101 Monster Feats (PFRPG) PDF

Weighing in at 19 pages with the prerequisite Cover/OGL/Ad combo eating up 5 pages, we are left with 14 pages of feats...that's right 14 pages. What, you thought 101 feats with a full description for each would fit in just a few pages? Following the standard dual column approach with embedded artwork, Mr. Russell continues to impress me with his ability to hunt down excellent old world art pieces that have helped define the look and feel of his books, and mixed them with a collection of recent stock pieces to pull off a very slick look and feel for yet another Rite publishing offering in the 101 series.

Being exactly what the title promised, this is a collection of feats designed for monster races, and not your players. An excellent means of changing and adding a few features to your next creature to keep a play group on their toes, and keep them thinking, as foes with new tricks make for interesting creatures, as opposed to the same old same old. So, let's dive into it, shall we?

OK, obviously I'm not going to cover all 101 of these, but I am going to pick out a few choice examples, and for those we start with Alter Breath Weapon. I mean, its so obvious it makes one wonder why this wasn't already in the game, how do you make your offensive breathers new and interesting? Change their breath weapon energy type of course. Cloak Alignment costs the usage of a 2nd or higher level spell-like ability, but suppresses your alignment aura, and puts you under a misdirection effect. Continous Breath Weapon gives us that massive gout of breath weapon that just keeps on coming that Hollywood has us all in love with. Divine Dragon replaces sorcerer casting levels with divine spellcasting levels instead...hmm, a natural clerical dragon,,,intriguing. Elemental Surge allows for an elemental to rapidly expand and reform, injuring all around them with either bludgeoning or fire damage (depending on elemental). Greater Curse of Lycanthropy is the type of feat that allows for creating those generational chains within a lycan pack, linking progeny to sire. Inhuman Name reminds us that when trying to cast certain spells (banishment, binding etc.) being able to actually pronounce the name of that you wish to effect is crucial. Invested Form truly makes gaze attacks a scary scary concept, changing the limit for range to line of sight. Now, to put that in reference, how far away are planes when they fly overhead? Birds? With this feat, if you can see it, you get a chance to effect it. Living Phylactery is hands down a must have feat for any and all counting on a phylactery to be their backup plan, you turn a creature who has failed their save against your paralyzing touch into a second phylactery, even if they have recovered from the paralysis. The idea of turning an enemy into a backup plan to the backup is to rich, and to tempting not to do. Pandemoniac Corruption is just wrong on so many levels, lol. Impregnate your opponent with goo that will take them on a painful and disgusting ride for a few days before killing them and violently destroying their bodies in birthing into the world a new member of your species....eeewwwww. And yes, there's even a quickened version that will kill in in a matter of rounds instead of days.

And last, but oh so not least, is Teleport Attack. A feat that allows one to use the spell of the same name (presented within this material) that allows you to teleport a foe into solid objects, a rather gruesome way to kill, I like it.

So, final thoughts? Editing, formatting all very good. There was an issue with spaces missing between a few words in the opening paragraph, but that was the only thing I saw, and that's pretty good in this much text to only have one line with an issue. Where as the feats don't carry names with as much oddity as a few of the feat collections, they do have the design strengths behind them, and that is what makes books like this worth having. Pick this one up, change up your creatures, and further torment your players as they try to figure out what new abilities the standard creatures have suddenly learned, and how to survive whilst they learn. A solid 5 star rating for an excellent collection of feats designed with a GM in mind.

101 Monster Feats is the next entry into the options category for creating characters (this one happens to be monsters) within Pathfinder. It allows a GM to have more options during character creation or new feats to use for creating unique and alternate versions of existing bestiary. This is a great tool for any Game Master looking to add more flavor and depth to their encounters or if they’re simply looking to create their own bestiary.

OVERALL

I am a big fan of options. I think it makes for much more interesting games when players are faced with bestiary that is a little more flavorful and avoids becoming dull or redundant. Supplements such as 101 Monster Feats help make those encounters more interesting or at the very least, different. Instead of simply running into the same foe you’ve met a dozen times, now they have their own tricks and have learned from their previous mistakes… just like the PCs!

RATINGS

Publication Quality: 9 out of 10
101 Monster Feats follows the standard, high-quality publication template that other Rite Publishing products utilize. It is very easy to read and the 101 feats are listed in alphabetical order. There is not table of contents but the PDF is fully bookmarked making it very easy to navigate (which is actually easier considering it’s a PDF format). There is an assortment of illustrations, although for this type of supplement they are not necessary, but do add a nice visual appeal. The true quality comes from how well the feats are presented and how easy they are to understand.

Mechanics: 9 out of 10
There is a definite variety of feats being presented here, and all have their place. They appear to be well-balanced and Rite Publishing has gone as far as meshing some of the feats together (giving additional value to those presented). There is a large number of new feats along with a collection of “greater” and “improved” versions of other feats. All-in-all, it creates a great collection of options for creating different bestiary, especially if you want to take existing ones and make them a little stronger.

