A Magical Society: Beast Builder

[Crothian]

A Monster Builder like nothing ever seen before…

A Magical Society: Beast Builder is 224 pages packed with information that helps you make your own monsters. In the tradition of A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe and A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture, A Magical Society: Beast Builder gives you the tools you need to make your own campaign specific monsters to challenge and excite your players while adding to the depth and realism of your campaign world.

Chapter One: Monster Concepts and Functions— Monster concepts and functions drive what a monster is and even more importantly, what it does. This chapter discusses common concepts such as creature hierarchies (juvenile, adult, elder etc.), additive abilities (like the vrock’s dance of ruin), mythological inspiration and other monster building aspects.

It gives advice on creating a good concept based upon the function of a creature. Every monster has a concept and a type (such as giant, vermin, etc.), but more than that every monster has a function; the part of the monster that answers the question “What does it do?” I outline the 20 most common functions such as grappler, caster, disabler, energy attacker and PC killer, and how such functions play out in the game. Under each function, you’ll also find a list of the creatures from the SRD as well as creatures from Monster Geographica: Underground that possess that function.

Chapter Two: Monsters and their Environment— Every monster has a place in your world and every place has its monsters. This chapter is simply stuffed with useful information about environment, ecology, biology, and behavior that will help you completely customize every creature to suit your needs. We all know that statistics alone don’t make a great monster. The best monsters are ones with a rich place within your world and this chapter will help you give your new creation a fitting background.

Chapter Three: Monster Statistics— Although a great background is a must for a great monster, statistical accuracy is just as important. This 19 page chapter discusses every bit of the monster stat block and gives you the information you need to insure your great fluff isn’t let down by poor crunch.

Chapter Four: Type and Subtype— Continuing the statistical break-down of creatures, type and subtype is analyzed in chapter four. I give advice about determining subtype (just what is an aberration anyway?) as well as breakdown on ability scores based upon the SRD monsters. You’ll find that although the rules say one thing, the execution often shows another when it comes to ability scores.

Chapter Five: Templates— Worthy of their own chapter, templates are great additions to any GMs bag of tricks. This chapter gives you information on the main 14 template (such as archetypal, greater, half, and planar-aligned) themes as well as seven main ways of acquiring a template. It finishes with a template-only version of chapters four and seven, giving you all existing information so you’ll have more options when designing your own templates.

Chapter Six: Bits and Pieces— Bits and pieces is a short chapter filled with campaign oriented monster parts. In a magical world filled with hostile monsters, holistic magic plays its role and the remains of fallen foes can often be used against those who lived. This chapter helps think of monsters from yet another perspective.

Chapter Seven: Special Attacks, Special Qualities, and Conditions— This huge chapter provides you with 600 special abilities taken from all the creatures in the SRD and all the creatures in Monster Geographica: Underground. Each of these abilities has been broken down to component parts to demonstrate useful guidelines when using them with any CR creature. For example the balor’s death throes SA/SQ is now tied to a creature’s HD, instead of being a straight 100 points of damage. Every SA/SQ has its source monsters (the monsters that possess that ability) listed as well. Once you jump into this chapter there’s no turning back; there’s simply so many cool things you could do when making your monsters you may not want to move onto the next chapter.

Appendix I: D20 Mechanic Table— A single table showing the d20 mechanic. You’ll be surprised how useful this is when deciding monster hit percentages and saving throw percentages. It’s much easier than just doing it in your head.

Appendix II: Editing Checklist— Every monster should face the checklist! A short outline-format editing checklist that covers the most common dangers/errors of d20 monster creation.

Appendix III: Random(ish) Monster Generator— And last but not least, a random(ish) monster generator is provided for when inspiration has simply gone dry. Don’t expect the most sensible results, but anything can happen! This is particularly useful if you want to make creatures for the hordes of chaos.

 

[Crothian]

Beast Builder

It sometimes seems odd that with all the monster books out there has never been a good source for creating one’s own monsters. Sure there are a lot of great monsters but every now and again I just can not find one that fits exactly what I need. Most of them time I will find something as close as I can and maybe alter it. But it just never seems as right as when creating them from scratch. But doing that can be time consuming and it can also be easy to forget stuff. And that brings us to spring. It seems that spring not only brings in the nice weather, picnic lunches, and lots of pollen; but it brings along with it the new Magical Society book from Expeditious Retreat. This is the third year in a row we have gotten a book in the springtime and this marks the third book in the series.

Magical Society Beast Builder is the new and anticipated book by Expeditious Retreat. They have the other two books in the series; Magical Medieval Society Western Europe, and Ecology and Culture. Both of those are top notch books well research and well put together. Beast Builder is out as a PDF right now but will be in print ins a few months or so. The two hundred nad twenty five page book is filled with information. It has a three page table of contents and some very nice book marks. I hope the print version also gets an index as there is none here. The art is good but there is not a lot of it there. The book is black and white with some nice borders so it will not be that big a deal to print out.

