RPG Review: Bestiary 2

Review: Pathfinder Bestiary 2

Continuing in the tradition started with the very first Monster Manual published for D&D, Paizo are releasing a series of books containing monsters ready stated for you to throw at your unwitting players.

As a GM, you are either going to love or hate these types of books. While it does give you the ease of having monsters ready to go without the need to spend half your prep time creating them, it does mean that any player with enough money to be buying the system books and a good memory, are likely to know the capabilities of every monster you throw at them. Personally I find the time saving aspects outweigh any problems about player knowledge, especially when you remind players about the difference between player and character knowledge.

Anyway, that's an aside, onto the contents of the book.

90% of the creatures in the book get a full page, with more advance creatures getting a double page spread. Only a few have to share a page, but they tend to be basic animals. Each has a full colour illustration, as well as a compressive stat block and a description. The descriptions can be a bit lacking when the creatures abilities take up most of the page, but that is kept to a minimum by common abilities being referenced at the back rather than being printed at every instance.

The creatures range from CR 1/2 to CR 23, with a good mix of the interesting and bizarre. As well as OGL creatures missing from the first book, there are more creatures from myth, folklore, and out of copyright fictional creatures such as the Jabberwock and creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos. Introduced in this book are creatures that inhabit the other planes of existence to balance out the Devils and Demons that are more commonly encountered. Also included are an interesting selection of Fey types, when you want to annoy your PCs without just dropping a Pit Fiend on their heads.


Some of the creatures also have stats for use as familiars or animal companions. Coupled with introducing 4 new elementally aligned PC races, you have a host of new options for your characters.

The appendix contains all the relevant rules you need to run the creatures, including some interesting templates that can be thrown on monsters on the fly to tweak their abilities. That should keep your PCs on their toes!

Overall, another well produced book my Paizo. The creatures don't feel like B-list fillers, with many new and interesting ones in amongst old favourites.