Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 6 (PFRPG)

4.30/5 (based on 19 ratings)
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 6 (PFRPG)
Show Description For:
Non-Mint

Add Hardcover $44.99

Add PDF $19.99

Non-Mint Unavailable

Facebook Twitter Email

Bow Down in Fear!

Monsters have long stalked us in the darkness. Within this book, you’ll find a host of these creatures for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Face off against archdevils and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, planar dragons and the legendary wild hunt, proteans and psychopomps, and hundreds more! Some creatures, such as the capricious taniwha, the mysterious green man, or the powerful empyreal lords, might even be willing to provide your heroes aid—if they deserve it!

Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 6 is the sixth must-have 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 best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era.

Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 6 includes:

  • More than 200 different monsters.
  • New player-friendly races, like the crazed monkey goblins, the telepathic albino munavris, the river-dwelling fey naiads, the wolflike rougarou, and the yaddithians of the Elder Mythos.
  • Numerous powerful demigods, from archdevils and Great Old Ones to empyreal lords and qlippoth lords.
  • New animal companions and other allies, such as fierce devil monkeys and loyal clockwork hounds.
  • New templates, including the entothrope and the mongrel giant, to help you get more life out of classic monsters.
  • Appendices to help you find the right monster, including lists by Challenge Rating, monster type, and habitat.
  • Expanded universal monster rules to simplify combat.
  • Challenges for every adventure and every level of play.
  • AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-931-8

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

Hero Lab Online
Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Rulebook Subscription.

Product Availability

Hardcover:

Available now

Ships from our warehouse in 11 to 20 business days.

PDF:

Fulfilled immediately.

Non-Mint:

Unavailable

This product is non-mint. Refunds are not available for non-mint products. The standard version of this product can be found here.

Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

PZO1137


See Also:

16 to 19 of 19 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>

Average product rating:

4.30/5 (based on 19 ratings)

Sign in to create or edit a product review.

Sometimes Less is Just Less.

3/5

While this is a good bestiary, it is not nearly as good as the others.

The good
-Kaiju, love these guys, wish there was more.
-Some cool new 0HD races such as the naiad and rougarou.
-Some interesting fey like the alp, boggle, and wild hunt.
-Some interesting plant creatures like the green man, giant sundew, and crypt flower.
-A lot of cool new oozes especially the oblivion.
-Several new proteans.
-Finally the nekomata.
-A lot of cool new vermin especially the giant starfish.
-Some really cool constructs including clockworks, golems, and the charnel god.

The bad
-Not enough types of dragons, giants, and 0HD races.
-No elementals (but I already new that).
-Way too many evil outsiders.
-Wasn't impressed with most of the monstrous humanoids.
-Disappointed with the new true dragons.
-Very few interesting undead and once again most are humanoid in form.
-I knew there would be much less monsters this time but still a little disappointed.

Other
-Was disappointed that the mountain giant wasn't colossal CR20 giant but at least we finally have it.
-Would have liked Krampus to have been a lower CR.


No Danger of Running Out of Monster Ideas Yet

5/5

Once again Paizo has knocked it out of the park with their latest Bestiary, proving that if there is such a thing as too many monsters that they have not reached that point yet.

This book has more high level threats than previous books, with Archdevils, Kaiju, and Great Old Ones. It also fills out some gaps in the categories of monster not usually encountered at higher levels, with high CR vermin, plants, and oozes.

The incorporation of Archdevils, Empyral Lords, and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse means that this book is slightly less generic than previous Bestiaries as these are based on Golarion's Cosmology but this is more a strength than a weakness - as unique individuals they require some sort of a background and they can still be easily transplanted into another setting.

I love the inclusion of the troop subtype as it allows low level threats such as goblins or bandits to challenge higher level parties through strength of numbers and also allows the PCs to feel awesome for mowing down dozens of enemies without the hassle of running a combat with that number of enemies. I loved the first appearance of troops in the Hell's Rebels AP and am delighted to see them appear in a hardback. Hopefully they will be a mainstay of future adventures and we will see many more varities of troop to come.

A final thing to mention is that there are far more two page spreads in this book than the previous Bestiaries, creating room for even more fantastic flavour material which draws heavily on real world mythology and provides plenty of ideas of how to use the creatures in a campaign. The flavour material has always been my favourite part of any monster book, as it is the flavour which makes each monster different and memorable to encounter, and it was great having so much of that in this book (apart from for the dragons but that is a long standing issue with how dragon stats are presented taking up a lot of space)

Overall this is a fantastic book and I highly recommend buying it.