The book is filled with a lot of information and might to some have too much information in it. For me though too much is better then too little. I might not need to know what the food supply of the creature the player characters are just supposed to kill is, but other times with a druid and range er in the party knowing about the local food webs and how it all works can create some very interesting and different sorts of adventures. There are little adventures ideas in here with how to use monsters and creatures in different ways. Many are not overly obvious and require one to think outside the box. It is not every book that presents a way to send the player characters into an environment to fix a food web that is out of whack for the local druids.

The first couple chapters deal with some good if sometimes not that useful monster information. This book is constructed to give you full information on all aspects of the creatures and in Dungeons and Dragons that is not always needed. The book starts with a nice introduction and goes into creature concepts and function. This is a nice section for people who might not know exactly what they want to create. Next it goes into the food chains and the food webs. It has some great information for what the monster will eat and how it interacts with its environment. It has some great information on magical eco systems and magical metabolisms. Fantastic creatures can be difficult to fit into nature but this book does a good job of saying how it can happen. I like the bit on what the creature eats and what eats the creature. What the creature does in terms of defense, reproduction, digestive, and many other traits are looked into as well. This will really allow for a creature to be created in a way that makes it almost alive. These details help make the environment more real and to have the beasts react in a way that might seem a little more realistic. The book has good sentimental information so one can determine where the beast place for the creature to live, roam, and hunt is. It covers tundra, grasslands, forests, desert and scrublands, rivers and lakes, swamps and marshes, coastline oceans and islands, underground environments, and mountains. The only area I think is missing is creatures that live only in the air and never come near the ground. I think that would be an interesting environment if a difficult one to describe. How the creature interacts with other creatures is next and it is followed up by evolution and intelligence. This is a great chapter filled with ideas and details that make it easy to create a creature even if one has little idea where to begin.

The next chapter should really be known as the John Cooper Chapter; it is all about the stat blocks. For those that may not know John Cooper is on of the reviewers here and is well known for deconstructing stat blocks in books and checking them to make sure they are all correctly done. There is a lot of information here but the two most important pieces I find are under the Challenge Rating and Level Adjustment. The best way to figure both of these out is to play test them. Creatures need to be play tested to see how they actually stand up to different levels of opponents. It seems at times that monsters do not get to be play tested enough. This whole section is really good and should really allow people who may feel uncomfortable creating the stat blocks for new creatures the confidence and knowledge they need to do so.

The book moves on to types and subtypes next. Everything is listed here and given skill points, feats, hit dice and all the other fun information that gets tied to the creature types. Then it goes into special abilities and conditions. This is a complete list of every special ability and condition that exists in the system reference document and in Monster Geographica Underground. And in all instances except for the extremely common ones like low light vision, each monster that uses the ability is listed. This is a fabulous resource for finding monsters. I want someone who can detect Gems. So, looking that up I find only the Gold Dragon can do that. I was actually expecting a few more then that for some reason, but gold dragons will work. Next, I look under sneak attack and see that there area few creatures this time: Babau and Derro from the SRD and Cave Hermit, Gutslug, Leytru, Silid, and Slithe from Monster Geographica Underground.

The book has a great appendix checklist that helps one check over his own work . There is an appendix with some d20 mechanics in it, but my favorite appendix is the random monster generator. This is the perfect way to just start getting the creative juices flowing and come up with something that no one has ever seen before. Just rolling and combining everything might not be the best thing so a person may need to alter some of the rolls to something that makes a little more sense to them.

This is a pretty darn useful book. I think it would be interesting to see someone create a PDF of monsters using this as their resource. The book has everything one needs to create a monster or fifty. This book is really something that anyone who want to create some new and different monsters for their campaign really needs.

 

[Tinner]

REVIEW: A Magical Society: Beast Builder

A Magical Society: Beast Builder
Author: Joseph Browning
Publisher: Expeditious Retreat Press
Format: Black & white PDF with color cover. 45 pieces of interior artwork.
Size: 224 pages
Price: $13.50, currently on sale for $10.00

If you were to compare d20 monster books to meals, it would be fairly accurate to call the MM a full three course meal – a variety of dishes, all combining to make a full meal. A Magical Society: Beast Builder by Expeditious Retreat Press on the other hand is not some much a meal, as a well stocked gourmet kitchen full of the finest, most expensive ingredients just waiting for an Iron Chef to appear and transform these delicacies into a multitude of delicious dishes.

AMS:BB is an odd kind of “monster book” in such as it contains no monsters. What Joseph Browning has done in this tightly packed PDF is distill every monster available in the SRD as well as ERP’s Monster Geographica: Underground book down to their components parts. He then takes these ingredients and shows how to recombine them into new combinations. But BB is more than just a “recipe book” for combining; it might be more accurately considered an advanced course in “cooking” up new monsters as well.

The book starts off with a brief two page introduction, where Browning spells out his ambitious goals. Beast Builder is “the first book entirely dedicated to making good, exciting, and fun monsters.” Sounds good to me. However, a book with this goal is clearly aimed at GM’s, rather than players. In fact, DM’s are going to want to be sure to keep their players out of Beast Builder, so new monsters will keep their surprises until sprung on the unsuspecting PC’s.

