Minions: Fearsome Foes

Ghostwind

First Post
Within these pages reside monsters that haunt the worst nightmares of heroes from across the land. From the crushing blows of the ebant to the deadly attacks of the ulatra, adventurers from any world have new challenges awaiting them.

Each monster is written world-neutral, allowing easy placement into any campaign setting. Every monster contains a wealth of advice on how to best incorporate them into your world.
 

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

Price: $24.95
Pages: 96
Price Per Page: About 26 cents per page, only slightly above average for this type of product.

External Artwork: A black vellum-effect design with a horse-like jewelled skull in the centre, and incongruous bright red writing for the title.

Additional Page Use: The back page uses the same effect and has an overview of the style of the monsters within, with an intent to be generic. The first page contains credits and contents, the last page has the OGL. The inside covers are both blank.

Internal Artwork: All the pictures of the monsters are in colour. Unfortunately, I don't like the style of the eight artists, who all seem to portray most of the monsters as emaciated. The pictures of insects and the like therefore work the best, whereas the humanoids tend to have an insect-like quality to them. The use of colour is vibrant, at times overdoing it. Texture can also be odd at times. There is a hint of 1st Edition Monster Manuals to some of the art.

Page Layout: As with the 3rd Edition Monster Manual, monsters are not set on their own page. This means that sometimes pictures are not with their titles but on the next page, which can cause some initial confusion, although this quickly dissipates. Margins are small, chunks of white space are limited, and text density is fairly good.

Style: In the same way as the monsters themselves are generic, so too is the writing style. There is nothing here to get excited about, and little to complain about either. Information is given in a basic, concise manner. There are a few typo's.

Whats Inside:

Well, essentially 92 monsters in much the same format as the Monster Manual. However, each monster comes with an additional section entitled 'Campaign' which offers up ideas for adventures and campaign integration for each creature. The monsters are designed to be "world-neutral, allowing easy placement into any campaign setting".

There is a section at the end which ranks the monsters by Challenge Rating (from 1/8 to 20) with most being CR 12 or under. There are also four templates (The Crowd, The Fallen and Half-Troll, as well as a guide to designing Inner Planar Creatures, and their use as familiars).

Several of the monsters can be used as PC races if desired, and there are rules included for doing so.

In terms of Type, the monsters tend to be mainly magical beasts (19), monstrous humanoids (11) aberrations (9), and outsiders (10), with some of the types severely under-represented, such as giant (1), dragon (2), fey (2) and shapechanger (1), or not at all (elemental, ooze). There is no table showing creature by type and subtype.

High Points: I liked the idea of the world-neutral monsters and the 'campaign' section. The language used lived up to this promise and did not specify religions, lands, etc. that would have precluded use without amendment. There are a few monsters in here which interested me: The Fallen template (a fallen celestial) has potential, I liked the idea of the Death's Bloom fungus (a fungus that grows on dead bodies and ingesting it gives visions of the dead person's life), Hearth Horror (a sentient haunted place), Shock Beetle, and Ebon Spider (a spider whose poison gives recurring nightmares) amongst others. The long list of playtesters imply that the CRs and playability of the monsters has been well tested.

Low Points: I found that although the idea of genericism seems a good one, the monsters often seemed quite weird and able to be used in very limited situations. I found the generic style of writing to be lacking atmosphere and interest most of the time. I did not like the style of art and found that the art regularly did not match aspects of the text description. I found the naming of the creatures to be a bit stupid or simplistic at times (e.g. blue spitter, cavernivore, chortler, glacier beast, grumpet, gutwrench, secret eater, silencer, tar beast and void monster) and many of the monsters failed to grab my attention for more than half a minute.

Conclusion: Overall, I personally felt that $25 for these monsters wasn't justified. Despite the adventure ideas and the few decent monsters in here, the style of writing and the artwork was mediocre. In addition, the regular incongruity between art and text was frustrating and there were many monsters in this selection that I found to be weird, limited, or tedious. However, the appeal of monsters is perhaps more in the eye of the beholder (excuse the pun) than most other aspects of RPGs so if you need more monsters for your campaign, and like a touch of weirdness, then this might be worth a second look - there are links to several much more positive reviews on the Bastion Press website at http://www.bastionpress.com/Products/Minions.htm
so what do I know?
 

First of all, I should note that I am concerned with content, content, content. Others have commented on the artwork in the book - I tend to try avoiding comment because in many cases, artwork critique simply reflects personal taste. I find artwork useful in helping me envision a creature, but as long as it is technically adequate, it does not concern me. The artwork in this case is technically adequate, though I personally do not care for the style.

Having said that, let me cut to the chase. Simply put, this is a great book. Why?

Technical Reasons: Every creature is well-balanced and "rules-legal"; I haven't found any glaring mathematical errors in the creature statistics. At this point in the d20 game, publishers should have a firm grasp of the rules before going to publication, and it is surprising to see that many still do not. This book does not suffer from these problems, and as such, gets good marks from me on that count.

Portability: While every creature has an excellent physical/social description, including such should be par for the course when publishing a book of monsters. Bastion scores extra points for including a section on "how to integrate this creature into a campaign" with each creature. This is a fantastic addition that makes the book extraordinarily useful, as it helps DMs quickly integrate monsters into their campaigns and helps adventures write themselves.

Originality: There are a lot of original ideas for monsters in this book - and the best part is that they are spread out among all the monsters - every one has its own feel, and every one has unique abilities or combinations. Contrast this with a work where one or two monsters seem to have the market for originality cornered - all of the neat ideas/gadgets/abilities are stuffed into a small percentage of the monsters while the rest seem... well... blah.

