GRIM TALES: Creature Creation

[Crothian]

In addition to including the complete Creature Creation chapter from Grim Tales, this purchase includes a fully-functional Excel spreadsheet to walk you through the process step-by-step.

This 16 page PDF supplement presents rules for Creature Creation from the ground up.

Working your way through the d20 statblock, determine the Type, Size, Hit Dice, and so on for your creature, and the spreadsheet will automatically calculate the fair and accurate CR of your creature.

 

[Crothian]

Grim Tales Creature Creation

With all the monster books on the market it can be hard to imagine why one would have need for creating creatures from scratch. However, as one sees the similar monsters that keep coming out without a lot of differences between them one can easily see how such an item would be useful. The Monster Manual and the System Reference Document both have instructions for creating creatures. The problem with the document is they are missing one crucial piece of information; how to assign a challenge rating. Challenge Ratings at times looks like a best guess and at other times seem to be picked out of a hat. Companies are now starting to slowly fill in these major lapses of information for the gamers. This product, Grim Tales: Creature Creation, has a very precise method for calculation challenge rating of creatures.

Grim Tales Creature Creation is a new PDF from Bad Axe Games. The PDF is of material from their Grim Tales book but does include an excel sheet that does a lot of the work for the DM. The Excel sheet does auto calculating as well as has a list of all the creature abilities and options allowing the GM to neatly fill out the form and save them. It makes for easy organization and a good constant format. The PDF is only twenty pages long but is mostly lists of the abilities and their costs as well as explaining how it all works. It is pretty self explanatory and seems to work pretty well.

The product is simple to explain. If anyone has a creature they are creating or even want to double check any creature already made; this product will work. The information can be computed by hand or entered into the auto calculating excel sheet. It is a fantastic timesaver and I am very curious how some monsters from a variety of products turn out when the challenge rating is double checked. It would be interesting to see a table comparing the CRs of the SRD and then using this program to compute the CRs and see how they differ.

Now a lot of people probably do not need this kind of accuracy in their CRS. I for one do not have a problem if CRs are off by a little as I do have alternate ways of granting experience outside the CR system. However, I have a feeling that those people who want something like this will be very happy at the thoroughness and completeness of the products. So, while it is not for everyone those it is for should really enjoy it. And those like myself who will not be using it all the time it still makes for some fun when I want to double check an encounter I want particularly hard.

The work that5 went in figuring out these numbers must have been impressive. The product really does a nice job of making itself user friendly and having all the information in the PDF portion for those that want to see how all the numbers are calculated. This is another impressive utility product from Bad Axe Games.