Go beyond goblins with an army of fantasy's most fearsome foes! Bestiary 2 presents hundreds of different creatures for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Within this collection of creatures you'll find undead dragons and mischievous gremlins, shrieking banshees and unstoppable titans, the infamous jabberwock, and so much more! Yet not all these monsters need to be foes, as new breeds of otherworldly guardians, living shadows, and vampires all might take up adventure's call. In addition, new rules for customizing and advancing monsters and an expanded glossary of creature abilities ensure that you'll be prepared to challenge your heroes wherever adventure takes them!
The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 is the second indispensable volume of monsters for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and serves as a companion to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. 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 320-page Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 includes:
More than 300 different monsters
Creatures both new and familiar, drawing upon the best-known beasts of legend, literature, and Pathfinder RPG adventures
Challenges for any adventure and every level of play
Hosts of new templates and variants, including simple templates for on-the-fly creature customization
Numerous lists of monsters to aid in navigation, including lists by Challenge Rating, monster type, and habitat
New rules for creating and running high-level menaces
Expanded universal monster rules to simplify special attacks, defenses, and qualities
New familiars, animal companions, and other allies
As its name implies, Bestiary 2 is the second full-length collection of creatures for Pathfinder. It's a big (320 page) book, and introduces, according to the back cover, over 300 different monsters. The vast majority of creatures get one page each (art, stat block, description), though there are a few pages with two monsters and a few monsters that get double-page spreads. In format, it's very similar to the first bestiary collection. Obviously, I can't review all the monsters individually, but I would like to list some of the creatures or new creature types that jumped out at me:
* Aeons: Embodiments of neutrality striving to maintain universal balance, these cosmic entities are hard to conceptualise but interesting and important for planar travel. Several varieties are included here. I particularly liked "bythos", monitors of disruptions to time or space.
* Agathions: Beastlike outsiders native to the neutral good plane Nirvana. The theme works surprisingly well, with each type having a distinct role. I've never really used these, but should.
* Aranea: Super creepy pic!
* Athach: Dumb, bizarre arm monster with no background.
* Crypt Thing: Special teleport ability is pretty cool.
* Daemons: Outsiders with a special desire to consume mortal souls. Still too similar to "demons" and I don't really see what distinct niche they fill.
* Primal Dragons: Elemental-themed dragons plus a shadow plane-themed umbral dragon.
* Elementals: Four new ones here (mud, lightning, magma, and ice)
* Elemental (playable) races: Ifrits, undines, etc., are introduced here.
* Giants: Four new ones, including rune and taiga.
* Golems: Six new ones, with adamantine and clockwork the best.
* Gremlins: New creature type, a good and suitably annoying addition to the game.
* Inevitables: Lawful Neutral outsiders implacable in their goals. Each has a good nice.
* Lycanthropes: Three new ones, with wereboars and weretigers having good, scary art.
* Megafauna: Four new ones.
* Nightshade: Introduced as a creature type, with a really cool description.
* Proteans: Chaotic neutral outsider type. Not particularly interesting, and not obvious how to use well in a game.
* Qlippoths: Pre-demon residents of the Abyss, they hate demons and mortals whose sins form them. A cool concept.
Generally speaking, there are a lot of high-CR and a lot of gargantuan- and colossal- sized creatures. The book fills in a lot of the classics that weren't included in the first collection, and I also noticed a lot that appeared in Rise of the Runelords (including art reproduction). However, there are also a lot I've never heard of before despite gaming for a couple of decades. A good mix! Overall, an excellent, high-quality expansion to a GM's toolkit.
This book so far has been my favorite purchase of ALL of my RPG books.
I don't know if I can explain the fervor I have for this book but I will try.
So first of all there is the cover, the ever feared Jabberwock(y) of Lewis Carroll legend. Having a tough SOB (CR23) on the cover is the best way to start things off I think. Lets me know im in for a ride with this book.
While the first Bestiary was the standard array of Monsters we have all come to know and love through years of them being reprinted for games the Bestiary 2 is where Paizo took off on its own with a whole slew of new monster and just general new ideas for monsters. A handful of new extraplanar monsters of various alignments were added such as The Aeons, Qlippoths and Daemons all have decently written history and offer a lot of inspiration for using them in games.
The two things I love best about this book are as follows.
