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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DragonTurtle" data-source="post: 2437434" data-attributes="member: 26206">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.</blockquote>

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