Chapters one (Monster Concepts and Functions) and two (Monsters and their Environment) really set the stage to get a DM thinking in the right direction to create a new monster Chapter one’s concept and function section might be thought of as the “metagame” of creating critters. Browning points out the variety of ways in which a monster can be used, the different roles available for these monsters, and encourages DM’s to consider ways to modify a monster to make it more exciting and fun, in keeping with his introductory philosophy. The basic environment types outlined in the SRD are further expanded here. Food chains, metabolism, reproduction, and socialization issues are all covered in this portion of the book in exhaustive detail.

There is some great material in these two chapters. I found the Concept portion to be full of great ideas that add challenge to monsters. Both these first two chapters contain data that not only achieves Beast Builder’s goal of helping DM’s create new monsters, but data that would also be readily useful for a DM just pulling monsters from a published product. The advice on identifying a monsters role in the game, as well as the advice on combining monster abilities and even other monsters to add challenge was some of the best monster related advice I’ve ever read in ANY RPG monster product.

After the appetizer of chapters one and two, chapters three (Monster Statistics), four (Type & Subtype), and five (Templates) are the “meat & potatoes” or monster making. Here Browning goes into great depth on the mechanical aspect of creating a new monster. There’s the potential for this sort of material to be a dry read. But Browning gives plenty of examples, and even pauses for a “Math Break” when absolutely necessary. The tables detailing Monster stats are clear and easy to read, without a lot of flashy graphics that would drain your print cartridge should you wish to print the material. If you’ve ever struggled flipping pages back and forth in the MM trying to invent a new monster, you’ll appreciate the clean detailed approach in Beast Builder. Determining the proper values for any monster is very easy, and after a little use the entire process becomes almost transparent. The Type and Subtype section is more than just a reprinting of this material from the SRD. While all that material is represented here, a Designer Notes section is included that also detail what sort of Special Attacks and Special Qualities that Type or Subtype of creature tends to have. The Templates section also benefits from this kind of approach, with templates being broken down into more types than the simple acquired and inherent types delineated in the core rules. As such, if you’d like to use east Builder to create Types, Subtypes, or even Templates for creatures rather than whole creatures, it should be a simple matter.

Chapter six – Bits and Pieces introduces a new kind of magic item - The holistic magic item. Holistic items are made from the remains of monsters. Collecting a Blink Dog paw will allow a PC to create a charm making teleportation magic more difficult. These items require no special feats, skills or prestige class levels to create, merely the knowledge of such items existence. This allows a DM to simply introduce these minor magics into his campaign with very little extra effort. On the balance side, all the effects seem very minor, and the creation cost is quite high, which should keep these scavenged trinkets from outshining those items PC’s must invest xp into. The flavor of these items is excellent and very much in keeping with a medieval mindset. After all, in the era that sees the invention of such food delicacies as blood sausages and headcheese, and such products as drinking vessels made from animal bladders, is it really believable that adventurers would leave any part of a monster behind? These rules give PC’s a reason to realistically behave in this historically accurate manner.

At last we come to chapter seven – Special Abilities and Conditions. This is the largest chapter in the book (covering nearly half of the page count), and rightly so, as it breaks down every SA, SQ and condition found in the SRD, as well as ERP’s Monster Geographica: Underground book. These 600 powers are broken down alphabetically, with extensive bookmarks allowing the reader to jump directly to any listing. The powers are each broken down into the stats the aspiring monster creator needs, with formulas as to how to determine any required DC’s. Even those powers that are listed in the SRD with flat numbers have had the math done to allow use of the power with any HD creature. The monster that the power is taken from is referenced with each entry, as well as listing the sourcebook each creature can be found in, whether SRD or MG:U. If multiple versions of a power exist (i.e. Ex, Su, or Sp), they are all referenced. Thoroughness is the watchword for this chapter. There are enough possible combinations of abilities in this chapter to create an almost limitless number of new monsters.

Three appendices round off Beast Builder. The first is the Monster Checklist. This quick reference tool walks you through every aspect of monster creation in a user-friendly paragraph format. If you follow this checklist completely, your new monsters will be a snap to create, and they will be properly formatted upon completion as well. This is an invaluable tool for any DM that wants to really wrestle with the nuts and bolts of the monster creation system.

The second appendix is the d20 Mechanic table. This table can be used to find accurate attack and save percentages for any creature. Personally, this table doesn’t do much for me. I recognize what it’s meant to be used for, but as my games are much more freeform, this appendix is of limited use for me. DM’s who want to really crunch numbers and squeeze ever ounce of power out each CR of monster will likely get more use out of this table however.

On the other hand, the final appendix, the Randomized Monster Generator is quite simply worth its weight in gold! The tables presented here provide the DM with a way to quickly generate a new, completely random monster. Even after just a cursory reading of this section, I was able to roll up three NEW fully statted, ready to play random monsters in under an hour. Like all random tables, the DM must show some restraint. Te first monster I generated with this system was a small ooze with five special features, after discovering that this ooze dealt double damage to objects, caused acid damage, and could use Prismatic Spray as a spell-like ability at will, I had a the perfect image of a critter I envisioned as the “Rainbow Ooze” looking like an iridescent slick of oil floating on water. Of course the final two powers coming up as a Smother attack and Superior Two Weapon Fighting seemed like two much of a good thing, so I chose to drop them, leaving the Rainbow Ooze weaker in total power, but stronger thematically.

