Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary (OGL)

4.50/5 (based on 40 ratings)
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary (OGL)
Show Description For:
Non-Mint

Hardcover Unavailable

Add PDF $19.99

Non-Mint Unavailable

Facebook Twitter Email

Here there be monsters!

What is a hero without monsters to vanquish? This 328-page book presents hundreds of different creatures for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Within this tome you'll find fire-breathing dragons and blood-drinking vampires, vile demons and shapechanging werewolves, sadistic goblins and lumbering giants, and so much more! Yet not all the creatures in this book are enemies, for some can serve lucky heroes as allies or advisors, be they summoned angels or capricious nymphs. And it doesn't stop there—with full rules for advancing monsters, adapting monsters to different roles, and designing your own unique creations, you'll never be without a band of hideous minions again!

The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is the must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.

The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary includes:

  • More than 350 different monsters
  • Dozens of monstrous variants to modify creatures and keep players on their toes
  • Numerous lists of monsters to aid in navigation, including lists by Challenge Rating, monster type, and habitat
  • Extensive rules for creating effective and balanced monsters
  • Rules for advancing monsters by hit dice, template, or class level
  • Universal monster rules to simplify special attacks, defenses, and qualities like breath weapons, damage reduction, and regeneration
  • More than a dozen feats tailored especially for monsters
  • Suggestions for monstrous cohorts
  • Two dozen additional animal companions
  • More than a dozen different wandering monster encounter tables
  • ... and much, much more!

Available Formats

The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary is available as:

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60125-183-1

Errata
Last Updated - 9/12/2011

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

Hero Lab Online
Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
Roll20 Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Rulebook Subscription.

Product Availability

Hardcover:

Unavailable

PDF:

Fulfilled immediately.

Non-Mint:

Unavailable

This product is non-mint. Refunds are not available for non-mint products. The standard version of this product can be found here.

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

PZO1112


See Also:

1 to 5 of 41 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | next > last >>

Average product rating:

4.50/5 (based on 40 ratings)

Sign in to create or edit a product review.

Without Opponents, Combat Sure Wouldn't Be Much Fun!

5/5

Bestiaries are Pathfinder's version of the D&D Monster Manuals: reference books containing descriptions and stat-blocks for hundreds of new creatures for PCs to battle, bother, or befriend. They're not designed to be read cover to cover, but that's exactly what I did for this review. The Bestiary weighs in at 327 pages and contains (according to the back-cover) over 350 different monsters arranged in alphabetical order.

The book starts with a two-page Introduction, and it's actually worth reading because it explains what the (28!) different categories of information in a creature's stat block mean. It also introduces the the "Monster Icons" scheme, wherein each monster receives three different icons to visually denote its creature type, terrain, and climate. I like the idea of the icons, but I find them too small and similar to be useful, and I'm not interested in flipping back to page 5 too figure out what they mean. I'm happy just reading the corresponding entries in the stat block.

For monsters, we start with Aasimar on page 7 and run through until Zombie on page 289. This is what the book is all about, but it's a challenging thing to review as my notes are full of bits of scattered remarks about dozens of different monsters. As I can't figure out a coherent way to synthesize them, I'm going to take the unusual tack of just including them as a sort of impressionistic picture of what's in the book. Skim to the bottom for more of the review.

"A"

--aboleths are a lot tougher than CR might indicate!

--Not officially Golarion, but flavour in entries generally compatible

--backdoor cosmology with angels stuff

--really good write-up of Solar Angels

--Army Ant Swarms are pretty nasty!

--like archons--I've never really seen them used outside of summoning, when no RP is involved

--azatas: CG celestials

Bs

--cool how barghests become greater!

--bebiliths: wow, awesome art for an awesome creature!

--bugbear artwork is weird, but fascinating bit on "The Nature of Goblinoid Evil"

Cs

--creepy Choker

--good mixture of animals and various types of monsters

--a lot of classic ones, but some new ones (like chuul) as well

--like history of cyclops and flash of insight power

Ds

--dark folk and dark stalkers?!?! humanoid subtype with language--never heard of them...

--demons! Good, engaging, clear explanation

--don't argue with a balor demon!

--great stories for demons--quasit familiars taking master's souls!

--devils! emphasis on hierarchy

--a good variety of tough foes, with lots of HP and resistances

--great writeup of lemure devils

--fantastic artwork all the way through!

--Devourers are pretty nasty for their CR!

--too many dinosaurs!

--dragons! stat blocks are so long, there's very little description

--driders and drow: underused

E

--elementals

F

--familiar (no idea that was here!)

--froghemoth--really?

G

--gelatinous cubes are really dangerous!

