Test your courage against the most infamous foes of myth and legend! Bestiary 3 presents hundreds of monsters for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Within this book you’ll find demiliches and demodands, grave knights and goblin snakes, norns and nephilim, imperial dragons and unfettered eidolons, and so much more! Yet not every creature needs to be an enemy, as winged garudas, crafty tanukis, and leonine lammasus all wait to join your party and answer the call of glory.
The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3 is the third 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 bestselling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.
The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3 includes:
More than 300 different monsters
Classic terrors from myth and literature, from the frumious bandersnatch and the righteous valkyrie to the cunning dybbuk and elusive kappa
Hordes of new creatures you can construct, grow, or summon to aid your party in its adventures
New player-friendly races to let you adventure as canny ratfolk, genie-blooded sulis, and more
New familiars, animal companions, and other allies
Challenges for any adventure and every level of play
Some of the strangest and most beloved creatures from fantasy roleplaying history and the Pathfinder campaign setting
Hosts of new templates and variants
Appendices to aid in monster navigation, including lists by Challenge Rating, monster type, and habitat
Expanded universal monster rules to simplify special attacks, defenses, and qualities
The third bestiary of monsters for Pathfinder is chock-full of cool stuff. A few major themes for the book can be extracted: creatures from myth and literature (like sasquatches and valkyries), creatures with an Asian theme perfect for adventuring in Tian-Xia (such as kami and jiang-shi vampires), and the just plain really weird (like yithians and zoogs). As always with reviews of books like this, there's no way I can go through the hundreds of monsters individually, but I can say the writing and artwork is top-notch. Some particular things to note:
* The book has five new playable races: catfolk, ratfolk, suli, vanara, and vishkanya. There's always a demand for anthromorphic races like catfolk, and ratfolk later become prominent (under the name ysoki) in Starfinder. Suli don't do much for me and vishkanya are a race I've never seen played. But I do have to shout out to the monkey-like vanara, since a vanaran PC features prominently in my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign!
* Several of the attempts from Misfit Monsters Redeemed to make goofy old monsters cool again are reprinted here, such as adherers and wolves-in-sheep's-clothing.
* Man, vulnudaemons are creepy.
* Love the artwork for animal lords--very Black Panther.
*The book introduces several new categories (sub-types) of monster: asuras (very cool concept I've never seen used), behemoths (creatures of divine vengeance on entire nations or worlds; a neat story idea), clockworks (a classic), demodands (titanspawn who hate the gods), divs (corrupted genies who strive for the ruin of all things made by mortals), imperial dragons (wingless, serpent-like dragons of Asian legend), kami (fixed-location nature spirits), kytons (creepy devils from the Plane of Shadows!), leshy (plant-like sentients), linnorms (cruel wingless dragons with a death curse), oni (evil spirits given form--the opposite of kami), rakshasa (drawn from Indian myth), sphinxes (with an interesting write-up), and thriaes (female bee-like seers). There's a real contribution to the richness of the game here, as all of these categories can then serve as the basis for rules-coherent variants introduced in later books.
All in all, Bestiary 3 is an excellent book and a smart purchase for a GM.
Reading through Bestiary 1 and 2, I was hoping that there will be even more eastern themed monsters. This Bestiary delivers just what I wanted! A must buy! Also, Flumph!!!
This is probably my favorite of the Bestiaries so far, the content covers many iconic monsters from editions past, and stuff from the Adventure Paths. With great Asian flair for the Tian Xia world guide that is coming up, as well as many incredible monsters that have never graced the pages of a monster guide but are very welcome.
Although I'm generally opposed to the concept of core book "sequels," the content in 'Bestiary 3' is top notch. Whereas it took me some time to realize the usefulness of the monsters presented in 'Bestiary 2' (extraplanar/dimensional encounters rarely play a role in my campaigns), I immediately recognized many of the creatures in 'Bestiary 3' as either "iconic" or interesting variations on an established monster class.
As is to be expected, this book is well laid out and the illustrations are (mostly) top notch - Paizo rarely disappoints here! The Pathfinder Campaign Setting is still missing a few iconic monsters (mostly due to WotC's draconic licensing practices), but this volume (and the two which preceded it) gives GMs a huge variety of creatures to populate their encounters.
