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E.N. Critters, Volume 1: Ruins of the Pale Jungle
E.N. Critters is E.N. Publishings line of monster books, presenting several new monsters based on a geographical theme and includes counters for the creatures in the back. Now, I'm a sucker for monster books so I was very interested in this series when it first came out but because of some lackluster initial reviews I steered away until now. Thanks to a big sale I was able to acquire the whole series at a buck each and I couldn't pass that up.
Appearances: The cover art is decent as far as PDF products go, giving us a rough illustration of what looks like a crumbling ziggurat in the distance surrounded by jungle. There's an ugly map. The art for the critters presented in the book ranges from terrible to mediocre. The counters, aside from a few, are just plain terrible. Some of the layout is wonky.
Content: Since this book is a monster book that dabbles in being a regional supplement, the content is fairly straight forward. One thing worthy of note is that the the pdf has been revised from it's original release, incorporating features from later volumes and apparently correcting stat-block errors, as most of the errors in the John Cooper review errata for this product in its original form are no longer there.
The book starts with an introduction to the product and an explanation of the line. This is followed by four-pages of overview about the creatures in the book and where they fit into the Pale Jungle then a couple of pages on geographic locations, which includes the previously mentioned ugly map. This information helps give a fair enough overview of the region and shows that it's a place with opportunity for adventure but there's a certain ho-humness about it all. Here's this ruin, here's it's two or three sentence history, here's a sentence or two on what lurks there. It takes some imagination to turn these dry entries into inspiration. If this were a regional book, I'd consider this a flaw. This is a monster book, though, and here it's merely a bland but useful bonus.
Then we have the monsters. Each has a read-aloud description, general description, combat info, ecology, a table for knowledge checks, and a section titled "Notes & Game Balance". The knowledge tables are pretty cool to have and generally useful, though occasionally they give pointless results. The Notes & Game Balance section is an interesting touch giving insight into what the designer had in mind when creating the creature.
* Animus (Small Incorporeal Undead), CR3 - A mist like undead that can possess people and objects.
* Arach (Medium Monstrous Humanoid), CR5 - The god that created this race of spider people is dead now. In some ways you could look at them as a smaller and non-magical version of driders. Not terribly original, but still could be useful.
* Balam Chac (Medium Evil Extraplanar Shapechanger Outsider), CR18 - One of the heavy hitters of the book, these are "god-like" extraplanar beings that have three forms...a humanoid jaguar form, a jaguar form, and a gargantuan godlike jaguar form...with a plethora of spell-like abilities. I could have fun with these if my group gets high enough level to not become instant kitty food.
* Banyaba (Small Fey), CR5 - Appearing as a small female child, these good aligned fey gain power by bonding to trees, which she can animate to fight for her. For the most part a beefed up Dryad, but I can see getting a good use or two out of her.
* Baya Tumbili (Large Incorporeal Undead), CR10 - A unique powerful undead intelligent ape that can possess other apes and creates spawn. Though it's a CR10 creature, it's impossible to permanently kill without a cleric of 16th level or higher. Thus a party won't be able to put the creature down for good until they're of high enough level that the Baya Tumbili is a pretty much negligible threat anyway.
* Colony Spiders (Tiny Vermin), CR1/3 - Spiders with intelligence on par with dogs. That's the only thing really notable about them...they have an intelligence of 2.
* Creeper Cat (Medium Magical Beast), CR4 - Tigers with supernatural chameleon abilities. They're not terribly exciting but reasonable enough for those who like to populate their ecosystems with animals with a magic twist.
* Demon: Pashinor (Large Outsider), CR16 - Demons resembling humanoid panthers that act essentially as big game hunters.
* Detritus Lurker (Huge Ooze), CR8 - This ooze hides beneath the general debris that litters the jungle ground. A potentially nasty surprise for a party resting outdoors. There's also a colossal version.
* Devil: Bloodhunter (Medium Outsider), CR12 - Hey, another evil outsider who delights in the hunt. Apparently outsiders only come to jungle to hunt things when they get bored hunting things on their own plane.