Beast Builder finishes with two pages of OGL, and three pages of “Shameless Advertising”

Conclusion: Expeditious Retreat Press’ “A Magical Society: Beast Builder” is an excellent product. The total package is a great value, and any dungeon master seeking new monsters will get plenty of use out of it. The entire topic of monster creation is handled in great depth, while still remaining mechanically simple. A bargain at $13.50, Beast Builder is now on sale for $10.00 thanks to its Ennie Award nomination, which makes it an even more attractive package for those gaming on a budget.

 

[DragonTurtle]

Physical Description: A Magical Society Beast Builder is a 225-page black and White PDF file. 5 pages of which is used in advertisements and OGL. The PDF is bookmarked and the layout clean. Some of the art is quite good, in particular that of Mates Laurentiu. A color cover can be found at the end of the document.

For the Player: Not much here is going to be of much value to players. The book is written to aid in the designing of monsters, which most players won’t be doing.

For the DM: Any DM who plays in a homebrew should find this book to be immensely valuable. The book truly has the DM think out the role of a creature when creating it or carving out its place in the local ecosystem. There is a lot of high level content that will help when designing a campaign world, this book will give some insight on how to take existing creatures and give them a place that makes sense, and also how to create some unique monsters of your own to fill in the gaps.

Another section that DMs should peruse is the chapter on concepts; it helps the DM to think of creatures by their general purpose. This is helpful when thinking about the type of thing the creature will be doing in battle. If you are creating a creature is it a grappler, if so does that mean it should have tentacles, or a bite attack? This section like others, give examples from the MM of creatures that fit each category.

New Mechanics: This book remarkably does not add any new monsters to your game. Which in this case is great, this book is an extra 225 pages that should have been slapped on the front of the MM. It is going to revitalize your monsters and give them a real place in your world which will make your game more enjoyable then another of the many books of monsters out there.
One thing the book does add is a random creature generator. This is great to give you some inspiration on a new creature, or could be used to represent summonings gone wild.
There is also a section on bits and pieces which are pieces of monsters that when specially prepared give a limited benefit to the harvester. For example, goblins will wear freshly shorned dwarf beards to grant them a bonus to constitution for a couple of days.

Overview: As I mentioned this book should co exist with the MM as it expands on the information within in way that is symbiotic. The grouping of creatures by special abilities can be helpful when planning an encounter and would have made a wonderful MM index. One thing that Expeditious Retreat Press did was add their own monster book Monster Geographica- Underground into the listing. I am sure that admirers of that book will appreciate the addition, however most users may not benefit from the inclusion. I know that the next time I create a creature I will grab this book. Since the content grabbed me and I was not particularly looking for this kind of book I will give it 5 out of 5 stars. Those looking for a guide on monster creation will find it invaluable, anyone else giving it a glance should definitely gain an insight or two.

 

[JoeGKushner]

A different type of monster book.

Beast Builder
Written by Joseph Browning
Published by Expeditious Retreat Press
www.exp.citymax.com
ISBN: 0-9729376-6-8
Stock Number: XRP1004
224 b & w pages
$35.00

While many people, including myself, enjoy seeing how others make monsters in books like the Monsternomicon or Tome of Horrors, there is something innately enjoyable as a game master in customizing your own monsters. One way to do this, is by taking existing monsters and using a template, such as those found in the Advanced Bestiary or the Deluxe Book of Templates.

Despite some of the math involved in the changes, that’s still the easy way and still might not result in the unique monster you’re looking for.

Enter the Beast Builder.

The book is broken up into seven chapters and contains three appendices. Layout is standard two column format. Art is provided by Rick Hershey, Ash Jackson, Mates Laurentiu, Michael Lo Presti and Jason Walton. Art for the most part is fantastic with some truly great pieces illustrating the work. Good news as there isn’t a ton of art and you’ll go pages sometimes without a single illustration. Tables tend to be boxed and have huge amounts of white space for ease of reading, but tend to look a bit low grade compared to the standard table layouts found in most products that don’t rely on pages and spacing for readability.

The book starts off with monster concepts and functions. This chapter includes different bits ranging from where you can find inspiration from monsters, ranging from folklore and myth, to changing those very abilities it’s supposed to have from myth to present something truly different. Perhaps more useful to those already with a concept in mind, is monster functions.

What role will the monster play in the game, and what can you compare it to that’s already been done? Several monster functions are included and a breakdown of existing monsters in the SRD and the Monster Geographica Underground are included. For example, some monsters are masters of pinning their foes. They fall under the grappler concept. They join such creatures as the cloaker, snake, dire lion and owlbear. Other monsters are there to help the players and include creatures like the blink dog or copper dragon. Of course if you’re running an evil campaign, these beasts may fall under a different category.

