baakyocalder
First Post
The third volume of creature reference manuals for the HackMaster 4th Edition RPG, continues your horrifying tour into the horrors and monstrosities that plague your campaign world.
The Hacklopedia of Beasts is an Encyclopedia series of monsters for Hackmaster. It is of course, GM-Eyes-Only material, but there's plenty of excellent illustrations for the players to be shown as they meet their doom!
This volume provides statistics, behavior information, and uses for beasts from Air Elemental, to Hippopotamus in alphabetical order.
The first seven pages are the typical Hackmaster disclaimer about roleplaying games, table of contents, and explanations of creature statistics. The major differences from Hacklopedias and prior monster books are that nearly every beast in Hackmaster has a twenty-hit point kicker to add to its 1d8 standard hit die and the Yield table. The Yield table says what the monster's corpse is good for, as well as what loot the monster might have accumulated. If you own another Hacklopedia volume, you've already bought this, so you can just skip ahead to reading about the monster.
Hacklopedia of beast volumes always focus intensively on a few creature types and give adequate coverage to thers; this volume makes giants the stars. 14 of the 128 pages are taken up by various races of giants and background information on these large creatures known as pinatas to most saavy HackMaster players. Of the eight volumes, this is the least devoted to one single creature type, but honestly, they don't need a ton on elves, gnomes, and halflings without a full splatbook because they are covered in the PHB.
Elemental, Elephants, Elves, Fairies, and Golems are not slighted at all. You get elementals for the four elements and the Greater Periodic elemental and those who love to ask their GM for elephants have a choice between small-eared (Asian), standard (African), sabre-toothed (like in the Two Towers), and club-trunked. Wood, grey, high, aquatic, and grunge elves appear, but not the Grevans. All non-grunge elves are Chaotic Good and the grunge elves or grel, are Chaotic Evil. Grugach, or wild elves, also appear. The standard fairies and your carnivorous fairies of Fairy Meat appear. The Fairy Meat fairies are called carnivorous fairies and they like everyone else, like the taste of elf flesh. Blood, gristle, iron, stone, flesh, and muck golems are presented for your amusement.
You can also find Enchanted Doors, Aboleths (as Enslavers of the Deep), gnomes, halflings, and my favorite critter in the book, the Frog, Yellow (page 41).
The artwork is the typical black-and-white Hackmaster interiors showing a great deal of violence and dodging the naked creatures while still trying some titilation. I like the Frog, Yellow, nearly as much for its lurid illustration (see page 41) as its propensity to make some seriously random effects and to be looted by Wild Mages. A similar piece by the same artist, Mike Simon, appeared on page 121 and when it first came out he produced the full monty version for HackMaster fans (he'd had to make it PG-13) upon request. The full-color front cover by George Vrbanic (KODT main cover artist) continues the mural of Hacklopedia art where one player character dies per book. On this cover, the half-ogre packbearer/fighter meets his demise at the hands of a Grappling Thrasher; his botch on the cover of volume II led most Hackmasters to presume he'd be the next to die and they were correct. The Grappling Trasher, which looks kinda of like the Swamp Thing, grabs the ogre with one pseuopad at the chest and another ant the neck and is bashing him against the wall or using the wall to aid in his chokehold. The white-and-blue shirted halfling who dies on many of the classbooks covers, is dodging below, sword in hand ready to backstab the Grappling Thrasher. The looks of the party imply that well, they didn't really like the half-ogre so they'll let him bite it and then attack his killer from surprise. The back cover has an excellent full-color illustration of the Gummy Fiend with summarized statistics. Personal favorites are the blood-soaked gnome titan by the Fraims on page 77 and the Fairy Meat fairies from pages 26-28.
The internal text contents of this volume of the Hacklopedia of Beasts are likewise excellent. Besides a long description of frost giants and their stupidity and motivations in the culture section, the text gives you the specifics you need on the species to start playing it. If you have the Monster Matrix or want to make an individualized monster, these give you the framework you need. Heck, I had a Bears, Nefarion, Gummy as my Gummy Fiend before this came out and since the Gummy Fiend is a large gummy worm and I was using gummy bears, this means often a new variant of the monster isn't far away. The text on the carnivorous fairies is true to Fairy Meat and humorous. As always, the tables are well-laid out and easy to read, especially the yield.
You'll find other interesting tidbits on Gummy Fiends, Grappling Thrashers, Giants and other fascinating beasts with a quick read.