Amazing

5/5

Having used monsters from this already, this book will keep giving. Amazing monster designs all around.


Quite Possibly the Best of All the Bestiaries

5/5

For an explanation of how I use the five star review method, see my entry on So What's the Riddle Like Anyway? HERE.

Bestiaries have three purposes: first, to provide adversaries for the player characters in the game; second, to help GMs with building their worlds and populating them with potential allies as well as threats, creating legends to draw adventurers in to the plots they’ve contrived; and third, to entertain the reader with a list of fantastic creatures both baleful and benign to stimulate their imagination, as well as beautiful artwork to please the soul.

This is the sixth Bestiary put out by Paizo for their Pathfinder RPG and some would rightfully point out that there are now more monsters in existence for this game than could reasonably be encountered in any campaign. Is there such a thing as too many monsters? Let’s take a look.

First thing to be noticed is the amazing cover by Wayne Reynolds, featuring a Brimorak demon, Charon, and Mephistopheles. It is a brilliant intro to the book, which covers threats for low-level adventurers (like the brimorak) to stuff of nightmares for the toughest mythic heroes (the boatman and THE archetypal devil).

The artwork throughout runs from the very good to the spectacular. My particular favorites are the portraits of Tawil at’Umr and Krampus by David Melvin, the Olethros Pschopomp by David Alvarez, the Whisperer by Will O’Brien, all of the members of the Wild Hunt by Roberto Pitturru, and the Animus Shade by Audrey Hotte. The artwork is up to the usual standard of Paizo: superb. There are a few I don’t like as much due to their caricature nature, as I prefer images as realistic as possible to help feel the threat level, but that is a personal preference and by no means a slight towards any of the artists who contributed to this volume.

The monsters are varied and intriguing; a good number are drawn directly from world folklore, literature, and even occasionally film. The fact that there are so many monsters of unique appearance and abilities after six volumes shows the depth of those resources have yet to be fully tapped. There are also constructs made especially for the game and at least one old classic from Gary Gygax’s AD&D Monster Manual II: The thessalhydra. Having it in Pathfinder in all its vicious lethal glory warms my nostalgic heart.

The threats range from CR ½ to CR 30 and all points in between: yes, ALL. It something that they have been careful about at Paizo to make sure each Bestiary has threats from the entire range to make sure a GM has options to challenge his players accordingly.

The arrangement of the book is the same layout as the previous and this is an example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” design philosophy. You can quickly find what you need to run any monster in the book without much fuss. Lists of types of monsters, terrains, animal companion stats, monster roles; in short, everything a GM needs to create populate her adventures with appropriate threats.

As to the threats themselves, this is one of the strongest showings in some time. The variety of creatures is quite mindboggling. I’ve looked through it and there aren’t many entries that I could call weak. There are some that look mundane like a piranha swarm, but then you realize things like, “how many swarms work underwater?” The ones we are familiar with have a practical use; the ones we don’t recognize fire the imagination.

I’ll bring one of my favorite entries: the Wild Hunt. This is based on Celtic folklore about fey who charge through the world on a manic hunt, trying to bring down prey; sometimes human prey. People who hear the horn of the Master of the Hunt are often drawn to join in and follow, not necessarily of their free will.

The write up takes the real world folklore into account and weaves it in with Paizo’s take on the Fey—which is easier than in many games as the Fey in Pathfinder have been deliberately kept close to the real world folklore. They add in their own game mechanics and describe not just one monster entry, but the descriptions of five different creatures that make up the hunt. They describe the different types of hunt that occur, including drawing in characters and making them Fey members of the Wild Hunt, right out of the folklore. I can think of not just side-treks or adventures, but whole campaigns out of the Wild Hunt entry alone. Wonderful.

There are Kaiju to slake the disaster monster fan in all of us, Archdevils and Great Old Ones to act as masterminds behind the scenes or end bosses for Mythic campaigns. There are creepy undead (whoever thought up the Lovelorn…wow, that’s disturbing. EDIT: It was Crystal Frasier!) and Empyreal Lords to champion the good guys. As I said the range is truly amazing.

If I am going to lay a criticism here it will be about the Dragon entries. Sadly, the format given that Paizo has admitted they are stuck with leaves little room for flavour text for each specific dragon type. A few lines to help convey the mood really doesn’t do them justice, especially these planar dragons which are just magnificent. I am at a loss to how to correct this problem, so I will let it slide.

