Thoughts on Bestiary V

"If you had an off switch, Doctor, would you not keep it secret?"


You'll notice we skipped straight to Bestiary V instead of going in order. Well, I just bought this book recently and it's 300% more bonkers than I expected. That's with already knowing there's a fucking grey on the cover. So, I have a few thoughts that are outside of my usual thing on playable monsters. We're just lumping them into the same post, or else a bunch of scattered ideas get randomly shoved into a Dumb and Wrong later on.

The Bestiary books kind of have themes, and this one's theme is apparently outer god damn space. I fucking love it, but this book is going to be pretty divisive. Plenty of people would say this stuff doesn't belong in a fantasy game, and I can't even really fault that. I like messing with genre conventions sometimes, though, and this book is a ton of great ammo for that. I apologize for kind of assuming you have the book in front of you when I make these posts, but it's either that, or these posts are a billion pages long.

Discussion of player options are in blue.


Aerial Savant. I really hate when games do this. This thing is so similar to the invisible stalker that the entry especially mentions that fact. So, why bother creating it? I know, padding, but you can come up with better padding than this. I'd absolutely take something wacky and dumb over a monster that's basically been reprinted.

Akaname. This is just a stand-in for a general statement, I really like that Pathfinder pulls from mythology a lot. Japanese myths have a ton of super neat monsters that none of the previous D20 games really went into. A lot of Japanese monsters are ultra specific, like the one who's just a wall that walks around and blocks your path. However, there are so many others that I'd love to see adapted.

Android. One of the book's solid character races, plus everyone wants to play Data. Their Constructed ability is a nice compromise to my own adaptation of Living Construct if you want something lower-key. You can easily fit this into a fantasy world, too. Wizards are always experimenting with creating life, so I don't want to hear that this is impossible to adapt.

Animate Hair. What.

Apallie. I'm not certain because ooze has some powerful immunities, but if you ever wanted a playable ooze, this is probably it. CR 2, 4 HD, and other than being an ooze and getting decent stat adjusts, it doesn't really get much.

Ape, Megaprimatus. Am I happy that King Kong is in the game? Yes. Am I irritated he's only CR 8? Also yes.

Astomoi. I'm only talking about this awful race because I told myself I'd share my thoughts on every player race in this book. They kind of set the precedence this book has for being full of "challenge" races. Races you'd only play if you wanted to deal with some sort of sucky penalty on purpose. They get nothing special that would make you want to play them, but are also blind outside of 60 feet. They don't even get blindsense, just darkvision. Blindsense would be a decent trade-off here. All the Astomoi gets are vague penalties that aren't mitigated by anything.

Bone Ship. Not that this thing isn't cool, but...can you imagine what trying to kill it looks like? Standing on its deck whacking the floor with a sword?

Clockwork Familiar. Lord help you if your GM thinks you should have to pay for one of these before taking it with Improved Familiar, because they are not worth it. The idea of stuffing a consumable inside of it is cool, but why are all of the effects completely unrelated to the contents of the scroll, potion or wand you stuffed inside it? What's the harm in letting it activate the wand you put inside it? Sure, fireball or lightning bolt would be pretty powerful...but it'd also be pretty expensive to keep stuffing those inside your clockwork bird.

Crone Queen. Another stand-in for a reoccurring issue in this book. I don't always mind when a book does this, but there are a lot of monsters with only one line of fluff. I get it, that another page might be wasted, but...I dunno, come up with something. 


Dark Folk, Caligni. These guys are basically just Double Drow. I like adding more planar races, or even just dudes who are kinda like planar races. They don't get much, but it's a dex/con race(which is really rare) and See in Darkness is super nice. Really if you want to play a Darkness Guy or Spooky Chick without the baggage of Drow, this is a good one.

Deep One Hybrid. Another really interesting character race ruined by its disadvantages. They take Wisdom Drain if they're away from the sea, ensuring you'll never actually play one of these things. Like, I get it. Innsmouth was a port town. Deep Ones are fish men. However, presenting a character race without any regard to playability is short sighted. It pisses me off. Just give them hit dice or make a note that they're intended for NPCs. Fucking Wisdom Drain. Not even damage, drain.  Oh yeah, and they explode into Deep Ones when they hit 60 years old. Nice.

Demon, Cambion. Their ability score bonuses are a bit much, but these guys are close to playable. Sin demons are a neat idea, too. Knock their ability score bonuses down a bit if you're worried, but really unless they're playing a monk or doing some weird multiclassing, I don't think they're going to come up.

Dragon. Hey, in case thirty or forty different kinds of dragons wasn't enough for you, there's like eight more in this book. Because of course there is.

Emotion Ooze. Yeah, I watched Ghostbusters II too. It's good, but it's not that good.

Firbolg. 2e's playable giant race is back. At CR 4 and 6 HD, these guys are so similar to Ogre that anything I said about them, you could also say about Firbolg. They also get Reduce Person at will. The only thing to watch out for is that they have bonuses to their mentals, not penalties like the ogre. Bumping their effective CR may be in store, depending on your game.

Ghoran. This race was also printed in Ultimate Wilderness with a special Plant type that was busted down so low that it didn't make sense any more. Here they're presented as a character race with no mention of a gimped type. So I guess it's up to you if you want to gimp out the plant type or not. Considering Ghorus Seed is really their only ability, I can't say they're unbalanced even with the full plant type.

