Is This The World Record For Most Official RPG Monsters?

Paizo's fifth major monster book for the Pathfinder RPG just hit store shelves. It contains 300 new monsters, and you can grab is as a hardcover for $44.99; is this a record for the number of official monsters in a supported RPG? "Creatures strange beyond imagining and more terrifying than any nightmare lurk in the dark corners of the world and the weird realms beyond. Within this book, you'll find hundreds of monsters for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Face off against devils and dragons, deep ones and brain moles, robots and gremlins, and myriad other menaces! Yet not every creature needs to be an enemy, as whimsical liminal sprites, helpful moon dogs, and regal seilenoi all stand ready to aid you on your quests—if you prove yourself worthy."

Paizo's fifth major monster book for the Pathfinder RPG just hit store shelves. It contains 300 new monsters, and you can grab is as a hardcover for $44.99; is this a record for the number of official monsters in a supported RPG? "Creatures strange beyond imagining and more terrifying than any nightmare lurk in the dark corners of the world and the weird realms beyond. Within this book, you'll find hundreds of monsters for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Face off against devils and dragons, deep ones and brain moles, robots and gremlins, and myriad other menaces! Yet not every creature needs to be an enemy, as whimsical liminal sprites, helpful moon dogs, and regal seilenoi all stand ready to aid you on your quests—if you prove yourself worthy."


UPDATE: Apparently 2E holds the record still by some margin.

PZO1133.jpg

I don't know how many Pathfinder monsters there are. If we include official ones only, five Bestiaries at 300 apiece comes to about 1,500 critters. Does that win Paizo the prize for most official monsters? What if we include critters from supplements and adventure paths? Is there a tabletop roleplaying game which beats Pathfinder at this point? At 7 years of age it's certainly miles ahead of its parent, D&D 3.5. Or am I way off-base and overlooking something obvious which dwarfs even Pathfinder's mighty library?

Bestiary 5 is now available for comments and ratings.
 

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coz

Explorer
2e had 15 numbered Monstrous Compendium indices ranging in page count from 64 to 144. Added together that's 1216 pages. The wikipedia entry for the Monstrous Compendium claims that each monster was presented on it's own page, though my (possibly faulty) memory recalls some pages had a monster on the front and back, but some monsters took more than one page (the entry on Dragons specifically if I recall correctly). However if we assume an average of one per page that's 1216 monsters which would lead one to believe that Pathfinder has won, however there were 4 Annual supplements tot he MC, 3 of which with 128 pages and one at 96, for an additional 480 pages of monsters. If we again assume an average of one per page then that puts 2e at 1696 monsters and that's not counting what I assume are numerous other monsters that appeared in modules or other books that weren't reprinted in a main or annual MC volume.
 


dynath

Villager
Several of those monsters had multiple varients listed on a single page in a table format, elemental for instance were listed that way with different types on a single page. I think pathfinder does similar at times.

I have an excel document I built some time ago with 2e monsters and it has 1933 total monsters in it though I'm not sure if some of those were homebrew from the dark annals of the internet or not.

http://www.lomion.de/cmm/_contents.php
 



2e had 15 numbered Monstrous Compendium indices ranging in page count from 64 to 144. Added together that's 1216 pages. The wikipedia entry for the Monstrous Compendium claims that each monster was presented on it's own page, though my (possibly faulty) memory recalls some pages had a monster on the front and back, but some monsters took more than one page (the entry on Dragons specifically if I recall correctly). However if we assume an average of one per page that's 1216 monsters which would lead one to believe that Pathfinder has won, however there were 4 Annual supplements tot he MC, 3 of which with 128 pages and one at 96, for an additional 480 pages of monsters. If we again assume an average of one per page then that puts 2e at 1696 monsters and that's not counting what I assume are numerous other monsters that appeared in modules or other books that weren't reprinted in a main or annual MC volume.

The main offender for not being in the main MC spiral-bound run would be Planescape, with 3 MC Appendix books published, as well as the smaller monster booklets in the 4 boxed sets. Sure, there were a good amount of repeats from the MC8 Outer Planes Appendix, but there was a lot, lot more that wasn't in that one...
 
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Echohawk

Shirokinukatsukami fan
[MENTION=9849]Echohawk[/MENTION] - Do you know the answer to the question?
I have not catalogued Paizo's Bestiaries in detail, but going simply by the page count of monster-specific sources, AD&D 2nd Edition is still way ahead of Pathfinder:

  • Bestiary 1-5 = 320 x 5 = 1600 pages
  • Monstrous Compendium series (26 volumes) = 2624 pages
[sblock]MC1 - 144 pages
MC2 - 144 pages
MC3 - 64 pages
MC4 - 96 pages
MC5 - 64 pages
MC6 - 64 pages
MC7 - 64 pages
MC7 - 64 pages
MC8 - 96 pages
MC9 - 64 pages
MC10 - 64 pages
MC11 - 64 pages
MC12 - 96 pages
MC13 - 64 pages
MC14 - 64 pages
MC15 - 64 pages
DSMC2 - 128 pages
MYMC1 - 128 pages
RLMC3 - 128 pages
PSMC1 - 128 pages
PSMC2 - 128 pages
PSMC3 - 128 pages
SCMC1 - 96 pages
MCA1 - 128 pages
MCA2 - 128 pages
MCA3 - 128 pages
MCA4 - 96 pages[/sblock]
 


Heh, Wikipedia has a really comprehensive list article on the monsters from the various D&D editions, including this one on 2e:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_2nd_edition_monsters#MC6.E2.80.9310_Monstrous_Compendiums

It looks like it's comprehensive and complete, so if someone wants to go through all those and count up the monsters while weeding out the repeats, we would have a definitive answer. I, for one, am not volunteering to do so though!

And looking at that just makes me pine for a 5e MM2 all the more. So many monsters needing updating!
 

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