The freakshow's come to town: Let's Read the Advanced Bestiary!

[Volthawk]

So, over the last couple of days, as I was making creatures for my PCs to potentially face off against, the idea to do a Let's Read started to form, really first because of Rappy's thread here. After seeing BobVosh start another one, I thought 'why not?', so here we go. Looking at Rappy's thread, you'll get the idea about what happens.


What the heck is an "Advanced Bestiary"?

The Advanced Bestiary is a 3rd party book by Green Ronin, which has a variety of templates, from clockwork creatures to the Four Horsemen. They give example creatures, and also give advice on how to use the templates, or some changes to the template that you could do, in infoboxes.

So now that's all dealt with, onto the book!

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Section One: A Monstrous Toolkit

So this is the introduction section to the book. It gives ideas for actual reasons the templates exist, from the races actually being like that naturally (for example, you could say all Dwarves in your setting are made out of elemental magma, so they all have the Magma Creature template by default), to planar leaks (say, a breach to the Negative Energy Plane gives all nearby undead the Negative-Energy Charged template). It goes through how to apply the templates, and the order to make the changes. It tells us that all templates in the book are given a difficulty level, showing how simple they are to apply, which goes from 1 (easy) to 3 (difficult). There's also a guide to creating your own, or modifying existing, templates.

OK, now we're onto the templates for real.

Amalgam

Well, the first template in the book, one which combines two creatures together into one, first looks very complex (given a 3 on the above scale), but once you have a proper read through, it's pretty simple. There's just a lot to go through. This isn't for half-x's, though, as it's really the sum of the two component creatures, not the average (apart from ability scores, though. They're averaged, once size is taken into account). As for CR and LA, well they just let you pick, although they do give a few bits of advice. The example is an Arrowtaur, a hybrid between an Adult Arrowhawk and a Minotaur, who 'build labyrinthine nests', and it notes that 'uneducated folk sometimes mistake this cruel, 12-foot-tall, winged humanoid for a vrock'.

Amphibious

I originally thought that this was quite subpar to the Stormwrack version of this template, given that this one reduces land speed and natural armour, as well as a penalty on saves against contact and inhaled poison, as well as gas. However, after looking some more, I saw the benefits of this version. First of all, it works both ways, given water-breather's air breathing as well as a land speed. You also get low-light vision, and can add Aquan to available languages, which isn't really anything special. The good thing, though, is a +2 bonus to Con. The infobox gives two possible reasons for their creation: the fallback of magic, or the more interesting idea of 'the evolutionary results of natural selection and adaptation'. It also says they can pretty much live anywhere. The example creature is of an amphibious giant praying mantis, 'a terror of temperate swamps and marshes', that 'sometimes travels along rivers to populated areas in search of prey.'

Apocalypse Swarm

Apocalypse Swarms are one the 'Wrath of the Gods' type things. It makes the swarm a lot tougher, with extra HD, high fast healing and SR (admittedly, weak SR, only 11+1/2HD). Apocalypse Swarms deal out more damage, and their distraction ability lasts longer (1d4 rounds), as well as getting the Ability Focus feat for it free. They have fear effects, triggering when they down their enemies, as well as a splitting ability, making two swarms when dealt enough damage (10 in a single attack, so quite low). They also double in speed, making them a harder to escape. All in all, pretty decent for +3 CR. The example creature is an apocalypse hellwasp swarm, a CR 11 monster, and thinking about it, their new splitting ability works well with Inhabit, so if you're up against these things, and you don't finish them off, the extra swarms will mean you have more enemies to deal with.

Arboreal Creature

Right, arboreal creatures, as the name would suggest, are creatures that spend their lives in the canopies of whatever forests or jungles you have in your setting. It gains a climb speed, loses any flight abilities and gains a slam if it doesn't already have one. It can move along the canopy as a base DC 10 Climb check (subject to modifications), has an ability that lets it jump from branch to branch while climbing, and gets boosts to Strength and Dexterity. It gets some pretty big skills boosts though, with the Climb bonus due to their climb speed, bonuses to Listen and Spot, bonuses to Hide and Survival in forests, as well as a +15 bonus to Jump and Balance. All for 1 LA and apparently +0 CR. The example creatures are tree-swinging halflings. So, um, yeah.