Substance: I noted very little white space, and the text was in a reasonable font. Except for the Table of Contents, a short Introduction, and the obligatory License/Legal pages (the TOC and Legal stuff was necessary and the Introduction expected), the whole 96 pages is devoted to the Minions themselves, with a short section on using a few of the creatures as familiars (a nice touch, I thought).

Variety: This book contains monsters of all CRs, of all types (beast, aberration, undead, etc.) and of all elemental subtypes (air, electric, cold, etc.). This makes it useful for a wide variety of campaign settings. In my view, it is highly important for a monster sourcebook to deal with a wide variety of CRs so as to make it useful for many different campaigns (since character level is probably the biggest difference among all campaigns).

Comment - on filling a niche: I prefer to see a product take one of two routes: either give the reader a large variety of all types of creatures for "general use" in a campaign world or provide a large variety of creatures within a single narrowly-defined niche (e.g., Legions of Hell). This is because the niche book will be useful for those interested in the niche, and others will know that the niche book may not help them as much as a diverse book. Similarly, the variety book will be useful for most, but for someone wanting to run a campaign exclusively in the niche, it will be apparent that the niche book will be more useful. A book that can't decide whether it wants to be "general" or "narrow-niche" is problematic. As stated, Minions does an admirable job of being a "general" book.

Favorite Creatures: I will give only three, but some of my favorites include...

*Glacier Beast - While some may think of this as "cold-adapted owlbear on steroids," I liked the presentation, myself. Particularly nasty is the creature's ability to fling opponents through the air... especially nasty if there are sheer drops or (as is likely in an arctic environment) ice-cold water around. It is a simple and elegant way to make the creature more challenging and make it substantially different from the "hugging" owlbear.

*Bone Sovereign - Started out as a run-of-the-mill undead skeleton until (ostensibly through exposure to strange magical/evil energies) it achieved sentience. This baddie can control other undead and merge with skeletons (and can spew them out later, if desired). The idea of a huge skeleton spitting out "baby skeletons" rather appeals to me, and its "unhallow" aura makes it a tougher foe than just a big skeleton would be.

*Vapor Bore - Wins the contest for my "favorite extension of existing rules" by taking the concept of Charisma drains a step farther. We know Charisma is supposed to be representative of a character's ability to impose his will (as opposed to Wisdom, which represents his personal force of will as opposed to the force with which he affects others). What happens when it is drained/damaged to 0? Well, obviously, even the most willful character no longer has the ability impose his will on anything (the will itself and the ability to impose it are different things entirely). The Vapor Bore drains/damages Charisma down to 0, then "seats" its own ability to impose its will into the victim by "implanting" a point of its own Charisma into the drained victim, thus rendering the victim an extension of the vapor bore's personality. A beautiful example of using a rule in an original new way!

OGC/d20/Legal: My favorite part about the book, though, is that the text (though not the artwork) is 100% OGC. That is HUGE because it increases the book's re-use value immensely. Thus far, publishers have been loathe to use other publishers' material due to concerns about what is OGC and what isn't. This means that you may see many of these monsters crop up in other publishers' products. It also makes it an invaluable resource for other publishers themselves. This, to me, is important in showing Bastion's commitment to the Open Gaming movement as some publishers try to publish as LITTLE OGC as possible, trying to "protect their precious content" rather than "grow the pot." WotC has released a TON of material as OGC, I don't think it's too much to ask for other companies to follow suit. The more material that is put into the common pot, the greater the diversity of ideas available to all. This leads to better products all around. That's my own little rant, though.

Conclusion: Simply put, this is one of the best additions to my 3rd edition library - and the more I read it, the more it grows on me. That alone justifies the cover price (which some find too high), IMO. I would compare it favorably to any non-hardcover published for the d20 system (and even some of the hardcovers aren't as good).

I vote with my wallet, and Bastion Press, with its original, high-quality, 99% OGC sourcebooks, will continue to see my business. That's the best endorsement I can give it.

--The Sigil
 

yes, but what kind of minions? In the review there is no factual information about what is actually contained in the book, it is a half page rave about the wonders of the OGC.
 


Minions: Fearsome Foes is a 95-page softcover book filled with all manner of monstrous creatures suitable for any d20 campaign. This is the first printed release for Bastion Press and it contains 88 different monsters with Challenge Ratings ranging from 1/8 to 20. In addition, there are 4 templates useable for any campaign. 14 of these 92 entries were developed and contributed by freelance fans rather than actual Bastion Press staff members. One of the best and most original of these submissions is the Inner Planar creature template and, more specifically, the Blue Spitter which was designed by Kristin Johnson. (How can you not help loving a familiar that likes to bring his master little "gifts" such as fish heads?)

The strongest feature of this book is the suggestions for campaign use that are provided at the end of every monster entry. This feature gives you solid tips on effective use of that particular monster. Minions went through extensive playtesting and as a result, the monsters are very well balanced with little or no changes needed. Some of my particular favorites are the Am-Ren (a stealer of names), a Bone Sovereign (a unique skeleton with a surprise), a Forlorn (half-celestial/half-demon), the Quickener (a magical black hole), a Swamp Hellion (lizard with attitude, major attitude), and of course, the Blue Spitter.

Minions:Fearsome Foes is a worthy addition to any collection, especially if your players have memorized every entry in the core Monster Manual. Minions retails for $24.95 and is a good investment. You can even add more to your arsenal of unexpected monsters by complementing Minions with a copy of E-Minions: Cunning Creatures (available online in pdf format from Bastion Press). I highly recommend both of these products for any DM. I know my players are worried about the perils that await them the next time we play...

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
 


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