Mythic Monsters 23: Worms (PFRPG) PDF

Disclosure: I received this product thanks to a wonderful Holiday contest, and agreed to review it.

"Mythic Monsters: Worms" is an excellent product that has me hungry for more of its kind. It is succinct, but delivers exactly what it promises; mythic worm monsters for your mythic campaign. These crawling creatures are not merely updated with mythic rules, but given nasty and potent features that make them more deadly, more interesting, and usually far far more creepy than the original version.

A lot of lovecraftian love was poured into these monsters, and it is evident that the designers weren't just throwing out another product, but rather making something that they could be proud of. Each entry drips with flavor that comes through with each special ability and stat block.

This product clocks in at 32 pages, with 8 pages taken up by front and back cover, PRD information, credits, and other miscellaneous pages, this product still manages to wow, as well as pack in amazing monsters. As if that weren't enough, there are a handful of feats, a domain, and 6 worm companions for players wanting to be extra creepy themselves.

This product harkens to the now famous Age of Worms adventure path, and almost begs that you run it, or are inspired by the mighty wrath of these wormy foes.

"Mythic Monsters 23: Worms" gets 5 out of 5 from me, and royal approval.

This installment of the Mythic Monsters-series clocks in at 32 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of introduction, 2 pages advertisement, 1 page inside of back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 21 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This time around, the installment of mythic monsters begins with supplemental material fans of Dune may appreciate - mythic feats intended for WORM-RIDING! Handling of worms? Check, including mythic power boost and extension to the creature-type - d'uh. Riding worms? Check as well -again, with a mythic upgrade of the feat, for your convenience. And yes, this IS the most concise way of handling riding worms and the like sans suffocating immediately, drowning, etc. I've seen in ages - love these feats! This, however, is not where the pdf stops - we also get the new worm domain, which includes a wormy sanctuary, tremorsense, etc. - and have I mentioned the stats for remorhaz, purple worm etc. companions for use with the new feats? Yes, awesome.

But we're not here for the supplemental material, cool as it may be, are we? So let's begin -with a wormy demon, the Vermlek at CR 4/MR 1, -not only can these beings implant themselves into corpses, they may even utilize the knowledge of the fallen they inhabit against their adversaries. This and their gruesome, gory exit from bodies render them great body invasion/creepy critters and a neat example for good low-CR critter design. At the same CR/MR, gricks can cause unpleasant diseases and even cause paralysis - solid, but kind of unremarkable upgrade here.

At one CR and MR more, the mythic FLAIL SNAILS receive better mucus, slimy runes, stunning attacks and slimy ropes - what can I say, but FLAIL SNAIL, baby - just love these guys! Better, though, would be the leech swarm upgrades - healing via blood drain, horrific body intrusions and clinging drain that stays with the victims - beautiful and deadly and what the leech swarm ought to have been capable of in the first day - yay! Now I'm going to use this and the giant file and gruesome giants to make leechwalkers, Demon Souls-style! The more mundane giant slugs (CR 10/MR 4) can use mythic power to spit acid in a spread and have a body so sticky, that weapons may adhere to it.

On the high end, CR15/MR 6 frost worms can use mythic power to amp up their coldness to staggering levels and they may utilize their hypersonic trills to cancel out magical silence - coolest, though, would be the option to call down a giant avalanche, potentially changing the terrain beyond the immediate deadly power of the attack itself - and yes, in other terrains, the effects are different. At 1 CR higher the purple worm-build not only uses a feat provided in the build (from Mythic Minis: Feats of grappling), but also get a powerful crush. Cooler, though, would be the ability to assault foes and drag them with them into their tunnels, potentially burying foes alive in the process - finally! Big tunneling worms ought to have had this capacity from the get-go. Two thumbs up! Finally, at CR 19/MR 7, one of my favorite critters ever, the neothelid not only receives full capacity of a sage, but also may use mythic power to store energy -worse, they can blast said stored energy at foes or charge its own attacks with it - it's the gauss-ring-style neothelid - love it! Have I mentioned that it uses the giant template (alternate sans it provided), disease-causing mindfire breath and immediate drop-to-minus 1 hp- psychic crushing? What about spawning seugathi, mythic ones at that? Yes, these guys are glorious.

Speaking of mythic seugathi - at CR 7/MR 3, poisonous gas, contagious madness and telepathic command of confused creatures render the critter so much cooler - two thumbs up, once again! At the lowest end of the spectrum, CR 3/MR 1 thoqqua constantly transform the terrain, are sunder specialists and take one of the lamest base creatures, rendering it mechanically exceedingly distinct - kudos for making these cooler! The penultimate creature herein is one of my favorites (Yes, I love Age of Worms...) - the worm-that-walks. While we get a CR 17/MR 7 conjurer as a base creature, the template itself is the star (and will be used in my planned AoW-mythic campaigns) - the template provides numerical escalation, tighter ability-control - and yes - various tier-based abilities make these guys a beauty. Oh, and yes, there is a worm-zombie simple template...though I wished it was as deadly as the spawn of Kyuss...