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Well, that's all for now, but in the next update, we'll have undead made out of blood and armour, creatures made out of plant, and the result of lots of torture.

[Dubious Pie]

I love this. I hope you keep doing this!

[AtlanteanTroll]

Can Apocolypse Swarm be applied to something that isn't a swarm, like the Tarrasque?

[BobVosh]

Arboreal is kind of a neat template. Sounds like one could have a lot of fun with it. I keep imaging Arboreal Bears so you can get a dropping bear :D

Apocalypse swarm sounds a bit like its trying too hard. Although I imagine there are a few times it could be great.

[The Glyphstone]

If Amalgam doesn't actually give a CR calculation, what purpose does it have? It's basically taking up a page for something you'd have to homebrew anyways.

[MachineWraith]

Can Apocolypse Swarm be applied to something that isn't a swarm, like the Tarrasque?

You're a bad person.

[Rappy]

The example is an Arrowtaur, a hybrid between an Adult Arrowhawk and a Minotaur, who 'build labyrinthine nests', and it notes that 'uneducated folk sometimes mistake this cruel, 12-foot-tall, winged humanoid for a vrock'.

The arrowtaurs are neat-looking, but they don't quite evoke the epicness of the displacer beast-humanoid samurai whose art also adorns the pages covering this template. Of course, being Product Identity, they sadly had no chance to actually stat such a beast.

If Amalgam doesn't actually give a CR calculation, what purpose does it have? It's basically taking up a page for something you'd have to homebrew anyways.

Most likely for people who are lazy, like myself.

Can Apocolypse Swarm be applied to something that isn't a swarm, like the Tarrasque?

No, it can't, but this book does provide a loophole template that can allow you to produce an Apocalypse Swarm Tarrasque...but I won't spoil the secret for Volthawk's thread.

[Volthawk]

I love this. I hope you keep doing this!

Thanks.

If Amalgam doesn't actually give a CR calculation, what purpose does it have? It's basically taking up a page for something you'd have to homebrew anyways.

Well, the advice I mentioned is this :

Spoiler

Show

Challenge Rating: Compare the amalgam to both base creatures
and select a challenge rating based on theirs. Th en compare
the amalgam to creatures with Challenge Ratings up to 3
higher to determine whether the CR you have assigned is
reasonable.

Level Adjustment: In general, the level adjustment of an
amalgam should be slightly lower than the combined level
adjustments of both base creatures.

No, it can't, but this book does provide a loophole template that can allow you to produce an Apocalypse Swarm Tarrasque...but I won't spoil the secret for Volthawk's thread.

Yep, that'll be up next time.

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Bipedal

Well, Bipedal gives your creatures a pair of arms and a pair of legs, converted from other limbs. Unfortunately, it resets speed to be based on size, but lets it use weapons. Any Rake attack is also lost. The infobox says how it can change how creatures fit into the world, giving the example of 'a race of bipedal deer that live like monkeys'. I'm still split between thinking that's completely stupid, and completely awesome. It also says you could use it to qualify for a few other templates in the book that require bipedalness. The example is a Bipedal Nightmare, which acts like a kind of assassin, and either fights with weapons or just beats you with flaming hooves.

