JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Masters & Minions, Horde Book 1, Stirges, brings us one of the monsters almost every adventurer has had to cross at an early point in their career, the stirge.
For those who don’t know, the stirge is like a big mosquito that drains blood. That’s pretty much it. It’s an old favorite that stretches back to first edition. Some of the changes made to them in 3rd edition make them vicious with their ability to deal Constitution damage with a touch attack. Well, the author wasn’t happy with just having the information from the monster manual and has created a whole book to help put the monster in its classic place.
Broken up into different sections, the book focuses on monsters, characters, adventurers, characters, and encounters. This allows the GM to get a little more use out of the book than just a standard book of monsters. It’s far different than if the author had just taken a bunch of templates or something and applied it to the stirge.
In terms of the monster write ups, they follow the revise edition rules. This means that they have different armor classes (standard, flat footed and touch), base attack and grapple information, attack and full attack information, and ending with level adjustment. Outside of the block, the creatures have background information, combat information, ecology, and designer’s notes. One nice touch is the read aloud section. Another nice touch is the challenge rating on a shield with two swords crossed behind it. This allows you to quickly see what the CR of the creature is. Monsters include the following creatures: Ashmalkin, Blood Bloat, Hollow Husk, Stirge and Stirge Swarm.
The Ashmalkin is a diminutive fey that uses the stirge as a mount. The creatures fight with shocklashes and flamedarts. They are crazy little creatures that often fight to the death. One of the interesting things about them is that while they often serve the UnSeelie Court, they just as often, serve themselves. Makes for some interesting role-playing potential as the GM can have the party get caught up in a mix up between loyalists and ‘traitors’.
The blood bloat is an egg layer, an older strige that’s reached a new level in its life cycle. These creatures lack the winged mobility of their younger counter parts but are able to use their smaller wings to navigate the waterways.
Now the hollow husk is a pretty simple idea for an undead. A creature that was drained to death by bloodloss. The author has put some campaign hooks into these creatures. See the corpse is animated by a Usthulag, a creature from the negative energy plane. When those creatures animate the husks, they poke a hole in reality and sometimes attract other undead to that spot.
The stirge is the standard monster from the original book with more details on it’s ecology. It’s not a great deal of ecology mind you. This is no article from Dragon Magazine like the old Ecology of series. Not a bash against the book, but it doesn’t go into when the creatures hunt, if they have any hierarchy among themselves or other behaviors. It doesn’t discuss ambushing the prey or using hit and run tactics or any of the numerous tidbits that the old Ecology articles did, It covers where they live and how they deplete an area of living resources.
The Stirge Swam itself is another nasty little piece of work. They fly onto you and begin their devouring. Keep those area effect spells handy folks.
In terms of characters, we not only have the Ashmalkins with racial stats, but also a prestige class, the Wing Jockey, to augment the average flyer. It’s a class the masters mounted combat on its stirge, bonding with a specific creature.
The section on adventures is a little misleading. It includes some new items, like the Ashmalkin shocklash and flamedart, as well as details on the bloat chrysalis, the shell that the stirge spins to undergo it’s transformation into a Blood Bloat. The ideas on running the Horde, include some ideas that are hinted at earlier and include a few sample adventure seeds, but don’t include game stats, relying on the GM to have them handy. The most obvious one is the negative energy break through due to the husk. The bad news is that it can grow from mere incursions to eruptions which leave negative energy as a dominant factor on the land.
In denizens, we have characters like Twizz Arglegray, a 18th level wizard with an unhealthy obsession with undeath. Now he’s not a necromancer or anything mind you, he just studies death magic. A little different I thought were Wise Fat Mottled, a blood bloat vampire and Ragged Wing, a stirge ghost. The other encounters are interesting and can provide the GM with some options when thinking of how best to use this book. For example, Urthein is a hollow husk but he’s a very special one. Twizz wanted to make a lich whose human body died due to blood drain at the same time he became a lich. So now we have one very powerful hollow husk.
Further benefit is found in the sample stirge lair. It includes an overland map of an Ashmalkin swamp colony as well as a subterranean stirge nest that can be linked to the sample lair. The good news is that this set up uses an easy to read map and looks like it could easily be done with Dwarven Forge sets.
Usually when a book has one artist, the art has a solid consistent feel. In this case, Sang Lee did all of the art. One thing that’s odd about Sang’s art is that it varies in quality. Take the cover. It’s a picture that’s used on the interior cover and for the stirge itself. It’s a nice piece. Now look at the Hollow Husk on page 10. Not quite the same quality. Then again, look at Wise Fat, a Blood Bloat Vampire on page 31. High quality once again. One thing that annoys me is that I think he got the number of legs on the stirge wrong. Well, when I read the Monster Manual description, it’s okay, but when I read the material here under the Read Aloud section, “The six legs dangling from its furry abdomen…” indicate that the author and the artist aren’t on the same page.
One of the odd things, which I believe is caused by the printer, is that the interior cover suffers some ink loss. This doesn’t affect the interior material, just the interior covers. Another problem was the author didn’t catch the cut off on page 48, where it stats, “Political divisions within the ashmalkin nations are likely to lead to some factions attempting to negotiate when the” and ends there.
At 54 black and white pages for $12.00, the book is well priced. Other books at this price level are usually 48 black and white pages.
While I’m not the type of GM who’d create a stirge campaign that involved the players not only trying to discover the link between the various stages of a stirge’s life or have them set up their own stirge farm for the gallduroi (stirge bladder), I can see some GMs really taking to wing with that idea. I’ll have no problem using this to set up a little adventure where the party has to move through a swampy area and wonder about all of the strange corpses that look like their falling in on themselves and the look of shock when they first encounter a stirge swarm. I look forward to the company’s next book because here, the author has taken a weird little creature and given it a new lease on life.