Overall, this is a 5-star product and worth adding to your Hackmaster collection, or taking to find nasty golems for your evil spellcasters to beat the PCs up with.
The Hacklopedia of Beasts is an Encyclopedia series of monsters for Hackmaster. It is of course, GM-Eyes-Only material, but there's plenty of excellent illustrations for the players to be shown as they meet their doom!
This volume provides statistics, behavior information, and uses for beasts from Air Elemental, to Hippopotamus in alphabetical order.
The first seven pages are the typical Hackmaster disclaimer about roleplaying games, table of contents, and explanations of creature statistics. The major differences from Hacklopedias and prior monster books are that nearly every beast in Hackmaster has a twenty-hit point kicker to add to its 1d8 standard hit die and the Yield table. The Yield table says what the monster's corpse is good for, as well as what loot the monster might have accumulated. If you own another Hacklopedia volume, you've already bought this, so you can just skip ahead to reading about the monster.
Hacklopedia of beast volumes always focus intensively on a few creature types and give adequate coverage to thers; this volume makes giants the stars. 14 of the 128 pages are taken up by various races of giants and background information on these large creatures known as pinatas to most saavy HackMaster players. Of the eight volumes, this is the least devoted to one single creature type, but honestly, they don't need a ton on elves, gnomes, and halflings without a full splatbook because they are covered in the PHB.
Elemental, Elephants, Elves, Fairies, and Golems are not slighted at all. You get elementals for the four elements and the Greater Periodic elemental and those who love to ask their GM for elephants have a choice between small-eared (Asian), standard (African), sabre-toothed (like in the Two Towers), and club-trunked. Wood, grey, high, aquatic, and grunge elves appear, but not the Grevans. All non-grunge elves are Chaotic Good and the grunge elves or grel, are Chaotic Evil. Grugach, or wild elves, also appear. The standard fairies and your carnivorous fairies of Fairy Meat appear. The Fairy Meat fairies are called carnivorous fairies and they like everyone else, like the taste of elf flesh. Blood, gristle, iron, stone, flesh, and muck golems are presented for your amusement.
You can also find Enchanted Doors, Aboleths (as Enslavers of the Deep), gnomes, halflings, and my favorite critter in the book, the Frog, Yellow (page 41).
The artwork is the typical black-and-white Hackmaster interiors showing a great deal of violence and dodging the naked creatures while still trying some titilation. I like the Frog, Yellow, nearly as much for its lurid illustration (see page 41) as its propensity to make some seriously random effects and to be looted by Wild Mages. A similar piece by the same artist, Mike Simon, appeared on page 121 and when it first came out he produced the full monty version for HackMaster fans (he'd had to make it PG-13) upon request. The full-color front cover by George Vrbanic (KODT main cover artist) continues the mural of Hacklopedia art where one player character dies per book. On this cover, the half-ogre packbearer/fighter meets his demise at the hands of a Grappling Thrasher; his botch on the cover of volume II led most Hackmasters to presume he'd be the next to die and they were correct. The Grappling Trasher, which looks kinda of like the Swamp Thing, grabs the ogre with one pseuopad at the chest and another ant the neck and is bashing him against the wall or using the wall to aid in his chokehold. The white-and-blue shirted halfling who dies on many of the classbooks covers, is dodging below, sword in hand ready to backstab the Grappling Thrasher. The looks of the party imply that well, they didn't really like the half-ogre so they'll let him bite it and then attack his killer from surprise. The back cover has an excellent full-color illustration of the Gummy Fiend with summarized statistics. Personal favorites are the blood-soaked gnome titan by the Fraims on page 77 and the Fairy Meat fairies from pages 26-28.
The internal text contents of this volume of the Hacklopedia of Beasts are likewise excellent. Besides a long description of frost giants and their stupidity and motivations in the culture section, the text gives you the specifics you need on the species to start playing it. If you have the Monster Matrix or want to make an individualized monster, these give you the framework you need. Heck, I had a Bears, Nefarion, Gummy as my Gummy Fiend before this came out and since the Gummy Fiend is a large gummy worm and I was using gummy bears, this means often a new variant of the monster isn't far away. The text on the carnivorous fairies is true to Fairy Meat and humorous. As always, the tables are well-laid out and easy to read, especially the yield.
You'll find other interesting tidbits on Gummy Fiends, Grappling Thrashers, Giants and other fascinating beasts with a quick read.
Overall, this is a 5-star product and worth adding to your Hackmaster collection, or taking to find nasty golems for your evil spellcasters to beat the PCs up with.
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