--genies

--love Shaitan genie art

--ghosts: emphasis on story-based customization, 2 page spread

--Giants!

--fun gibbering mouthers artwork

--goblins

--golems

Hs

--half- templates

--occasionally the titles aren't the most intuitive: "Herd animal, bison" for example

--need full stats for combat-trained horses

Is

--intellect devourer--WTF!

Ks

--kytons are cool/creepy

Ls

--lamia artwork is regrettable

--lich: gotta have 'em!

--linnorms are nasty, especially curses and poison!

--lycanthrope template

Ms

--medusas, minotaurs, mimics--all the classics!

--mummy rot sure is nasty!

Ns

-- nagas look dumb

--neothelids are intriguing! need more

--nymphs have cool boons

Os

--Oni need better explanation

Ps

--good amount of player detail for pegasi

Rs

--rakhasa: a lot of potential in the right campaign

--retrievers are scary

--rust monsters!

Ss

--sea hag artwork is great! (and evil eye comatose ability!)

--shadows can be quite more lethal than CR

--touch ACs are so low because of artificial natural armor bonuses, making Alchemists and Gunslingers especially powerful

--shoggoths arent very scary for CR19

--skum have surprisingly interesting write-up

--giant slugs too goofy

Ts

--tarrasque: bad pic, underwhelming

--troglodyte pic is great!

Us

Vs

--vampires: elaborate template

--vargouille's kiss is nasty

Ws

Xs

--xills are awesome!

Zs

--zombie pic is hilarious

Hm, that was embarrassing. Sorry!

After the monster entries are a series of appendices, and these definitely add value to the book.

Appendix 1 is Monster Creation, and it offers a very thorough and clear guide to monster creation. There are a *lot* of moving parts to creating balanced monsters in Pathfinder, so this will take some time until you get the hang of it. Appendix 2 is Monster Advancement, and this is another important part of the book because it shows GMs how to adjust creatures in the book to make them more or less powerful by adding simple templates (like "Giant" or "Young") and by adding racial hit dice or class levels. Appendix 3 is the section of the book I use more than any other, and it's indispensable: Universal Monster Rules. In order to save space and avoid repetition in stat blocks, common monster abilities are fleshed out here: everything from Darkvision to Damage Reduction to Incorporeal and more. Only very, very experienced GMs should try to run creatures just from the stat blocks without remembering to double-check what their monster abilities do, precisely, in the Universal Monster Rules. The same appendix also contains creature Types and Subtypes, which are like packages of basic information that all creatures of a particular category, such as demons or animals, share. Again, this is to save space in stat blocks. Appendix 4 is very short, and provides some advice on Monsters as PCs. I've never used it. Appendix 5 is Monster Feats, though some PCs may actually legitimately use some of them like Craft Construct. If you notice that a monster has a feat you can't find in the Core Rulebook, that's probably because it's listed here. Appendices 6 and 7 list Monster Cohorts (for the Leadership feat) and Animal Companions (for druids and rangers), respectively. Appendices 8-12 are indexes that help a GM who is looking for monsters of a particular type, CR, terrain, etc. Really useful information that most people who just use online databases probably never realized was available. Finally, Appendix 14 contains Encounter Tables broken up by terrain. These include average CRs for an each table, but I still think it'd be foolish to actually roll on them: in a Hill/Mountain, region, for example, your PCs could run into CR 3 orcs or CR 12 fire giants. A party that is challenged by the former would be curb-stomped by the latter. Good random encounter table design needs to have a narrow range of CRs before they become feasible.

I'm not a huge monster guy like some people, but I definitely enjoyed reading the Bestiary and I learned a lot about the core monsters of the setting. I know there are five later books that expand the selection far more, but much of what I see in APs and PFS still draws from this book. Along with the Core Rulebook, it's safe to say that the Bestiary was one of the releases that helped to solidify Paizo's reputation as a company that publishes the highest calibre of RPG books in terms of writing quality, artwork, design, and layout. It's not indispensable since there are multiple websites that present the same information, but for ease of use (and the joy of skimming), the Bestiary is one of those books that every GM should have.


It all starts here babee

5/5

One only two books you require to jump in and play Pathfinder, it is the essential meat in the gaming stew. As important and the core rulebook is, it is nothing with out this work.

Expanded and tweaked off the OGL 3.x material, its cleaner, better organized and tweaked for the Pathfinder rules. Every hero needs a foe, every damsel in distress needs a captor, and every GM needs a source of badies to keep the group on their toes. You will find it all here, between these pages is years of destruction and mayhem.

No matter if you playing Pathfinders own setting, one of your own design and creation, or another publishers material, this is the must have companion to your CRB.