It’s a good start to getting your mind wrapped around the concept theme. How will your monster make it mark in the world? What is its primary function in terms of fighting?
After looking that over, the book moves into monsters and their environment. It’s a little dry reading, but goes into enough detail, briefly, to give the reader an idea of what role the monster will play in its environment. For some game masters and players, the more realistic the monster’s impact on the ecology and environment about him, the better it is. This chapter covers things like food webs and niches, briefly going over terms like predatory and herbivore-predator prey systems. It’s a good read for those wondering why a monster simply doesn’t eat everything in it’s path, including the fact that many predator’s have more than one prey to protect themselves in case something happens to one food supply.

Some of the material also covers how the creature fits into it’s environment in terms of it’s own lifestyle and habitat. What type of mechanism does it uses for respiration? How does it handle changes in temperature? How does it reproduce? By providing these broad categories of information, the game master can focus on answering the questions using the examples provided.

It’s helpful to know what type of environment might house what type of beast, and the book provides a breakdown of the different types of environments in a typical fantasy milieu. This includes the standard, like forests, but also breaks down those broad categories into things like coniferous forest, taiga, montane, temperate, broadleaf, deciduous, and tropical rain forest.

It’s a meaty chapter and includes ideas on evolution and speciation. How do creatures adapt to their environment? How do variations of the same monster come about? How does mutation flourish?

Because not all monsters are unintelligent, there is some brief discussion on what type of cultures a monster may have. It’s done in the form of questions for the game master to think about what the monsters culture would need.

Players will probably be more interested in the section discussing monsters as races. This is a good summary of how hit dice, class levels, and effective character level work in game play, providing ideas on how to calculate ability scores.

Some game masters though, don’t want to concern themselves with what the monster eats, as long as the players are included on that list. Instead, they’re more interested in the actual mechanics of the monster. That’s where chapter three comes in, monster statistics. This chapter provides breakdowns for many areas of monster construction. Want to know how monsters advance by hit dice, attack bonus, skill points, and saving throws? That’s all under table 3.3 with type information. Want a listing of how size and CR affect each other? That’s table 3.4, where we see that the CR for a large creature starts at one and usually ends at twenty-three. How about how CR and hit dice are related or how to estimate natural armor class? All covered.

While it’s nice that the author tried to minimize the book flipping by repeating the table on increased damage by size, since it’s done with other tables as well, the repeating information should’ve been limited so that there was more room for more examples, art, or sidebars on how different aspects were looked at to come up with the numbers.

This section includes just about everything you need to start understanding just how complex that building a monster can be. It includes details on what skill synergies happen withwhich skills, the monster feats from the SRD, ability modifiers and bonus spells from one to forty five, as well as advancement and ideas on how to handle level adjustment.

Now for those looking for more ideas on how type fits into monster concept, chapter four, type and subtype, is where you want to start digging. It repeats the base information, with a table exactly the same as in chapter three, and then the breakdown of what that means, which means repeated information in terms of hit dice, base attack, good saves, and skill points. ON the other hand, it also includes traits, like which types have darkvision, what weapons are the different types proficient with, and more importantly, designer notes. Sometimes this includes a breakdown of what special abilities or special qualities a monster has, as well as a general overview of how powerful or difficult it is to classify the type.

For example, the angel subtype is a powerful creature and the designer notes include the fact that all angles have damage reduction, and more than half have regeneration or spell use. On the other hand, constructs generally need background information that details the process of creation, detailing both the gold and experience point cost for creation.

Sometimes though, even a new monster can benefit from an old template. That’s where chapter five, templates, comes in. It briefly discusses template themes, like an archetypal template, such as chaos, evil, law, or war, or the old favorite, the undead template. Some templates are created where a particular race or type was altered by a template. For example, the Ebon Servitor in the Deluxe Book of Templates leads to the creation of a new orc subrace. The chapter then describes how to add a template to a creature, noting what to look for and how to adjust things like challenge rating or level adjustments.

Interestingly enough, while there are no templates present here, they do include a breakdown of all template special attacks and special abilities as found in the SRD. Some of these refer to chapter seven, while those that are native just to the templates, are fully detailed here. Each entry includes what template the ability was taken from. For example, breath weapon, a supernatural ability, is from the half-dragon.

Chapter six, bits and pieces, is going to work well for some campaigns and not at all for others. See, chapter six focuses on using parts of monsters to do magic. For example, take elf ears. They can be treated so that they provide a +2 racial bonus to listen checks for one week after which they are ‘ritually consumed.’ The bonuses aren’t big, but almost any time something of this sort pops up, you can be sure monster harvesting is in the future and characters don’t go on adventure for adventure sake, but to harvest bits and pieces. Fine for some campaigns, but not for all.

Chapter seven on the other hand, gets back to what the monsters can do. This includes the special attacks, qualities, and conditions that monsters have. It includes all the abilities from the SRD, as well as Monster Geographica: Underground. Abilities are extraordinary (Ex), spell like (Sp), or supernatural (SU) in nature. Each ability is fully detailed and include where the source came from. For example, all-around vision is, an extraordinary ability, gives it a +4 racial bonus on Spot and Search checks and opponents get no flanking bonuses. This ability is typically found in Xorn, as well as Gloom Crawlers among other beasties.

