E.N. Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland

The sixth volume in the E.N. Critters series contains 21 creatures suited to desert environments. As usual, the creatures range across a variety of Challenge Ratings and types. This volume contains all the usual features found in an E.N. Critters book:

* The medium resolution PDF is fully bookmarked for easy reference.
* Both the Table of Contents and the bold creature names in the Theme Detail section are linked to the creature stat pages.
* Several pages of theme info focused on geographic details as well as how each creature fits in with the region and other critters.
* A full color map of the target area (Berk’s Wasteland) and surrounding regions.
* A wide range of creature types and challenge ratings. (Twenty one all new creatures including 2 aberrations, 1 construct, 1 dragon, 2 elementals, 1 fey, 1 giant, 1 humanoid, 4 magical beasts, 3 monstrous humanoids, 1 outsider, 2 plants and 2 undead. The creatures range in CR from 1 to 14.)
* Full color illustrations for most creatures.
* Each full creature entry is set to make the GM’s job easy to run that creature, including additional information about certain types of abilities to save time having to reference additional books.
* A detailed ecology section for each creature with a few paragraphs about topics such as its origins, where it is found, what it
eats, etc., useful for GMs wishing to add an extra dimension of cohesiveness to their games.
* Suggested knowledge tables to make resolving player knowledge checks quicker and easier.
* A notes and game balance section for each creature to lend insight into what concept the writer had as well as how they feel it balances out for its CR in the game.
* Full color, 2-sided counters for each creature in the volume.
* Tables listing all creatures by CR, type and subtype and writer/illustrator credits.
* The PDF is intentionally formatted with 2-sided printing in mind in case a hardcopy booklet is desired. If printed in this fashion, most entries start on a left-hand page and end on a right-hand page for easy reference. The margin has also been set in case 3-hole punching is desired.
* Contact information for the very responsive developers. If you have questions, we have answers for you!
* Revision availability. As errata is corrected, adjustments made and possibly new information added, revised versions of the PDF are available for download free of charge.

Berk’s Wasteland is the sixth volume in this series. All of the creatures herein have been developed around an environment of arid deserts and wastelands and are suitable to be dropped into any campaign. If you are looking for an actual wasteland setting complete with regional descriptions and how the regional inhabitants of this volume interact with each other, then you are in luck again. A fairly detailed account of Berk’s Wasteland’s geography, inhabitants and general plotlines have been provided as well as a regional map that ties into the regions detailed in other volumes in the E.N. Critters series. This is however primarily a monster compendium and not intended to be a complete campaign sourcebook. Rather, the setting details have been included to create a framework for the creatures presented, as well as to provide the GM with with plenty of information and plot hooks to build adventure’s around whether or not the actual detailed setting is used.

Creatures by Challenge Rating:

Bombilli (CR 1)
Grumbleweed (CR 1)
Fastling (CR 2)
Silica Omal (CR 2)
Desiccated (CR 3)
Berk’s Harbinger (CR 4)
Jaklyn (CR 4)
Ashen Drake (CR 5)
Bombillo (CR 5)
Boneswirl (CR 5)
Hoodoo Gargoyle (CR 5)
Sand Hag (CR 5)
Mica Cuttlefish (CR 7)
Carrion Sphinx (CR 8)
Grit (CR 8)
Thorn Giant (CR 8)
Scorpienne (CR 9)
Cactallion (CR 11)
Vermillion Creeper (CR 11)
Desert Colossus (CR 14)
Mica Cetacean (CR 14)

Creatures by type:

Air: Bombilli, Boneswirl
Aberration: Mica Cetacean, Mica Cuttlefish
Chaotic: Vermillion Creeper
Construct: Desert Colossus
Demon: Vermillion Creeper
Dragon: Ashen Drake
Earth: Bombillo, Hoodoo Gargoyle, Mica Cetacean, Mica Cuttlefish, Silica Omal
Elemental: Bombillo
Evil: Vermillion Creeper
Extraplanar: Bombillo, Vermillion Creeper
Fey: Grit
Giant: Thorn Giant
Goblinoid: Fastling
Humanoid: Fastling
Magical Beast: Berk’s Harbinger, Carrion Sphinx, Jaklyn, Scorpienne, Silica Omal
Monstrous Humanoid: Hoodoo Gargoyle, Sand Hag
Outsider: Vermillion Creeper
Plant: Cactallion, Grumbleweed
Shapechanger: Scorpienne
Undead: Boneswirl, Desiccated

EN Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland

EN CRITTERS VOLUME 6 -BERK'S WASTELAND
By Robert Lajoie, Ed LaPrade, Jeffrey LeBoeuf, Bill Salloway, Jim E. Vilandre, and Joshua Courtney
E.N. Publishing product number ENP-CR6
60-page PDF, $6.95

EN Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland is the latest PDF in this monster-based series. As you might gather from the title, this time the focus is on creatures that live in a large desert area.