They need more monsters

5/5

not as useful as the advanced raced guide for the monsters you could play as it does have a lot. i own this and well do my best to keep it hidden from my players. they keep trying to make them fight dragons... they are lvl 5


great reference book

5/5

This book has all the monsters you would need on a starting campaine


The standard by which all monster products will be judged by.

5/5

By now, there are several Bestiaries out in print, but when this book first came out you arguably needed to own it to play the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Was it worth the purchase? Decide for yourself!

Crunch
When we talk about a book's crunch, we're looking at its game rules, mechanics, and similar stats. As a monster book, the Bestiary is 99% crunch, and for Paizo's first real Bestiary, it is absolutely fantastic. There isn't a whole lot you can really say about monster stat blocks; they work perfectly and there aren't any monsters that feel ridiculous for their challenge rating (CR). The book also includes several new races that are appropriate for player characters; in this book, we have aasimars, the tieflings, and drow, as well as the applicable but seldom appropriate deurgar, drow noble, and svirfneblin. The book stays true to the rules of its predecessors; when you look at a drow, you recognize it as a drow from previous games. Because of the significant power up that the core races received these classically "OP" races aren't very far out of line with your traditional player characrers, and as a result we don't see the Level Adjustment system in Pathfinder. If you're unfamiliar with the term, in older editions of Dungeons and Dragons, some races were deemed so powerful that you had to actually forgo class levels in order to be a member of the race. For example, if you wanted to play a drow, you had a LA of +1, meaning that your race counted as 1 class level when determining your party's level. This either meant you were more powerful than your friends or (and more commonly) your GM had you start at a lower level to compensate. And believe me, it is not fun to be a sorcerer of an LA race because of how far behind your party is! The racial benefits seldom made up for the loss of character levels and it was a pretty terrible mechanic all around, so good riddance.

Although the book's theme is classic monsters, Paizo manages to add its own spin on fantasy games by including weird and amazing monsters. A perfect example is the froghemoth, which is basically a giant aberrant frog-monster. As a huge Lovecraft fan, I was ecstatic to see monsters like the shoggoth creep up in Pathfinder as well. For a first Bestiary, the spread of monsters is well-chosen and you could definitely run a game with only this book if you really wanted to.

What probably amounts to the best change of all, in my opinion, is the changes to the rules for building your own monsters. These rules are difficult to comprehend and enact in other games, but the Paizo team does an excellent job of laying out step-by-step every detail in crafting your own monsters by including handy charts and tables. For a game that knew it wasn't launching with much material and that it wanted to be backwards-compatible with older products, it was a very wise choice to streamline monster-making as much as they did and its probably the best reason to keep a copy of Bestiary I in your library alongside future monster tomes. 5 /5 Stars.

Flavor
When we talk about a product's flavor, we're talking about its fiction content, its style, and its overall feel. This section is always very opinionated, because even though I whole-heartily enjoy Lovecraft and his works, there are those who don't like their minds thrust into insanity and the mere sight of a shoggoth or whatnot. When you read the Bestiary, the one thing that becomes very clear is that there simply is not much room for flavor. Most monsters get a paragraph and a half of descriptive text and a beautiful picture, but that's about it. Honestly, however, that's all this product needs. The monsters that are detailed are classic monsters, so the information provided about them tends to be enough that classic gamers can recognize the creature for what it is and new players can get a sense of wonder and learn enough about the monster to be on the same page with the veterans. The art is fabulous in this book and supplements the descriptions perfectly, even when the monster concept is weird text-wise a beautiful illustration helps to sell it to you personally.

The elephant in the room is that Pathfinder wants to have its own identity as much as it wants to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors. This means that every so often the Paizo team completely re-imagines and redefines the traits of a specific monster. Usually this happens to a relatively unknown or under used monster (we'll talk more about this in Bestiary III), but there is one monster in particular that is relatively well-known and got the Paizo makeover in a big way. That monster, which has become Paizo's mascot of sorts, is the goblin. To give a little bit of background, traditionally goblins have admittedly lacked character; they were little more than evil halflings in most settings. Paizo's very first adventure path, Rise of the Runelords, shook this up by drastically changing the image of the goblin; they were now psychotic savages who were obsessed with fire and scared of dogs and horses. They sang Children of the Corn style songs about death and murder and often filled a role as comic relief in many of the adventures they have been featured in while simultaneously managing to inspire fear and terror in many a party. In my experience, you either love or you hate the new look of goblins. Many classic gamers that I've played with deplore the "new" goblin if only for the art design; big heads, small bodies. Honestly, however, it doesn't bother me much; my gaming generation includes Warcraft's techno-suicidal goblins and Warhammer's hordes of insane, suicidal goblins; next to those, Paizo's take on the goblin fits in rather nicely.

