Get your first look at the future with more than a dozen menacing monsters that we couldn't make room for in the Pathfinder Bestiary. These creatures won't be making an appearance in the Pathfinder RPG for at least a year and will thus only be available in this book for a long while. Showcasing the new rules and flexibility of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, this collection of creatures draws from more than 30 years of gaming history and includes:
Deadly beasts and familiar allies, such as allips, caryatid
columns, faerie dragons, huecuvas, shadow mastiffs, and more!
New rules for monstrous companions, arcane creations, sinister traps, variant creatures, and other options for use with both 3.5 and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
Explanations of never-before-seen rules being included in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
A preview listing of nearly every monster to be included in the upcoming Pathfinder Bestiary
Reimaginings of some of the most iconic creatures in gaming, vibrantly illustrated by some of the best artists in fantasy
Add a taste of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game to
your campaign today with this official manual of
Pathfinder monstrosities!
This 16-page supplement was initially made available for Free RPG Day on June 20, 2009.
Note: Due to the special nature of this product, it is NOT part of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Subscription.
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Is it sheer coincidence or proof of cosmic synchronicity that my personal rotation of reading has scheduled me to review Paizo's 2009 Free RPG Day offering on the same day as 2019's Free RPG Day? We'll let the metaphysicians chew that one over, but in the meantime, I'll discuss the Bonus Bestiary.
This sixteen-page, full-color, softcover product served as something of a preview of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, as it was released just several weeks before the Core Rulebook debuted. It introduces the overall look of monster stat blocks in the game and (I assume) gave players some monsters to work with prior to the release of the first Bestiary. The twelve monsters it includes weren't included in that book, so it had some value even past the first year of the game's existence (it looks like most of these were included in Bestiary 3 in 2011). You can judge the cool cover art yourself (I didn't realize water nagas were so scary!), but here's a description of the contents.
The inside front cover is a listing of the 300+ monsters that were to appear in the Bestiary so readers could get a sense of what to look forward to. The inside back cover is the classic: "3.5 Survives! 3.5 Thrives!" advertisement for PF1. I should really get a poster of that advertisement for display somewhere.
After a credits/table of contents page, the next two pages discuss a couple of rules developed uniquely for Pathfinder: the concepts of Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense. These were elegant simplifications on how to resolve things like trips, disarms, grapples, etc., without having separate formulas for each type. There's also an explanation of how diseases and poisons are formatted. The rest of this introductory material explains Pathfinder's approach to Universal Monster Rules, and gives some samples. It all shows the designers spent a lot of time thinking about how to do monster stat blocks in an intelligent and user-friendly manner.
Now, on to the monsters. A high-DC Perception check will notice some very minor differences in how the stat blocks in the Bonus Bestiary are formatted compared to the actual Bestiary: the CR/XP entry is slightly different, and there's a fixed gold piece "treasure value" instead of a reference to treasure categories like "Standard", etc.. I might actually prefer the explicit gold piece value, approach, but that's neither here nor there now, not to mention a decade's time travel away. Each of the twelve monster entries is illustrated, though the artwork styles are a bit more inconsistent than later Paizo books.
1. Allip: Super creepy undead resulting from the death of the mad or suicidal. Their special abilities fit well.
2. Ant Lion, Giant: Never actually seen these in a game, but I like their little sand trap ability.
3. Ascomoid: Never heard of this--some kind of giant puffball fungus. Frankly pretty goofy, and really more a supernatural hazard than a monster.
4. Axe Beak: If you have bird phobia, watch out! Good to see training and animal companion rules--a reminder of another thing the Pathfinder team did well.
5. Caryatid Column: Essentially lesser stone golems, but their "shatter weapons" ability could be really nasty. If I were a mean GM, I'd toss these in any time a melee character got on my nerves.
6. Dragon, Faerie: These sorts of creatures aren't really my thing, as they verge more on the cartoonish. Still, I have to admit the artwork is really colourful and they might be fun to have as a familiar.
7. Dragonne: Kind of a bland lion/dragon mix. Rules for mounts (using Leadership) and animal companions.
8. Hag, Annis: The artwork here is great, capturing the size and hunch-backed nature perfectly (though perhaps making them look like undead).
9. Huecuva: Heretical undead clerics; an interesting concept but they need a power boost to really work well.
10. Lammasu: I guess this is a lion/eagle mix. I think maybe some of these entries were omitted from the first Bestiary for a reason.
11. Naga, Water: Cooler on the cover than here.
12. Nixie: Okay, I guess.
13. Shadow Mastiff: Cool artwork and "shadow blend" makes them fearsome foes for their CR.
Overall, there's a good mix in the book of different monster types: undead, constructs, magical beasts, regular animals, etc. I did notice there aren't any high-CR threats, with the CR 8 Lammasu as the highest.