The cover is a full-color piece by Allen Kerswell, featuring a desert landscape with a half-buried skeleton clutching a glowing amulet. In the background is an approaching humanoid figure, and behind him further in the distance, a dust devil swirls. There's not a whole lot of detail, but the color scheme is nice and I really like the way Allen blended the sky to make it look hazy.

For the interior artwork, Allen is joined (once again) by Jeffrey LeBoeuf and Mike McMenemy, who together provide 20 full-color illustrations and the 38 full-color counters in the back. Tammy Lajoie provides the full-color map on page 11. The artwork is very good this time around, with a few simplistic exceptions (like the bombilli/bombillo illustrations on pages 16 and 19) that are nowhere near the higher standards in the rest of the PDF. I particularly liked the fastling on page 30 (nice detail on the wispy hair, and I loved the high-speed blurring effect), the boneswirl on page 20 (cool "snapshot in time" effect), and the desiccated on page 28 (looking particularly foul under the burning sun, although it's a real shame what happened to his genitals). On the down side, the mica cuttlefish on page 42 is missing two arms. Two of the creatures didn't get illustrations, but as explained in the PDF, they look basically like a normal vulture and a normal tumbleweed, so we aren't missing much - and they did get represented in the counter section in the back.

The first thing I noticed about EN Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland is that this time, every creature's entry begins on an even-numbered page. That means that if you print the PDF out on both sides of each sheet of paper and put them in a three-ring binder (as I do), you can open up to any monster's listing and have everything there in full view. (Well, except for the bombilli and bombillo, but that's because their entries took 4 pages - there's not much they could have done about that!) This is a very handy benefit, and I appreciate the extra work the authors put into making it fit on the page that way. Best of all, there was really only one instance where reading through the entry I could sense that "padding" was being added to fill up the page (over half a page of the Sand Hag entry was devoted to an excerpt from a loremaster's journal); the rest all seemed to seamlessly flow to the end of the appropriate page. I hope that this becomes the new standard for the EN Critters PDFs, because it really is a great benefit and helps it stand out above the crowd.

Of course, EN Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland continues with the features that have made this PDF line so successful - the Knowledge tables for each creature, the Notes and Game Balance section explaining how the creatures were designed and how their Challenge Ratings were derived (by comparing the monster in question against monsters from the Monster Manual), and of course the two-sided, full-color counters in the back suitable to be printed out and used on your battle board during play.

As for the monster selection, we get the following: 2 aberrations, 1 construct, 1 dragon, 2 elementals, 1 fey, 1 giant, 1 humanoid, 5 magical beasts, 2 monstrous humanoids, 1 outsider, 2 plants, and 2 undead - considering the only standard creature types that go unrepresented are animals, oozes, and vermin, I'd say this is a pretty healthy spread. There are some really interesting monsters in here, as well. Both undead (boneswirls and desiccated) are favorites of mine, the former being a small whirlwind of bone fragments and the latter being a dried-out humanoid husk. The carrion sphinx, with its vulture head, makes a perfectly logical type of desert sphinx and is much more to my liking than the jackal-headed canisphinx, crocodilian crocosphinx, reptilian saurosphinx, or ibis-headed threskisphinx from Wizard of the Coast's recent Sandstorm. I even like the berk's harbinger, which is basically just a souped-up vulture, but the modifications they made to it make it really flavorful. (Its powers are mostly defense-related, making them difficult creatures to hit.) The fastling, while really just a barely-disguised quickling from earlier versions of AD&D, was well thought out, with a logical set of powers and abilities.

Of course, not all of the creatures in here are winners. My least favorite of the bunch is the jaklyn; not only is its name practically the phonetic equivalent to "Jacqueline" - not very scary, giving a monster what sounds like a girl's name - but it's basically just a two-headed jackal/hyena hybrid. Nothing says "I couldn't come up with a cool concept for a monster" to me faster than "I know, I'll slap an extra head on a normal creature!"

