Mindscapes, Vol. II, Beasts of the Id

[Messageboard Golem]

This class book for psionicists is just what the fans have been clamoring for! It offers a variety of new prestige classes for psionic characters, as well as an alternate psionic combat system and some new feats and powers as well. Mindscapes also offers lots of all-new psionic creatures -- several of which were inspired by the art of Alan Pollack.

 

[GameWyrd]

Mindscapes: Beasts of the Id is short, sharp and to the point. The Beasts of the Id are supplemental to the Bruce Cordell’s Malhavoc Press Mindscapes psionic supplement. Beasts of the Id comes in at 34 pages and that includes cover, inside cover, index, back page, full page advert for a forthcoming Event Book and another page for the OGL text. There is room in the $7 (currently discounted to $5) PDF for 18 monsters and a new psionic power. The new power happens to be "Calling the Beasts of the Id" which does exactly that.

Even with respect the new power it would be wrong to describe Beasts of the Id as having nothing else going for it but 18 psionic monsters. The PDF glows with Malhavoc’s professional shine. The contents page, for example, has entries for every sidebar note. The PDF is in the traditional Malhavoc style, designed to be as easy to print off as possible, saving you ink and time. The sidebars predict and then answer those questions DM and players are likely to have. For example, the Mournwrath carries a deadly +4 greatsword and so the sidebar lets us know just how someone might preserve the weapon after the Mournwrath has been slain and just what the cost of doing so is.

You don’t strictly need the original Mindscapes: A Psion’s Guide to use Beasts of the Id – although it helps. The creatures are presented with the assumption you’ll be using the alternative psionic combat system, the mindscapes duel, from the Psion’s Guide but it is possible to dismiss this. The scrapeworm only comes into existence when a mindscape is called but it’s easy for DMs to ignore this.

The artwork is worth noting. The cover is by Alan Pollack and the interior by Spaceship Zero’s Toren "MacBin" Atkinson. For every Cordell creature we’ve a MacBin illustration and that’s a great help. Some of these psionic nasties are hard to visualise because they’re just so alien but MacBin’s work really does seem to hit the nail on the head every time.

Beasts of the Id isn’t just straight-up stat blocks either. The Qid are a possible player character race and so we’ve got their attribute modifiers, level adjustment and even notes on how their special attacks and qualities might translate. Their telepath ability, for example, doesn’t come with the vanilla race if it’s being used as a PC race. The likes of the Idbeast and Fungiform Ego are templates rather than stat blocks. We’re given the template and a sample creature. The sample creature ensures that a busy DM (someone likely to be being buying Beasts of the Id in the first place) has a plug’n’play monster for every entry in the download. As an observation the Fungiform Ego’s example is of a typical mercenary infected by the Beast, this typical mercenary is carrying a magical sword and wearing magical armour. Ever since I was reminded that Challenge Ratings are worked out with compensation for the weapons carried by a "typical party" I’ve been really interested in finding out just what designers like Cordell and Cook assume a typical party will have. Whether you would have given your average mercenary magical armour and weapons doesn’t impact on Beasts of the Id one whit but I find it to be a useful insight.
There’s a good range of Challenge Ratings in Beasts of the Id. Quite literally the range starts at CR 1 (the Qid) and reaches CR 20 (the scary Xenocrysth). In fact there’s a Beast for CR 1 through to 13. There are two CR 6, 8 and 13s, one 15 and then the Xenocrysth finishes off. I think this balance is just about dead on. There should be an encounter for everyone. Near the start of the download there’s a list of monsters by Challenge Rating. These entries aren’t hyperlinked so you can’t click on them and the page number entry assumes you’ve printed the document out and so are off by one if you’re using Acrobat’s page count (add one). Mindscapes: Beasts of the Id does come complete with bookmarks though and it’s easy enough to click on the tab and then on the monster name.

Beasts of the Id has my preferred default settings. The document opens so that the page is as wide as possible (rather than shrinking to make sure the whole length fits in the screen), it scrolls continuously (rather than one page at a time or with facing pages) and the use of the bookmarks keeps the page in fit-to-width mode. It’s just nice not to need to fiddle with these things.

Mindscapes: Beasts of the Id fulfils its promise and serves up a dose of psionic monsters. It does so without beating around the bush, in a tidy and well-organised PDF. If you want a range of psionic monsters designed and drawn for you then you’ll be pleased with this niche product.

* This Mindscapes: Beasts of the Id review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I'm just curious, the tone of your review seems to imply a rating higher than 3/5. What aspects made it a 3 instead of say... a 4?

