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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2010774" data-attributes="member: 9860">This is not a playtest review.Monsters Of The Mind is a creature collection from Green Ronin dedicated to monsters that use psionics. It is designed to tie in with the Mindshadows psionic campaign setting based on the island of Naranjan, inspired by the cultures of Southeast Asia and India, but can be used for other psionic campaign settings. It is suitable for use with 3.5 (bearing in mind the expected future release of a 3.5 Psionics Handbook).Monsters Of The Mind is a 64-page mono softcover product costing $14.95. Space is used well with a small font for the main text (though the subheading text is quite large and breaks things up well), average margins and no chunks of white space. Creatures are not kept to their own pages and new creature titles often begin mid-page. Each of the creatures is illustrated and the quality of art is mainly high - of particular note is a full-page Todd Lockwood piece showing an Asian-looking female assassin-type looking brilliantly supercilious. The cover piece showing an anonymous-looking monster doesn't have quite the impact that some of the interior illustrations do, though it is well rendered. Writing style is concise and workmanlike. Editing is good.As with most creature collections, CRs tend towards the lower end of the scale, so although the CRs range from 1/4 to 21 for the 50 or so monsters presented, about 2/3 of the monsters presented fall between CRs 1 to 10. There is no index of the monsters, nor any listing by terrain or type. The majority of creatures presented fall into the Outsider, Aberration, Magical Beast and Monstrous Humanoid types, but there is a good range overall. The book begins with a brief overview of the setting of Naranjan, and each of the creatures has a small section dedicated to outlining the creature's role in the Naranjan setting (of course, these snippets can be used to inspire ideas for use in other campaign settings).Monsters are a bit like art - it depends on your taste. Here's a brief selection of the good and the bad in my own opinion:Creatures I enjoyed:I tended to appreciate those monsters specifically designed for psionic use, such as Thoughtforms, which are outsiders from the Astral Plane based on the six psionic disciplines, the dorje ooze and dorje golem, the psionic celestials (psions who have transcended to deva or lunar status) and the damned thought, husk and demi-husk created when a psion is slain whilst he is being possessed by a psionic Asura Demon. I also liked the Makara dragon, which consumes its victims memories as well as its body.Creatures I didn't:The Naranjan variants of standard monsters (aboleth, couatl, yuan-ti) are probably great to add flavour to a Naranjan campaign but have limited appeal outside this use. The Yali, a cross between an elephant and a lion on an amoral quest for knowledge, seemed a bit ridiculous to me, as did the Kalavij, a gargantuan aberration that lurks beneath its illusion of a ship projected to the surface of the ocean waiting to feed on those who come to investigate.Conclusion:This collection provides a good selection of psionic monsters for use in any campaign where psionics are being used. Stats seem sound, though buyers should note that although level adjustments and notes on favoured classes may be provided, racial traits and tactics on a round-by-round basis are not. Monsters of the Mind provides an excellent addition to the collection for those interested in GR's Mindshadows campaign, but is a strong release for all those who want to use psionic monsters.</blockquote>

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