Okay. So. We have had our differences. I for one am just going to let by-gones be by-gones. The thing to keep in mind is, I am emotionally invested in both Pathfinder, Paizo, and the GameMastery line of products. Very passionately so. So with that in mind, for YOUR consideration, my review of the Bestiary Box.
I have to say. For 35 bucks, You get a good deal. The box is beautiful, meaty and well made. It is quite honestly one of the best boxes for any game or supplement I have ever seen or held. It looks FANTASTIC on the shelf next to my Pathfinder books. The pawns themselves are up to the usual very high standard of work I have come to expect from Paizo. The card stock is of AAA quality. The pawns are sturdy. The bases are well made and plentiful. I knew this would be a good effort, and I was not disappointed. The art: Well. What can you say. It is the uberly awesome Pathfinder art that I think will one day be ranked up there with guys like Larry Elmore and Denis Beauvais among fantasy RPGers.
All in all, this is an A List Product. I am very happy with it. And glad that Paizo decided to provide this.
I do have some problems. And I will list those to get them off my chest and in the hopes that someone at Paizo may be inspired to find a solution for them. It may seem like nitpicking. But its my review, and while I promised to be fair, I am not going to hold anything back.
The art on the pawns IS fantastic. But one of the arguments against pogs in favor of pawns put forth by Erik was that you couldn't fit that much art on a pog. And that brings up my first problem. There is a SERIOUS amount of 'Dead' white space on most of the pawns. If you think there is more art on these then on the WoTC pogs, you are smoking crack. And that is as nice a way to say it as I could think of. My second issue is there really isn't much you can do with them to represent a creature that has been killed. I mean.. sure you can just tip them over, take them out of the base.. whatever. That's really... just sort of haphazard though. With the Pogs, you could just flip the pog over, and presto, you had a corpse. This may seem like nitpicking again... but its still a problem for me. I am the type of GM that YOU ARE going to do skill checks for dancing over the corpses of the dozen orcs you just slew while you deal with their ogre-magi boss. And really my last problem is on the number of some monsters provided. But the list was provided before hand, so I can't really complain beyond saying that 4 goblins and 4 kobolds is just LOL. A dozen 'dry erasable' blanks would have gone along way to taking care of this.
So. All in All. If you use game aids in your RPGing... PICK THIS UP. It is a 5 star product. If you are heavily invested in an alternative (either miniatures or pogs) this IS STILL A GREAT DEAL. Thanks for listening to those of us who wanted this.
(edited for spelling and grammar. It is 2:30 in the morning :P)