 

[GameWyrd]

It's a 6/10 GameWyrd review. You can think of that has between 3 and 4 stars (since 5/10 is also 5 stars). I've some notes on my thought process behind the numerical rating.

Improvements? More creatures. The supplement didn't really have the "wow" factor. There wasn't a creature there that I really wanted to use. There was one creature that comes into being because of the Mindscape, I would have been pleased if they'd gone down that road further. A Shrink 101 into the Id, Ego and Superego would have been good to. Why not Beasts of the Superego? It's a bit expensive. Mindscape does the dirty and introduces time travel and says that time/something slaps down people who screw up the time line and I was hoping that we'd see some of that slap down in the form of Beasts here (okay, think Mage, think Paradox) but we've got the Dark Plea instead.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Mindscapes: Beasts of the Id is a collection of 18 monsters designed to be used with Mindscapes: A Psion’s Guide, all the monsters in this PDF are presented here assuming you will be using the psionic combat system from Mindscapes: A Psion’s Guide, that said you do not need Mindscapes: A Psion’s Guide to use this PDF. Some of the creatures detailed here also have tie-ins with When the Sky Falls, another book written by Bruce R. Cordell again When the Sky Falls not required but it does give additional information on some of the creatures. The challenge ratings of the monsters included here are spread out almost evenly ranging from CR 1 to CR 20. Out of the 18 monsters three are creature templates, three are possible PC races, and twelve are normal creatures. Two new powers are also included, and a new artifact.

This PDF follows the standard layout of most creature books, meaning the creatures are in alphabetical order with a stat block, description, section on combat detailing any special abilities the creature can use, and a drawing to help with descriptions.

New Powers:
The first power is a form of summon monster allowing you to summon any creature from this PDF. Each creature has a level requirement and has a number of power points that have to be spent before you will be able to summon it. The second power is called Beast of the Id and allows the psionicist to unleash the Id beast in them. Basically this power allows the caster to acquire the Id beast template for a short duration.

This PDF includes at least one of the standard creatures just giving them psionic abilities, a few notable creatures are the Psimech which is a template creature, the Nhalcid, and the Vultar (which is one of the races that can be played as a pc). The Psimech is one of my favorite creatures from this book. Basically the template merges a living creature with crystals and mechanical parts (forming all this into a type of construct). The abilities of this creature allow it to be used various ways, not only for psionic campaigns but for standard fantasy types as well. The Nhalcid is an insect like creature that implants its larvae into a living host. The larvae grow and eventually kill its host body going on to spread out and continue to reproduce. The last creature that I like is the Vultar. The Vultar are a vulture like race that make excellent rangers (their favored class). Their special ability is to psychically link with their prey granting them abilities to track and hurt their chosen prey.


Overall this is a good book, All of the monsters are well thought out and balanced to be challenging for PCs. The races that can be used as PCs are unique with different powers and abilities. The template creatures are a little weird but they can have interesting uses. I found with a little work you could use some or all of these creatures without psionics, a few could be used for other types of campaigns also (the Psimech and Nhalcid could be used in a futuristic campaign with little modification). This book does have one few draw back that bothers me a little, it makes numerous references to other books while not needed the other books do add histories or other information for a few of the creatures. While I don’t want tons of reprinted material it would help if there were at least a little of the information reprinted here. Otherwise this book would be a good addition for you if you are running or planning to run a campaign with psionics. If not, you still could get some use out of it but you would be missing the whole concept of the book.

 

[Psion]

Mindscapes: Beasts of the Id

Hmm. Beasts of the Id. Interesting title. It takes me aback to the SF classic (and a personal favorite) Forbidden Planet, in which the intrepid crew of a spacecraft (including a young Leslie Nelson) venture onto a planet whose native race was destroyed by creatures conjured from their own subconscious. Scary stuff, eh?

So does Beasts of the Id live up to this image? Or more importantly, to the bar set by its companion volume, Mindscapes: A Psion's Guide?

Mindscapes: Beasts of the Id is a PDF product detailing a number of Psionic monsters for use in psionic-ready d20 fantasy campaigns. It is written by Bruce Cordell and published by Malhavoc press. It is also available in print combined with the companion volume, Mindscapes: A Psion's Guide.

A First Look

Beasts of the Id is a 34 page PDF (including cover and ad pages), currently available from RPGnow for $5.00 US. It is also available in print in a combined volume with Mindscapes: A Psion's Guide.