As for the quality of the creature stats, here comes the "unofficial errata" section of the review. I recommend making the following changes to these creatures from EN Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland:

• p. 17, Bombilli: "Tumble +7" should be "Tumble +6" (2 ranks, +2 Dex, +2 synergy bonus from Jump).
• p. 44, Sand Hag: The Organization entry says a covey can be made up of 3 hags of any type, but this is contradicted in the creature's write-up, which states that sand hags don't associate with other types of hag.
  [*]p. 47, Scorpienne, Monstrous Form: Add "Tumble +3" to the list of skills (+1 Dex, +2 synergy bonus from Jump).
  [*]p. 47, Scorpienne, human Form: Add "Tumble +3" to the list of skills (+2 Dex, +2 synergy bonus from Jump, -1 armor check penalty). [Edit: I overlooked Tumble being a "trained-only" skill - see comments below for details.]
• p. 50, Thorn Giant: Add "Knowledge (nature) +2" to the list of skills (+0 Int, +2 synergy bonus from Survival).
• p. 52, Vermilion Creeper: It has 11 HD, yet the Advancement starts at 9 HD and only goes to 24 HD. I suggest changing it to read "12-22 HD (Large), 23-33 HD (Huge)" instead.

Wait, that's it? 6 simple mistakes? [Edit: no, only 4.] Out of a total of 22 sets of creature stats? Yeah, that was my initial reaction, too. I really have to compliment the authors of the EN Critters line: they've really turned around the quality of their monster stat blocks from the early days of their initial efforts, to the point where the quality of their latest monster stats are blowing Wizards of the Coast out of the water! Way to go, guys!

On the down side, while their monster stats have taken a giant leap forward, the quality of their general proofreading and editing has taken a turn for the worse - the much worse, as a matter of fact. I documented 3 and a half pages of errors while reading through this PDF, and while most of them fall into the "I'm easily confused by punctuation" category, there were still plenty of examples of improper capitalization, word misuse (lead/led, breathe/breath, past time/pastime, morning star/morningstar, borne/born, oasis/oases, quarter staff/quarterstaff), and the misspelling of normal words (judgment, vermilion) and their own made-up names (is it "Keska" like on page 9, or "Kreska" like the map on page 11?). Here's a mere indication of the punctuation problems:


Do you know what those are? After I typed up my list of errata to send to the author (something I normally do when reviewing a PDF, as they're so easily corrected), I went back and counted - on that string above are the 62 commas that I noticed missing while reading through EN Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland! It looks like proofreaders Jim E. Vilandre and Johannes Luber have got their work cut out for them.

Still, despite the generally poor proofreading job, I can honestly say that most of the errors, while far too numerous for my taste, do not make it difficult to read through the PDF and know what was meant. The PDF comes across looking not as professional as it could be (and hopefully soon will be), but the material is completely understandable, and those with a higher tolerance for poor grammar and punctuation might not even notice all that much. Likewise, I haven't let the poor initial stab at proofreading drop EN Critters Volume 6 - Berk's Wasteland from being my favorite in the EN Critters line to date; the many improvements in this book (over others in the series) stand out far more than the nit-picky errors that I noted while reading through it. With a better initial proofreading job and the weeding out of the few goofy monsters (yes, I'm looking specifically at you, jaklyn!), this might well have gotten a "5 (Excellent)" rating from me. As it is, I'm giving it a very high "4 (Good)," with the proviso that once they fix up the proofreading job (as they have in the past), you can consider this to be a "5." Well done, guys: there's still some room for improvement, but this is easily your best book yet!

Firstly, I'd like to thank you for praising the stat blocks. Beating the 800 pound gorilla surely means something!

Secondly, 3 and a half pages of errata? Oh my... That is truly bad. So my holy crusade against stat errors swayed my focus away from the text in general. Good to know for doing #7. (Yes, I'm one of the proofreaders, if you haven't guessed it by now. ) Three synergy errors are a definite sign, that I need to improve my spreadsheet helper - along with the advancement line (automatic checking saves a lot of time, but one has to remember the limits). But to save a little of my honor: Judgment can be written both with and without e. I've read once an interesting discussion, that in legislation texts "judgment" is preferred.

Well, I've learned something new today, then. I just remember "judgment" getting drilled into our heads at school as the only way to spell it.

And you're quite welcome to the praise on the stat blocks: it was truly earned. You guys have made phenomenal progress along those lines.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why is "Tumble" being added to a skill list for the "scorpienne" if it hasn't any ranks in the skill?

Skills are usually added to the list, if they are modified by more than the ability modifier - feats, racial boni, and especially synergy boni are the biggest "culprits". There are two major exceptions, I know top off my head: Speed modification and synergy boni for trained only skills. Tumble is trained only, so it doesn't get listed - which is, what Robert Lajoie had to remind me again. It is a rule, which isn't explicitly listed, so it is easily overlooked and/or forgotten. That is the reason, I use a spreadsheet - so I don't need to know all the rules.

Because...I overlooked the fact that Tumble is a "trained only" skill, and thus the fact that a scorpienne has 5 or more ranks in Jump doesn't come into play. Good catch! I'll modify the review accordingly.

Of course, this just means that the stat block work that I raved about in the review is even more rave-worthy!