* Jungle Drake (Gargantuan Dragon), CR20 - The results of arcane experimentation on green dragons, these big nasties aren't terribly inspiring.
* Earthbound Creature (Template), CR+2 - When specific form of plant life kills a creature with its poisonous pollen, it takes over that creature's body, thus making it an Earthbound Creature. Between its vine's lashing out to drag enemies closer and the poisonous spore cloud it emits this template can give adventurers a very bad day no matter what it's applied to and that makes me happy.
* Engraved (Medium Construct), CR10 - Built into walls to look like engravings of warriors, the Engraved are yet another example of constructs designed to guard something well past the expiration date of most living creatures.
* Haze Horror (Medium Incorporeal Undead, Fire), CR6 - Poor souls killed by heat exhaustion may find themselves Haze Horrors. You don't see many incorporeal undead with the fire subtype so this could be useful for throwing off a party's expectations.
* Kithrotto (Large Elemental, Earth, Water, Extraplanar), CR5 - A belligerent stone creature with one serious sweating problem that tries to pin and drown its opponents.
* Leaflings (Small Humanoid), CR1/2 - Presented as a PC race, these are essentially more dexterious, physically weaker jungle halflings. Not terribly interesting or exciting but I suppose no jungle creature book is complete without a take on pygmies. The entry also contains the CR5 Shaman, and the undead Leafling Ancestors in both Lesser (CR5) and Greater (CR9) varieties.
* Leechvine (Medium Plant), CR2 - A bloodsucking plant. It's lack of mobility makes it a sitting duck once discovered, but with a 20' reach and some nasty abilities like attach, blood drain, and incapacitating poison it has a chance to do some serious damage with its opening shots.
* Parryn (Small Humanoid), CR1/2 - Another creature presented as a PC race, though this time with a level adjustments primarily due to its ability to fly. Aside from the wings, it has even less to seperate them from other small humanoid races than the Leaflings, which at least have a bit of their culture expanded on beyond being curious and friendly people who like to sing.
* Revered Ancestor (Medium Undead, Psionic), CR7 - Human sacrifices that gain psionic ability beyond the grave. While that might smell a bit like cheese, it's at least got some cleverness in its tactics. Generally entombed, they have the ability to screw with PCs beyond the walls of their tomb so half the trick of fighting these fellows is finding and getting at them.
* Root Roper (Medium Magical Beast), CR9 - A surface variation of the roper. Yawn.
* Sandtrapper (Medium Plant, Aquatic), CR3 - A plant that lures prey into quicksand. Perfect for a jungle random encounter table and not much use for anything else.
* Scrimp (Tiny Abberation), CR2 - These nasty little poisonous pests are going to give low level characters in my campaigns a bad day or two. I want one of these rat-lizard things as an improved familiar for my next sorcerer.
* Shetani (Tiny Undead), CR1/2 - Tiny undead monkeys. 'Nuff said.
* Swarm: Delirium (Diminutive Vermin, Swarm), CR5 - A swarm of poisonous flies that induces a confusion effect.
* Swarm: Piranha Bird (Tiny Animal, Swarm), CR3 - A swarm of meat eating hummingbirds.
* Swarm: Vermiliants (Diminutive Vermin, Swarm), CR1/2 - A swarm of ant-like insects with a healing poison. I'm not sure why this creature is considered more dangerous than many other creatures that don't heal with its attack. Useless as a threat unless your PCs are somehow immune to its healing poison, but I suppose the idea has some value as a potential plot point.
There is also an appendix with a handful of more mundane animals such as the ocelot, the peccary, the quickdeath snake, and the spitting asp.
In Conclusion - I was overall pretty satisfied with this product. While there are some definite bores in the crowd, they're outnumbered by more useful and interesting creatures. The important thing is that I can definitely see myself getting some use out of about half the creatures in the book which isn't bad. Most of that will be fleshing out random encounter tables for jungle territory, though. There's not a whole lot in here that really screams to have an encounter planned around. I'm a bit torn between giving a three or a four rating and am going to lean towards the three due to the fairly shoddy art and layout.
