Mythic Monsters: Colossal brings you a dozen and one terrifying titans to shake, rattle, and roll your heroes into submission. From CR 10 to the first CR 30 creatures to appear in the Mythic Monsters series, you'll find challenges fit to shake the foundations of heaven and grind the weak underfoot in your campaign. There are tiny terrors made massive, like the titan centipede and shipwrecker crab, alongside prehistoric gargantua like the colossal dire ape, immense tortoise, and giant brachiosaurus and tyrannosaurus. You will also find fantastic foes that fill the horizon, from planar predators like the astral leviathan and god-cursed zombie titan to an entire family of behemoths to ravage air, land, and sea, and the legendary tarrasque. As if these were not enough, we also bring you the biggest monster of all, the legendary linnorm Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent! On top of 13 marvelous mythic monsters, we also present alternate rules for creature size and shape and a whole new combat climb system for your heroes to clamber and cling to their colossal opponents!
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.
This installment of the mythic monsters-series clocks in at 30 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page ToC, 2 pages hot to use/introduction, 3 pages of advertisement, 1 page inside of back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 18 pages of content - so let's not waste any time!
The supplemental content provided in this installment would pertain a variant rule I've been using in my home game for years - variant shapes and a supra-colossal size for Kaiju et al. Essentially, standard, tall, long, narrow etc. are provided as easy measurements to make the fighting experience more intriguing. Alongside these handy references, we get Shadow of the Colossus-style rules for climbing creatures of this size, holding on, etc. - and yes, I've using homebrew rules to the same effect. Stowing away on the creatures is covered as well and two feats that allow you to climb these brutes can be found.
The first creature, then, would be the mythic version of King Kong - at CR 15/MR 6, these creature can deliver devastating, crippling rends and, following the lore, despise kaiju and are particularly adept at destroying them. They may also fly into powerful rages and toss huge objects or creatures- the artwork, which can also be seen on the cover, is neat and supplements a cool build! The CR 23/MR 9 Astral Leviathan may allow creatures to board its cysts and can generate a tide that draws all nearby creatures inside - and carving your way out is hard thanks to the phasing-inducing gullet. Oh, and the movement of these titans disrupts reality itself. The CR 27/MR 10 tempest behemoth can fire scales that can cripple even the healing of the most powerful of mythic casters, may pay mythic power to let all creatures bleeding currently suffer and use mythic power to increase its scale salvos even further - personally, I see SIN from Final Fantasy X when reading this entry- only more visceral and deadly - awesome! At 2 CR less, the thalassic behemoths are not significantly weaker, but their focus is different - with searing clouds of mist and an emphasis on staggering and weapon destruction, the build is just as glorious in its different area of expertise and utilizes some handily reprinted feats from the great installment on Sea Monsters. And yes, where applicable, this applies to all feats.
A further 2 CR and 1 MR down the line, at "only" CR 23/MR 9, thunder behemoths curse those swallowed AND inflict crushing despair on those swallowed, adding not one but two insults to the injury caused by their caustic acid and grinding stomachs. Again, awesome. The CR 11/MR 4 titan centipede can encircle foes, has powerful whipstings and may affect creatures trampled with toxins - oddly, three abilities don't have their names properly bolded in a minor layout glitch. (And yes, they get the cool Feel Footfall-feat from the installment on bugs...)
The Shipwrecker Crab at CR 16/MR 6 not only has devastating pincers - it also requires truly big guns to take out - and yes, PCs will shake in their boots as this thing approaches and cannonballs bounce off its carapace... The CR 13/MR 5 brachiosaurus once again has some abilities not bolded and gets straightforward powerful tramples and tail swipes and they may ignore conditions that would affect minor beings. The CR 12/MR 4 tyrannosaurus comes with the giant mythic simple template added as well as notes for the unmodified stats - and is also pretty straightforward: Deadly bite? Check. Deafening roar? Check. But I did not expect the fortified stomach or the option to be a truly relentless pursuer - both are welcome and render this build much more interesting, while still remaining thematically consistent. The dino also gets a cool artwork, just fyi!
At CR 30/MR 10, there can be only one - the Tarrasque. Beyond the expanded abilities from Golarion's Inner Sea Bestiary, the creature comes with a small artwork (as seen on the cover) -not the most impressive rendition of this titanic terror, but at the same time, this cannot be said about the build itself - clocking in at 2 full pages for all abilities and the statblock, all chock-full with info, this is the singular most impressive tarrasque build I've seen in d20. No amount of gushing would properly convey the beauty of this beast - just note that one of the least impressive abilities can net it a total acrobatics of +98. No, that's not a typo.