The cover is illustrated by Alan Pollack, with an illustration of three bizarre looking creatures against a desert backdrop.

The interior is black and white (except for the ad page). Alan Pollack is joined by Toren "MacBin" Atkinson. Each of the bizarre looking creatures herein gets an illustration.

A Deeper Look

The book starts out by introducing a new power, Call Beast of the Id. The power is a clairsentience/psychoportation power, and allows the character to summon a variety of creatures in this book in the same vein as a summon monster spell. The power scales similar to the way "call weaponry" does; more powerful creatures require a larger PP expenditure.

The list of creatures that can be summoned by this power is limited to creatures in this book. Given this, and the title of the book, I was sort of thinking that there was some linking commonality between the creatures that would explain why these particular monsters are summonable while psionic creatures from the core rules are not. But alas, there is no such reason provided. These are just psionic creatures with no special linkage between them other than they are psionic.

Most of the remainder of the book is creatures, but as is the case with many Malhavoc products, there is a little extra material stuffed here and there, often in sidebars. A few of these are new items or powers relating to the creatures. One is a variant creature rule for psionic creatures: operant creatures.

An operant creature is simply a creature that has power points and pays power point costs for its abilities instead of having a flat usage per day (or unrestricted use) of powers. Cordell originally incorporated the latter method to make it simpler to run creatures, but it had some aggravating side effects. I was sort of hoping, when I started reading this, that Cordell would have included a system for converting existing psionic creatures to this method. Alas, while there is a template that will add operant abilities to any creature (including psioncs), no conversion technique is provided.

The creatures (of which there are 18) include three template creatures (with entries for the template and a sample creature) and two creature types with information for use as members of PC classes. A few of the creatures use the Dark Plea, an otherworldly entity expanded on in When the Sky Falls as a background element. Many of the creatures are very bizarre in appearance, almost like something that escaped a Lovecraft story.

A sampling of the creatures include:
-Idlock/Idbeast: The most direct reference to the title of the book, Idbeast is a template that represents a creature that has unleashed its baser, wild components. The creature becomes more urge-driven and animal like (including neutral alignment), and gains abilities somewhat like fiendish or celestial templates but psionic in nature.
-Mournwraith: This is one of the dark plea related creatures. The mournwraith are actually created from unborn children who are touched by the entity known as the dark plea, and are drawn into the plans of the dark plea as they grow. Mournwraiths are always filled with grief. In addition to some items provided by the dark plea, mournwriaths have psionic abilities such as an emotion effect limited to despair or hate.
-Orge Psychic: The ogre psychic is to some extent a psionic parallel of the ogre mage, though it is a bit tougher (12 HD). In addition to a buff selection of psionic powers, the ogre psychic features a "chakra drain" ability that siphons off power points or intelligence points. Given the approach of creating a psionic analog of an arcane-powered creature and the addition of Indian mysticism elements, it seems to me the Ogre Psychic would be right at home alongside creatures from Green Ronin's Monsters of the Mind.
-Scapeworm: One of the most directly related to the Mindscapes psionics system presented in Mindscapes: A Psion's Guide, the scapeworm only comes into being where mindscapes are formed. As such, this creature is only likely to be useful if you use the companion volume; in and of itself it is not that special (a big worm with a few psionics and a swallow whole ability.)
-Taenaid: One of the weirder entrants in this book, the taenaid are creatures that emerge from under the earth and are surrounded by silvery tendrils. If these tendrils brush the eyes of a character, it is drug underground and can only be retrieved with some difficulty. The oddest part of this is that the tendrils are handled using the gaze attack semantics. I don't quite get why touching one's eye is the necessary mechanic.

Conclusion

As should be expected from Cordell, the creature statistics are fairly solid. As mentioned, many of these creatures are very bizarre (almost alien) in appearance, and lack any sort of unifying backstory. This initially made me doubt their general utility in the game, beyond as functionally similar creatures to drop in alongside other alien entities (like mind flayers). Though I don't think Cordell creates as interesting a feel for these creatures as he does for the character options in Mindscapes: A Psion's Guide, a deeper read reveals a few clever bits and interesting ideas.

Though short, the PDF does weigh in at a $5.00. This is fairly cheap if your campaign if you find that the creatures fit. Mostly, this would include games like the above that cast psionic creatures as having a bizarre alien feel to them, using the mindscapes system, or using Green Ronin's Mindshadows setting.

Overall Grade: C+

-Alan D. Kohler