The second volume in our new Mythic Monsters series, Mythic Monsters: Molds, Slimes, and Fungi brings you a dozen and one pestilential horrors and moldering monstrosities to torment your PCs! Twelve of your favorite fungi are here, updated for the mythic rules, and when we say updated we mean complete stat blocks, yes, but more than that every fungal creature has its own unique and exciting new mythic abilities, from an mythic ascomoid's puffball avalanche to a mythic fungus queen's battle pods and a mythic mu spore's unstoppable titan. From the vicious vegepygmy to the virulent violet fungus, the seductive fungus queen to the colossal corruption of the mu spore, this product covers CRs from 1 to 26. In addition to a dozen familiar fungal monsters, Mythic Monsters: Molds, Slimes, and Fungi also includes rules for the fungal creature subtype as well as eight mythic fungal hazards, from the familiar green slime and yellow mold to shriekers and azure fungus! To top it all off, Mythic Monsters: Molds, Slimes, and Fungi introduces an entirely new 13th mythic fungal creature, the sublime and mysterious fairy ring, a living portal into the realms of the fey that can be a boon or bane to weary and lost travelers.
The Mythic Monsters series from Legendary Games brings you dynamic and exciting mechanics alongside evocative and cinematic new abilities that really help creatures live up to their flavor text, whether they are creatures of real-world myth and legend or creatures born out of the RPG tradition itself. These creatures can work just as well in a non-mythic campaign as they do in one that incorporates the full mythic rules, as you can throw them at your jaded players who think they’ve seen it all or know the standard monster stats as well as you do. That look of surprise and “What was THAT?” will warm any GM’s heart.
Download this 32-page mythic monster supplement today, and look forward to future releases in the Mythic Monsters line.
This supplement clocks in at 32 pages, including nine pages of covers and legal matter, leaving us with 23 pages of content. Each installment in Legendary Games’ Mythic Monster series contains 13-14 mythic monsters: one original and the others mythic versions of nonmythic creatures from previous Paizo and Legendary Games supplements. The mythic-ized old monsters’ entries consist almost entirely of crunch, with minimal fluff to describe their new abilities and no artwork. The new monster in each supplement comes with complete fluff and crunch, along with a full page, full color illustration. Additionally, each installment begins with a few mythic feats, path abilities, or new miscellaneous game mechanics related to the type of creature featured in the supplement.
Compared to the previous installment, Mythic Monsters II: Mold, Slimes, and Fungi focuses on an often underused set of creatures. After the introduction, this book introduces the Fungus subtype, which is weak to sunlight and identified with a different knowledge skill than its base type. Several old monsters are then assigned the Fungus subtype.
Then, we get mythic versions of several non-monster Hazards. The Mythic Brown Mold emits extreme cold around itself, dealing nonlethal cold damage. A Mythic Green Slime can eat through limbs of its victims, dealing ability score damage. Mythic Yellow mold obscures vision in addition to its normal effects. There are a couple hazards which are just the normal versions with higher numbers, but these are the exception. Overall, this section is a wonderful addition to an often underused portion of the game rules.
Next comes the main event: 12 mythic-ized versions of earlier monsters, ranging from the Mythic Vegepygmy at CR 1/MR 1 to the Mythic Mu Spore at CR 26/MR 10. The trend is that each monster gets the number boosts that come with mythic ranks, along with at least one new and unique ability. The Vegepygmy gains the ability to produce drow poison, while the Vegepygmy Chief infects its attackers with Russet Mold (from Tome of Horror Complete). The Mythic Fungus Queen can keep a legion of sporepods to fight alongside it. The Mythic Mu Spore gains a host of new abilities, including the ability to communicate telepathically with all plants within 30 miles. It also has a strange ability which gives it a 50% miss chance, but only against touch attacks and critical hits, not normal attackers. While the author attempts to justify this mechanic, it would probably play more easily if it were simply a flat miss chance, since that is an established rule in the game. Overall, though, these monsters are far more deadly than their nonmythic counterparts, and can be plopped into encounters to great effect.
