Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I just picked up Rising Phoenix Games' Phoenixes—A Field Guide (affiliate link), and liked it quite a bit!
One minor caveat to mention here is that the listed number of pages on its product information is slightly misleading. While the book does have forty-six pages as indicated, this is presented as being twenty-three instances of doubled pages, even if you set your PDF reader to show single pages only; the product seems to have been formatted that way from the start, and so is quite a bit shorter than you'd think.
Of course, this is an understandable decision when you realize that the two-page spread is necessary for the multiple pieces of beautiful artwork! Bob Greyvenstein's depiction of the various breeds of phoenixes is absolutely breathtaking, and quite honestly worth the price of the book all by itself. Even the backgrounds and page borders are gorgeous to behold; this is a product that's as beautiful to look at is it is fun to use.
The phoenixes themselves, while not at all bad in their presentation, hit the notes you'd expect in a book of variant monsters. While I've spoken before about my enjoyment of variations on a theme, there's several instances here where it felt like the low-hanging fruit was reached for. There's an ice phoenix, for instance, and an evil phoenix, and of course a tiny, PC-friendly phoenix. None of these are bad, having enough powers and flavor text that each one is satisfactorily fleshed out, but it felt like I knew what to expect before I opened the book.
Almost.
What made me laugh in delight was that there was one phoenix here which I recognized, that being the shield phoenix, as an homage to Needle, the baby phoenix from the Conan the Adventurer animated series. While not a one-for-one adaptation (e.g. this phoenix can't talk), it's very clearly meant to be Needle, and even has rules for taking a shield phoenix as a familiar or animal companion (being a magical beast, I suppose you'd technically need the Monstrous Companion feat for the latter option, but being a CR 1/2 creature, I'd say the shield phoenix shouldn't require a feat investment).
Between the resplendent artwork, the nice stat blocks, and the delightful send-up to a cartoon I enjoyed a lot as a kid, I definitely got my money's worth out of this one.
One minor caveat to mention here is that the listed number of pages on its product information is slightly misleading. While the book does have forty-six pages as indicated, this is presented as being twenty-three instances of doubled pages, even if you set your PDF reader to show single pages only; the product seems to have been formatted that way from the start, and so is quite a bit shorter than you'd think.
Of course, this is an understandable decision when you realize that the two-page spread is necessary for the multiple pieces of beautiful artwork! Bob Greyvenstein's depiction of the various breeds of phoenixes is absolutely breathtaking, and quite honestly worth the price of the book all by itself. Even the backgrounds and page borders are gorgeous to behold; this is a product that's as beautiful to look at is it is fun to use.
The phoenixes themselves, while not at all bad in their presentation, hit the notes you'd expect in a book of variant monsters. While I've spoken before about my enjoyment of variations on a theme, there's several instances here where it felt like the low-hanging fruit was reached for. There's an ice phoenix, for instance, and an evil phoenix, and of course a tiny, PC-friendly phoenix. None of these are bad, having enough powers and flavor text that each one is satisfactorily fleshed out, but it felt like I knew what to expect before I opened the book.
Almost.
What made me laugh in delight was that there was one phoenix here which I recognized, that being the shield phoenix, as an homage to Needle, the baby phoenix from the Conan the Adventurer animated series. While not a one-for-one adaptation (e.g. this phoenix can't talk), it's very clearly meant to be Needle, and even has rules for taking a shield phoenix as a familiar or animal companion (being a magical beast, I suppose you'd technically need the Monstrous Companion feat for the latter option, but being a CR 1/2 creature, I'd say the shield phoenix shouldn't require a feat investment).
Between the resplendent artwork, the nice stat blocks, and the delightful send-up to a cartoon I enjoyed a lot as a kid, I definitely got my money's worth out of this one.