Paizo took the same approach with its Free RPG Day 2017 product when getting ready to debut Starfinder. I'd actually rather have more of a grab-bag preview--maybe one class, a few skills, a few feats, and then a couple of monsters to get a feel for the game as a whole. Anyway, the Bonus Bestiary is still available for purchase as a print product from Paizo (for just $ 1!) or as a free PDF download. Today, the product is really nothing more than a curiosity, but it's a mildly interesting one nonetheless.
I have always love monsters and little book has some of my favorites like the Nixie, Annis hag, Faerie dragon, and Dragonne. My only complaint is there not a single monster in this book that should have been in the main Beastiary.
I personally love the Allip and the Huecuva, but anything undead will always light a fire in my heart. Also, I love the appearance of the Caryatid Column in here. I remember springing one of those on my unsuspecting players in the Undermountain dungeon crawl.
For being a freebie, this is definitely a solid product you should download. The only monster I had a tough time with was the Ascomoid. A rolling spore ball's only weakness is level surfaces! Exploit it!
If it works the way Free RPG day has the last two years, the only ways to get it will be (free) Free RPG Day itself at your FLGS or ($5) paizo.com. However, the PDF should be free after that.
Nope, because Paizo isn't going to be exhibiting at Origins. However, I expect we will have enough to last for a while on paizo.com. And we should also have enough to sell at GenCon. But not Origins. Sorry. :/
Nope, because Paizo isn't going to be exhibiting at Origins. However, I expect we will have enough to last for a while on paizo.com. And we should also have enough to sell at GenCon. But not Origins. Sorry. :/
Oh, I am affraid to even ask... But... don`t tell me that the Erinyes will be on the Player Manual instead of Bestiary?!... And the sucubbus/incubbus too?!... You are spoiling us too much...
Curse you, Pacific ocean. Curse you to hell, total lack of game stores in Taiwan.
Any chance you can keep a few aside for ordering by individuals who don't want to fly for six hours to find a game store? There is a reason I buy stuff online.
Gonna have to make sure I get there early this year! Last year, the only place running it in San Diego gave me bad info, over the phone, saying I DIDN'T have to stay the whole time to get the free stuff, when I got there they were being jerks about it...Had my family with me and we were on our way to the Zoo, just dropped by to pick up the Paizo product...which thankfully I did get eventually.
Damn, on June 20th I am far away on holiday. Any chance to buy this BB from your shop here on Paizo, or will there be a pdf available only afterwards?! I so need to get this print version...
Folks, it says, in bold, right at the top of the page:
This 16-page supplement will be initially made available for Free RPG Day on June 20, 2009.
A free PDF and a limited number of copies of the print edition of this product will be available for sale exclusively on paizo.com after Free RPG Day 2009 concludes.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:
Folks, it says, in bold, right at the top of the page:
This 16-page supplement will be initially made available for Free RPG Day on June 20, 2009.
A free PDF and a limited number of copies of the print edition of this product will be available for sale exclusively on paizo.com after Free RPG Day 2009 concludes.
Vic,
Come on, this is teh internets! Do you seriously expect us to check our facts before launching rants and/or questions?
Folks, it says, in bold, right at the top of the page:
This 16-page supplement will be initially made available for Free RPG Day on June 20, 2009.
A free PDF and a limited number of copies of the print edition of this product will be available for sale exclusively on paizo.com after Free RPG Day 2009 concludes.
SO what your saying is at 11:59pm on the 20th of June I should be sitting on this website ready to order it?
Actually, we won't be selling them until the Monday following... but I don't think you need to camp out on the refresh button. We think we've got plenty.
SO what your saying is at 11:59pm on the 20th of June I should be sitting on this website ready to order it?
Actually, we won't be selling them until the Monday following... but I don't think you need to camp out on the refresh button. We think we've got plenty.
If you have 2 pages per monster that would be 8 of them. Though if it is 1 page per monster which is more likely on most of them thats 16 of them. So if you split the difference that would be about a dozen monsters. Seems like a preview to me, just enough to get you interested and want more but not enough to slake you desire for more.
Of nearly every monster? There's going to be over 200 monsters in the Bestiary. You'd need, conservatively, ten monsters per page to get a "preview" of nearly every monster in the bestiary.
The book contains more than a dozen full monster write-ups (with color illustrations) as well as a more-or-less complete list of all the monsters that will appear in the full Bestiary.
The book contains more than a dozen full monster write-ups (with color illustrations) as well as a more-or-less complete list of all the monsters that will appear in the full Bestiary.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
Chief Technical Officer
