e-Minions
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JoeGKushner
Adventurer
e-Minions
Edited by Michael Cantrell
Published by Bastion Press
www.bastionpress.com
24 full color pages
e-Minions is a .pdf supplement for Minions, the first release by Bastion Press. Like that print book, Minions focuses on monsters in full color, to add to the campaign. This supplement covers sixteen new creatures for GM’s.
Monsters are listed in alphabetical order broken down by name, combat stats, background information/appearance, combat information and special abilities and campaign notes. One of the nice things about the Combat section though is that under Construct you’ll find the information needed to craft your own. This is very useful for the Amber Goelm and the force Guardian, two servants that the Gm may wish to use in his campaign to showcase the different styles of construct creation.
Unfortunately, this book came out a while ago and when it does provide characters suitable for play like the Groundling, it only gives them an ECL and not stats to actually make such a character. Worse, no favored class is listed for such characters. Still, since most Groundlings lair in or near undead tombs and barrows, perhaps it’s best that no stats are provided?
Outside of the two constructs, the Amber Golem and the Force guardian, my favorite creatures include monsters like the Xoleroth, the Heart Stalker, and the Udamentaz. Some of the other creatures have more interesting uses, but I’m a person who looks towards crunchy bits, especially monsters, on a visual basis. If I think it looks cool, it’s going to be something I want to throw into my campaign. The Xoleroth is an outisder from the lower planes. These creatures are slavers and can make excellent foes for mid-teen level parties. The Heart Stalker is an undead with spikes and horns giving it a very gothic appearance. The cool thing about the creature though isn’t only its looks as it can create other spawn like itself and the campaign seed suggests having the party witness a death of a friend. After defeating the Heart Stalker, they have to take the body back for proper burial and during that time, WHAM! It rises as a Heart Stalker of it’s own. Another interesting campaign idea is that the hearts and souls that the creatures take feed the original Heart Stalker, a unique entity that grows in power as more people die at its undead servants claws. Lastly, I like the spider like Udamentaz because despite its natural camouflage ability, including the ability to polymorph into human form, these creatures often take levels in the rogue or cleric class to make them even more formidable. Such a nice twist when you throw some romance into a campaign and shatter the player’s dreams by having their love turn into a sickly red bloated human faced spider.
Only two artists do the art for this book, Todd Morasch and Yannick Zogg. This gives the product a fairly uniform feel. The bad news though, is if you don’t’ like the artist, then you’ve got problems. I find that I enjoy the artist’s take on the constructs and the undead as it gives them a lithe yet powerful figrue.
e-Minions has some problems though. First, because it’s a .pdf file and its in full color, your printer will hate you. Now don’t get me wrong, not too long ago your printer would’ve hated you more because there used to be only one version of e-Minions which had a full color border. E-Minions now has two options so you don’t have to print the border if you don’t want to. Another problem is that there are no listings of the monsters. While it’s only sixteen monsters, would it have killed Bastion to include a quick CR chart? Well if it would’ve, I’ve included such a chart at the bottom of this review. Lastly, some of these monsters have seen publication elsewhere since the product’s original publication such as in the electronic Egyptian Gods and the sourcebook Villains.
To get a 5, they’d have to put this CR chart in the book, add racial notes for the playable monsters, and add at least two new monsters to make up for the ones that have appeared in other works.
Still, for $2.99, let’s not kid anyone. Full color monsters with or without borders makes this a great product.
CR 2
Groundling (Small magical Beast)
Skin Wraith (Medium-size Undead)
Ushabti Small Construct
CR 3
Brainweed (Small Plant)
Heart Stalker (Medium-Size Undead)
Serpard (Medium-size Magical Beast)
CR 4
Fox Maiden (Small Shapechanger)
CR 5
Hound of Insanity (Large Magical Beast)
Ka Spirit (Medium-Size Undead-Incorporeal)
Lockling (Fine Outsider)
Rocanny (Large Magical Beast)
CR 6
Udamentaz (Medium-size shapechanger)
CR 9
Lifetap (Medium-size Aberration)
CR 10
Force Guardian (Medium-size Construct)
CR 14
Amber Golem (Large Construct)
Xoleroth (Large Outsider)
Edited by Michael Cantrell
Published by Bastion Press
www.bastionpress.com
24 full color pages
e-Minions is a .pdf supplement for Minions, the first release by Bastion Press. Like that print book, Minions focuses on monsters in full color, to add to the campaign. This supplement covers sixteen new creatures for GM’s.
Monsters are listed in alphabetical order broken down by name, combat stats, background information/appearance, combat information and special abilities and campaign notes. One of the nice things about the Combat section though is that under Construct you’ll find the information needed to craft your own. This is very useful for the Amber Goelm and the force Guardian, two servants that the Gm may wish to use in his campaign to showcase the different styles of construct creation.
Unfortunately, this book came out a while ago and when it does provide characters suitable for play like the Groundling, it only gives them an ECL and not stats to actually make such a character. Worse, no favored class is listed for such characters. Still, since most Groundlings lair in or near undead tombs and barrows, perhaps it’s best that no stats are provided?
Outside of the two constructs, the Amber Golem and the Force guardian, my favorite creatures include monsters like the Xoleroth, the Heart Stalker, and the Udamentaz. Some of the other creatures have more interesting uses, but I’m a person who looks towards crunchy bits, especially monsters, on a visual basis. If I think it looks cool, it’s going to be something I want to throw into my campaign. The Xoleroth is an outisder from the lower planes. These creatures are slavers and can make excellent foes for mid-teen level parties. The Heart Stalker is an undead with spikes and horns giving it a very gothic appearance. The cool thing about the creature though isn’t only its looks as it can create other spawn like itself and the campaign seed suggests having the party witness a death of a friend. After defeating the Heart Stalker, they have to take the body back for proper burial and during that time, WHAM! It rises as a Heart Stalker of it’s own. Another interesting campaign idea is that the hearts and souls that the creatures take feed the original Heart Stalker, a unique entity that grows in power as more people die at its undead servants claws. Lastly, I like the spider like Udamentaz because despite its natural camouflage ability, including the ability to polymorph into human form, these creatures often take levels in the rogue or cleric class to make them even more formidable. Such a nice twist when you throw some romance into a campaign and shatter the player’s dreams by having their love turn into a sickly red bloated human faced spider.
