Bestiary 3 Commentary

[Glade Riven]

Bought it, just finished looking it over...glad I got the PDF (granted, I prefer bestiaries in PDF form).

I mean, lots of cool stuff and all, but I honestly don't know how much of it I would use.

 

[Crothian]

Why don't you think you can use most of it?

 

[BuzzardB]

I have heard a couple things about it that made me lose interest in buying it, what about it do you not like/not think you will use?

 

[gdmcbride]

Personally, I think there are many interesting and iconic monsters in Bestiary 3: the demilich, ghul, graveknight, huecuva, kappa, megalania, moon beast, nephilim, oni of all stripes, sasquatch, shadow mastiffs, sleipnir, valkyrie and even the great race of yith. Those are all monsters that really leapt out at me on my first pass.

I also like the Paizo take on the Bandersnatch(CR 17; make it Frumious and its CR 19!).

Yes, there are some terribly odd monsters in here as well. I'm not sure I'll ever need a carbuncle or a flumph. But they still make pretty interesting reads.

Overall, it's a great monster book!

My real question now is with three bestiaries plus the Tome of Horrors, do I need a bestiary 4?

Oh, who am I kidding?

Sure I do.

Gary McBride
Fire Mountain Games

 

[BuzzardB]

Flumphs are classic, but yeah not sure I would use one ever.

 

[Rampant]

Are you kidding? 9 out of 10 PC prefer Flumph brand fall insurance.

 

[Flatus Maximus]

Flumphs are classic, but yeah not sure I would use one ever.

Heh. I was a flumph once. It's a [level] we all go through. You'll get there one day, kid.

 

[Lexeme]

I bought it, and it does have some nice, iconic creatures, but once I got to the two-page spread of Flail Snail -- Flumph, I almost thought they were trolling me.

There's also a number of half-man, half-X creatures, which I find rather uninspired. Also, there's a lot of "far east" styled monsters, so I imagine the book is partly a preference thing.

I wrote a bit more about it here: A First Look at the Pathfinder Bestiary 3 | Sage Owl

 

[Glade Riven]

Why don't you think you can use most of it?

There is a lot that is thematically incompatable with what I'm currently doing. The many categories of fiends are getting harder to keep track of and new ones are increasingly specialized.

Still, it is spawning a few ideas that are being tucked away for future use - like a war between Imperial Dragons and the Linnorms. I do appreciate that there are a lot of critters based on liturature, folklore, and mythology (something WotC seemed to be going in the other direction on when I last looked at their products).

 

[Thotas]

Bestiary 3 rules! And let me give you one simple (if somewhat lengthy) reason why.

Some couple years of so ago, I saw a story through some news outlet of a paleontologist or archaeologist or some such in Australia who had found some remains of a relative of the kangaroo. These kangaroos had thicker, stronger bones than the ones we see nowadays, indicating bigger, stronger musculature. They also had claws. And fangs. Now, the discoverer of this news was a bit heartbroken to see such a nasty variation of the peaceful kangaroo. But I am a gamer, so my reaction was, "Cool! Kangaroo with the Dire Animal Template!" But alas, this idea was of no value without roo stats to apply the DAT onto. I have been planning ever since to do some research on kangaroos to create that write-up on my own.

But Bestiary 3 has saved me the trouble! Behold the glory of page 191 -- "Marsupial, Kangaroo"!!!! And now the packs of Dire Kangaroos can run amok upon the players who have me for a GM. Wonderous, it is wonderous, I tell you.