Ghoul, Leng. Did Lovecraft need special ghouls all for himself? Couldn't we just use the regular ghouls in the Bestiary? I mean, I liked Pickman's Model too, but come on.

Gray. When I saw a little big headed alien on the cover, I thought to myself "It's gonna be really hard to present this monster in an acceptable way.". They didn't succeed. This monster is dumb, it just has a bunch of meme-worthy abilities people attribute to gray aliens.

Gray Goo. https://youtu.be/RhMsboqMMzs

Ichthyocentaur. Well, nice to know God still hates us. Remember the rainbow winged wolf creature from 3.5? Yeah, me too.

Merfolk, Deep. GUYS. GUYS! MER-DROW.

Mummy Lord. This is playable on the level of being an alternate to Lich. By the time someone in your party is becoming a Lich, Mummy Lord would be on the table too. I also love seeing mummy templates, since it never made sense to me for mummy to be a lumbering, basic CR 5 thing.

Mutant. This is a fairly playable template, and I just wanted to say I think it's really cool that they added something like this, even if these are basically radiation mutants. Radiation definitely isn't something that a party in a fantasy game should be worrying about. I guess the entry does mention "Strange magical auras" too, but...the writing's on the wall. It's really obvious where these came from. That aside, this template can make for some really memorable encounters, or even some cool player characters. This can easily be used as antagonist theming without restricting yourself to a specific type or kind of monster.

Orang-Pendak. MONKEY! Fairly playable. It's weird to see a small size race with a bonus to STR, but I can get behind that. Their disadvantage irks me since this book's races all seem to have them for no fucking reason, but it's fine. a penalty when they're riding another creature or on a vehicle isn't likely to come up that much. It's something interesting that can be roleplayed.

Plagued Beast. I fucking love this template. It's a great little monstrous template that has a lot of legs. Not literally. I mean, I guess you could use it on a spider. I'm saying it has a lot of different ways to use it in a story. There's a ton of stories and plot ideas that could include these things. I'm just upset that there's no hard rules on creating these. I never understood that: A dedicated necromancer or evil cleric is just going to look around until they find one and use Command Undead on it. At that point, just let them blow gold or something on making one.

Reptoid. Really interesting stat adjusts(STR/CHA bonus, DEX penalty), very fun idea, and pretty good racial bonuses. Reptoids are definitely this book's winner in terms of player concepts. The fact that they're inspired by real world conspiracy theories is just a bit of icing. I particularly like seeing more variation in stat adjusts, and this book in general delivered a lot of that.

Robot. This is the first time the book really lost me. We already have clockworks. There's a ton of them and I feel they were a decent addition to the game. So, now there's robots. Which are different. You can't create robots like you can clockworks...but does that really warrant these being a completely different thing? All of the aliens in this book(even the ton I didn't talk about) can be justified in some way or included as planar travelers, but unless you're running a setting like my Terra Prime world, you simply can't justify using these. The artwork, while decent, is especially egregious. This is straight up anime stuff.

Shabti. I love this idea, and this is more interesting stat adjusts with a CON/CHA race. They're playable and fun, but with a big old asterisk on that statement. Shattered Soul means that, to be raised, the caster must succeed at a caster level check equal to 10 plus the Shabti's hit dice. This is a dumb little disadvantage that just serves to steer people away from playing the race. I actually couldn't find any information on when in the casting process you pay material components. If your GM rules that the fizzled raise spell still expends its material components, nobody is going to try more than once to raise you. If your GM rules that you only pay if the spell is completed(which is the more reasonable interpretation) then this is just a really big nuisance. It stains an otherwise neat concept.

Skinwalker. Very nearly the winner for Best Playable Thing in Book, these animal shifters are pretty awesome. That's especially so, considering that their skinshifting bonuses can change every time they do it, and it's not a per-day or otherwise limited thing. People who like versatility will love skinwalker. It's a great way to play a were-creature without having to bring monster CR and Hit Dice into it.

Thriae Dancer. Don't think I don't see you. Get back to Ahn Qiraj! I don't even know how you got out!

Trench Mist. I like the concept of a gas that creates juju zombies, but I almost feel like making the gas an actual intelligent monster is a bit silly. I honestly never liked gaseous creatures to begin with, you always end up in a situation where someone's swinging a weapon at it. Calling it Trench Mist also calls to mind this being a reference to Mustard Gas, and...that's maybe a bit insensitive.

Undigested. WHAT.


Overall, this is a really solid book, even if whoever was in charge of the player races felt like they all needed some kind of big disadvantage. In terms of monsters, it's got a ton of mythological stuff in it, and I always like seeing that instead of someone inventing some random shit. It has a bend toward aliens and sciencey stuff, but I have to be honest, I liked seeing that too. It's nice to see a guideline, for if you want to muddle genres and throw some aliens into your Pathfinder game. You can even use and keep the player guessing about how they arrived on their planet and never directly say they're extraterrestrial. Depending on the tone of your game, that might be the best way to go about it. Though me, I'm the kind of person that would straight up put a crashed alien ship in a random encounter. So I guess your mileage may vary.