For being limited to several paragraphs of text per monster, the Bestiary gives you everything you'd expect and more flavor-wised. Its a book of monsters that feel threatening and believable; there's nothing too dumb or too far out there unless you're a hard-core medieval traditionalist. 5 /5 Stars.

Texture
When we talk about a book's texture, we're talking about its grammar and layout, among other things. As someone who has actually sat down to try and write a bestiary, let's be clear that if there's one thing I get, its that stat blocks are HARD. They're hard to format, they're hard to standardize, they're even hard to spell check because of the sheer amount of text that a book like the Bestiary has. All of its complex jargon, half of it made of surreal naming conventions. With all this mind, if there's one place that the Bestiary is amazing, its the texture. There is almost no errors of any kind in this document. Perfect grammar. Perfect spelling conventions. Perfect formatting. Everything is perfect.

As you can see in the picture I included, the Bestiary breaks from traditional monster books in that it limits one monster page, with only a few exceptions (mostly animals and familiars). There is extreme attention to detail in the text placement, and its very impressive that the book manages to be as descriptive as it is with as little space as it has; almost every monster is illustrated, after all, so not only are you juggling stat blocks, but you're also juggling them with text descriptions and illustrations. This book is a marvel of editing and layout and nothing less. 5 /5 Stars.

Final Score & Thoughts
Crunch: 5 / 5
Flavor: 5 / 5
Texture: 5 / 5
Final Score: 5 / 5

This book does everything right. It is the shining star by which all monster-based products should be judged. For a first attempt, Paizo smashes their monster book out of the park, past all expectations. It makes me excited to start looking at the future Bestiary products.


1 to 5 of 41 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | next > last >>
851 to 900 of 1,296 << first < prev | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | next > last >>

Can I just say the night hags are better than ever?

Their detect abilities are now constant, so they don't have to waste standard actions activating them.

They have deep slumber instead of sleep — which is exactly what I suggested! — because any creature capable of fighting a night hag is immune to sleep due to HD.

They have soul bind at will — so if you die while fighting one, you'll just be added to the hag's collection.

AWESOME!

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

Laithoron wrote:

James:

I noticed that while Angels, Devils, Demons, Giants, Dragons, and some other groups of monsters were clustered together that Hags got spread out through-out the beastiary. Given that hags are often encountered as a covey comprised of each of the 3 variants, I would think that they would have been grouped together to reduce page-flipping and improve ease of reference.

What was the reasoning behind spreading them out as opposed to grouping them, particularly when it seems like attention was given to grouping other related monsters?

Were hags grouped in the 3.5 MM or previous editions? Mine are all in storage now, or I'd look. But I know that the examples you mentioned were grouped by type in at least the 3.5 MM. It wasn't Paizo who chose to put those monsters together.


yoda8myhead wrote:
Were hags grouped in the 3.5 MM or previous editions? Mine are all in storage now, or I'd look. But I know that the examples you mentioned were grouped by type in at least the 3.5 MM.

Yes, hags were grouped on pages 143 and 144 of the 3.5 MM. Furthermore, rules for Hag Coveys were given on those pages (now they are listed on the Green Hag's entry).

For me, this change is (thus far) the only detractor I've seen in what is otherwise an outstanding reference book.

While I agree with the ungrouping of the animals (and pairing them with their giant or dire variants), I end up hitting a mental snag when I try to think of the names of the 3 hag types separately. At least the dinosaurs are still grouped... I'd really have a rough time recalling their individual names! ;)

BTW, there are typo in the Janni and Efreeti's Change Size descriptions:
Janni: It reads that the ability can work on the efreeti instead of on the janni.
Efreeti: The save DC should be 14 instead of 13 (10 + 2nd level + 2 Cha mod). The "13" is the save for the Janni's +1 Charisma modifier.

Also, is anyone else reminded of Leonidas when looking at the Storm Giant illustration? :D

Liberty's Edge

Hey, there's even an Easter Egg regarding Ptolus in the Bestiary. Cool! :)


First, I love the new Bestiary. I had a nerdgasm when I saw it was hyperlinked and had an expandable bookmark feature.

However, for the "One File per Chapter" option for the Bestiary PDF download, does anyone know if they are currently organized in some way? I downloaded it, but can't make any real sense of it.