Chapter seven is another lengthy one, and includes a lot of material. What’s good is that it’s not just a listing of powers. For example, when invisibility is detailed, it also include listen checks to detect invisible creature, including a table based on what the creature is doing. When looking at poisons, there is a huge table with over a dozen types of poisons, including lich dust, drow poison, purple worm poison, and arsenic. What’s good is that it includes the details of how poisons work (contact, ingested, inhaled, injury), as well as differences between primary and secondary damage.

So now that you’ve gotten through the seven chapters of the book, what can the appendices possibly offer? Well, appendix one is a monster-editing checklist. This is a good list that provides a quick round up of things you should be doing as you craft your monster. For example, for speed, does it’s movement type match its description? For attack, have you calculated bab, size, and appropriate statistic? For treasure, if it has magical items, have you included them in the monster’s armor class or attack abilities?

Appendix two on the other hand, is for the math headed. It’s a massive cross chart of attack/save AC/DC with numbers going across from five to thirty five and dwon from negative five to thirty nine. Where the columns meet, is what the attack or save percentages are. For example, per the book, a monster with a +13 attack tries to hit a fighter with an armor class of 28. The chance the monster will hit is 30%. On the other hand, if that monster’s attack was +33, it’s chance would be 100%.

For those in a hurry to make new monsters, flip to appendix three. Here we have a ‘randomish’ monster generator. It includes tables for determining special qualities, size, type, subtype, hit dice, movement, natural armor, and natural weapons. Good for those who need a little something to get the brain flowing.

In many ways, the book is the missing link between the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual. While it admits that judging the final CR of a creature is still part art and part science, it allows you to at least see what that science is. By providing all the special qualities and attacks in one book, along with information on all the different types and subtypes, it makes itself a one stop shop for monster creation.

 

[Pinotage]

A Magical Society: Beast Builder is a pdf supplement from Expeditious Retreat Press. It features a detailed guide on creating realistic, entertaining and challenging monsters, a definitive guide to monster building. This pdf has a page count of 225 pages - 2 devoted to covers and cover art, 3 for credits and a table on contents, 2 for OGL declarations (including an enormous section 15), 3 pages of advertisements, 2 pages of introductory material, leaving 213 pages of monstrous goodness. A Magical Society: Beast Builder normally retails for $13.50 on both RPGNow.com and DriveThruRPG.com.

Initial Impressions:

I was excited when I started reading this pdf, and was very pleased to find that I was not disappointed. This book is excellent - a fantastic resource and guide to monster creation, both in providing clear and concise design guidelines, but also as a resource for monstrous material such a special attacks and qualities, tables and types and subtypes. The layout is in two columns throughout the book, with simplistic borders, which is fine for a pdf product. My only complaint was that it was often hard to discern headings from sub-headings from sub-sub-headings, given the many layered structure of the book and its contents. Thankfully, it's fully bookmarked, and that's a tremendous help navigating the pdf.

Art was superb in places, mostly the greyscale pieces rather than the often mundane looking black and white drawings in-between all the monstrous content. There is a comparatively good amount of art, fifty pieces in total, and the majority very good - the kind you need to stare at for some time just to absorb what you're seeing. I have to admit that I was hooked from the start when reading this material. It contains a little more detail than I'd like to see on some subjects (fine details on monster environment), and a little less on others (examples of how to apply environment details to SRD monsters), but I think it's a fine guide to monster design, providing a clear path to follow in creating interesting monsters, particularly campaign specific monsters.

The Details:

A Magical Society: Beast Builder consists of seven chapter and three appendixes. The introductory material contains a brief history of the pdf as well as a summary of each chapter and what you can expect to find in them, giving a taste of what lies ahead, but also a more detailed guide on where to look for what you're interested in. And, if you're like me, there's a lot to be interested in, even if it's something simple as delighting in the special attacks and special qualities all combined into a huge list from a score of different sources. A definitive guide indeed!

Chapter 1: This is an exciting and fun chapter detailing monster concepts and functions. It's particularly useful in aiding in coming up with a decent concept for a monster, by listing typical examples used to generate concepts, such a myth and folklore, or using false cognates, monsters that don't appear as they seem. There are a whole host of others, giving enough inspiration in searching for monster ideas. The chapter continued from here to monster functions, again giving a detailed list of what the monster actually does. Is it a drainer that causes ability score damage, or a misdirector that uses illusion magic, or even a PC killer that has certain attacks that can be deadly to PCs? Whatever type of monster you want to create, this chapter gives full details on concept generation and function. Each monster function also lists all the creatures from the SRD and Monster Geographica: Underground that fit that particular category, a useful way of getting an complete idea of what each function entails. There's nothing to disappoint in this chapter.

Chapter 2: Probably the most detailed chapter in the pdf, this chapter details monsters and their environment, looking at such aspects as what monsters do, how they interact with other creatures, where they live and other aspects. It is, as mentioned, very detailed, trying to establish a very realistic view of a magical ecosystem of which monsters and magical creatures form a part of. It's a bit much for me, particularly because there were very few examples of how typical monsters found in the SRD relate to the information contained in these pages. Describing the ecosystem of several different varieties of forest or desert is very useful in developing monsters along those environmental lines, but I'd have liked to see how, for example, a troll fits into that ecosystem - what it feeds on, how it hunts, how it interacts with the other creatures, and what its dependencies are. While I could conceivably fill those details in myself, if would've been a great addition to the pdf.