E.N. Critters is E.N. Publishings line of monster books, presenting several new monsters based on a geographical theme and includes counters for the creatures in the back. Now, I'm a sucker for monster books so I was very interested in this series when it first came out but because of some lackluster initial reviews I steered away until now. Thanks to a big sale I was able to acquire the whole series at a buck each and I couldn't pass that up.
Appearances: The cover art is decent as far as PDF products go, giving us a rough illustration of what looks like a crumbling ziggurat in the distance surrounded by jungle. There's an ugly map. The art for the critters presented in the book ranges from terrible to mediocre. The counters, aside from a few, are just plain terrible. Some of the layout is wonky.
Content: Since this book is a monster book that dabbles in being a regional supplement, the content is fairly straight forward. One thing worthy of note is that the the pdf has been revised from it's original release, incorporating features from later volumes and apparently correcting stat-block errors, as most of the errors in the John Cooper review errata for this product in its original form are no longer there.
The book starts with an introduction to the product and an explanation of the line. This is followed by four-pages of overview about the creatures in the book and where they fit into the Pale Jungle then a couple of pages on geographic locations, which includes the previously mentioned ugly map. This information helps give a fair enough overview of the region and shows that it's a place with opportunity for adventure but there's a certain ho-humness about it all. Here's this ruin, here's it's two or three sentence history, here's a sentence or two on what lurks there. It takes some imagination to turn these dry entries into inspiration. If this were a regional book, I'd consider this a flaw. This is a monster book, though, and here it's merely a bland but useful bonus.
Then we have the monsters. Each has a read-aloud description, general description, combat info, ecology, a table for knowledge checks, and a section titled "Notes & Game Balance". The knowledge tables are pretty cool to have and generally useful, though occasionally they give pointless results. The Notes & Game Balance section is an interesting touch giving insight into what the designer had in mind when creating the creature.
* Animus (Small Incorporeal Undead), CR3 - A mist like undead that can possess people and objects.
* Arach (Medium Monstrous Humanoid), CR5 - The god that created this race of spider people is dead now. In some ways you could look at them as a smaller and non-magical version of driders. Not terribly original, but still could be useful.
* Balam Chac (Medium Evil Extraplanar Shapechanger Outsider), CR18 - One of the heavy hitters of the book, these are "god-like" extraplanar beings that have three forms...a humanoid jaguar form, a jaguar form, and a gargantuan godlike jaguar form...with a plethora of spell-like abilities. I could have fun with these if my group gets high enough level to not become instant kitty food.
* Banyaba (Small Fey), CR5 - Appearing as a small female child, these good aligned fey gain power by bonding to trees, which she can animate to fight for her. For the most part a beefed up Dryad, but I can see getting a good use or two out of her.
* Baya Tumbili (Large Incorporeal Undead), CR10 - A unique powerful undead intelligent ape that can possess other apes and creates spawn. Though it's a CR10 creature, it's impossible to permanently kill without a cleric of 16th level or higher. Thus a party won't be able to put the creature down for good until they're of high enough level that the Baya Tumbili is a pretty much negligible threat anyway.
* Colony Spiders (Tiny Vermin), CR1/3 - Spiders with intelligence on par with dogs. That's the only thing really notable about them...they have an intelligence of 2.
* Creeper Cat (Medium Magical Beast), CR4 - Tigers with supernatural chameleon abilities. They're not terribly exciting but reasonable enough for those who like to populate their ecosystems with animals with a magic twist.
* Demon: Pashinor (Large Outsider), CR16 - Demons resembling humanoid panthers that act essentially as big game hunters.
* Detritus Lurker (Huge Ooze), CR8 - This ooze hides beneath the general debris that litters the jungle ground. A potentially nasty surprise for a party resting outdoors. There's also a colossal version.
* Devil: Bloodhunter (Medium Outsider), CR12 - Hey, another evil outsider who delights in the hunt. Apparently outsiders only come to jungle to hunt things when they get bored hunting things on their own plane.