Value Add: 9 out of 10
The basis of this value add only considers Game Masters who wish to do more than just use the standard bestiary guides and templates. What 101 Monster Feats does is provide more tools for the GM to use to make their game unique or more difficult. In addition, you can take recurring monsters and add “greater” or “improved” versions of feats to show that they too have grown stronger as the days go by. The one and only thing I found that slightly hinders the value is the ultimate variety. A lot of these feats seem to be designed for use with more prominent monsters and I would like to have seen more variety. However, there is still a large amount of variety for use with numerous types of monsters.

Overall: 9 out of 10
For any Game Master creating their own bestiary, 101 Monster Feats is a very valuable took to add to your kit. It’s concise, easy to use, and flavorful. Using this is bound to keep your players on their toes.

The bane of a Game Master with limited time on her hands is a player who memorizes the capabilities of monsters they have encountered, or read about. Even those who do try to roleplay the in game knowledge their character should possess still have a tendency to act upon what they know as a player or blurt their knowledge out loud to the rest of the group. Enter Rite Publishing’s 101 Monster Feats. This is a treasure of a tool box for those GMs who want to throw a twist into the standard abilities of monsters encountered. An added bonus is a GM’s ability to look through this book and put together abilities for entirely new monsters her own creation.

The feats in this book range from fairly mundane to eye-popping, “wow” in effect. With 101 feats there are some that are bound to be more interesting and/or useful. And what is interesting to some may not be so for others. None seemed to be overpowered. Those really interesting or powerful feats were limited by appropriate prerequisites. There were quite a few feats specifically designed for outsiders. Of all the monster categories, I think that outsiders are virtually limitless in their potential extent so having more extra things to alter them to a greater or lesser degree seems fitting. There were also some nice feats for those (like dragons) with a breath weapon ability.

Here are some of my favorites:

Alter Breath Weapon (Surprise! Not the breath weapon you were expecting from that color of dragon)

Aura of Suffering (a delicious twist to channel energy)

Continuous Breath Weapon (sweep your breath weapon in an arc equal in arc length [text says radius] to the standard length of the normal breath weapon)

Cursed Ability Damage (the ability damage cannot be healed except with a remove curse or more powerful magic) – Yeah, the potions of lesser restoration your players keep around in case of emergencies can’t touch this.

Death Grip (the undead to not tire and can more easily suffocate the living) - a really good reason to be wearing neck protection

Expel Creature (swallow whole and regurgitate back out projectile vomit fashion) - worth it just for the looks on my player’s faces

Greater Curse of Lycanthropy (the afflicted also possesses the ability to transmit the curse which cannot be cured until the originator of the curse is slain or destroyed) – this screams ADVENTURE IDEA to me.

Greater Pounce: (pounce +) Now this is a pounce! It seems particularly appropriate for a large animal that may otherwise be disappointingly mundane.

Improved Awesome Blow (Sends the smaller opponents flying when struck) – Oh yes, all giants of appropriate size and awesomeness are getting this one to use against my players’ characters. Those puny beings won’t know what hit them.

Living Phylactery (what it says) screams rescue mission adventure hook.

Pandemoniac Corruption (infecting a disease which kills as it births a new corruptor) is such a cruel thing to do to a PC. But whole town infected this way is an adventure waiting to be written.

Planar Instability (proximity to a being with this ability disrupts teleportation effects) “Exit stage left, I teleport away!” Um, no you don’t. *Evil GM grin*

In addition to these 101 monster feats there is also a spell, teleport attack which requires the Teleport Attack feat. This is a brutal spell which allows the caster to deliberately teleport an enemy into a solid surface.

If you are a GM who wishes to spice things up for your players this book is full of ideas. Certain of these feats are also perfect seeds for adventure. I saw none that were not useful, even for just a minor tweak to a creature’s abilities. On the whole I would say this selection of feats is well thought out, there is no filler. When I first skimmed the book I was going to grant it only 4 stars. Reading in depth caused me to realize just how many of these feats made wonderful adventure seeds. The beautiful layout and the flavor text at the head of each feat put this over the top. I give it five stars.

101 Monster Feats by Rite Publishing

This product is 19 pages long. It starts with a cover and credits. (2 pages)

New Monster Feats (14 pages)
Here is a few that caught my eye.
Alter Breath Weapon – make a breath weapon do a different kind of damage.
Appendage Severing – Lets monster bite off arms and legs.
Aura of Suffering – negates all healing effects and spells around it.
Choke Slam – lets monsters with grab knock foes prone.
Cloak Alignment – lets a monster hide their alignment from detection.
Cornered Beats – gains a bonus to hit, dmg and saves when reduced to half hp or less. The name is a bit misleading, I think Enraged Beast would have fit better.
Corrosive Blood – monster blood is like acid. Nice Aliens feat here.
Curse of Victory – the monster as a final act as it dies curses those that killed it
Dreaded Foe – monster chooses how their fear effects others, by choice of conditions.
Elemental Entrapment – lets a elemental change shape to trap foes, turning themselves into things like walls of fire etc.
Extra Spell Like Ability – gain a low level spell as a spell like ability.
Feast of Flesh – lets undead eat flesh and heal when doing so.
Greater Curse of Lycanthrope – Curse can not be removed unless the creature that gave the target the curse is also cured or killed. Very much like the old werewolf myths.
Mournful Cry – ranged energy drain.
Pandemic – those effected by the monsters disease can pass it on to others.
Possess Body – lets a outsider take over a target like magic jar.

