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.
Here's our third hardcover Pathfinder RPG book for the year! The first Bestiary was an excellent book, but due to spacial limitations it left us hungry for more. Well here's our solution!
Kytons weren't devils when originally introduced (or at least they weren't in 2e Planescape's Planes of Law box set, I dunno if they ever were around before that.) The change just returns them to the status they held before, denizens of Hell but not true devils.
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Kvantum wrote:
Kytons weren't devils when originally introduced (or at least they weren't in 2e Planescape's Planes of Law box set, I dunno if they ever were around before that.) The change just returns them to the status they held before, denizens of Hell but not true devils.
Ah ok, I used to ignore Planescape back then, because I found the original box set offensive in its tone and embarrassing in trying to be cool with its awful "cant" and DiTerlizzi art.
Ah ok, I used to ignore Planescape back then, because I found the original box set offensive in its tone and embarrassing in trying to be cool with its awful "cant" and DiTerlizzi art.
Not all of us can afford to buy every Pathfinder product. If Paizo put out bi-yearly monstrous compendiums I'd do flips.
You could always pull back your Blu-Ray addiction. ;)
I'm pretty much at where I want to be with it now. And anyway, as not having a gaming group, I have no need to collect every issue of every adventure path.
Kytons weren't devils when originally introduced (or at least they weren't in 2e Planescape's Planes of Law box set, I dunno if they ever were around before that.) The change just returns them to the status they held before, denizens of Hell but not true devils.
Actually, while there certainly ARE kytons in Hell... their main plane is the plane of Shadow in Golarion. But yeah... the weren't devils in 2nd edition when they were initially created, and even in 3rd edition, even though they were CALLED "chain devils," just look at their stats. They're not BUILT like devils. They don't have any devil traits. No spell-like abilities. They're like retrievers and bebiliths (two others who we moved out into their own entries).
Ah ok, I used to ignore Planescape back then, because I found the original box set offensive in its tone and embarrassing in trying to be cool with its awful "cant" and DiTerlizzi art.
The official Bestiary 2 announcement, very, very NICE!
I am glad that Wayne Reynolds is doing the cover art for this one as well.
(Since there wasn't a Bestiary 1 promo poster, any chance for a Bestiary 2 promo poster?) Pretty Please...?
BTW James... very glad that hippogriffs were mentioned, as well as proteans, and the aeons too. (After hearing talk of the True Neutral outsiders for a while, its nice to have a name, and knowing we'll have much more in about 8 months).
That fellow? A sea life curator? Just use stats for an NPC Expert with Knowledge (Nature - sea life), and use the page-space for something more useful, such as a giant sea crab maybe?
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