Thereafter, ladies and gentlemen, the goth and literature scholar in me had a slight nerdgasm - at CR 21/MR 8, the new creature herein is the *drum roll* CONQUEROR WORM. Poe's poems pwn posers. *ahem* Pardon. Not only is the artwork stunning (and not so slug-like as in 3.X's fiend folio, the conqueror worm actually gets unique tricks this time around, not just a numerical escalation - Deathless (regenerating in an HOUR) with ranged CMBs via tongues, lethal, all-consuming slime that adds insult to injury by reviving the slain as undead and massive spellcasting prowess, these things will SO feature in my campaigns - even among the iconic new creatures in the product-line, these worms stand out.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good, I noticed no significant glitches apart from some minor formatting hiccups here and there. Layout adheres to Legendary Games’ nice two-column full color standard, streamlined and developed further - and for the better. The artworks by Michael Jaecks is neat indeed. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Jason Nelson, Mike Welham, Alistair Rigg, Tom Philips - I extend my sincere congratulations to you, gentlemen . this ranks as one of my favorite installments in the series - with the exception of the relatively bland grick, these worms are downright glorious, with supplemental material and templates standing out just as much as the surprising diversity of unique abilities that set the worms apart; that give them a distinct identity beyond "worm-like, eats and kills" - these critters fight totally differently from their non-mythic versions and bring to the table the unique panache I have come to expect from mythic monsters. And worm-riding. worm companions. Come on! How awesome is that? Final verdict? Unsurprising 5 stars + seal of approval - superb job indeed!

Endzeitgeist out.

This is a review for 'Mythic Monsters: Worms', a Bestiary by Legendary Games. I'm not a native speaker (I'm German), so I may have fumbled my language skill checks from time to time. Give me a note if I wrote something wrong and I'll try to make myself more clear.

When I look at a Bestiary I'm watching for something I can throw at my players without much preparation time and something that gets a reaction from my players that isn't a yawn, since I prefer them full of fear or full of wonder, and at the edge of their seats. This means I usually look at the special abilities first to get an idea what the monster is meant to do. Your view may vary.

Mythic Monsters: Worms has a short and nice introduction about feats like wormriding, a Worm Domain and Worm Companions, 2 pages all together, and about 18 pages of monsters, so you'll get about 20 pages of information with two big full color pics (and a cover, table of contents and so on). Most Monsters are mythic versions of the originals found in the various Bestiaries. So they may sound familiar – which can be misleading now and then. PCs who let their guards down may be in for a surprise or two.

These monsters didn't strike a chord in me:
The rot grub swarm takes things a bit far for my taste, but thats of course my personal opinion.

These monsters I partially like:
I'm on the fence for the Neothelid, maybe he is useable as a weird NPC sage;
I like the Crawling Crush of the Purple Worm. He got some other feature that are okay, but nothing that captures my imagination.

These monsters are good and I look forward using them:
The Vermlek, a demon, is especially creepy for he can inhabit bodies;
the Frost Worm is nice and will especially anger your close combat characters;
the Grick got some fitting poison to work with;
the Worm that Walks and the Conquerer Worm all have Bossmonsters written over them, so I think a whole campaign can and should be written around them. If you like very big worms, those are your guys. I wonder what you'll get if you use them for fishing?

These monsters are so great they will immediatly get thrown at my unsuspecting victi... eh, players:
The Flail Snail and its new slime rune abilities can be very nice, in the right environment a snail really may star and its easily foreshadowable;
the Leech Swarm will show your players that they really should buy that Swarmbane Clasp Ultimate Equipment has introduced. Don't use these suckers when children are in the room!
Seugathi – crawling insanity. Yes please!
Giant Slug – take salt with you, lots of it. I like monsters with weaknesses the players actually can guess on;
Thoqqua- this one is very hot, and I mean this verbatim. Nasty, low CR, nice. Once you burn your PCs with them, be ready to fend of their tries to summon this mythic form with Summon Neutral Monsters though. They may insist!

Other notes:
The introduction with the feats like wormriding, the Worm Domain and Worm Companions is very good, I especially liked the creepy Worm Domain. The wormriding of course has Frank Herbert's signature written all over it, but Dune is an inspiring setting, so its good to have some rules to handle wormriding finally. With the companions a few lines about riding your frost worm companion and handling his cold aura while doing it would have been appreciated, but the PC will notice this particular drawback soon once certain body parts have been frozen. Having a Purple or Death Worm as a close friend will certainly help you with members of the opposite sex also – as long as those have the Worm Domain.

Thoughts about improving the material:
Back in the days new monsters did sometimes come along with the appropriate Knowledge Checks and the informations gained for different levels of insight. I miss that and would have liked to see it in this Bestiary.

I also would like to see if there are some combos of the abilities and spells or whatever, or even synergies with other CR-compatible monsters that would help me design encounters. For example, a new monster radiating heat damage would work nicely with an Iron Golem, helping him regenerate faster and shake of slow-effects.

Last but not least I'd like to see a 'During Combat' part, which helps me with the tactics. It may even be divided into meet at range and close combat sections. The designer of the monster normally has something in mind how to use the beast, so why not give some hints about it?

Conclusion:
Its a very good book, five monsters in the best cathegory of mine, only one I didn't like. This bestiary is a winner for any creepy realm your PCs are going to visit, and they won't easily forget what they'll meet there!

Have fun!