For those who don’t know, the stirge is like a big mosquito that drains blood. That’s pretty much it. It’s an old favorite that stretches back to first edition. Some of the changes made to them in 3rd edition make them vicious with their ability to deal Constitution damage with a touch attack. Well, the author wasn’t happy with just having the information from the monster manual and has created a whole book to help put the monster in its classic place.
Broken up into different sections, the book focuses on monsters, characters, adventurers, characters, and encounters. This allows the GM to get a little more use out of the book than just a standard book of monsters. It’s far different than if the author had just taken a bunch of templates or something and applied it to the stirge.
In terms of the monster write ups, they follow the revise edition rules. This means that they have different armor classes (standard, flat footed and touch), base attack and grapple information, attack and full attack information, and ending with level adjustment. Outside of the block, the creatures have background information, combat information, ecology, and designer’s notes. One nice touch is the read aloud section. Another nice touch is the challenge rating on a shield with two swords crossed behind it. This allows you to quickly see what the CR of the creature is. Monsters include the following creatures: Ashmalkin, Blood Bloat, Hollow Husk, Stirge and Stirge Swarm.
The Ashmalkin is a diminutive fey that uses the stirge as a mount. The creatures fight with shocklashes and flamedarts. They are crazy little creatures that often fight to the death. One of the interesting things about them is that while they often serve the UnSeelie Court, they just as often, serve themselves. Makes for some interesting role-playing potential as the GM can have the party get caught up in a mix up between loyalists and ‘traitors’.
The blood bloat is an egg layer, an older strige that’s reached a new level in its life cycle. These creatures lack the winged mobility of their younger counter parts but are able to use their smaller wings to navigate the waterways.
Now the hollow husk is a pretty simple idea for an undead. A creature that was drained to death by bloodloss. The author has put some campaign hooks into these creatures. See the corpse is animated by a Usthulag, a creature from the negative energy plane. When those creatures animate the husks, they poke a hole in reality and sometimes attract other undead to that spot.
The stirge is the standard monster from the original book with more details on it’s ecology. It’s not a great deal of ecology mind you. This is no article from Dragon Magazine like the old Ecology of series. Not a bash against the book, but it doesn’t go into when the creatures hunt, if they have any hierarchy among themselves or other behaviors. It doesn’t discuss ambushing the prey or using hit and run tactics or any of the numerous tidbits that the old Ecology articles did, It covers where they live and how they deplete an area of living resources.
The Stirge Swam itself is another nasty little piece of work. They fly onto you and begin their devouring. Keep those area effect spells handy folks.
In terms of characters, we not only have the Ashmalkins with racial stats, but also a prestige class, the Wing Jockey, to augment the average flyer. It’s a class the masters mounted combat on its stirge, bonding with a specific creature.
The section on adventures is a little misleading. It includes some new items, like the Ashmalkin shocklash and flamedart, as well as details on the bloat chrysalis, the shell that the stirge spins to undergo it’s transformation into a Blood Bloat. The ideas on running the Horde, include some ideas that are hinted at earlier and include a few sample adventure seeds, but don’t include game stats, relying on the GM to have them handy. The most obvious one is the negative energy break through due to the husk. The bad news is that it can grow from mere incursions to eruptions which leave negative energy as a dominant factor on the land.
In denizens, we have characters like Twizz Arglegray, a 18th level wizard with an unhealthy obsession with undeath. Now he’s not a necromancer or anything mind you, he just studies death magic. A little different I thought were Wise Fat Mottled, a blood bloat vampire and Ragged Wing, a stirge ghost. The other encounters are interesting and can provide the GM with some options when thinking of how best to use this book. For example, Urthein is a hollow husk but he’s a very special one. Twizz wanted to make a lich whose human body died due to blood drain at the same time he became a lich. So now we have one very powerful hollow husk.
Further benefit is found in the sample stirge lair. It includes an overland map of an Ashmalkin swamp colony as well as a subterranean stirge nest that can be linked to the sample lair. The good news is that this set up uses an easy to read map and looks like it could easily be done with Dwarven Forge sets.
Usually when a book has one artist, the art has a solid consistent feel. In this case, Sang Lee did all of the art. One thing that’s odd about Sang’s art is that it varies in quality. Take the cover. It’s a picture that’s used on the interior cover and for the stirge itself. It’s a nice piece. Now look at the Hollow Husk on page 10. Not quite the same quality. Then again, look at Wise Fat, a Blood Bloat Vampire on page 31. High quality once again. One thing that annoys me is that I think he got the number of legs on the stirge wrong. Well, when I read the Monster Manual description, it’s okay, but when I read the material here under the Read Aloud section, “The six legs dangling from its furry abdomen…” indicate that the author and the artist aren’t on the same page.
One of the odd things, which I believe is caused by the printer, is that the interior cover suffers some ink loss. This doesn’t affect the interior material, just the interior covers. Another problem was the author didn’t catch the cut off on page 48, where it stats, “Political divisions within the ashmalkin nations are likely to lead to some factions attempting to negotiate when the” and ends there.
At 54 black and white pages for $12.00, the book is well priced. Other books at this price level are usually 48 black and white pages.
While I’m not the type of GM who’d create a stirge campaign that involved the players not only trying to discover the link between the various stages of a stirge’s life or have them set up their own stirge farm for the gallduroi (stirge bladder), I can see some GMs really taking to wing with that idea. I’ll have no problem using this to set up a little adventure where the party has to move through a swampy area and wonder about all of the strange corpses that look like their falling in on themselves and the look of shock when they first encounter a stirge swarm. I look forward to the company’s next book because here, the author has taken a weird little creature and given it a new lease on life.