I was expecting a breakdown something like this (and I'm sure a lot of other users are, too):

Chapter 1. Front Cover, Credits, Table of Contents, Introduction

Chapters 2 - X: A chapter for each letter (unless there's only a couple entries, in which case multiple letters can be combined like for W-Z)

Chapter X+1: Appendices, Advertisement, and Back cover

I'm hoping either to gain some insight regarding the current chapter division so I can use it "as is" or to get a chapter breakdown that makes sense to me.

-John


galwinganoon wrote:

I'm hoping either to gain some insight regarding the current chapter division so I can use it "as is" or to get a chapter breakdown that makes sense to me.

-John

I think they're just grouped by page number. You can always rename 'em so that the make sense to you. :)

Grand Lodge

Denim N Leather wrote:
galwinganoon wrote:

I'm hoping either to gain some insight regarding the current chapter division so I can use it "as is" or to get a chapter breakdown that makes sense to me.

-John

I think they're just grouped by page number. You can always rename 'em so that the make sense to you. :)

Appears to be grouped in signatures to me

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Laithoron wrote:

James:

I noticed that while Angels, Devils, Demons, Giants, Dragons, and some other groups of monsters were clustered together that Hags got spread out through-out the beastiary. Given that hags are often encountered as a covey comprised of each of the 3 variants, I would think that they would have been grouped together to reduce page-flipping and improve ease of reference.

What was the reasoning behind spreading them out as opposed to grouping them, particularly when it seems like attention was given to grouping other related monsters?

This was actually something of a contentious point during the book's layout... in 3rd edition's Monster Manual, the hags were SORT of grouped. The annis, green hag, and sea hag were all listed under "Hag" but the night hag was not. In the first edition of the game, though, the hags were organized in the same way we do so in the Bestiary; each as their own entry alphabetically.

SO, on one level we decided to go a little nostalgic with the hag organization. But the main reason was that we don't want to limit covens to hags, nor do we want to limit our naming convention of hags to "Noun/Adjective Hag" style, even though that's exactly how the green hag and the night hag and the sea hag work. The annis didn't work like that until 3rd edition. And if we were to introduce some new kind of hag, it might or might not have the name "hag" in its title—likewise, we might some day do something with non-hags in covens.

Furthermore, while hags do all share some thematic similarities and the ability to be in covens, they don't actually share much else. They don't even share types; of the hags in the Bestairy, they're either outsiders or monstrous humanoids. I could see us some day doing humanoid hags or undead hags or fey hags, for example. Their stats are built on their own as well, with no attempt or need to give them shared traits. Since hags don't really share a large number of game rules in common except by chance or coincidence, there's less of an urge to group them together.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Andrew Betts wrote:
Denim N Leather wrote:
galwinganoon wrote:

I'm hoping either to gain some insight regarding the current chapter division so I can use it "as is" or to get a chapter breakdown that makes sense to me.

-John

I think they're just grouped by page number. You can always rename 'em so that the make sense to you. :)
Appears to be grouped in signatures to me

I believe that's how we did it; that's how we organized the section of the book when we were working on it, for sure. (A signature is a group of 16 pages that comprises one section of a book; it's a printing and binding thing.)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Did a quick look-through. Might have missed a few, and there are some who have been given new names (eladrin to azata for instance). And didn't bother looking up the mundane animals or their dire versions. Some of those that were excluded are in the bonus bestiary, some are WotC IP, some are from older open source (dark folk for instance), and some will most definitely not be missed (bye bye, tojanida).

Of the new one's I welcome the linnorm, the sea serpent and especially the SHOGGOTH.

GONE

achaierai, allip, athach azer, beholder, belker, bodak, carrion crawler, chaos beast, delver, destrachan, devil - hellcat, digester, dinosaur - megaraptor, displacer beast, dragonne, eladrin, ethereal filcher, ethereal marauder, frost worm, githyanki, githzerai, gray render, grick, grimlock, hippogriff, howler, inevitable, krenshar, kuo-toa, lammasu, locathah, magmin, mind flayer, nightshade, phantom fungus, phasm, rast, ravid, sea cat, shadow mastiff, shield guardian, slaad, spider eater, sprite, tendriculos, thoqqua, titan, tojanida, umber hulk, yrthak, yuan-ti

NEW

azata, basirond, boggard, cave fisher, cyclops, dark creeper, dark stalker, demon - nabasu, demon - shadow, dinosaur - ankylosaurus, dinosaur - brachiosaurus, dinosaur - pteranodon, dinosaur - stegosaurus, flytrap, froghemoth, goblin dog, intellect devourer, linnorm, mite, morlock, neothelid, phoenix, pixie, sea serpent, shoggoth, tengu, vegepygmy, yellow musk creeper, yeti


Navdi wrote:


GONE

achaierai, allip, athach azer, beholder, belker, bodak, carrion crawler, chaos beast, delver, destrachan, devil - hellcat, digester, dinosaur - megaraptor, displacer beast, dragonne, eladrin, ethereal filcher, ethereal marauder, frost worm, githyanki, githzerai, gray render, grick, grimlock, hippogriff, howler, inevitable, krenshar, kuo-toa, lammasu, locathah, magmin, mind flayer, nightshade, phantom fungus, phasm, rast, ravid, sea cat, shadow mastiff, shield guardian, slaad, spider eater, sprite, tendriculos, thoqqua, titan, tojanida, umber hulk, yrthak, yuan-ti

The allip, dragonne, lammasu, and shadow mastiff are in the bonus bestiary.