Finally, we get the Fairy Ring, and original CR 8/MR 3 monster with a full page illustration. The creature is a swarm of tiny mushrooms which can open planar portals and heal and protect others. The fluff suggests that they were created by the ‘Eldest Lords of the Fey’, although for what purpose is not specified. It has a ‘curse’ which can cause a target to age one year in a day, but there is no restriction of this ability to creatures which do not benefit from aging (e.g., true dragons).
The main issue I have with this monster is that it is a jumble. It has a big range of really cool abilities, but they do not synergize well with each other, nor can you expect them to all be used in a typical encounter. The fluff is equally jumbled. They were created to fulfill specific purposes which don’t go all that well together, and the given ecology is too vague to provide anything more than rough ideas. It’s a decent interesting creature to add to your campaign world as a long-term feature. It does not, however, fulfill the immediate goal of providing a monster you can insert into encounters.
Conclusion: The editing and formatting are top notch, as expected from Legendary Games. This supplement is a mix of number-boosts to old game mechanics and new material. The new rules that are presented are, with few exceptions, very well written. Many of the new monster abilities would be useful in creating new monsters, in addition to improving the monsters they come with.
Short term rating: 4/5
Long term rating: 4.5/5, rounded up to 5/5 due to the low price.
This installment of Legendary Games' Mythic Monsters-series is 32 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of introduction, 2 pages of advertisement and 1 page inside back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 21 pages of raw content, so what do we exactly get here?
I like the gritty and dark. My campaigns tend to feature a lot of diseases, poisons and the like. Add to that the fact that I have some serious health issues with regards to fungus spores and a traumatic horror story I read as a child and I'll come right out and say it: Demons? Lovecraftiana? Pfff. If you want me to feel uncomfortable, put me some fungi before me. I just consider them CREEPY and thus, I love using them. They also make players squeal - after all, who wants to be rotted from the inside-out?
As a nice idea, this pdf kicks off by introducing the optional fungus-subtype before providing...yes, 8 mythic fungus hazards. Though regular brown mold was bad? Wait until you fall into a patch of the mythic variant! Seriously, I love hazards and these add nastier variants to a DM's arsenal - so kudos!
Now let's look at the creatures, shall we? At CR 6/MR 2, the mythic ascomoid has not only better control via spore jets (and thus about their charging), it also is a neat fungal overrun machine. Cool! At the same CR/MR, the mythic basidirond not only gets poison blood and the option to entrap foes in ropy tendrils, they may also emit a sympathy-inducing aroma that can even fascinate those witnessing it from close-by. Creepy! At CR 12/MR 5, the Mythic Fungus Queen is a threat to fear indeed - not only can she energy drain, create difficult terrain (connected with her entrap ability!) and fight through her sporepods, she can also create legions of slain spawn. *shudder*
On the less high level/boss-battle style adversaries, we'd get the CR 3/MR 1 Mythic Leshy Fungus with soundburst (that one should probably be italicized) puffballs and yes, we also get full information for the ritual to create these.
Well, though the fungus queen was bad? CR 26/MR 10. MYTHIC MU SPORE. 'Nuff said. Or not - 8 signature abilities versus two of the non-mythic version. One-page glorious full-color artwork. Shudder, tremble and fear, mortals. One glorious beast! At CR 5/MR 2, the mythic myceloid can go one step further and transform those infected by their purple pox into full-blown myceloids - oh, and they may actually taste your emotions, highjacking morale bonuses and ferret out you via emotions. CREEPY. CR 4/MR 1 Mythic Phantom Fungus may spew forth dazzling spores. At CR 5/MR 2, the mythic phycomid can rapid fire their pellets and have them pop up in splash-damage-style bursts.