Only two artists do the art for this book, Todd Morasch and Yannick Zogg. This gives the product a fairly uniform feel. The bad news though, is if you don’t’ like the artist, then you’ve got problems. I find that I enjoy the artist’s take on the constructs and the undead as it gives them a lithe yet powerful figrue.
e-Minions has some problems though. First, because it’s a .pdf file and its in full color, your printer will hate you. Now don’t get me wrong, not too long ago your printer would’ve hated you more because there used to be only one version of e-Minions which had a full color border. E-Minions now has two options so you don’t have to print the border if you don’t want to. Another problem is that there are no listings of the monsters. While it’s only sixteen monsters, would it have killed Bastion to include a quick CR chart? Well if it would’ve, I’ve included such a chart at the bottom of this review. Lastly, some of these monsters have seen publication elsewhere since the product’s original publication such as in the electronic Egyptian Gods and the sourcebook Villains.
To get a 5, they’d have to put this CR chart in the book, add racial notes for the playable monsters, and add at least two new monsters to make up for the ones that have appeared in other works.
Still, for $2.99, let’s not kid anyone. Full color monsters with or without borders makes this a great product.
CR 2
Groundling (Small magical Beast)
Skin Wraith (Medium-size Undead)
Ushabti Small Construct
CR 3
Brainweed (Small Plant)
Heart Stalker (Medium-Size Undead)
Serpard (Medium-size Magical Beast)
CR 4
Fox Maiden (Small Shapechanger)
CR 5
Hound of Insanity (Large Magical Beast)
Ka Spirit (Medium-Size Undead-Incorporeal)
Lockling (Fine Outsider)
Rocanny (Large Magical Beast)
CR 6
Udamentaz (Medium-size shapechanger)
CR 9
Lifetap (Medium-size Aberration)
CR 10
Force Guardian (Medium-size Construct)
CR 14
Amber Golem (Large Construct)
Xoleroth (Large Outsider)
Messageboard Golem
First Post
By Steven Creech, Exec. Chairman d20 Magazine Rack
*Note: This is an older review being reprinted here for inclusion into the EN World database archives.
10-09-2001
This review is for E-Minions by Bastion Press. This is a monster manual for the d20 gaming system that is available in electronic format for download from their website (www.bastionpress.com) or RPGNow.com for the low price of $2.99. Since it is encoded in .pdf format Adobe Acrobat Reader is required in order to view it. I will be up front by saying that I am involved with the playtesting development of this and other future products from Bastion Press. Therefore, I am slightly biased in their favor for obvious reasons.
The book consists of sixteen totally unique monsters that are mostly the creations of fans. Bastion Press held a contest seeking submissions for their forthcoming hardback monster book titled Minions: Fearsome Foes. The monsters contained in E-Minions are the ones that were good but couldn't quite be included due to room constraints. Some of the best monsters include the Ka Spirit, Rocanny, Serpard, and Xoleroth while the not-so-good has to be the Skinwraith (which one of my gamers immediately dubbed "an undead fruit roll-up"). The facet I really love about this book is that each monster description contains an entry devoted to campaign use. Here you find suggestions on not only how to place the monster into a campaign but also tactics that may be employed against the party, such as teaming one type of monster with another.
Overall, I am pleased with the way E-Minions came out and am looking forward to the hardcover Minions when it is released sometime in December. E-Minions provides the Game Master with a small selection of creatures that his players will most likely have never encountered before in their lives. It is the perfect solution when dealing with players who tend to memorize every monster in every book published. Just throw a Xoleroth at them and see how well they handle it. Hehehehe...
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
*Note: This is an older review being reprinted here for inclusion into the EN World database archives.
10-09-2001
This review is for E-Minions by Bastion Press. This is a monster manual for the d20 gaming system that is available in electronic format for download from their website (www.bastionpress.com) or RPGNow.com for the low price of $2.99. Since it is encoded in .pdf format Adobe Acrobat Reader is required in order to view it. I will be up front by saying that I am involved with the playtesting development of this and other future products from Bastion Press. Therefore, I am slightly biased in their favor for obvious reasons.
The book consists of sixteen totally unique monsters that are mostly the creations of fans. Bastion Press held a contest seeking submissions for their forthcoming hardback monster book titled Minions: Fearsome Foes. The monsters contained in E-Minions are the ones that were good but couldn't quite be included due to room constraints. Some of the best monsters include the Ka Spirit, Rocanny, Serpard, and Xoleroth while the not-so-good has to be the Skinwraith (which one of my gamers immediately dubbed "an undead fruit roll-up"). The facet I really love about this book is that each monster description contains an entry devoted to campaign use. Here you find suggestions on not only how to place the monster into a campaign but also tactics that may be employed against the party, such as teaming one type of monster with another.
Overall, I am pleased with the way E-Minions came out and am looking forward to the hardcover Minions when it is released sometime in December. E-Minions provides the Game Master with a small selection of creatures that his players will most likely have never encountered before in their lives. It is the perfect solution when dealing with players who tend to memorize every monster in every book published. Just throw a Xoleroth at them and see how well they handle it. Hehehehe...
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
