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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crothian" data-source="post: 3669885" data-attributes="member: 232">It is always nice to see ideas and a series of books expanded on.  There is the Behind the Spells series of PDF and now that has led us to this Behind the Monsters series.  With three dozen Behind the Spells books out it is obvious Bret Boyd the author and creator if this line of products has really learned a thing or three about doing such a series of books.  This book is well polished and does not read rough as some first books in a product line tend to.      Behind the Monsters: Owlbear is the first in this new series of books.  It is also the first book in Bret Boyd’s new PDF company Tricky Owlbear Publishing.  The books is well organized and formatted even though it is only seven pages long.  A new addition over the Behind the Spells books is this one has art done by Rick Hersey in it.  There is not much art a nice wizard by the title and an owlbear later on it is good to see some art there.  The book is fully book marked and since this is free and can be downloaded <a href="http://www.trickyowlbear.com/products/btm/btm-001.php" target="_blank"> here </a> there is little reason to not get this and read it.      The book starts with the history of how an Owlbear came into existence.  Basically there are two countries at war and one of them wants a powerful front line attacker.  The head wizard through inspiration or insanity magically crosses an owl and a bear and history is made.  The history is good but there does seem to be a small flaw in it.  There is a control collar used to control the owlbears and costs over one hundred and fifty thousand gold pieces to create.  The history talks of enough owls and bears to create a hundred of owl bears and obviously in the resources it would take to create a hundred control collars I think would bankrupt most small nations.  At the very least it would take one wizard of seventeenth level over forty years to make them all.  While having more wizards of that level would lessen the time I think if you have more then a few seventeenth level wizards you should be winning the war through other means.  Aside from this nit pick of mine the history was perfect for how one would imagine the Owlbear coming into creation.    Each of the books in the series is going to be narrated by the same person: Jadrin Nelv.  I like that as it help bring a consistency to the series and allow for a monster sage like NPC in the campaign if the DM wants.  After the history Jadrin tells the reader how to deal with Owlbears and the most important fact is how to sneak through their territory.  There is some pretty good advice but not all of it easy or guaranteed.  So if combat does happen Jadrin has some advice on how to fight them as well.      In the final section called related research is the exact stats for the control collar and another magical item the Owlbear Claw Token.  The token is great for low level games as it is priced under a thousand gold pieces and will be very useful for barbarians and fighters..  And there is also new monster called simply enough the bearowl.  It is the body of an owl and the head of a bear and no less mean then the owlbear.  It also has a very cool special ability that can disrupt transmutation spells.  It is a clever twist given the creation of these creatures.      Behind the Monsters Owlbear is a good start to this series.  It takes a classic animal almost ever D&D player has faced at least a few times and really gives it some history and background.  It no longer has to be just a near mindless animal to be slain though given its temperament it will probably still be trying to eat the player characters.</blockquote>

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