Pathfinder Mystery Monsters Revisited

I normally don't hit up actual game products because there are so many other things out there but this one holds a special "ha!" for me.

I picked it up at Half-Priced Books along with several other Pathfinder books by Paizo. It was also during the 20% off sale. On one hand, that's awesome for me. $8.00 for a Pathfinder book? Awesome. But seeing multiple copies of each book indicates to me that it was a 'dump' and that Paizo is making too many books and that those books are being dumped into used book store chains. If we had any Powel bookstores around, I'd be curious to see if they had any as well.

But that's not what I get the "ha!" from.

Rather, it's that this book includes "cryptids", creatures from the 'real world' that are 'mystery' monsters in that even with all of our modern science, we can't find them.

Some of these are classic bits like the Mothman, the New Jersey Devil (aka the Sandpoint Devil in Pathfinder), Yetis, and Sasquatch

But that's not what sold the book to me.

Rather it was the Death Worm!

How can you not love a monster from Mongolia that is not only poisonous, but has electicity as well? I actually have a few miniatures of the thing that i got for cheap when I was looking for some monstrous creatures.

For me, I got my money's worth right there. The monsters themselves are a CR 11 so it's not a piddling threat either!

Some of the other beasties will get to see immediate use. For example, the bunyip has a 'muck' variant. My group is in the River Kingdoms right now with a lot of rivers and waterways so I'll get to throw one of those big bastiches right at them.

Some of the other stuff may come up later but between the death worms and the bunyip's immediate use in my game? Well done Paizo.

The book also includes the standard bits. An example monster for each type. One of the bigger bads is a sea serpent, the mourning one, that clocks in at CR 19.

It also includes names and historical/setting information on monsters not statted out. For example, also under sea serpent, the ashen worm, a white worm that is never about in the daytime but hunts at night.

It's a fun little book that can allow some quick use for a variety of CR's.

Monsters Resurrected: Terror Birds

Walking with Dinosaurs and others are shows that I enjoy. Monsters Resurrected is in the same vein if a little less impressive and cool. For one thing, it reuses the same footage over and over again. I get it, you're going to recreate the animal and you're going to show how awesome it was! But after you see the same elements over and over again, you're like, give me a damn break about it already eh?

Anyway, the first episode is about terror birds. I've seen these in D&D with all sorts of names including Axebeaks for example and there were probably several varieties of them in 3.5 with the utility of the OGL.

One of the interesting things about fantasy campaigns, Dungeons and Dragons in particular, is that the game isn't worried about the 'real' ecology of the landscape. Sure, Dragon magazine back in the day used to have some great ecology articles, and Kobold Quarterly has taken up that mantle, and even Paizo has their various 'revisited' lines. But to think that a setting could support as many giant, super predators as the typical fantasy setting has in it's back yard? Probably not going to happen.

Even here when talking about the terror bird and how it was an apex predator and had an impressive length of time as king of the wheel, it's two main competitors for food were not things like T-Rex or tool using man, but rather, sabertooth tigers and wolves. Turns out that not having teeth, being a solitary predator and laying eggs on the ground are possibly reasons why the wolves managed to use pack tactics, use packs to keep the young alive, and well, have really good teeth that can quickly down a meal before other predators come by.

To me, I always figured it was more like cow tipping. With those tiny little arms they probably got pushed down by proto-cavemen who were bored and couldn't get up like a little turtle on its back.

But no, seriously, when looking at these monsters with their razor sharp beaks and ability to inflict tremendous damage, with great eye sight, with fantastic hearing, and with great speed and stamina, in a fantasy setting, they would make for some great mounts. As meat eaters, they could dispose of any left over orcs, or if the orcs are riding them, any left over humans. In some aspects, they might make better beasts of burden for monstrous riders as those monstrous humanoids probably wouldn't feel too squeamish about feeding them any wounded on their side either.

Still, with the sheer variety that terror birds have been visualized with, its not that difficult to see different variants of the bird serving one master while another variety serves still a different one.

Another interesting aspect of these creatures, is that like with most ancient and old entities, they are always finding or testing out this theory or that, or how the animal might have lived and fought including some impressive kicking skills and larger speciemens.

Tome of Horrors Complete for Pathfinder

One of the things I tell people is that they have to support the things they like with money. I can't always do it and my priorities aren't always where they should be, especially on luxury purchases. But when I look at the Tome of Horrors Complete, I see both failure and success.