One: New dragons, and not just more "coloured or metal" dragons, but a new type of dragon altogether: Primal Dragons. These bad boys have probably the best art in the whole book (magma, im looking at you) and they make for a nice change from the everyday.
Two: The art, while the art in Bestiary 1 is GOOD, its not near as sharp, crisp, and detailed as this book. The colours, the textures, the everything, all done very well. You will not be disappointed when looking through this book.
Looking through the PDF of Bestiary 2, I find myself remembering the days in the 1980s when I'd sit in the back of the mall bookstore and leaf through the various gaming tomes I couldn't possibly buy all of.
Crystal Dragons, Aeons, and several others in this book remind of that golden era, when DMs had such a wide variety of unusual (and often new-age-y) creatures at their disposals, they couldn't possibly ever use them all.
Sure, some of the creatures are a little odd, but on the other hand, the vast variety will lead to some adventurer groups with a far different list of encountered monsters than the norm.
I personally can't wait to spring the Dullahan (aka Headless Horseman) and Animate Dream on my party!
Not as extensive as the first, yet the same price...
I do not mind the creatures in this book, but it does get less use than my other bestiary. However it still has the same problem as the first also. The use of generic rules for a creature type. For an actual hardcover book to be useful in a game (for creatures) you MUST be able to have all rules for the creature on the one page. The use of rules based on a type of creature that you need to leave the creatures page to reference is irritating and a waste of in game time.
Please fix this problem. I understand that constructs all have similarities but I need the rules on each constructs page to reference. Not have to skip to the end of the book to see if they have something relevant when they need it.
Heya, products after our initial 2 releases (with the exception of some special hardcovers) do not have inline hyperlinks because they are just too unwieldy to maintain internally (especially if we were to attempt hyperlinking between different books).
Sorry for tardy response. Life got "interesting" in the chinese proverbial sense.
Thanks for the reply. I can understand that. Shame though. The links make the PDFs super friendly in-game when e.g. summoners get busy.
So I know a lot of people wonder why some magical beasts are, well, magical despite being essentially fantastic but otherwise normal animals. Well, related to this, I'm wondering, why are gryphs neutral evil? They have int 2, so they are animal level intelligent. Animals usually don't have anything besides neutral alignment
Because they are consistently, across all editions of D&D, Neutral Evil with animal intelligence, so I guess Paizo assumed that the amount of people who would be surprised that Gryphs are suddenly not evil and/or intelligent will be higher than the amount of people who wonder why they are. As to why they were done so in 1981 Fiend Folio, I guess you're out of luck, since as far as I recall, the editor of FF has passed away in 2003.
Because they are consistently, across all editions of D&D, Neutral Evil with animal intelligence, so I guess Paizo assumed that the amount of people who would be surprised that Gryphs are suddenly not evil and/or intelligent will be higher than the amount of people who wonder why they are. As to why they were done so in 1981 Fiend Folio, I guess you're out of luck, since as far as I recall, the editor of FF has passed away in 2003.
Well, I guess that explains it, still confused about what exactly makes them naturally evil since as animals they can't choose it and nothing in their bestiary page says why they would be inherently evil(undead are normally inherently evil, non evil undead are more of exception) .-.
Because they are consistently, across all editions of D&D, Neutral Evil with animal intelligence, so I guess Paizo assumed that the amount of people who would be surprised that Gryphs are suddenly not evil and/or intelligent will be higher than the amount of people who wonder why they are. As to why they were done so in 1981 Fiend Folio, I guess you're out of luck, since as far as I recall, the editor of FF has passed away in 2003.
Well, I guess that explains it, still confused about what exactly makes them naturally evil since as animals they can't choose it and nothing in their bestiary page says why they would be inherently evil(undead are normally inherently evil, non evil undead are more of exception) .-.
Zoogs are CE with Int 5, Chimeras are CE with Int 4, there's whole bunch of "really dumb but still Evil" magical beasts out there. Gryphs are just the dumbest of them all.
Jen Page
Media Specialist, SmiteWorks USA (Fantasy Grounds)
Hello everyone! Happy to say, this is now available for purchase from Fantasy Grounds or on Steam. Sync your FG account first to get it a discount equivalent to the PDF Price ($7.49)
Did anyone figure out why the dullahan has a DC 22 for its death calling ability, and not DC 19? It has 10 HD and Cha 18. It doesn’t even have Ability Focus for the +2, which would still only make the ability DC 21. Frightful Presence is at least DC 19.
