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Good morning everyone,
I'm proud to announce my project, which consumed the better part of the last year of my life is finally finished and available on the DMs Guild
The book features a professional, handcrafted layout. It contains hundreds of monsters, both from previous editions of the game and entirely new. There are several appendices covering various types of zombies, skeletons and elementals that add variety to these creatures. Additionally you will find a number of easily applied templates that change the nature of a creature, such as half-celestials, fiends and even a template that allows you to turn any creature into a legendary encounter.
While DMs gain a big roster of new monsters, players gain new types of skeletons and zombies to create with necromancy, options for familiars and beast companions, as well as suggestions and easy ways to adjust class options based on the monsters found in the book, such as cosmic dragon bloodline sorcerer origins and obyrith as warlock patrons.
I look forward to hear what you all think about it and I'd be happy to answer questions about it as well.
I haven't read the book, but it looks like it was a big project. Congrats on getting it out there!
How many of the monsters are conversions, and how many are totally new?
The majority of monsters are conversions of classics, you can see the list of contents in the preview pdf to give you an idea. Each one of these has been given a lot of thought on how they should work in 5th edition and how they would interact with the edition's unique traits and mechanics, rather than a simple adaptation of their statlines. I reached as far back as second edition to see if and how each monster worked in each edition and what its lore was.
New monsters are:
Unmarked Bodak, Boggoul, Toxic Cave Fisher, Cosmic Dragons (Moon, Sun, Time, Void and Warp dragon, each with wyrmling, young, adult and ancient variations), Ettercap Spiderherd, Wild Giants, Girallon Alpha, Harbinger Beast, Howling Echo, Igneous Strider, Kopru Abomination, Sunscale Lizardfolk, Meenlock Half-Spawn, Merskarab, Nixie (this one is very different from the nixie known from classic DnD), various types of Obyrith (Avathu, Bhasylit, Cyoturma, Inoqua, Isaati, Nethui and Ysolith), Primal Lycanthropes, Quicksilver, Elder Redcap, Skullbat, Swarm Husk, Wild Effigy, Tree Woad, Xvart Degenerate
There are also a few new creatures in the appendix, such as Giant Waterbears, Great Wolves and Yeth Jackals, but I couldn't tell you for sure which one of the4se have really not been in the game in previous editions, because it containts a lot of animals.
I may publish a complete list of the stat blocks found in the Critter Compendium later.
For those who are unconvinced or would like to see more: DawnforgedCast have made a video review
Thank you, Lorathorn!
A lot of the art and creatures shown are definitely from previous editions, including several pieces of art shown in the video. Did you get permission to use them and/or the art assets? I was under the impression that stuff would have been copyrighted considering WotC track record.
DM's Guild has some art assets from WotC you're allowed to use in DM's Guild products, ex. a collection of fiends.
These are usually fairly limited, but as long as you stick with them you're in the clear.
@Aleron,
All the art assets used are either available under the DMs Guild Community use license or owned by me, so it's 100% legit, I promise.
@hiiamtom
That's awesome, go for it!
Congrats on Silver seller.
Oh wow, I only just saw that. Thank you!
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I've been thinking about that recently, it's something that I really missed out on doing, I will probably do it in an update. Along with some corrections for typos and minor grammatical mistakes. In the meantime, the pdf is thoroughly bookmarked. You will find every single bestiary entry there by name.
In other news, the Critter Compendium graduated to Electrum Seller!
That looks very cool.
Thank you RJGrady, in my humble opinion, it is too. ;)
I added an image of the Creature Index by CR to the store page, for anyone who wants a more detailed list of contents before buying.
Today the Critter Compendium struck Gold(-bestseller).
An update is coming soon, that will add links to the Table of contents as well as the (corrected) page references throughout the monster entries, making the pdf more convenient to navigate.
The update took a bit longer than I planned, but is finally out.
I'm currently working on a Critter Compendium module for Fantasy Grounds.