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Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for Pathfinder Second Edition: Sample Monsters $0.99 $0.00
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Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for Pathfinder Second Edition: Sample Monsters
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Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for Pathfinder Second Edition: Sample Monsters
Publisher: Infinium Game Studios
by Federico C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/22/2020 00:02:53

The primary purpose of a bestiary is to provide GMs with usable statblocks to run their games.

While the concept for this product is interesting and there is a lot of potential and value in it, and I appreciate the principles and ideas, the statblocks are all over the place.

Let’s take the sample given -a banshee- and compare each version given to the benchmark values for Pathfinder Second Edition (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll stick to basics):

At level 4, this Banshee has abysmal AC, high HP, near extreme attack and moderate damage. It fits the role of an HP sponge (like an ooze) with sniper-style offensive.

At level 12, it has low AC, moderate-low HP, moderate attack, and moderate damage. It would probably work as a very squishy skirmisher - the flight and spectral ripple help.

At level 16, it has high AC, moderate-low HP, moderate attack, and high damage. It can fit as an armoured tank with imprecise, hard-hitting strikes.

At level 20, it has low AC, moderate-low HP, extreme attack, and high damage. It would play as a glass cannon, with highly precise, powerful attacks (this is considering that the +120 is an obvious typo and it was meant to be +12).

If this is meant to be a realistic representation of the final product, I would say that it fails in its base purpose - to carry a creature across levels. The same creature will give wildly different feels, because there is no attempt to keep a guideline or relation between the numbers, or in other words, there is no creature concept that these numbers represent. Each version of it plays differently, and likely has different playstyles and points of balancement (I am not going to evaluate in detail whether or not each of these four entries is balanced for play, but I’d eyeball a hard no). Not only this is not true-to-the-rules as claimed, this feels like it has never been examined with the rules at hand. If this is one that’s been chosen for representation, what of the other 6000+ entries in the actual product?

I like the idea of quadded statblocks. I like the idea of being able to carry a monster across, and above all, I like the idea of having access to a wide variety of creatures. However, I cannot advise purchasing a product this size unless I can believe it’s usable.

If there is going to be an attempt at fixing the product... It'll be a lot of work. I believe the main issue is in the adjustments used to "quad" the statblock. A valid way to do it would be to relate the original base stats to the value tresholds and use similar tresholds, adequate to the new level, for each of the additional blocks, rather than applying the current "templates and tools" (which, clearly, aren't working). I can't speak to the baseline conversion, as format and rules references seem to be okay, but evaluating values would require a lot more examples. The one positive note is that at least the closest leveled version (lv12) seems to attempt to maintain creature concept, if a little undertoned, so something is going in the right direction.



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