* Jungle Drake (Gargantuan Dragon), CR20 - The results of arcane experimentation on green dragons, these big nasties aren't terribly inspiring.
* Earthbound Creature (Template), CR+2 - When specific form of plant life kills a creature with its poisonous pollen, it takes over that creature's body, thus making it an Earthbound Creature. Between its vine's lashing out to drag enemies closer and the poisonous spore cloud it emits this template can give adventurers a very bad day no matter what it's applied to and that makes me happy.
* Engraved (Medium Construct), CR10 - Built into walls to look like engravings of warriors, the Engraved are yet another example of constructs designed to guard something well past the expiration date of most living creatures.
* Haze Horror (Medium Incorporeal Undead, Fire), CR6 - Poor souls killed by heat exhaustion may find themselves Haze Horrors. You don't see many incorporeal undead with the fire subtype so this could be useful for throwing off a party's expectations.
* Kithrotto (Large Elemental, Earth, Water, Extraplanar), CR5 - A belligerent stone creature with one serious sweating problem that tries to pin and drown its opponents.
* Leaflings (Small Humanoid), CR1/2 - Presented as a PC race, these are essentially more dexterious, physically weaker jungle halflings. Not terribly interesting or exciting but I suppose no jungle creature book is complete without a take on pygmies. The entry also contains the CR5 Shaman, and the undead Leafling Ancestors in both Lesser (CR5) and Greater (CR9) varieties.
* Leechvine (Medium Plant), CR2 - A bloodsucking plant. It's lack of mobility makes it a sitting duck once discovered, but with a 20' reach and some nasty abilities like attach, blood drain, and incapacitating poison it has a chance to do some serious damage with its opening shots.
* Parryn (Small Humanoid), CR1/2 - Another creature presented as a PC race, though this time with a level adjustments primarily due to its ability to fly. Aside from the wings, it has even less to seperate them from other small humanoid races than the Leaflings, which at least have a bit of their culture expanded on beyond being curious and friendly people who like to sing.
* Revered Ancestor (Medium Undead, Psionic), CR7 - Human sacrifices that gain psionic ability beyond the grave. While that might smell a bit like cheese, it's at least got some cleverness in its tactics. Generally entombed, they have the ability to screw with PCs beyond the walls of their tomb so half the trick of fighting these fellows is finding and getting at them.
* Root Roper (Medium Magical Beast), CR9 - A surface variation of the roper. Yawn.
* Sandtrapper (Medium Plant, Aquatic), CR3 - A plant that lures prey into quicksand. Perfect for a jungle random encounter table and not much use for anything else.
* Scrimp (Tiny Abberation), CR2 - These nasty little poisonous pests are going to give low level characters in my campaigns a bad day or two. I want one of these rat-lizard things as an improved familiar for my next sorcerer.
* Shetani (Tiny Undead), CR1/2 - Tiny undead monkeys. 'Nuff said.
* Swarm: Delirium (Diminutive Vermin, Swarm), CR5 - A swarm of poisonous flies that induces a confusion effect.
* Swarm: Piranha Bird (Tiny Animal, Swarm), CR3 - A swarm of meat eating hummingbirds.
* Swarm: Vermiliants (Diminutive Vermin, Swarm), CR1/2 - A swarm of ant-like insects with a healing poison. I'm not sure why this creature is considered more dangerous than many other creatures that don't heal with its attack. Useless as a threat unless your PCs are somehow immune to its healing poison, but I suppose the idea has some value as a potential plot point.
There is also an appendix with a handful of more mundane animals such as the ocelot, the peccary, the quickdeath snake, and the spitting asp.
In Conclusion - I was overall pretty satisfied with this product. While there are some definite bores in the crowd, they're outnumbered by more useful and interesting creatures. The important thing is that I can definitely see myself getting some use out of about half the creatures in the book which isn't bad. Most of that will be fleshing out random encounter tables for jungle territory, though. There's not a whole lot in here that really screams to have an encounter planned around. I'm a bit torn between giving a three or a four rating and am going to lean towards the three due to the fairly shoddy art and layout.