Details in this chapter include such things as food chains, food webs (multi-faceted food chains), types of ecosystems, aspects of what creatures do, what they eat, where they live and a host of other information. Near complete details on each possible monster environment are given, such as forests or underground, with each environment often consisting of a number of different sub-varieties, each detailed with weather, fauna and flora considerations and other bits and pieces. Design guidelines are given relating to each environment and information on how to fit a magical ecosystem on top of these environments. As if that wasn't enough (I said it was detailed, didn't I!) the chapter concludes with interspecies relationships, intelligent creatures and their cultures, and brief details on using monsters as races and how to adapt them to your game.

I can see this chapter as being tremendously useful for those building campaigns and trying to generate new monsters in their campaign environment, but as less useful for those of us just wanting to generate a quick critter to scare the daylights out of the party. Given that many of the SRD monsters don't contain the details given here, or rather don't contain as much detail, it might be a kind of verisimilitude that many won't be requiring on an everyday basis.

Chapter 3: This chapter is a crunch chapter. Its details the mechanical aspects of building a monster, pulling apart the monster stat block and explaining each section in a clear and concise manner. It's extremely useful, given that each aspect of the stat block described contains details on CR considerations, one of the trickier pests in the current game. Tables are given on a variety of different things, from size increases, to damage vs. size, to CR vs. HD and CR vs. type tables generated from the SRD. All these tables offer a huge amount of valuable information in comparing your newly design monster with those contained in the SRD. Monster advancement is discussed in detail, and while this information in repeated in parts of the book, it does save time flipping (clicking!) through the many pages of this book. The advice given on CR selection and LA selection is sound, and for those looking for that information, let me repeat it here: playtest! There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but that's the most reliable way of constructing CRs and LAs.

Chapter 4: This chapter delves into the various types and subtypes, giving design advice on deciding which type or subtype should be used, and full details on the type traits. Another useful and full chapter containing useful reference data, and in addition listing for each type and subtype the typical special attacks and qualities that monsters of that particular type and subtype contain. This is another solid chapter filled with useful design information and complete reference material.

Chapter 5: Templates, one of my personal favourites, are covered in this chapter. Templates are broken down into typical themes, such as half templates and planar aligned templates, giving guidelines in designing your own templates. In addition, it lists a number of ways in which templates can be acquired, ranging from combining creatures to creatures formed from planar leaks. Like the preceding two chapters, this chapter continues to delve into the aspects of creating a template, with full details given on each aspect of writing and creating a new template. The latter part of the chapter, for reference, lists the typical special attacks and special qualities that templates from the SRD grant, and the source for each of these abilities.

Chapter 6: An unexpected addition to this great book, this chapter deals in holistic magic, or creating short duration magical items from monster body parts within a campaign specific environment. While I generally like the ideas contained in this chapter, and certainly the great flavour text provided for each monster 'recipe', it's not everybody's cup of tea. For one, there are some balance issues that may arise when PCs or other cults and groups decide to go on mass monster slaughter fests, although that in itself could provide an interesting adventure for PCs. While every effort appears to have been taken to ensure that these items are not 'over-harvested', it is a distinct possibility, and one that turns fighting a monster to overcome it into fighting a monster to grab its bits to do cool things with. It really depends what you like in your game.

Chapter 7: The beefy part of the pdf. Or the beefier part. This lists all the special attacks and qualities from the monsters contained in the SRD and Monster Geographica: Underground. I sincerely hope they add the monsters from the other environments to this series (Marsh and Aquatic, and Forest), perhaps releasing the special abilities and 'monster building' goodness in separate short pdfs as it relates to this pdf. I'd certainly like to see that, as it would be an invaluable reference. In any event, each ability also lists the monsters that have that ability and the source for said ability, and concludes with a list of all the conditions that may arise from critters using these abilities. This is a great chapter - not only because you can delve through the abilities to find new and exciting abilities you may not know of, but also because you can search for monsters based on particular abilities. Having a search function connected to this as a database would've been great!

Appendixes: There are three appendixes to seal off a well done and complete package on monster building. The first if a extremely helpful checklist, providing you with a handy reference to make sure you've got everything correctly. The second contains probability tables, indicating the probability of success when, for example trying to hit a certain AC with a given attack bonus, or trying to make certain DC save with a given save bonus. This is useful in designing certain aspects of monster in relation to typical party members of the monsters' CR. Lastly, the third appendix contains a random monster generator, which is fun, but not necessarily something many people will use.

What can I say about such a grand pdf? It's an excellent design resource, both on the advice front and on the mechanics front, containing a well balanced mix of crunch and fluff. There's not a lot missing from this book, although maybe one or two examples in certain places would've been more useful. This is most definitely a useful addition to any monster builder's gaming library - if you like designing monsters, you should not leave home without this pdf, or the print version.

