit...you get the theme there. Notable: They all come with means to bypass them beyond rolling Disable Device, which is a huge plus, design-aesthetics-wise, as far as I'm concerned. Beyond these traps, we also are introduced to a total of 5 new magic items and a new artifact.
These items include a compass to keep one's bearing, an enchanted machete that allows for the relatively easy traversing of natural difficult terrain (via actions, even really nasty terrain can be taken care of), a jawbone shield that helps versus being grabbed via bites and may even bite in retaliation. Primeval brooches are pretty straight numerical enhancers and verminous beacons can keep the biting critters at bay. The artifact, the atlas esoterica contains delightfully obscure information - atlas obscura, anyone?
All right, as always, we should move on from these solid supplemental materials to the critters, and this time around, we begin with the CR 5/MR 2 amphiptere, who receives blood lust and may employ mythic power to temporarily gain flight via uses of mythic power...and impaling creatures will be more lethal as well for the victims of these predators. At CR 1/MR 1, the much loathed pugwampi can create traps sans gold etc. and the build actually features some cool sample traps...oh, and rolling 1s in their aura actually becomes pretty painful...and your players thought they'd hate the regular pugwampi...
On the diametrical opposite end of the power-spectrum, at a mighty CR 20/MR 8, the grootslang (literally: Greatsnake, just fyi!), the strange amalgam of elephant and snake, can sense the presence of gems and heal itself via the devouring of gems. They gain a grounding stomp (that can also AoE smash foes to the ground), Awesome Blow tail attacks via mythic power expenditure and control over both elephants and snakes and immunity versus polymorphs...all in all, a deadly foe.
The mythic jackalwere (CR 3/MR 1) can employ its mythic power to duplicate hallucinatory terrain with added debuffs - decent one. At the same CR/MR, juvenile seps can spit acidic blood and use mythic power to extend its reach, which is pretty cool. The adult version of this creature, btw., clocks in at CR 13/MR 5 and sports an upgrade of these abilities as well as a crushing bite. The Lukwata, at the same CR/MR, receives blood rage, a loathing of crocodiles and they gain better DR. Their magic digestion is also improved, getting interaction with extradimensional spaces etc. right and the antimagic-theme is also further underscored...kudos there!
The classic Kamadan clocks in at CR 5/MR 2 is all about predator-stlye efficiency and as such, they are brutal...mythic power for six snake attacks...ouch...and cool: We actually get the dusk and polar variants as well! Two thumbs up for making this one makes sense! The CR 18/MR 7 kongamato can execute devastating dive-bombing assaults and these fearsome beings may lace their breath with shattering harmonics...awesome!
The living mirage clocks in at CR 11/MR 4 and has a cool regeneration ability that interacts with the wind vulnerability and it can actually use mythic power to cancel wind,,, and as a whole emphasis its weird and unique nature even more than the already rather cool base creature. At the same MR/CR, the mobogo can feign its death and receives poisonous skin as well as a hypnotic gaze: Using mythic power to shed skin and regenerate also makes for a great boss ability.
Mythic popobalas, at CR 18/MR 7 add Charisma damage to rends, may use mythic power to enhance their signature fever and these beings can AoE-Intimidate foes, copy sounds and heals when in the vicinity of those suffering from several negative conditions...oh, and they are particularly adept at turning friends against foes....cool!
The new critter herein would be the emela-ntouka, at CR 8/MR 3, and this new critter is amazing, vaguely serpentine or rhino-like, their horns can provide deadly impaling attacks and they can actually lift prey, making for a compelling critter of the "efficient, believable quasi-natural predator" type, ending the pdf on a high note.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no serious glitches. Layout adheres to Legendary Games' 2-column full-color standard and the pdf sports a couple of amazing full-color artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.
Loren Sieg, Mike Welham and Jason Nelson deliver one of the installments in the series that perfectly shows why I love this series. The upgrades for the creatures take the respective roles of the creatures perfectly into account; we have an increased emphasis on mythological abilities and an emphasis of unique and powerful abilities that help the respective beings, making them universally cooler. In short: This is a great supplement and with its amazing critters, makes for a must-ow installment of the series. My final verdict will clock in at 5 stars + seal of approval.
And here I am, checking out the dangerous monsters in this volume!
What I liked
-I can almost taste the Indiana Jones homage coming from these traps, but I like that about them, as they let you recreate famous movie scenes, which is always great.