CR 3/MR 1 mythic slime molds can disgorge green slime and make those hit unwitting carriers. Mythic vegepygmies and their champions (at CR1/MR 1 and CR 2/MR 1) get greensight, can create greenblood oil and chieftains get essentially defensive russet mold.
At CR 4/MR 1, mythic violet fungi get tentacles with barbs, okay, I guess. Finally, we get a lavish one-page illustration in full color of the Fairy Ring, a CR 8/ MR 3 new beast that is a plant swarm with various SLs that can act as a planar crossroads, disenchant magic items, act as a guarded rope trick-style pocket dimension, deals its swarm damage not only selectively, but also non-lethal and can even put you to sleep or pronounce ageing curses! Superb, iconic, awesome and a final capstone offering for the book!
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are generally, rather good - while there aren't any significant glitches that detract from the entries per se, it should be noted that basidirond, leshy, phantom fungus and violet fungus miss the ecology-entries of their statblocks. Not a catastrophe, but also a minor glitch. Layout adheres to Legendary Games' two-column full-color standard and the two 1-page full color illustrations are glorious. The pdf comes bookmarked, but not to the respective entries and the bookmarks seem to be taken from the Demon-pdf, another minor gripe there. the pdf comes bookmarked with the good type of hyperlinks that is applied to rules/components where it makes sense.
Jason Nelson has crafted a thoroughly disturbing array of cool creatures (and hazards) here, with just about every critter filling very iconic roles and some monsters actually doing exceedingly cool things. That being said, this level of awesomeness is not continuous - the violet fungus, for example and the vegepygmies feel somewhat less inspired than the otherwise awesome creatures herein. Add to that the aforementioned glitches, and we arrive at a verdict where I can recommend this installment of mythic monsters at a heartfelt 4.5 stars, but will round down by a very small margin to 4 for the purpose of this platform.
Anything Mythic right now is good news for DM's running mythic campaigns and this product is no exception.
I've converted Red Hand of Doom into mythic and this PDF is great, adding more mythic options to throw at the PC's. It could do with a few less low level stuff and a few more mid level monsters but as a whole I'd recommend this to everyone.
Like the rest of the series, the quality is top notch.
*Pulls up in store credit* Ahh was waiting for you to show up here book of horrifying slime monsters. Now we need some more stuff on aberrations.
Jason Nelson
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Next in line are Mythic Monsters: Mounts and Mythic Monsters: Oozes, but fear not... Mythic Monsters: Mythos is not far behind, just in time for a horrifying October!
Next in line are Mythic Monsters: Mounts and Mythic Monsters: Oozes, but fear not... Mythic Monsters: Mythos is not far behind, just in time for a horrifying October!
Cool will that one be getting art for each creature or will follow the trend that the other mythic books have?
Jason Nelson
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
The Mythic Monsters line follows a pretty standard format: One illustration for the cover (and interior) that shows 2-3 of the creatures within, plus an illustration for the new mythic creature introduced in the volume. Our feeling is that you've already got great art for all of the existing creatures that we're updating. Making mythic versions of those same creatures would be cool - the monster illos in the Mythic Adventures hardback are great - but really not necessary when the original art in the various bestiaries is already great stuff.
But I gotta tell you, the cover art for Mythic Monsters: Mythos by Chris McFann is really cool. My 15-year-old son liked it so much he made it his wallpaper on his ipod. I'll probably be previewing it soon on our website, so keep an eye on things over there.
Okay though I think I finally found why I think people end up missing the illustrations. In my mind at least those illustrations help make the creatures pop and jump off the page and become more then just a wall of numbers and stats. Now I know that many of these are just mythic versions of creatures we already have but to me that feels like a golden opportunity to play with the art and really let us see what a mythic version of these creatures are, what the baddest of the bad is supposed to look like and the epitome of their game design in its highest form. Like having a mythic myceloid that has a back riddled with mushroom caps from which his clouds of spores and mind warping body shaping powers come from or having a vegepygmy chief bedecked in his high finery, mossy dreaded topknot, and hardened fungal armor.
