Have 5 stars.
Seriously this is just really good for a GM. Its more than a bestiary or a compilation of templates, or an NPC book. Its all three. In fact its more considering that the templates are often very involved. This massive book effectively multiplies the entries in all the bestiaries and NPC codexes saving me a ton of trouble and making for incredible encounters.
You can find this over at Paizo.com here.
Retrospective:
My original review for this was rather short. Others has posted reviews in great detail and I just wanted to add my stars to the mix, but really there isn't all that much to say.
The product is very basic. Its a big fat book full of creature templates. The templates are diverse and create a lot of interesting abilities and plot hooks. Each template has an example creature that is either an NPC or monster that has the template. So the entire book is one part bestiary and one part 'pimp my monster' but has some weird NPCs in there.
To understand how good this is, think about how many monsters you have. We have five bestiaries, an NPC Codex and a Monster Codex. Each of those creatures when they have a template applied is pretty much a new monster given that these templates are far reaching and add some bit of flavor. So the amount of creatures you have at your disposal multiplies with each template. With, what I'm guessing is 200 templates, some of which have multiple 'modes' you can seriously never have the same creature twice for a really long time. Gone are the days when your players can predict how a creature works completely, even if it's the same monster they've seen dozens of times. Monsters that they've fought at level one can show up more often with newer and more diverse abilities. My usual method of advancing monsters has been applying class levels but with this many templates I can do quite a bit very simply. I could even design entire campaigns around some of the templates because they do more than add a few plusses but can add a new dynamic or a new kind of enemy. Besides that the book is effectively a new bestiary given the amount of sample monsters.
This book reduces a lot of work for any GM and has been one of the most useful books I have to make encounters more interesting or buff up a monster that wasn't too interesting to fight. It is pretty much an automatic five stars simply by how often it gets used.
Seriously this is just really good for a GM. Its more than a bestiary or a compilation of templates, or an NPC book. Its all three. In fact its more considering that the templates are often very involved. This massive book effectively multiplies the entries in all the bestiaries and NPC codexes saving me a ton of trouble and making for incredible encounters.
You can find this over at Paizo.com here.
Retrospective:
My original review for this was rather short. Others has posted reviews in great detail and I just wanted to add my stars to the mix, but really there isn't all that much to say.
The product is very basic. Its a big fat book full of creature templates. The templates are diverse and create a lot of interesting abilities and plot hooks. Each template has an example creature that is either an NPC or monster that has the template. So the entire book is one part bestiary and one part 'pimp my monster' but has some weird NPCs in there.
To understand how good this is, think about how many monsters you have. We have five bestiaries, an NPC Codex and a Monster Codex. Each of those creatures when they have a template applied is pretty much a new monster given that these templates are far reaching and add some bit of flavor. So the amount of creatures you have at your disposal multiplies with each template. With, what I'm guessing is 200 templates, some of which have multiple 'modes' you can seriously never have the same creature twice for a really long time. Gone are the days when your players can predict how a creature works completely, even if it's the same monster they've seen dozens of times. Monsters that they've fought at level one can show up more often with newer and more diverse abilities. My usual method of advancing monsters has been applying class levels but with this many templates I can do quite a bit very simply. I could even design entire campaigns around some of the templates because they do more than add a few plusses but can add a new dynamic or a new kind of enemy. Besides that the book is effectively a new bestiary given the amount of sample monsters.
This book reduces a lot of work for any GM and has been one of the most useful books I have to make encounters more interesting or buff up a monster that wasn't too interesting to fight. It is pretty much an automatic five stars simply by how often it gets used.
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