-I like the amphiptere myself, although I wish the tail had a higher crit range to make some of its abilities activate more. But it's still a cool monster with interesting design.
-Why would you make a pugwampi more dangerous? Why would you do this? Some of the new abilities such as trap crafting and healing through natural ones is very flavorful.
-The artwork for this book is amazing; I wish there was more, but what artwork there is happens to be amazing.
-Now the kongamato, this is a really nice creature with some fun additions that I really enjoyed, a nice retooled monster.
-Natural Mirage is probably my favorite monster from this book, it's fun, flavorful, and an absolute joy to drop on a party. This is the kind of monster that your players will remember, and they will hopefully hate you for using.
-The lukwata is pretty interesting as it has a strong disenchantor vibe, and the idea behind its damage reduction is really cool, it's something I'd like to include for things I do in the future.
-The Mobogo has a pretty interesting line up of abilities that help to make it unique, touching on the frog theme as well as just being overall a pretty cool monster.
-While Seps is basically built entirely on its spring attack, its spring attack is cool, making this an overall decent use of mythic power.
What I was unsure about
-The magic items, while flavorful, are a little too specific. They work well for the theme of the book, but in games other than the one that they're designed for, they're only okay.
-I feel like more could have been done with the jackalwere, but it's still a very solid monster.
-The popobala is pretty nice, but it feels like it has too many different abilities to really focus on one. It's still interesting, but more scattered than I would hope.
-While the emela-ntouka is unique, it's another monster that could have used just a bit more content.
What I disliked
-I'm not a huge fan of the new changes to the grootslang, it just doesn't feel as unique as the other options.
-The Kamadan is another monster that feels like it wasn't taken far enough.
Final Thoughts
For the most part, I could see using every monster here, and not just in an african themed game. A lot of the monsters feel like they could work well in a variety of environments, making this an overall solid text. Really, only the overall limited scope of the magic items makes me hesitant to give it a perfect score as well as some of the less tuned monsters, but the rules text and design work is very solid throughout. I'm going to personally give it a 4.5, rounding up for Living Mirage.
Search Thread
Jason Nelson
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
Arise Mythic Monsters! Cry havoc and let slip the popobalas and lukwatas of war!
This is a bit OT but isn't the emela-ntouka supposedly a real-life 'living dinosaur' like mokele-mbembe, at least according to the cryptozoologists? It will be interesting to see how it's been changed for this bestiary.
EDIT: Wait, the mobogo is African? Here I thought the toad-dragons were either original to the game or from Bob Howard's horror stories.
Jason Nelson
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
I was all excited to write the popobala, since I had written the original monster back in AP #40 during Serpent's Skull... but then I got super-busy and passed it off to Loren and Mike and just wrote some of the frontmatter! :)
Jason Nelson
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Eric Hinkle wrote:
This is a bit OT but isn't the emela-ntouka supposedly a real-life 'living dinosaur' like mokele-mbembe, at least according to the cryptozoologists? It will be interesting to see how it's been changed for this bestiary.
EDIT: Wait, the mobogo is African? Here I thought the toad-dragons were either original to the game or from Bob Howard's horror stories.
Our take on the emela-ntouka pulls from the cryptid tales but we came up with a fun, creepy, and seriously vicious take on it.
As for the mobogo, welll.... it's not purely a creature of African myth and legend, but honestly it felt like a good fit with the African theme. Here was our non-exhaustive list of candidates from the official monsters. We thought out pulling one or more of the monsters from the Serpent's Skull AP bestiaries (I actually wrote several of them for AP #40 - Vaults of Madness), but all things being equal we decided to err on the side of monsters in the hardback bestiaries, and the mobogo felt like a fun addition.
And dropped a review. I'm not normally one for monster books, but everything in here seemed clean and well done aside from my issues with the weaker end magical items.
Loren sparked the trap section by mentioning the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark (including the failed alternate method to bypass the trap) and I ran with the idea like a boulder was bearing down on me.
Reviewed first on endzeitgeistcom, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, amazon, etc.
Jason Nelson
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Endzeitgeist wrote:
Reviewed first on endzeitgeistcom, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, amazon, etc.
Thanks for the great review, Endy. This one was a lot of fun to do and brought in a lot of monsters more "off the beaten track" of traditional fantasy!
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