The Megaraptor (which is actually a Utahraptor, but I am being picky) is an advance deinonychus, and the shield guardian is an option for all golems.


Denim N Leather wrote:

Just d/l pdf, waiting for the strat to get a hard copy in.

Looks great!

If youre talking about the Complete Strat in NYC then yeah they got their hard copies in...

*walks away grumbling to himself*

P.S. The book looks great though.


ShinHakkaider wrote:
Denim N Leather wrote:

Just d/l pdf, waiting for the strat to get a hard copy in.

Looks great!

If youre talking about the Complete Strat in NYC then yeah they got their hard copies in...

*walks away grumbling to himself*

P.S. The book looks great though.

I was, thanks!

Good thing they're open late tomorrow!!! :)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Navdi wrote:

GONE

achaierai, allip, athach azer, beholder, belker, bodak, carrion crawler, chaos beast, delver, destrachan, devil - hellcat, digester, dinosaur - megaraptor, displacer beast, dragonne, eladrin, ethereal filcher, ethereal marauder, frost worm, githyanki, githzerai, gray render, grick, grimlock, hippogriff, howler, inevitable, krenshar, kuo-toa, lammasu, locathah, magmin, mind flayer, nightshade, phantom fungus, phasm, rast, ravid, sea cat, shadow mastiff, shield guardian, slaad, spider eater, sprite, tendriculos, thoqqua, titan, tojanida, umber hulk, yrthak, yuan-ti

As mentioned above, some of these monsters are actually in the book, they're just kind of hidden. And several others are in the bonus bestiary. The eladrins ARE in there, but they've been re-named to be azatas (since the word eladrin isn't availble; it's owned by WotC).

Others, like the achaierai, the chaos beast, the howler, and the hellcat show up in various adventures we've published since the Bestiary or are at the printer.

Others, like the frost worm and the grick and the nightshades are VERY VERY likely to be in Bestairy 2 (the release date of which has not been anounced).

A dozen or so will NEVER be in the game because they're owned lock, stock, and barrel by WotC (beholder, carrion crawler, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, kuo-toa, mind flayer, slaad, umber hulk, and yuan-ti).


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:


As mentioned above, some of these monsters are actually in the book, they're just kind of hidden. And several others are in the bonus bestiary. The eladrins ARE in there, but they've been re-named to be azatas (since the word eladrin isn't availble; it's owned by WotC).

A dozen or so will NEVER be in the game because they're owned lock, stock, and barrel by WotC (beholder, carrion crawler, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, kuo-toa, mind flayer, slaad, umber hulk, and yuan-ti).

Pretty much what I said in my original post isn't it. ;)

Navdi wrote:


There are some who have been given new names (eladrin to azata for instance).

Some of those that were excluded are in the bonus bestiary.

Some are WotC IP.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Navdi wrote:
Pretty much what I said in my original post isn't it. ;)

But with more explanations from the person who built the book. My apologies if the additional details were extraneous.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:


But with more explanations from the person who built the book. My apologies if the additional details were extraneous.

Added explanations are always appreciated. So, in which book are we getting the tojanida back? ;)

Dark Archive

Bestiary XXVII :p


I'm so looking forward to this arriving in the mail!

Dark Archive

Ravenmantle wrote:
Bestiary XXVII :p

AKA "The Tome of Horrid - PFRPG edition"

AKA "The Compleate Book of Unused Creatures - featuring the Algoid, Carbuncle, CIFAL, Sheet Phantom and others"

The Flumph didn't make the cut for the actual physical book, but there are rumors that they're in talks to see if they will get a write up as a free PDF bonus.
Right before the game line is discontinued.

Paizo Employee Chief Creative Officer, Publisher

Dryder wrote:
Hey, there's even an Easter Egg regarding Ptolus in the Bestiary. Cool! :)

There is?


