Posts
This
massive bestiary clocks in at 105 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial,
1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, leaving us with a massive 100
pages of content, so let's take a look!
First of
all - this is a massive bestiary and as such, I can't go into the details of
every creature herein without bloating it beyond belief. Additionally, I have
reviewed the ongoing subscription (with the exception of ~2-3 installments, I
think), so if in doubt, there are some reviews in the ether that are more
detailed regarding the respective creatures. Finally, if you're like me and
have accompanied the evolution of PFRPG's psionics, then you'll notice that
Ultimate Psionics no longer featured monsters - well, that's why this book
exists - handy player/DM separation by book - nice.
We begin
this book with some explanations on how psionic creatures work, what to look
out for etc., before 2 new feats that are used in this book are depicted - the
aberration-only feat that nets you acidic blood, plus one 6-rank-prerequisite
feat that allows the creature with it to avoid detection by e.g. blindsight
etc. - while I get the intent behind the feat and applaud it, I do think that
different abilities should add different bonuses to the perception-check for
fairness's sake - after all, quite a feat creatures are very much dependant on
blindsight and more often than not fail to invest ranks in perception. Now rest
assured that this is a VERY minor nitpick and will not influence the verdict,
but I'd urge DMs allowing this feat to take a look at eligible creatures and
potentially reassign skill-ranks.
All right,
got that? Neato, then let's dive head first into the array of psionic creatures
presented herein - and, as per the tradition, we begin with the iconic astral
constructs and all the table to customize them...but I assume you're familiar
with these guys. Much cooler would be the psionic inevitables, the automata -
crystalline machinery, deadly tricks, a regeneration only foiled by sonic
damage...these guys are nasty and the direct foes of aberrations and similar
creatures!
Classics
like the crysmal, caller in darkness, folugub, psion-killer or cerebrelith can
be found in these pages as well, though more often than not, I have to admit to
by now simply having a higher standard for monsters - when compared to quite a
few critters herein, the "classics" feel a bit conventional at times.
Now if
you've followed my reviews, Hellfire aura-bearing devils, cerebremorte undead,
beetles with a truly disturbing life
cycle and brain parasite worms may sound familiar - and if you haven't
encountered them, the phrenic hegemony, heirs to the illithids, may very well
be the more disturbing (and complex) type of creature - they were awesome in
the WiP-pdf and by now have more artworks - and these are simply awesome.
Speaking of awesome - when I complained about the polearm masters of the
Pyn-Gok race not getting any cool signature tricks via their plummage, I was
heard - they now have quite a bunch of cool additional tricks! The T'artys have
alas, not received a similar treatment - they still are ye' old
mischief-causing fey, only with psionics. *shrugs* Their artwork ahs been
upgraded, though!
A nod to
Forgotten Realms' Saurians can be found in this pdf alongside some delightfully
demented plant creatures -from the
classic udoroot that now has some actually unique tricks to strange,
mouth-studded trees, many of the artworks perfectly drive home the utter
weirdness and partially alien flavor of psionics - take the humanoid plants
with EYES, the Iniro. One look at their nightmareish artwork and you'll know
you want to use these fellows! The Mindseed Tree is no less disturbing to me
and just a fun adversary as well!
Dreamborn,
colossal magical beasts adrift in the ether, the last members of a dying race,
a strange array of mutated creatures that have been driven insane by a
cataclysm, only to endure...how? Upon death of one , another member of their
race hideously splits in two... The crystalline shackle using Dedrakons and similar
hunters make for iconic magical beasts as hunters that work well in a context
of a given world requiring appropriate predators.
And
speaking of predators - beyond the awesomeness that is the phrenic hegemony, we
also receive examples of psionic apex
predators - psionic dragons. A total of 5 dragon types are provided - all of
which radically different from the gem-dragon tradition: We receive the Cypher,
Imagos, Keris, Lorican and Scourge dragons. Cypher dragons are travelers of the
planes and do have some rather cool, unique abilities - they can disrupt
patterns just like the Cryptic-class and indeed, their age-category abilities
gained fall in line with this concept and remain their uniqueness.
Imago dragons
do not cause fear, instead using confusion and are the wilders among
dragonkind, coupling wilder-style tricks with a theme of oneiromancy etc. -
cool! Now if you're like me, at one point, the color-coding of dragons annoyed
you - while templates etc. by now allow for ways past that, simply introducing
the energy-type changing Kerris dragons and their tricks might do the trick as
well. Two thumbs up! Speaking of which - the Lorican dragon's tricks are
imaginative as well - these guys can wrap essentially a pocket astral plane
around themselves and exert control over this area, modifying magic affinity,
gravity etc. - innovative and just incredibly cool!
Finally,
the Scourge Dragons would be the dread-equivalent to the cypher dragon's
cryptic-affinity -masters of fear with
an affinity for the plane of shadows, they should be considered rather awesome as well. But this would not be
all - beyond these trueborn dragons, there also are Ksarite dragons and drakes,
partially composed of psionic force
-compared to the true born dragons, though, these guys feel less
impressive.
In case
you're looking for templates to apply to creatures, we also receive fodder in
that regard beyond aforementioned brain worm hosts - take the Marked One (CR
+3) template - studded with psionic tattoos they can spread, these guys are
obsessed with order and there might very well be a global agenda behind the
phenomenon... narrative gold hiding here. Speaking of which - by now, you can
create your own deranged trepanner-constructs -cool to see the missing crafting
information showing up herein. I just wished the psychotrope drugs of a
shambler variant had received similar treatment.
A massive
appendix of creatures by type, by CR and by terrain makes this bestiary easy to
handle for the DM - kudos!
Conclusion:
Editing and
formatting are top-notch: At this point a shout-out to Anguish on the Paizo
boards who did a massive bunch of editing for this book, checking statblocks
for even the most minute of errors. My hat's off to you, sir (or madam)! The
pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience and layout adheres to
Dreamscarred Press' two-column full color standard. The artworks provided for
the creatures herein are universally full-color and belong to the more
gorgeous, unique of artworks you'll see. While not adhering to a uniform style,
the artworks are great and the less than awesome ones from the WiP have been
exchanged with higher quality pieces - neat! It should also be noted that the
pdf of this book comes with an additional, more printer-friendly version -
nice! I can't comment on the print-version since I do not have it.
The team of
designers Jeremy Smith, Andreas Rönnqvist, Michael McCarthy, Dale McCoy Jr.,
Michael Pixton, Jim Hunnicutt, Jade Ripley and Dean Siemsen have done a great
job - the psionic bestiary offers quite an array of damn cool psionic creatures,
studded with unique signature abilities, using the rules to their full extent,
often significantly improving the less than superb examples among the
WiP-files. Indeed, the majority of the creatures herein have something
significantly cool going for them. Now if there is something to said against
the pdf, it would be that there is no template to turn non-psionic creatures
into psionic creatures and wilder in the class rules of the respective psionic
classes. This is especially baffling to me due to the cover offering an
aboleth, of which there is a distinct lack of in the book - why not provide
some psionic versions of these iconic foes?
This would
constitute the only thing truly missing from this book - a way to codify
psionics in a massive choose-your-tricks template - other than that oversight,
this book is a glorious bestiary, especially if you're looking for far-out
creatures...and for fans of psionics, there's no way past this, anyways. My
final verdict will hence clock in at a high recommendation of 5 stars, just
short by a tiny margin of my seal of approval.
You can get this great psionic bestiary here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com's shop!
Endzeitgeist
out.
No comments:
Post a Comment