I’m going to call out my favorite monster as the Conqueror Worm. Drawn from a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, it is a disturbing mastermind, manipulating beings from the shadows for its own amusement, eventually taking its minions and devouring them after making them destroy their entire civilization. Its actions as described in the entry could explain the country of Galt in Golarion quite well and makes you wonder whether the eternal revolution is the result of human depravity and corruption or something far more sinister. This is a campaign in a single monster entry.

Final Thoughts: All in all, Bestiary 6 fulfills all the criteria I gave at the start and then some. Adversaries for every level of play, creatures with back stories and flavour to inspire world and adventure building, and beautiful artwork and strong characterizations of motives and actions to fire the imagination. You really can’t get better than that. This may be the best Bestiary of them all. Five out of Five Stars.


Oh here we go

5/5

This book is AWESOME.

It's almost too much to go over with two new awesome player races to homicidal flying weasels that work very well as BBEGs to the all the demigods... I'm going to get so much mileage out of this bestiary.


16 to 19 of 19 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>
3,651 to 3,693 of 3,693 << first < prev | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | next > last >>

Yeah I remember the Mezlan, wish they got new art, but happy they made it in.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Alexandre Gayk-Lemay wrote:

I quite like the product over all, but does anyone else have a wierdly low-rez image by Tyler Walpole for the Vavakia Demon on p.89?

I've looked closely at every other image in my copy and I've found every other image to be very high resolution and generally beautiful - the contrast is jarring to the point where I can't help but think it might not be intentional...

My friend tells me that there are several such low resolution graphics in the Bestiaries going as far back as #3. He thinks it most commonly occurs on reprinted monsters, where the original image was small, but then got improperly blown up to fill the larger page space of the Bestiaries during reprint.

I haven't confirmed anything of the sort, but I have seen several such images in the Bestiary 6, and speaking as a professional graphic designer, it's damned sloppy! I sure hope whoever is responsible gets a stern talking to, and that it gets fixed before reprint.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Milo v3 wrote:
edit: also, why can't Herecites be oracles/druids/antipaladins/hunters/onimuji/etc. who don't rely on faith?

All divine spellcasters rely on faith. That's part of what makes faith what it is in the game, a belief in something larger than yourself. Typically that's a deity or demigod or the like, but can also be a philosophy or a pantheon or anything else a divine spellcaster must believe in so as to gain their powers. Including oracles, druids, antipaladins, etc.


Finally got my hard copy in the mail.

Were there issues with the print run? My copy has 30 pages out of order and duplicated with missing entries. It's horrible.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Feros wrote:
Luthorne wrote:
Would someone be willing to say how long a rougarou can remain in wolf form? Is it 1 minute/HD, indefinitely, something else?
1 minute/HD, as it works like beast shape I.

no it's indefinitely as the change shape monster ability which it is

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Brother Fen wrote:

Finally got my hard copy in the mail.

Were there issues with the print run? My copy has 30 pages out of order and duplicated with missing entries. It's horrible.

No issues I know of, but weird printing errors like this happen with every print run for every book in every publishing company. Let customer service know and they'll help you with a solution.


Thanks for the kind response, James!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
James Jacobs wrote:
All divine spellcasters rely on faith. That's part of what makes faith what it is in the game, a belief in something larger than yourself. Typically that's a deity or demigod or the like, but can also be a philosophy or a pantheon or anything else a divine spellcaster must believe in so as to gain their powers. Including oracles, druids, antipaladins, etc.

Even if you tried to make it so druid and antipaladins did that, that blatantly isn't how oracles and onmyouji work in pathfinder. Oracles don't have a choice in having power, it's just shoved into them faith or not. They don't even know where their powers come from, they don't have anything to believe in and there is a good chance of them disliking what gave them their curse....


oracles believe in a ideal don't they? hence the mystery

Paizo Employee Creative Director

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Milo v3 wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
All divine spellcasters rely on faith. That's part of what makes faith what it is in the game, a belief in something larger than yourself. Typically that's a deity or demigod or the like, but can also be a philosophy or a pantheon or anything else a divine spellcaster must believe in so as to gain their powers. Including oracles, druids, antipaladins, etc.
Even if you tried to make it so druid and antipaladins did that, that blatantly isn't how oracles and onmyouji work in pathfinder. Oracles don't have a choice in having power, it's just shoved into them faith or not. They don't even know where their powers come from, they don't have anything to believe in and there is a good chance of them disliking what gave them their curse....

Actually, it's EXACTLY how oracles work. Feel free to adjust that in your home game, but in Pathfinder, oracles are divine spellcasters and thus their power comes from faith. The oracle may not have a choice to believe since the supernatural elements of her faith are bound to her spirit and soul via her curse, but it's still divine magic and thus still faith based.