It ends with a OGL and ads (3 pages)

Closing thoughts. The artwork color and ranges from meh to ok. Layout is good, editing is ok, it is not as good as I have come to expect from Rite Publishing. While the editing isn't to bad, you will have no trouble understanding whats what, it was noticeable in a few spots. The vast majority of these feats are very very good. Outsiders, elementals and Undead are the big winners but everyone gets a little something cool. Fey sadly got the worst of it, most of their feats are some of the worst in the book. I would say 90 plus are very good feats. I especially loved the little IC blurb for each feat, of the monster talking about how they used their special power. That while not needed really helped make the book special. So what's my rating? I am going to give this book a 4 star review, if the editing is fixed I would change it to a 4.5 review.

Trust me, I'm a Succubus.

This pdf is 19 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 14 pages for 101 monster feats, so let's take a look at them!

The first thing you'll notice is that the layout is beautiful and adheres to the full-color two-column standard set in the Pathways free e-zine line. Thus, the book is a beauty to behold. Monster feats are feats specifically for monsters (d'unh) and not players, so what do I expect from them? I expect them to be an easy, cool way to customize my critters, expand their abilities and open up new and iconic tactics for my tried and true foes. What I don't expect is "Add +2 to the DC of ability XYZ".

Thankfully, this pdf does not fall into this filler-trap, but rather offers some very cool feats for monsters - One example would be the spit venom feat tree, which lets you spit your venom as a contact poison. Poison-lovers do get more love with virulent poisons, but there's more: Fans of our iconic dragons can now give them feats to change their breath weapon-energies (already seen that, sorry) and some rather cool ones that let you sculpt breath weapons into e.g. cubes or spheres and there are some abilities that make swallowing be a VERY, VERY painful experience for the swallowed creatures.
Indeed, many of the feats add free maneuvers to abilities like e.g. pounce or improve these already existent abilities.

The true winners of this pdf, though, at least for me, will be outsiders (especially the poor elementals) and undead: Elementals can change into living, fighting Walls (via Elemental Entrapment) or detonate and instantly reform, angels, devils and demons and the like can move to the astral plane and directly from there to heaven or hell via "Astride the Ladder" or deliver a terrible curse when being banished to another plane. "Cloak Alignment" makes for a great feat for insidious/stealthy outsiders that don't want to be discovered via low-level divinations. On the goofy, humiliating and just plain awesome side we also get "Expel Creature", which lets you projectile vomit swallowed foes at enemies. Imagine the look of your players. Priceless.
Miss the Slaadi and their parasitic means of propagation? "Pandemoniac Corruption" lets you add the inside-out-friend-fun on your creatures. Undead gain perhaps one of the most deadly and cool feats EVER: "Aura of Suffering" negates ALL kinds of magical healing, fast healing and regeneration in an aura of 5ft. per HD - if used sparingly, this makes for truly frightening opponents, especially when e.g. combined with the almost inescapable "Death Grip". Liches can now use living beings as phylacteries, serving for awesome moral dilemmas. However, there also are losers - fey get the short end of the stick and e.g. "Beguiling Nature" only adds a +2 to Bluff and +2 to the DC of charming abilities - rather bland, especially in direct contrast to the big, baddy abilities like "Breaching Fling", a capsize attempt that flings people through the air and the "Improved Awesome Blow", which lets you, Sauron-style, bash enemies and fling the through the air like the puny foes they are.

Conclusion:
I've already mentioned the beautiful layout and the artwork is fine. Formatting is good, although there is one feat that is called "Invested Form" and improves the gaze attack of a critter, which felt a bit strange to me.
It should also be noted that every feat gets its own short sentence, written in-character, that comments on the ability presented in the feat. While it seems to be just a small benefit, it made reading and re-reading the book much more enjoyable than it would otherwise have been.

The crunch of the feats is great and made me come up with many good ideas and although some of the feats felt like fillers (e.g. "Beguiling Nature") or the "Improved Curse of Lycanthropy", that lets the DC of the curse scale with your level, something I'd personally rather house-rule, but oh well, there are significantly more killer feats than fillers (Ratio of about 90% great ones) and that would usually suffice for a good 4.5 star-rating. However, in contrast to other publications by Rite Publishing, this book is plagued by a surprising plethora of punctuation errors, that crop up in the fluff-sections and, while not impeding the ability to understand the feats, deter from the otherwise juicy feeling of the book. Most feat-books are rather dry reads and this one isn't and I really think that these fluff-sections should become the standard. The amount of glitches irritated me and did detract from this otherwise great innovation and thus, I'll detract another star, resulting in a final verdict of 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 due to the quality and imaginative potential of the feats. Note that usually I'd round down to 3, but however I look at it, this book IS still too good for 3 stars, thus my rounding up this time. I hope for V.2.0 to get another editing pass.