Liber Bestarius: The Book of Beasts

[Messageboard Golem]

The Book of Beasts features
- A full range of creatures from Demons and Golems to small furry mammals and new PC races!
- New feats and special abilities!

Each creature entry contains
- A complete description of each monster fit for use in any setting.
- Adventure hooks providing advice on inserting the monster into your campaign.
- PC suitability entries offering suggestions for adding the beast as a member of the party!
- A full list of stats totally compatible with d20 System materials.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.
Beware! This review contains spoilers.

Liber Bestarius is a book of creatures from Eden Studios.

Liber Bestarius is a 160-page hardback coming in at $27. Font and margins are average and there is little white space but there are 5 pages of ads. Each creature gets its own set of pages (usually 2-3) and each is illustrated. The internal mono artwork ranges from average to superb. The cover art is a simple design showing an eye looking through a keyhole. Writing style and editing are fairly good.

All the creatures in Liber Bestarius have information on six areas - stats (including languages known), background (an overview of the creature with any history or essential facts), physiology/habitat, combat (with special abilities detailed in full where relevant), PC Suitability (with a rating from zero through to high - the stat block also contains Level Equivalence info), and usage (with adventure ideas). For relevant creatures, there is also an extra page dedicated to an NPC with stat block and combat tactics information. The physiology/habitat section is also broken down further for some civilised/sentient creatures to include information on government, religion, and social structure.

An appendix at the end of the book gives four mini-settings (a few paragraphs each) since some creature text refers to locations, which are described in a little more detail here. The appendix goes on to cover two new feats introduced in the creatures section, and lists creatures by size, creatures by type (and subtype), creatures by CR, creatures by level equivalence, creatures by alignment, creatures by climate/terrain, a list of NPCs with their class levels and relevant page number, creatures that can be summoned by the summon monster spell (with their monster summoning level), and a full index. There are over 60 creatures in total. Creatures range from CR 1/4 to CR 18 with a fairly good spread up to CR 13. There is also a good spread across type/subtype (with exceptions being dragons, shapechangers, and vermin), size, and climate/terrain.

Examples include Boggurt (a demon with a paralyzing belch), dark familiar (undead familiar), forest slayer (the twisted spirit of a dark wood), Lord Of Dream (a devil who dominates powerful people in their dreams to help it create a machine to turn the realm of dreams to a realm of nightmare), shadow ooze, skitterwing (evil fey spirit of mosquitoes), slaver (a scuttling arthropod that attaches itself to the back of victims necks to enslave their minds), and tisyah (intelligent reptilian humanoid quadrupeds that rule a savannah kingdom through martial prowess).

Conclusion:
I liked the variety of different types and power of creatures presented in the book. The possible use as PCs, the Instant Badass (ready-to-run NPCs) and the adventure hooks all added to the usually standard fare of creature books. What did not work quite so well was the occasional use of location-specific information, and important connections to other creatures elsewhere in Liber Bestarius. This seemed to be an attempt to get away from bland genericism, but to me tipped the balance the other way at times. It doesn't ruin the book, but I felt it unnecessary when the creatures were good enough to stand on their own, and perhaps one or two more could have been added at the expense of this information.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

With only 60 monsters doesnt that make it the thinest book currently out as a monster list?

Do you think the greater detail given to each monster makes up for this fact? I can spend a few dollars more and get 5 times as many monsters with Tome of Horror but none of the detail in this book.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Also out of those 60 how many would you call flushes. Monsters so off or weird you will never use them. What kind of default setting do you think the creatures were made to fit in?

 

[Simon Collins]

DocMoriarty

Depends what you want really. If you want something to fling at your PCs as a once-off, then this doesn't cut the mustard compared to something like Tome of Horror. If you want something like a cut-down version of the "Ecology Of..." from Dragon, to ensure monster placement makes sense, with additional adventure ideas and PC usage advice, then it about evens up in my opinion.

One of the things I particularly liked about the book was that very few of the creatures seemed off the wall - they seem pretty well thought out. There are one or two oddities, but a smaller percentage than I've seen elsewhere. They seem suited for a fairly standard fantasy D&D setting.

Hope that helps.

Simon Collins

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Thanks, I think I will pick i up today. Books like the Tome of Horror doesnt really appeal to me since so many of the seem to be first edition silly with no background.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Steven Creech, Exec. Chairman d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Liber Bestarius: The Book of Beasts is from Eden Studios, a company best known for producing the licensed version of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game. This collection of monsters is laregely the brainchild of Matthew Colville, but he did receive some assistance from a talented group of contributors. Liber Bestarius is a 160-page hardcover that retails for $27.00.

Critical Hits
This book is a collection of 61 new creatures that, while primarily intended for mini-settings (since many of the creatures relate to one another), can be adapated to fit any campaign with minimal work. Each entry is a little different than most monster books in that along with the regular stats, you also get information on level equivalence, known languages, background, physiology/habitat, PC suitability, useage, and occassionally a write-up for an "instant badass".

Critical Hits
The inclusion of level equivalence (where the creature is the equivalent of a PC of the listed level), PC suitability (the usefulness and difficulty of the creature as a player character race), and useage (a short listing of plot hooks) help make this book more versatile. There are some new special abilties such as thaumivore (absorbs magical energy) and searign skin (inflicting divine fire damage). A "badass" entry is usually an advanced creature with the addition of class levels and equipment. For the most part, a badass is ready to be dropped into any campaign encounter.

Critical Misses
One thing that would have been an improvement would have been the inclusion of a badass creature for every entry rather than a select few. The amount of open game content is substantial, but it would have been better to have opened everything up including descriptive text. Overall, there are few things I can really complain about.

Coup de Grace
The collection, while certainly more on the alien appearance side, offers some solid alternatives to the usual monster fare. Most will fit into a fantasy campaign just fine, but personally, I see a great deal of these creatures being ideal for science fiction campaigns, especially those where characters regularly visit alien worlds (Farscape, Traveller, Star Wars, etc.). For the content, the price is slightly higher than most books of this type, but for GMs looking for alternatives that their players haven't committed to memory, it is worth examining.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

The low number of monsters in the book did scare me a little at first, but the detail and potential-for-extended use of many of them make it far better than tons of goofy dime-a-dozen baddies with a claw-claw-bite and one moderately unique characteristic.

Tome of Horrors is good but it has a specific purpose, and that purpose includes silly old 1E monsters.

If it's a good monster book you want, get both ToH and Liber Bestarius. Then get CC2, 3, and Revised, N&D 1&2, Monsternomicon....