Blood Knight

OK, Blood Knights are the damned souls of fierce warriors who died in a particularly bloody manner. They're now just blood, inside a suit of full plate. Blood Knights are undead, who are bonded to their armour, and natural armour turns to a deflection bonus (with +1 extra), with the old 'gains a primary slam attack if it has no other natural attacks' thing (it comes up alot). It's natural attacks deal Constitution damage, and more Con damage is dealt automatically in grapples, plus Improved Grab to make it more likely, and all it's attacks make the enemy bleed, dealing more damage, until they get healed or pass a Heal check. It has a Grease effect constantly around it, and can spray a fountain of blood out of it's armour, exposing people around it to it's poisonous blood, which does Con damage, then nausea. It can store anything that fits into it's body, gains DR, boosts to physical stats, and a big bonus to Escape Artist (I guess being that bloody makes you hard to keep hold onto). All for CR +2, but LA -. Some suggested variants are to ignore the armour part, making blood gaunts instead, and to make the knights self-propagating, turning those it kills with Con damage into blood knights. It also tells you how to make dread blood knights, dread undead being more powerful (I'll come to them in later times), a CR +3 version that has more AC, gets bonuses to all it's stats apart from Int, SR based on CR, turn resistance, extra speed, and immunity to sonic, for some reason. One interesting thing is that it's pretty much for creatures with class levels, as it requires proficiency with full plate. Sure, you could just have the three armour proficiency feats, but feats are quite valuable. The example is of a dwarf blood knight who's just a bit bat**** crazy, having been killed by a falling giant woman who he killed, and then coming back and killing his dwarves.

Bramble

Well, evil plant-things. Type changes to plant, with changes made to RHD, BAB, etc. If you have low natural armour (+1 or less), you get more, if you have no natural weapons, you get a gore, not the usual slam. Scaling uses of Entangle, Improved Grab, and the ability to harm enemies if they try to pin, constrict, swallow, or damage you in a grapple. Once a day, you can get a free whip for an hour, that deals lethal damage and doesn't have the armour restriction of the normal whip. Twice per level, you can throw thorn-darts. The bramble gains Woodland Stride, as well as Thorn Walk, a version of Tree Stride that only works on thorny trees, plus they burn a bit more, with vulnerability to fire. It also gains proficiency with simple weapons, as well as the whip (so they can use their abilities properly, I guess), as well as Quick Draw. It also loses Strength, but gains Dexterity. They're usually NE, but it does say many are not. The example is a wild elf, although they seems to have done it wrong, as they didn't apply the Bramble stat adjustments, only the wild elf changes.

Broken Soul

So, Broken Souls are the result of lots of severe mental and physical torture. Apparently, nobody know what actually happens to make one. They're also fuglies, as the book says "Its twisted and broken body is a mass of bruises, scars, and infected, oozing sores". They're slower, from the agony, get natural armour from the scarred tissue, has a fear-inducing wail, a gaze attack that does Strength, Constitution and Charisma drain, and a torturous touch that does both HP and Dexterity damage, as well as making the target fall prone and helpless. They get DR, resistances, lots of Con, Endurance, Diehard and Toughness as bonus feats, and a bonus to Intimidate. All for CR +2, LA +4. The examples are erinyes, who have been subjected to especially vile torture, as they 'are accustomed to torture—in fact, many enjoy both giving and receiving it'.

[AtlanteanTroll]

Yep, that'll be up next time.

Excccelent!

Bipedal

Well, Bipedal gives your creatures a pair of arms and a pair of legs, converted from other limbs. Unfortunately, it resets speed to be based on size, but lets it use weapons. Any Rake attack is also lost. The infobox says how it can change how creatures fit into the world, giving the example of 'a race of bipedal deer that live like monkeys'. I'm still split between thinking that's completely stupid, and completely awesome. It also says you could use it to qualify for a few other templates in the book that require bipedalness. The example is a Bipedal Nightmare, which acts like a kind of assassin, and either fights with weapons or just beats you with flaming hooves.

Aweosme. Silly, but awesome.

[Thurbane]

Good stuff Volthawk, looking forward to the rest of this.

I almost picked up a hard copy of this at my FLGS when there was a sale on all d20 stuff just after the release of D&D 4E, but it was still a little pricey. I've got a soft copy saved somewhere that I got cheap online a while back.

[Rappy]

Okay, had some Internet issues recently, but I'm back, so I'll add some thoughts to the last batch.

Bipedal: This template is great for throwing off expectations. "It's anthropomorphized, it must be intelligent!" is a common enough gamer thought that using the Bipedal template on creatures can throw off the sense of security for a player. They may be able to reason with, say, bearfolk, but a Bipedal grizzly isn't going to be thinking about negotiations as it mauls their faces.