Best thing I've seen so far:

Centuars don't use large sized weapons! Hooray! I never liked centaurs and driders and the like using large sized weapons when their upper halves are obviously medium.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Erik Mona wrote:
Dryder wrote:
Hey, there's even an Easter Egg regarding Ptolus in the Bestiary. Cool! :)

There is?

Yeah... I'm curious to know about this too. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional. But it might have been...

Paizo Employee Creative Director

KnightErrantJR wrote:

Best thing I've seen so far:

Centuars don't use large sized weapons! Hooray! I never liked centaurs and driders and the like using large sized weapons when their upper halves are obviously medium.

Yeah, we tried to give the undersized weapon quality to most of the centaur-like creatures, like the drider and the lamia. It just kinda makes sense.

Note that not all of the centaur-like creatures get undersized weapons. Some of them (like the marilith and the lillend) are big enough and bad-ass enough that they still use weapons sized for their actual monster size category.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Some comments.

Love the art. Most of it beats the art in the MM hands down.

Like the fact that the animals are correctly alphabetized.

The PDF file is very heavy with layers and slow to load. Makes it very hard to find anything in it fast, for example during a game.


James Jacobs wrote:
Others, like the achaierai, the chaos beast, the howler, and the hellcat show up in various adventures we've published since the Bestiary or are at the printer.

Are there any plans to include these in a later Bestiary? I've purchased a couple of adventures, but I don't traditionally buy those.


Pathfinder Adventure Subscriber

I complained enough when as a superscriber, my Bestiary didn't ship when it should have, Now I'll give credit where credit is due. Not only has my order shipped, but they sent me an apology email, with a bonus to make up for my inconvenience. Kudos's to the customer service staff.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

scranford wrote:
I complained enough when as a superscriber, my Bestiary didn't ship when it should have, Now I'll give credit where credit is due. Not only has my order shipped, but they sent me an apology email, with a bonus to make up for my inconvenience. Kudos's to the customer service staff.

I'd like to make it clear that the e-mail scranford is talking about was directed only to people who had their subscriptions set to ship *separately*, and were—contrary to their stated preference—having their shipment held up by the unexpected last-minute delay on Seekers.

People who had set their combined subs to ship out *monthly* were processed exactly as specified. "Hold for monthly" means that we hold anything that comes in early in the month until *everything* due that month has arrived, and then we ship it all at once to decrease shipping fees. Which is exactly what we did. Everything we're expecting this month has now arrived, and the "hold for monthly" shipments are now going out.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Brian E. Harris wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Others, like the achaierai, the chaos beast, the howler, and the hellcat show up in various adventures we've published since the Bestiary or are at the printer.
Are there any plans to include these in a later Bestiary? I've purchased a couple of adventures, but I don't traditionally buy those.

There are indeed plans.


My compliments for fixing dragons. And I'm just talking about organizing the information. No longer are we stuck with a pair of tables beside each dragon type. The layout here is superior. Good job.


James Jacobs wrote:
There are indeed plans.

God bless your fiendish tyrannosaur self, good sir.


Kyle is going to bed sad tonight. No happy email from Paizo today. :(

Scarab Sages

I too noticed the broken up hags, and would have preferred a similar format to the MM 3.5 for them, since they are one of my favorite long running villians in campaign games. However, this is a minor thing, and I have to say the bestiary is just amazing. The art is spectacular, the write ups are excellent, and its great to have a Pathfinder monster book to carry out to my games now instead of carting the old MM3.5 around.

While paging through admiring the art, I noticed the picture of lamia with a lower lion body. After seeing pictures of the lamia matriarchs with snake bottoms in RotRL books, I just sort of assumed the Pathfinder version of lamias in general had serpentine lower halves, so this was suprising, but also rather interesting. Are there any other varieties of lamias out there in Golarion?

And just to tie the two together, I think it would be rather cool to add a lamia to a hag covey as one of the members.

Suggestion for the Bestiary II:

An appendix for groups of monsters and their gestalt abilities:

hag coveys(what sort of other creatures (non-hag) might be able to join)
Fey circles (possible powers and creature types)
groups of Giant casters
pack tactics of wolves or other predators that pack hunt
tactics for multiple dragon fights (aerial)

These might give some good ideas to new and not so new DMs when using these creatures.

Liberty's Edge

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for giving Deinonychus feathers. Oh, and the book is great too. :)

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

redcelt32 wrote:


While paging through admiring the art, I noticed the picture of lamia with a lower lion body. After seeing pictures of the lamia matriarchs with snake bottoms in RotRL books, I just sort of assumed the Pathfinder version of lamias in general had serpentine lower halves, so this was suprising, but also rather interesting. Are there any other varieties of lamias out there in Golarion?

And just to tie the two together, I think it would be rather cool to add a lamia to a hag covey as one of the members.