Conclusions:

A Magical Society: Beast Builder is a comprehensive guide to designing and building realistic monsters within a campaign environment or as a general creature to scare you party. It's very detailed, an invaluable resource, and an almost must-have for any serious monster builder's gaming library. If you want to create interesting, detailed monsters that have a realistic feel to them, yet provide a fun and challenging experience to your players, thereby enhancing your campaign world, then this is the product for you. Based on its excellent material and value for money with very few holes in said content, I'd grade it with four and a half stars, rounding up to five stars.

 

[Psion]

[imager]http://www.exp.citymax.com/i//WebsiteBBCover.JPG[/imager]A Magical Society: Beast Builder is a book providing conceptual and mechanical resources for the creation of new creatures for d20 fantasy games. The book is written by Joseph Browning and published by Expeditious Retreat Press; the book spins off of topics introduced in their book A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture.

The book is available in both print and PDF format; this review is principally based on the print edition.

A First Look

A Magical Society: Beast Builder is available in hardcover and PDF format. The hardcover book has 224 pages and has an MSRP of $35.00. The PDF is available at RPGnow for $13.50 U.S.

The cover of the book depicts some manner of feral looking creature leaping towards the viewer. The illustration is Kenshiro Suzuki, who illustrates comics in the UK.

The interior is black-and-white. The illustrations predominantly picture new and in some cases bizarre creatures, possibly serving as a source of inspiration in their own right. Illustrators include Rick Hershey, Ash Jackson, Mates Laurentiu, Michael LoPresti, and Jason Walton.

A Deeper Look

A Magical Society: Beast Builder is divided into 7 chapter, but most of these chapters can be fairly divided into two categories, which I would roughly call inspiration and implementation.

The first two chapters are what I term inspiration. These chapters are along the lines of the material that appeared in Expeditious Retreat Press’s A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture regarding the role of different creatures in the environment.

The first chapter, Monster Concepts and Functions provides a number of starting points when it comes to conceiving monsters. This can be further divided into sources of inspiration (such as “folklore and legend” and “fish out of water”) and more specific conceptual categories that existing d20 system monsters tends to fall into (such as confusers, disablers, etc.) This latter set of categories provides example creatures from the SRD and XRP’s own Monster Geographica: Underground, as well as providing a statistical breakdown of how many creatures of each type exist in the SRD.

This analysis of monsters is interesting and potentially useful. Its primary use is probably primarily in considering which roles a creature concept is likely to fill. However, I think that it could even be potentially useful in considering how you deploy monsters; you might find that you are repetitively using monsters with similar capability and could afford a bit of variety (or, on the other hand, it could give you a theme to seek out and provide you with a list of appropriate creatures you could muster to provide that theme.

The second chapter, Monsters and Their Environment comes at creature concepts less from the angle of how they fit in the game and more from the angle of how they fit in the game world. This is a good thing to me, as I see believable monsters as compelling ones; the fewer questions you raise about why a creature is where it is and why it does what it does, the less likely you are to remind players that they are just playing a game.

The chapter discussing authentic ecological topics such as food webs and environments, and layers on top if it fantasy born theories about the role of magic and magical creatures in such a food chain. Sections devoted to specific environments describe which creatures with which characteristics are likely to exist in creatures that dwell in that environment.

Most of the remaining chapters are, in essence, a rules breakdown of what goes into a monster. At first I was a little nonplussed by all this. After all, they are just parsing out what you already have in the SRD, right?

Well, not quite. Yes, a lot of this information is gleaned or reprinted from the SRD. But a lot of painstaking analysis goes into these chapters. For instance, are you uncertain what ability scores to give your creatures? The section on ability scores lists minimum, average, and maximum ability scores for creatures given their size and CR, which can serve as a very useful guide for choosing appropriate ability scores for your creatures. Other topics covered are other creature statistics, creature types, template construction, and creature abilities (with a compilation of all the creature special attacks and qualities that appear in the SRD or Monster Geographica: Underground.

The odd chapter here is the chapter on Bits and Peices. It describes some potential uses for a number of items harvested from creatures. Though the harvesting techniques aren’t simple, their uses are fairly straightforward and some of these can provide effects of spells with no further enchantment. I found these rules a bit weak; similar rules I have seen elsewhere (such as Monsternomicon and Advanced GMs Manual) have rules such as checks to harvest or know about the special bit or piece, which makes their use in game a little more practical.

Finally, the book features three appendices. The second one seems to be the dud to me; it translates d20 target number to chance of success, something that strikes me as pretty straightforward math.

The other two appendices are valuable, however. The first is a brief but useful walkthrough of a creature statistics blocks, describing things to check for to ensure that a creature that you have created can be all that it can be and has as few errors as possible.

The third appendix is a “random(ish)” monster generators. It provides a selection of tables that can provide you with the creature type, attack modes, and special abilities of a monster. The results of these rolls can be used as inspirations or starting points for creature creation.

Conclusions

The audience for A Magical Society: Beast Builder is limited if apparent: if you have a hankering to create customized creatures for your game world, this book is for you. The book provides a bevy of useful tools and inspiration to help realize d20 system creatures.

The above goes doubly if you have any intention of creating d20 system creatures for pay. I have seen more of the mistakes listed in the first appendix in various products I have reviewed than I care to mention.

Overall Grade: B

-Alan D. Kohler