So I knew that even if I never bought anything else for the Pathfinder Second Edition game I was going to buy the Bestiary. And much like it's Great-Grandfather AD&D, I picked up the Bestiary first. I grabbed the Core Rules (that I discussed yesterday) based entirely off of what I read in this book.
I guess I really should have done this one on Monday instead of a monster, but I wanted to do the core rules first.
So what does this book have and why did I like it so much? Well, it has a lot going for it.
Pathfinder 2nd ed Bestiary
For this review, I am considering the Hardcover version I purchased at my FLGS. For Pathfinder 2e I have been going with the Special Edition covers. My oldest gets the Special Ed covers of the D&D 5 books and I get the regular ones since D&D 5 is "His" game. I normally like to get the Special Ed covers since I am a sucker for a book with a ribbon in it. Plus he has no plans to play PF2e and we even combined our PF1e books into one collection and sold off the rest (which is how I can buy these!)
The book is 360 pages with full-color art. You know when you walk into the floor of the Gen Con trader hall and the smell of new books hits you? That's how this book smells. Like Gen Con, but in a good way.
This book contains about 415 different monster stat blocks. Before I get into those blocks I want to speak about the layout. The PF1e Bestiary worked hard to get monsters down to one page per monster. Sometimes there were variations, but it was obvious the Paizo crew (and many others of the d20 boom) liked the presentation of one monster per page as in the AD&D 2nd days. PF2e takes this design strategy and extends it to the next level. Sometimes we get one monster per page. Many times we get a monster type (for example the Alghollthu) that extends across 2-, 4- or more pages (always an even number) that are facing each other. So in this case the Skum and Faceless Stalker.
This continues throughout the book. The practical implications here are 1.) finding something is easy IF you know the group it might be under. 2.) you can lay your book flat and have access to everything you need for the monster. There is of course one other. While I love my special editions, if I went to the Paizo website and got all of these as PDFs I could do the exact same thing I have done with the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums and the various S&W Monster books, I can print them all out and organize them all into one large folder. Note you can do the same things with the D&D 4e Monster books too. Maybe this is something I should consider when doing my Basic Bestiary.
Continuing on. The stat blocks are easy to read and honestly understand if you have played any form of D&D form the last 20 years. There is the Name, it's level (which replaces HD and CR). Under that there are the descriptor tags, this includes Alignment, Size, and Traits. So our faceless stalker is a Chaotic Evil medium-sized aberration and it is level 4. There are some basic "monster stats" such as skills, perception and abilities mods, and what items if any it has. It's Defence block is next with AC, saves, HP and resistances, immunities, or vulnerabilities. It's attack block follows. The feel is very much like that of D&D 5e.
The block is smaller than that of PF1e (thank goodness!) and all the important bits are readily visible,
Like the Core Book this features sidebars with more details. This often includes rumors, mentions of other types, and more.
About the Monsters
Most monster books take a LOT of cues from the 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual. Many feature the same set of monsters. Enough that I often refer to the Demons Type I to VI and the Succubus as "The Usual Suspects." Does this Bestiary follow suit? Almost, the Hezrou (Type II) and Nalfeshnee (Type IV) are missing but the others are here.
Either due to space or to make the the stat blocks come out right there are a lot of creatures here that you do not normally see in a "core" monster book and some that I expected are missing. Nothing game-breaking mind you. In fact it gives a great flavor to the book. There are many you expect, all the dragons for example, and some I didn't, like the gug and lillend.
One of the neatest things about this book is reading over what are classical monsters too many of us and seeing how they are different not just through the lens of PF2e, but from different creators and a different world. I have already talked about how much I enjoy Pathfinder's goblins, but they really do feel different here. This change is then reflected in other creatures like the barghest. Some are quite different, like the kobolds, and others are largely still the same, like orcs.
Speaking of orcs. A while back I did a post discussing what should be part of a universal stat-block and I used orcs as my example. The reasoning was that orcs are one creature that has appeared in all versions of D&D (yes there are others, but they are ubiquitous) and they are a good typical foe for 1st level adventurers. How do the Pathfinder (PF1e and PF2e) orcs stack up?
Orcs in D&D 3.x were (are) CR ½. This meant they were a good, but not necessarily deadly, challenge to a party of 1st-level characters. In Pathfinder 1e they are now CR ⅓, so even easier really. Pathfinder has the Orc Brute at Creature 0 and Orc Warrior at Creature 1 with 15 and 23 hp respectively. Still something a group of first levels could take on, but maybe slightly harder.
How does this book stack up to my Monster Manual test?
My Monster Manual Test is how I feel when I first open a game book. While this book can't reasonably live up to the hype of when I first picked up the AD&D Monster Manual it does do the exact same thing; It made me want to buy the system so I could know more about it. Like PF2e Core this book is gorgeous and just wonderful to read through. The designers have made me invested in their world and I want to know more.
Enough that I have more books to cover!
1 comment:
FWIW, my favorite "monster books" are the two 13th Age Bestiaries, which aren't quite as pretty as Pathfinder or WotC D&D books have been (their art budgets are beyond Pelgrane's reach, methinks) but rival or exceed them for page count and are phenomenally well-written. Many of the monsters are familiar D&D critters, but they (and the wholly original critters) invariably offer unique twists in both backgrounds and mechanics. Great stuff all around.
I'll also put forward a more controversial candidate for third place, the Book of Foes from Avalon Hill's Lords of Creation RPG. It's shoddily made (paper cover, staple bound), the artwork didn't look all that good even when it came out in 1983 (so laughable by 2022 standards), and the monster description are rarely more than a few lines crammed into the kind of primitive page layouts that you'd expect from the late 70s. And none of that matters to me in the least, because the list of "foes" statted up in the book is the most gloriously, stupidly gonzo mishmash I've seen in almost half a century of gaming. Scifi, fantasy, historical, classic literature - this book has everything, and not in small doses either. Show me another monster book where you can get the stats of Ogun Onire, the Kraken, King Arthur, swashbuckling cat people, cyborg soldiers, Neanderthals, War of the Words tripods, and Epimetheus all in the same book. And that's just scratching the surface of this thing, there are over 450 listings in it. Makes the crazy Judge's Guild Field Guide to Encounters look tame by comparison. Unlike 13th Age it isn't actually good, but it sure is interesting. :)
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