As far as I can tell, lamias (at least in Golarion) all have the lower half of different creatures. The one's I've seen have been lion, snake, and tiger thus far. And I've seen all of them in their adventures. *shrugs* Hope that helps.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Lamias in Golarion have big cat lower torsos, be those torsos lions or panthers or whatever.

That said, there are numerous other types of lamia in Golarion; the lamia matriarch is the most well-known—they have the lower torsos of snakes. Lamia matriarchs are detailed in Pathfinder #2.

We've detailed 3 more lamias as well. They're in Pathfinder #6; the vulture-like kuchrimas (who are more like vulture-people with no arms than they are like centaurs), the immense lamia harridans (who are basically Huge sized lamias), and the hungerers (which are foul, super-obese, super hideous lamias). Pathfinder #6 has a fair amount of additional flavor about all of the lamia races as well.

But by and large, the standard lamia as detailed in Golarion is the most common.

Scarab Sages

Ah, that explains it, as AP#5-6 are in my wife's clutches currently destined for distribution as one of my Christmas gifts (along with about 5 items of Pathfinder loot!) I have not yet seen those two issues, but now I am really looking forward to them.


James Jacobs wrote:


And several others are in the bonus bestiary.

Where can I find this bonus bestiary ?


sempai33 wrote:
Where can I find this bonus bestiary ?

Bonus Bestiary

Bestiary Preview

Bestiary Preview II

Liberty's Edge

James Jacobs wrote:
Erik Mona wrote:
Dryder wrote:
Hey, there's even an Easter Egg regarding Ptolus in the Bestiary. Cool! :)

There is?

Yeah... I'm curious to know about this too. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional. But it might have been...

Easter Egg:
Well, p.13, left colum, first paragraph (in the Solar's entry), you can read: "On another, seven solars stand watch over seven mystical chains keeping evil gods bound within a prison

demiplane."

Dark Archive

Vic Wertz wrote:
Everything we're expecting this month has now arrived, and the "hold for monthly" shipments are now going out.

Am I correct in assuming that this process will take more than one day? I've set my subs to ship out monthly and they haven't shipped yet (heck, they're still in my sidecart).


Vic Wertz wrote:

I'd like to make it clear that the e-mail scranford is talking about was directed only to people who had their subscriptions set to ship *separately*, and were—contrary to their stated preference—having their shipment held up by the unexpected last-minute delay on Seekers.

People who had set their combined subs to ship out *monthly* were processed exactly as specified. "Hold for monthly" means that we hold anything that comes in early in the month until *everything* due that month has arrived, and then we ship it all at once to decrease shipping fees. Which is exactly what we did. Everything we're expecting this month has now arrived, and the "hold for monthly" shipments are now going out.

Really? Because I have my shipping preference set to separately, but my order has not yet been processed.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

Ravenmantle wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:
Everything we're expecting this month has now arrived, and the "hold for monthly" shipments are now going out.
Am I correct in assuming that this process will take more than one day? I've set my subs to ship out monthly and they haven't shipped yet (heck, they're still in my sidecart).

I feel your pain. Patience is a virtue, it is said.

Liberty's Edge

I just purchased the PDF. At least now I can read it.....

Sean

Sovereign Court

Oh.........................I hold in my hands the hardcover book. There has never been a finer dungeons and dragons book ever made! This is also the smartest game tool I have ever seen. Absolutely amazing! *****

The Exchange RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32

I bought it too. Couldn't wait any longer!
Since a credit card hiccup on Monday which I immediately fixed by authorising a different card, I've heard nothing. I realise that not being able to pay put me to the back of the queue, I just hadn't expected quite as big a queue!

Plus my order is weird - Seekers was split away, an OoTs book I bought was added to my normal subscription items - you need a special kind of packing troll just to get it right!

Still, four days of nail-biting broke my will. (That on top of the whole week before)

I must say - I cannot WAIT to get the real book. The pdf looks fantabulous!!

Scarab Sages

I cross my fingers every day when I arrive home, hoping that I'll find a box of Pathfinder goodness waiting for me....

Liberty's Edge

Okay...how do you cost out animated objects using craft construct?


Just got the book yesterday and I love it. Having each monster take up only page is a very welcome design choice. Oh, and I dug the Lovecraft reference in the Tarrasque entry. Nice little tidbit there that took me a little while to figure out.

Dark Archive

Matthew Morris wrote:
I feel your pain. Patience is a virtue, it is said.

My patience hasn't quite run out yet. Just needed some clarification is all.

851 to 900 of 1,296 << first < prev | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Paizo / Product Discussion / Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary (OGL) All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.