[UPDATE: NOW LIVE] TOME OF BEASTS Preview - A 5E Monster Book from the Kobolds!

Kobold Press is continuing its D&D 5E offerings with a new Kickstarter which is set to launch today (Monday). I'll update this article with the link when it arrives (update - it's now live), but the project is a new 5E monster book called Tome of Beasts. Kobold Press, of course, made the Tyranny of Dragons adventures for WotC. They've kindly sent along a preview of this new book - an eye golem - which is one of the more than 300 monsters in this book.

[UPDATE: The Kickstarter has now launched!]

This makes the second major monster book from a third-party (Necromancer Games produced 5th Edition Foes earlier this year). Here's what I know about it so far - it's 300+ new monsters which are compiled from Kobold Press' history, full colour, and will be Kickstarted for 30 days starting Monday 5th October. They mentioned that the book would include clockwork creatures, drakes, dragons, devils, and dark fey.

There's also a Book of Lairs which features short adventures (and also starring some of these monsters), each with a large encounter map.

What else have the Kobolds produced for 5E? Aside from the two Tyranny of Dragons adventures for WotC, they've already brought us an adventure called The Raven's Call, and a pile of races and backgrounds in Midgard Heroes.

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[froth]

Looks pretty cool but way too expensive. Im skipping it.

 

[moldyderp]

Yeah, $90 for both books is too expensive. I haven't payed MSRP for a book in years, even when buying at my FLGS. Price per monster really isn't a good indicator of value when you consider that most people won't ever use 60+% of the monsters in the book anyway.

With Conan RPG coming up in the next month or two, I'm not sure I want to dump money into this. Looks cool, and I'm glad they're doing it and I hope they take in lots of money so more and more books continue to come out, but too expensive. I'd be a buyer at $70 for both, or $50 for soft cover variants.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Nice! The artwork looks really cool. And I always need new monsters to keep the PCs on their toes. Backed!

I quite like Fifth Edition Foes, even with the wonky CRs. But I've been a longtime fan of Necromancer Games.

Now I just need a book with more magic items...

 

[SkidAce]

I'm in for the print and PDF of Tome of Beasts.

 

[Cristian Andreu]

Well, well, well!

Count me in for the print version of the Tome of Beasts!

 

[JediGamemaster]

I put myself in for the $90 but I'm not sure about spending so much...

 

[Monkey King]

I'm happy to report that the first two stretch goals are unlocked, so we're adding a few more monsters (including an underdark dragon) and a set of 100 monster tokens to the rewards for all backers.

The next 2 goals add a copy of the Midgard Heroes book to all backers, and add more lair maps. At 750 backers, we open the gates to monster submissions by backers.

Thanks for your support! We have 4 weeks to keep adding material and make it a better and better deal.

 

[Mistwell]

How does Primal Voice end? It says if you fail your save you become frightened. 5e standard is you get a chance to re-save each round, but that is not included here. Does it end on the creatures death? Something has to end it.

 

[jadrax]

How does Primal Voice end? It says if you fail your save you become frightened. 5e standard is you get a chance to re-save each round, but that is not included here. Does it end on the creatures death? Something has to end it.

The odd lack of punctuation makes it look like something was snipped from the sentence at that point.

 

[Mistwell]

The odd lack of punctuation makes it look like something was snipped from the sentence at that point.

Yeah I noticed the missing period as well.

If it was just an editing accident when getting the page ready to post to the message board, no big deal. But if it's supposedly a finished page and that page would have gotten into the book as-is unless someone here had pointed it out, and the whole book was edited with the same level of care, I'd be concerned. Missing punctuation, and missing functionality to attacks, are sloppy and detract from the value of the product.