Bane Ledger Valoume 1

[Bloodstone Press]

The Bane Ledger presents thirty monsters gathered from the legends of our own world. These amazing creatures have been carefully selected from African, Polynesian, Australian and American folklore for their surprising and unique characteristics. Some creatures, like the abatwa, can be helpful and informative while others, like the impundulu seek to do unspeakable things with corpses. Eating the heart of a taniwha can infuse a hero with morale bonuses and beating a one-armed hai-uri in a fistfight can earn a character special insight into healing herbs.

The Bane Ledger features monsters ranging from CR 1/2 to CR 32, including one of the most fearsome creatures of them all, the mighty Ya-o-gah! In fact, more than half the creatures in the Bane Ledger have challenge ratings of 7 or higher, making this a great supplement for games of mid to high levels of play. The four eldest categories of storm dragons and summer dragons all have challenge ratings of 20 or higher. The Bane Ledger also features many creatures of lower challenge ratings, including the nightmarish aswang and the impossible djien.

The many creatures in the Bane Ledger once roamed the myths and legends of our forefathers, haunting their dreams and filling their hearts with fear. These horrors have now been collected and cataloged with d20 statistics and are presented here for your gaming pleasure. Now it is your turn to face the fell creatures that have plagued mankind for centuries!

Fear the storm dragons for they will bring chaos and destruction wherever they go. Beware the xiuhcoatls for they can cause famine and drought. Avoid the undead impundulu for it will slay you and drag your corpse back to its master!

These and dozens of other amazing creatures lurk within the pages of the Bane Ledger! Buy it today and watch with delight as these beasts maul the heroes in your game!

 

[Crothian]

Review of Bane Ledger Volume 1

Bane Ledger proves that if one wants creepy and interesting creatures one only needs to look into the mythology and legends of the world. Bane Ledger is a 32 page pdf filled with a bit more then two dozen creatures. All of them are inspired from legends and myths of our world. The pdf comes in a zip file of less then 700 KB and unzipped the file is just a bit over 700 KB.

The art in the book I found average. It is black and white and does the job of showing some of the odder creatures presented. The art in the product is a little on the light side. I’ve always felt that monster books need art to better show the creatures being described. The layout is in the normal two columns per page. It requires a little bit of scrolling to get the stats on the creatures if one uses this from a computer or laptop while one plays. The bookmarks are simple just listing the monsters.

The monsters fill a wide variety of types and challenges. There is the Asari, a very small fey creature that is rather non combative. There is also one of the most powerful creatures I’ve seen, the Ya-o-Gah. It is the sheer power of winter. The creature has a challenge rating of 32, over a thousand hit points, and some devastating abilities. One of my favorites though is the Djien. It’s a spider creature that actually buries its vital organs to protect itself. Many of the creatures have unique abilities like that.

Some of the creatures in here are not well balanced for their challenge ratings. The Abatwa is a challenge rating one fey. It has a 24 AC, +14 to hit with its poisoned arrows, and the poison has a fort save of sixteen. It is a slow creature being diminutive in size and has only a single hit point. There is also a creature, the Aswang, which has a feat that is not described. I think by the notation next to the feat that it is included in another book, the Hero’s Handbook. Reprinting that feat under the creature is a little detail that would have gone a long way.

While the creatures are from the legends and mythology of real world civilizations, there is no thing that says what creatures come from what myths. It does not even have a basic list saying if the creature is from an African or European source. So, while I salute the author for using creatures from mythology, I really feel that many people besides myself who like to have seen a listing of were these creatures are from. I also like to see tables listing the challenge ratings and terrain the creatures can be found in. While these last two are rarely seen in monsters books, some of the lesser known publishers can distinguish themselves by going the extra mile.

Over all, this is a nice collection of monsters. There is a good variety and there are many ways to use them. Not all the monsters are designed for killing and the book does explore other ways to use monsters to some degree. I think the product could have been a little more in depth and that a few extras could have been used to really make this shine.