And since it says onmyouji spells are divine spells... they rely on faith as well.

That's not really something I want to argue though, so I'll back out of the discussion for now and let folks talk about how it might work differently in home games. I'm only here to confirm how it is assumed to function in the game as we envision it.

Silver Crusade

I am not really aware where I need to put this but
the hybrid weremantis on page on page 117 appears to have a full attack routine of flurry of blows and claws as well.

I thought monks could not use natural weapons alongside their flurry of blows?

Designer

Richter Harding wrote:

I am not really aware where I need to put this but

the hybrid weremantis on page on page 117 appears to have a full attack routine of flurry of blows and claws as well.

I thought monks could not use natural weapons alongside their flurry of blows?

The best place to post possible mistakes like that one is the possible errata thread.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I just got my copy of Bestiary 6 in the mail. First I flipped through it, admiring the pictures. One feature of the Pathfinder Bestiary series that I especially like how is how the staff at Paizo credits the individual artist of each illustration in the margin. It makes it appear as if Paizo is not some giant corporate entity (cough, cough, Hasbro) in which recognition of individual effort is beneath their level of interest. I wish the staff at Paizo did this in all their publications, including the Player Companions, Campaign Settings and Adventure Paths. A fair number of these illustrations are familiar to me (especially, if memory serves, from Book of the Damned volumes) but, at least in some cases, the artists were not previously credited (individually).

In any case, it looks great! In the upcoming months, it will be included in the "Survey of Bestiaries" blog. In 2017, the staff at the Poison Pie Publishing House have been adding one bestiary each weekend to the survey. As of today, the survey currently includes 149 bestiaries.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Finally got mine yay!


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Poison Pie wrote:
One feature of the Pathfinder Bestiary series that I especially like how is how the staff at Paizo credits the individual artist of each illustration in the margin.

I didn't know that!

-flips to p.111-

Kim Sokol... I'll have to thank her sometime.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Am I the only one here who is disappointed in the huge number of reprinted monsters in this book? When I got into Pathfinder, i bought up a lot of the books, even picking up used copies on ebay. Now that the new bestiary is out, I'm a little annoyed that so much of it is material I already have.

EDIT: And what really annoys me is that its just reprints of stuff from Pathfinder books. Where are the pathfinder updates for crazy monsters from old 3.5 adventures Paizo wrote, like the Hoary Muntjak?


Mavrickindigo wrote:
Am I the only one here who is disappointed in the huge number of reprinted monsters in this book? When I got into Pathfinder, i bought up a lot of the books, even picking up used copies on ebay. Now that the new bestiary is out, I'm a little annoyed that so much of it is material I already have.

There are supposedly the same percentage of reprints in the bestiary as their normally are in the bestiaries (which I rather appreciate since I don't buy golarion content so all the creatures in this were new to me and I otherwise would never have seen them).


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Mav,

I think it's just you. Also updates from adventures/adventure paths aren't something that occurs regularly. *looks at Cabal Devil longingly*

In ANY case I enjoy this book tremendously.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I am fine with reprints from APs and other softcover books. In fact their some creatures I have been waiting for several years to be reprinted into a hardcover bestiary.


Dragon,

Like Cabal Devils? ;)


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Mavrickindigo wrote:

Am I the only one here who is disappointed in the huge number of reprinted monsters in this book? When I got into Pathfinder, i bought up a lot of the books, even picking up used copies on ebay. Now that the new bestiary is out, I'm a little annoyed that so much of it is material I already have.

EDIT: And what really annoys me is that its just reprints of stuff from Pathfinder books. Where are the pathfinder updates for crazy monsters from old 3.5 adventures Paizo wrote, like the Hoary Muntjak?

Nope, though I've seen many of them before, I know that in a Bestiary they'll get a lot more coverage and I'm a lot more likely to run into them as a player...not to mention it makes those monsters more available for other adventures, whether they're Pathfinder Society scenarios, modules, Adventure Paths, or third party adventures. Not to mention the convenience of having them all in one book when I'm browsing for monsters in a format that has pictures available.


A question for James Jacobs:

A few reprints in this book were from the Worldwound campaign setting book, but the Gallu demon from that source was not reprinted. Any particular reason?

I think I recall that the new outsiders in the Book of the Damned are all new, so I guess that won't be something the Gallu was saved for.