If I could make any suggestions for future 'Bestiary' volumes, the first would be to expand upon the lore provided - I realize it would likely halve the number of creatures included per book, but a two page spread (even for "simple" creatures like oozes) might help a GM find a place for a given creature within his campaign setting. Also, better illustrating a creature's size (perhaps even graphically) would be useful - general size classifications only go so far, and being able to see a silhouette of a given entry next to a human-sized creature would give both GMs and players a clear understanding of exactly how big a monster is (this was employed beautifully in an old FASA publication for Shadowrun: 'Paranormal Animals of North America' by Nigel Findley). Again, these are just suggestions on ways to improve an otherwise outstanding collection of Bestiaries. Keep up the good work!
An excellent monster book, strong mythological presence (from various cultures). Probably even better than Bestiary 2. And it has the flumph! (this is a good thing, well its worth a page) If you're looking for a monster book for some critters outside of the real core you would well to pick this up.
I would've much rather seen a psionics or epic level book than yet another monster manual, especially one in which 1/3 of the "new" monsters are just rehashed from the adventure paths.
Between Bestiary 1&2, the tome of horrors 1-3, the 3.5 monster manual 1-5, creature collection 1-3, and dozens of other books i've got more monsters than i'll ever use. all of which are very simple to "upgrade" to pathfinder stats. So for me personally another book of monsters is just a waste of paper.
Epic rules on the other hand are alot harder to try to convert and balance, so i'd love to see the paizo epic...er, mythic book see the light of day...and the sooner the better.
I actually would like to see HALF the monsters be from the AP's. It would be nice to have them in one place instead of remembering which AP a particular Monster was published. I am hoping a lot of the old AP monsters are going to make an appearance.
I do not use third party products unless they are from Green Ronin or well PAizo for D&D 3.5. SO I like getting one Bestiary a year.
I want to get the Tome of Horrors, but that will still remain low priority until I get the Paizo Minis and other things from Paizo I want.
All I need to know is whether the tanukis do have grotesquely enlarged scrotums as in some folklore depictions.
Because if yes, then this is book is GLORIOUS.
Some balls are held for charity and some for fancy dress, but when their held for pleasure they're the balls that I like best! My balls are always bouncing from the left and to the right, it's my belief that my big balls should be held every night.
I know about Misfit Monster Redeemed. That's why I'd be excited if they got redeemed. But as Mournblade94 said, it'd be nice to have the flumphs in the same place as other monsters; if only so I can keep a sense of mystery when describing creatures and not have my players automatically go "Oh, it's from that book? Well, there's only eight monsters in there; so it's gotta be Z!"
I know about Misfit Monster Redeemed. That's why I'd be excited if they got redeemed. But as Mournblade94 said, it'd be nice to have the flumphs in the same place as other monsters; if only so I can keep a sense of mystery when describing creatures and not have my players automatically go "Oh, it's from that book? Well, there's only eight monsters in there; so it's gotta be Z!"
They got Pathfinderized in the Tome of Horror Complete...
She's from Curse of the Crimson Throne. (She's the elf.)
James is right, she's THE elf.
Cheerfully optimistic tsudere perky goth action genki girl cleric of Zon-Kuthon. Complete with a spiked chain and a bucketload of happy. Bloody bucketload, at that. And yes, she's on TV Tropes.
Well, I hope it's a good picture of Laori, because I ordered the book just to see that one picture. ;)
(I would really like to have a good picture of her to show my players in my current Crimson Throne campaign - she is just too good a character not to have an amazing picture).
I know there won't be as many outsiders in this one probably, but will we have a few more of my favorites? I'm wondering if there will be more angels, archons, proteans and inevitables? Especially the last two, I love the more law and chaos stuff than the good and evil. More giants, too maybe? And fey I'm sure.
I know there won't be as many outsiders in this one probably, but will we have a few more of my favorites? I'm wondering if there will be more angels, archons, proteans and inevitables? Especially the last two, I love the more law and chaos stuff than the good and evil. More giants, too maybe? And fey I'm sure.
There'll be some, but not all. Certainly more giants and fey though.