Giant tortoises, at CR 10/MR 4 are immortal, sentient and smart and can camouflage themselves as islands or hills - yeah, we know the iconic stories - this build supports them. And yes, their shells are very strong! The CR 13/MR 5 zombie titan with its accursed axe, is anathema to divine casters and agents and is accompanied by a zombie plague - nasty!
Know when I said that there could only be one at CR 30/MR 10? I lied. The ultimate Grand-daddy of linnorms and kaiju, friggin' Jörmungandur, Miðgarðsormurinn, the friggin Midgard Serpent would be the new creature herein - while I really dislike the artwork here, this in no way mitigates the awesomeness of the build - the crushing coils truly crush, the death curse wrecks all healing, the creature can consume all magic and it may consume the small ones with AoOs. Its poison transcends immunities. It is accompanied by weather most foul - and its very surrounding area is pure despair and murk. Nigh unstoppable, this superb beast makes for a great, final adversary!
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good - apart from the minor bolding glitches I noticed, I saw no significant issues. Layout adheres to LG's two-column full-color standard. One should not be remiss and mention the excessive amount of new, full-color artwork provided for most creatures herein. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.
Jason Nelson, Jonathan H. Keith and Mike Welham delivered in spades in the "unsexy" bug-book: Here, a designer has his work cut out: I mean, seriously, how can you NOT make these awesome, titanic foes cool? They are awesome by virtue of existing. At the same time, they had to cover a lot of bases and keep these beasts challenging for the powerful heroes that will inevitably face them. The builds are complex and fun and achieve this goal - the creatures contained herein are all killer, no filler: The more magical creatures have a vast array of iconic options. The less iconic ones follow the design-style paradigms for animals etc. and thus retain a sense of continuity that represents the icing on the cake. While personally, I like the installment on bugs slightly more due to the difficulty it posed, this is nonetheless an excellent, superb installment in the series and well worth a final verdict of 5 stars + seal of approval.
Endzeitgeist out.
New Mechanics, Monsters, and More for your Mythic Game!
Mythic Monsters: Colossal from Legendary Games brings you 30 pages filled with titanic terrors, mythic monsters and colossal climbing rules to help you bridge the gaps in your kaiju filled game sessions. There are few constants in the d20 universe; you roll a d20 to hit, you do damage, you take damage and Legendary Games is making mythic roleplaying accessible to every gaming table. This latter constant is one that I have discovered but recently.
This supplement starts out with a brief discussion of the Mythic Monsters series as well as a brief introduction to colossal monsters. The gaming mechanics get off to a roaring start with the introduction of a great new mechanic “Combat Climbing” for use when dealing with beasts of the colossal variety. The new mechanics give you options for climbing on, holding on during combat, attacking and dismounting and you are given two new feats to help you accomplish these tasks, “Combat Climber” and “Combat Cling”.
The combat climbing mechanics are what sold me on this supplement and I must say that those two pages alone make the supplement worth the price of admission.
But wait, there’s more!
As with all of the entrants in the Mythic Monsters series, this supplement goes on to give you full crunchy statblocks for twelve monsters – now with full mythic abilities. Legendary Games drops the mic with their first creature – the Mythic Colossal Dire Ape(a CR15/MR 6 creature) – which works quite nicely for anyone wishing to include the original king of the monsters in their Pathfinder campaign.
Other creatures include the Astral Leviathan (CR 23/MR 9), Tempest Behemoth (CR 27/MR 10), Thalassic Behemoth (CR 25/mR 10), Thunder Behemoth (CR 23/MR 9), Titan Centipede (CR 11/MR 4), Shipwrecker Crab (CR 16/MR 6), Brachiosaurus Dinosaur (CR 13/MR 5), Tyrannosaurus Dinosaur (CR 12/MR 4), Tarrasque (CR 30/MR 10), Immense Tortoise (CR 10/MR 4), Zombie Titan (Cr 13/MR 5), and lastly, for those of you planning to unleash Ragnarak on your campaign, you can now bring the end of all things with the Midgard Serpent Linnorm (CR 30/MR 10)!
There are a couple typos and errors here and there, but the supplement is error free for the most part. Combined together, the new game mechanics and the fine bestiary selection of mythic colossal monstrosities make this a must buy supplement for GMs wishing to include mythic titans in their campaign.
Legendary Games has cornered the market on Mythic Adventures and this supplement continues to showcase the high quality of the brand.