Failure is on the path of WoTC. Their restrictive licensing, instead of embracing the OGL, put this puppy right into the hands of a third party instead of killing it. Oh sure, it was dead for a while but the potential for it to be released under the OGL under Pathfinder was always there. For 4th ed? No using that license and not apparently by anyone who just wanted to run a book of 4e monsters out there using this material under a heading of "For the world's most popular role playing game" as I've seen some try to avoid the license WoTC is currently offering.

And it's a damn shame and yet a good thing. If such a book had come out at the start of 4e's lifespan, it would be using the 'wrong' math. Yeah, while we haven't got a 4.5 edition (ha!) the game plays differently now in combat and other aspects (rituals anyone) than it initially did.

The sad thing is its not like WoTC couldn't have used more monster support, especially up in the higher levels of things. Perhaps when they were talking about keeping core monsters like the Frost Giant out of the original Monster Manual to insure higher sales for the 2nd Monster Manual, they should have been working on some more epic material?

Anyway, for WoTC, the publication of this book is failure. On their part.

For Paizo, and for Frog God Games, it's a success. Even without cracking it open and talking about what I'm sure needs to be errata'd, the book sold out of its initial Pathfinder print run and went back for a second print. To me, this indicates that the Pathfinder market is healthier than the end run of 3.5. I'm not saying this is AWESOME news or anything but Necromancers games kept things close to the vest in order to avoid over printing at the end of times and well, we didnt' get a lot of reprints. The fact that this book is being reprinted? Good news.

In terms of errata, I'm disillusioned of it. WoTC has put out so much errata for their games that when I see another company or book with errata, I can't really muster a lot of energy to go, "sonofabitch" as opposed to 'm'eh'. Now if it's really game changing errata or just plain damn errors, like missing pages, yeah, the nerd fires get stoked there.

Better news in that if you were a fan of the old books, or a fan of 1st edition monsters and wanted to see them in Pathfinder, well, you've got them. there's a ton of inspiration to be found here. Hell, the book itself is like some primitive printed monolith waiting to be placed on the shelf.

WoTC, I hope that when 5th ed rolls around you realize you're not the producers of D&D being sold in Toys R Us and open up to the OGL again and Paizo, I tip my hat off to you and Frog God for this success.

Mongolian Death Worm

Lately, I've been more into miniatures than I have role playing. Not in terms of what I'd rather be doing mind you, but in terms of what I'm actually doing. The guys I game with have like ten people there and that's too many for me and the GM is very easy in terms of setting a table limit. While I don't hold that against him, ten people is too many players to have to compete with the GM's attention for and way too many people to make combat resemble anything like quick. And that isn't a knock at 4th edition.

When I used to play 2nd edition, one of the guys I played with, Dan Maxwel, put up a sign at Gamer's Paradise in the Century Mall that called for an adventure few could handle. He had a massive set up of drow, mind flayers and the actual dungeon itself build up. I played a few times but it took hours to get through a single round of combat due to the sheer number of enemies and players that were in it. A fun time but it resembled more of a board game than RPG.

So anyway, I'm at Games Plus and they're doing a buy three get one free thing on their discounted miniatures. I picked up some Mongolian Death Worms, two of them, and some other stuff. Even better because they were in the discount bin they were like $7.50 each as opposed to the new price of $14.00 Shakes hand at the invisible hand of inflation. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of metal here but man, $4.00 increase from the time Games Plus got them till now?

Anyway, I figure that I can knock the Mongolian Death Worms out pretty quick as hey, how hard can it be to paint a worm right? The worms are fairly large, easily seven to ten feet in length in the old 28mm heroic scale. The assembly wasn't bad but I was lazy and should have pinned instead of just applying green stuff and a ton of super glue at the join part.

They sprayed up well enough and I'm almost finished painting them.

But the funny thing was, for some reason, I wondered where they came up with the whole idea of Mongolian Death Worm. And hey, Wiki is your friend again on the Mongolian Death Worm subject. An animal that supposedly lives in the gobi desert that can spit acid and discharge electricity and has massive teeth to devour its prey with? Yup, snapped right up into the myths of D&D for me. And if you want some variants there, do an image search. Some great variants and images there.

Long live the unseen and unverified Mongolian Death Worm!