JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Monsters of Luclin is a 128 page black and white hardcover that details the creatures on the Moon of the Everquest series. The back of the book claims compatibility with both 3rd edition and revised 3rd edition fantasy role-playing rules, but is that 100% accurate?
Opening up the book, I note that they've snagged a few things from the revision. For instance, creatures have a breakdown on their armor class, a base attack/grapple entry, and another entry for full attacks. On the other hand, damage reduction does not look reduced and still uses various enchantments to show strength. The Akheva, four-armed humanoids created by the Goddess Luclin herself, have DR ranging from 20/+2 to 40/+4. In addition, it appears that their feats are based off of the old formula of 1 plus 1 every four levels, as opposed to the new standard which follows character progression. In either case, the book is still 100% useable with Everquest, the game its meant for. So much for 100% compatibility.
The monsters cover a nice range of challenge ratings, but tend to be on the higher side. For example, we have two varieties of giant scorpion, one that's small, and another that's medium, that clock in at ½ and 2. On the other hand, we have Overfiend thought horrors, huge aberrations that clock in at a CR of 27.
Because this is based off of the online game, there are many variants of the same creature. The Spire Spirit for example, has three options, lesser, greater and lord, ranging from CR 13, to 15 to 18. This allows a GM to keep the feel of the online game alive and continue to use the same creatures.
One of the nice things about this book is the various appendices. These cover templates, with examples, Luclin Villains (all high level NPCs more fleshed out than their original appearance in Luclin), Ancient Songs and Spells (more powerful magic that is rare), Akheva-to-Common Dictionary, Monsters by Challenge Rating (including monsters from different modules and sourcebooks), and Monsters by Habitat. The habitat section also includes a nice map that provides an overview of Luclin's dark and light sides.
I personally like having the templates separated from the main body of the text. This allows me to look up the templates a little easier. These include templates like the Fallen, perfect for those GMs who want powerful skeleton undead, as they retain most of the abilities that they had in life, to Shadows, bodiless creatures of darkness.
The section on Villains is only going to be used by the most high powered campaigns outside of background information. I find it hard to think of a time when I'd need to bust out the Lord High Inquisitor Seru, a CR 34 who is a 30th level warrior with augmented abilities.
One thing I thought well done due to the comprehensiveness of it's listing was the habitat section. It provides descriptors for some of the locals like cold, temperate, and warm. It would've been nice if they could've included the challenge rating and page number of the creatures thought to make sure it was as useful as possible. Now it's great to see the different types of animals that can be encountered on the warm plains, but which book is it in? See, while the include footnotes for the various monsters that happen in sourcebooks, that don't tell you the difference between Monsters of Norrath and this book. I assume that most of these are coming from the Norrath book.
In terms of space use, it's fairly good for the most part. There are a few pages that are almost all white space but they don't crop up as often as I've seen in other SSS products. The only bad thing is the huge illustrations that are fairly mundane and take up half a page. For example, for the Reishi, a creature also known as the “myconids” or “shriekers”, do we really need a half-page illustration? Or the horse? Or the Kaas Thox? The mandatory advertising is here as well, this time three pages, two for the RPG, one for the Playstation 2 game.
The layout suffers a little here as they squeeze a lot of information in. The section on the Akheva details five varieties and then numerous examples within those ranks which crowds the pages. Art is good in most cases but there could be more to help the reader see the differences between variants of the same creature. For example the Shik'nar are insect like creatures that range in size form tiny to huge. Do they all look alike? How about a guide showing the various sizes in comparison to a humanoid?
Overall the book provides a solid value. Nowadays most 128 page books are $21.95-$22.95 and are in softcover. This one doesn't' provide quite the value that the Monsters of Norrath, a full color tome, did, but does a good job of illustrating the Monsters of Luclin and providing a GM with enough templates and variants to keep his players guessing for months.
Opening up the book, I note that they've snagged a few things from the revision. For instance, creatures have a breakdown on their armor class, a base attack/grapple entry, and another entry for full attacks. On the other hand, damage reduction does not look reduced and still uses various enchantments to show strength. The Akheva, four-armed humanoids created by the Goddess Luclin herself, have DR ranging from 20/+2 to 40/+4. In addition, it appears that their feats are based off of the old formula of 1 plus 1 every four levels, as opposed to the new standard which follows character progression. In either case, the book is still 100% useable with Everquest, the game its meant for. So much for 100% compatibility.
The monsters cover a nice range of challenge ratings, but tend to be on the higher side. For example, we have two varieties of giant scorpion, one that's small, and another that's medium, that clock in at ½ and 2. On the other hand, we have Overfiend thought horrors, huge aberrations that clock in at a CR of 27.
Because this is based off of the online game, there are many variants of the same creature. The Spire Spirit for example, has three options, lesser, greater and lord, ranging from CR 13, to 15 to 18. This allows a GM to keep the feel of the online game alive and continue to use the same creatures.
One of the nice things about this book is the various appendices. These cover templates, with examples, Luclin Villains (all high level NPCs more fleshed out than their original appearance in Luclin), Ancient Songs and Spells (more powerful magic that is rare), Akheva-to-Common Dictionary, Monsters by Challenge Rating (including monsters from different modules and sourcebooks), and Monsters by Habitat. The habitat section also includes a nice map that provides an overview of Luclin's dark and light sides.
I personally like having the templates separated from the main body of the text. This allows me to look up the templates a little easier. These include templates like the Fallen, perfect for those GMs who want powerful skeleton undead, as they retain most of the abilities that they had in life, to Shadows, bodiless creatures of darkness.
The section on Villains is only going to be used by the most high powered campaigns outside of background information. I find it hard to think of a time when I'd need to bust out the Lord High Inquisitor Seru, a CR 34 who is a 30th level warrior with augmented abilities.
One thing I thought well done due to the comprehensiveness of it's listing was the habitat section. It provides descriptors for some of the locals like cold, temperate, and warm. It would've been nice if they could've included the challenge rating and page number of the creatures thought to make sure it was as useful as possible. Now it's great to see the different types of animals that can be encountered on the warm plains, but which book is it in? See, while the include footnotes for the various monsters that happen in sourcebooks, that don't tell you the difference between Monsters of Norrath and this book. I assume that most of these are coming from the Norrath book.
In terms of space use, it's fairly good for the most part. There are a few pages that are almost all white space but they don't crop up as often as I've seen in other SSS products. The only bad thing is the huge illustrations that are fairly mundane and take up half a page. For example, for the Reishi, a creature also known as the “myconids” or “shriekers”, do we really need a half-page illustration? Or the horse? Or the Kaas Thox? The mandatory advertising is here as well, this time three pages, two for the RPG, one for the Playstation 2 game.
The layout suffers a little here as they squeeze a lot of information in. The section on the Akheva details five varieties and then numerous examples within those ranks which crowds the pages. Art is good in most cases but there could be more to help the reader see the differences between variants of the same creature. For example the Shik'nar are insect like creatures that range in size form tiny to huge. Do they all look alike? How about a guide showing the various sizes in comparison to a humanoid?
Overall the book provides a solid value. Nowadays most 128 page books are $21.95-$22.95 and are in softcover. This one doesn't' provide quite the value that the Monsters of Norrath, a full color tome, did, but does a good job of illustrating the Monsters of Luclin and providing a GM with enough templates and variants to keep his players guessing for months.