Milo v3 wrote:
Mavrickindigo wrote:
Am I the only one here who is disappointed in the huge number of reprinted monsters in this book? When I got into Pathfinder, i bought up a lot of the books, even picking up used copies on ebay. Now that the new bestiary is out, I'm a little annoyed that so much of it is material I already have.
There are supposedly the same percentage of reprints in the bestiary as their normally are in the bestiaries (which I rather appreciate since I don't buy golarion content so all the creatures in this were new to me and I otherwise would never have seen them).

Yep...I believe the ratio of new and old is the same as the last few bestiaries. It might feel a bit obvious with this edition though because the total number of creatures I think is reduced, since there are more two page entries?

Shadow Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder PF Special Edition Subscriber

I'm not bothered too much, it's good to have them all collected in one place.

Liberty's Edge Contributor

5 people marked this as a favorite.

Getting monsters reprinted in a Bestiary also puts them into the PRD, which makes them easier for other publishers to use them in their own material.


Indeed. I for one am looking forward to PRD Obsicisdaemon.

Silver Crusade

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Paris Crenshaw wrote:
Getting monsters reprinted in a Bestiary also puts them into the PRD, which makes them easier for other publishers to use them in their own material.

And for Paizo being able to use them in adventures by simply referencing the name, instead of reprinting the whole statblock, thus saving space for other nice things.


Has anyone tried to make the six Empyreal Lords we have a bit more equal to the CR they represent (this includes Arshea, Black Butterfly, and Ragathiel)? I'm having some difficulty comparing the stats of the three Emypreal Lords we received in this manual to Archdevils, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Kaiju, and Great Old Ones of similar CR (it keeps coming up unequal in terms of power). Maybe it's just me?


Berselius,

Maybe the reason they're uneven is no one expects normally GOOD PCs to fight such creatures. But I could be wrong.


I wasn't assuming that a party of good-aligned PC's would fight them. I was assuming if an Empyreal Lord (such as Ragathiel or Arshea) fought against a force of equal CR (such as a Demon Lord, Archdevil, or Horseman of Apocalypse). In that case, the Empyreal Lords seem to be at a distinct disadvantage.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Try running Ragathiel against Barbarossa and see what happens.


Gorbacz,

Why would you want to fight a pirate?

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'm not sure, but the autocomplete on my phone's keyboard will likely have the answers when I stop punching the living daylights out of it.


Gorbacz,

Yeah autocomplete/autocorrect are the bane of many people's existence.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Of course, I meant Ragathiel vs. Barbatos fight. But I wasn't too far off, DAT BEARD YO.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

They both do have very nice beards, no question.

Contributor

6 people marked this as a favorite.

A slime naga (p. 199) paired with about a half dozen slithering pits (p. 254) made for one of the most exciting and unique encounters I've run in a while. Have fun with that combo, folks!


That sounds like more slithering slimes than I care to imagine...


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Dragon78 wrote:
So is the rougarou's bite damage a d6 or a d4 because the creature's stats say d6 but the 0HD rules says d4?

If you look at the back of the Bestiery pg 302 on the chart a medium sized creature will have a 1d6 bite. Thus I would as a DM determine that in humanoid form this bite would remain a d6 as well. This is further Confirmed when you look at the entry for the Wolf pg 278 as a medium size creature which the Rougarou Change shape's into has. Also by the rules for Change Shape pg 298 they retain their stat abilities and gain any Special Qualities of the new form if any which the Wolf has none so they being a wolfen creature themselves would neither lose or gain anything in the wolf form.

This is just my humble opinion based on the rules set for from the Bestiery books and as a DM of 35 plus years.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Question about Troops.
How do attacks work?
In melee (for goblin troop) it just says: Troop (2d6).
They also have the overwhelm special ability where they deal 3d6 when they occupy the same square as an opponent.
So does that mean that any time a troop is adjacent to someone they automatically deal damage without having to roll for it, like a swarm?

Paizo Employee Managing Developer

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Charles Scholz wrote:

Question about Troops.

How do attacks work?
In melee (for goblin troop) it just says: Troop (2d6).
They also have the overwhelm special ability where they deal 3d6 when they occupy the same square as an opponent.
So does that mean that any time a troop is adjacent to someone they automatically deal damage without having to roll for it, like a swarm?

For the most part, troops act like a swarm. The troop's attack is described on page 308 in the section that talks about the troop subtype. The short of it is that they can attack any creature within their reach or those that they share a square with.

Dark Archive

This came out in april 2017.

-When is the pocket edition coming out?

The "Return of the Runelords" & "Tyrants Grasp" adventure paths make frequent use of this volume and i would be glad to add this last missing Bestiary volume to my collection.

3,651 to 3,693 of 3,693 << first < prev | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Paizo / Product Discussion / Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 6 (PFRPG) All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.