On top of this you guys have consistently had some of the sharpest art I've seen in a 3rd party publisher for a long time and it's a shame to not see your artists go to town on some of these concepts, especially things like the slime molds and their ilk which really don't get illustrations that often.
But that's my 2 cp and I would love to hear what you guys think ^-^.
Hey, Doc. It's really a hard line to walk. In the PDF market, it's very difficult to do the premium art and still keep the price point at a place where products generate enough sales to make them worthwhile. Jason's goal going into this project was to essentially do a mythic version of every monster that wasn't included in Mythic Adventures (which got maybe 40 of them in there...many of which were used up on multiple versions of dragons and elementals). If you sit back and contemplate just how many individual illustrations that would be per PDF, it becomes staggering enough that we couldn't pay artists their due in making such an art-heavy project. At least, not if we wanted to keep the price low enough to draw folks in.
So, we're really caught between a rock and a hard place here. If we go art heavy and charge folks accordingly, we'll take a further round of criticism that our prices are too high (and we'll lose some sales). Meanwhile, if we go art light and keep the price down, we take criticism that the product didn't meet everyone's expectations from a layout/illustration standpoint (and we'll lose some sales). If we're going to err on one side of that equation right now...and for this kind of product...it makes more sense to go art light. That way, we keep things simple from a design standpoint, we avoid having to wrangle that many art assignments across so many artists, and we still give folks the crunchy stuff they need for their game.
Now, that said, as we continue exploring print products, I think it's possible we could revisit the situation down the road. For example, if LG has success with the Mythic Monsters line, I could see a print compilation getting commissioned at some point, and that might be the time to ensure there's all new mythic illustrations included. That's because the price point for a print product gives us more to play with in terms of meeting the high art standard with the larger number of illustrations we'd need. So, if you want to see something like that happen, help us sell the Mythic Monster PDFs by spreading the word about their usefulness. The resulting sales will give us a better sense of the consumers' appetite for this kind of plug-in series. And it'll fuel us to do something more elaborate with it.
But that's just my two cents,
--Neil
P.S. One suggestion I made to Jason when he began this series was to do a sort of rogue's gallery piece as the cover image. That way, you could squeeze in as many "looks" as possible for the monsters inside via a single piece of art. Of course, these PDFs contain so many monsters that it'd become a little busy if we tried to show them all. So, it boiled down to cherry picking the ones that made the most sense to help "sell" the product. And, of course, as we include an all-new, standalone mythic monster in these products, we made sure to illustrate it, too. So, that was our happy compromise for anyone wondering about the design decisions that went into crafting these things.
Jason Nelson
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
Neil has nailed it with his usual erudition: Increasing the art load for these products would have pushed the price point up, and we wanted to keep it lower to make the products accessible. We've got one illustration featuring a couple of the creatures inside, plus another for the brand-new monster in each release.
We also were thinking about how to create a product with mythic monsters, and after considering how to present flavor text and such for the monsters, it seemed like it was always going to be the same thing, over and over, "this same monster, but MORE AWESOME" and "add one of these same dozen backstories." It seemed pointless to keep repeating that same story over and over, so we decided to really focus in on bringing the excitement and imagination to the stat blocks and the mythic abilities that would make the monsters exciting and fun to play at the table. As we thought about the art, we came to the same conclusion. Sure, it would be neat to provide art for everything, but in terms of a cost-benefit analysis for the consumer, who already has great artwork for these monsters, it didn't seem like a very large value-add. Sure, Paizo did it for their hardback, but their art budget is just a little bigger than ours.
That said...
We do have plans to develop a print compilation that we'll be announcing soon, and one of the goals of the way we're doing it is going to be to fund some additional art. Clearly people would like more, and while I don't know if every creature will have its own illustration, we'll see what the response is. Who knows? You might just get your wish.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