Blood Knight: I'm a big fan of the blood knights, as they just scream to be used as the minions of a high-ranking devil with their blood motif.

Bramble: Not sure what I could say about this one. It's...planty?

Broken Soul: Personally, I feel the Broken Soul shouldn't have any Level Adjustment. It's clearly a demented templatae that lends itself to NPCs, not players.

[Volthawk]

And I'm back!

Cave Creature

Well, you can guess the purpose of this, really. It gives a climb speed, blindsight (negated by Silence), bonuses to strength and constitution, but loses Dexterity and Intelligence, as well as gaining light blindness. The interesting this is their natural attacks, as 'A claw grows on each of its arms, wings, fins, or other such appendages.'. So, according to this, everything that is adapted to live in caves is a clawed monstrosity. The example creature is a cave squid. I haven't got much to say about that, really.

Celestial-Blessed Creature

This is one of 4 templates like it (demons, devils and genies get one each), where a celestial inhabits a creature to give it divine power. It can only combine with good creatures, but interestingly, once the two are bound, the celestial can't leave without a special ritual, so some people keep hold of the power even when it was agreed beforehand that the celestial would be released after a certain time (they insist on something being agreed beforehand), and some even use the celestial power for evil. Anyway, most of the template's effects depend on what celestial is involved. All of them deal extra damage to evil, give a bonus to attack and saves, gives another bonus to saves against poison and petrification, have good resistance to electricity, and are vulnerable to certain spells. Apart from that, the type of celestial determines what special attacks and qualities are gained, the stat adjustments, and LA. Of course, some are a lot worse than others, like the Ghael-blessed only gaining Fear 3/day and resistance to cold 10, while Brilani-blessed gain two SLAs at-will (Gust of Wind and Wind Wall). They're both LA+2. So yeah. The example is of a half-elf Blackguard named Bryven Nightkirk, who met his Hound Archon when he was still a paladin. They agreed on a 5-year blessing, but our pally liked the power, and ran away, eventually becoming evil. He has an evil rat.

Clockwork Creature


Clockwork creature is one of the templates in the book that turns the creature into a construct. This one is vulnerable to electricity, has hardness, is actually not mindless automatically (-4 to mental stats, but Int has minimum 0, so if the creature's dumb enough, they become mindless). It first acts mindless, but then it's intelligence becomes active. It knows if it's creator is near, and knows if someone's just disguised as him, and works on a wind-up key. They also get boosts to physical stats, and some resistances The costs are based on CR, and so is the level needed to make them. The spells needed are quite high level, though, with POA and limited wish being two of them. The example is a clockwork choker. A choker. With hardness and increased physical stats. And construct immunities. Be afraid.

Creature Swarm

Here we go. The way to make swarms of tiny Tarrasques. Creature Swarm turns a creature into a swarm of tiny versions of itself. It gets a hive mind, like the hellwasps, but the weirdest thing? It has LA. +4, specifically. So yeah, your PC has a way of being a horde of Fine humans. Or orcs. Or dragons. And so on. The example is a swarm of Frost Worms. So it's a horde of small icy worms that can paralyse you and still has a breath weapon. This has two infoboxes. One basically says "Think about what you're doing." and the other says "If you like, you can ignore the corporeal only restriction, and make a horde of tiny ghosts."

[hamishspence]

Cave Creature

Well, you can guess the purpose of this, really. It gives a climb speed, blindsight (negated by Silence), bonuses to strength and constitution, but loses Dexterity and Intelligence, as well as gaining light blindness. The interesting this is their natural attacks, as 'A claw grows on each of its arms, wings, fins, or other such appendages.'. So, according to this, everything that is adapted to live in caves is a clawed monstrosity. The example creature is a cave squid. I haven't got much to say about that, really.

Some real squid do have claws rather than suckers on their tentacles (the Colossal Squid is one) but this has nothing to do with being cave-dwelling.

Still, clawed squid are realistic.

[Volthawk]

Some real squid do have claws rather than suckers on their tentacles (the Colossal Squid is one) but this has nothing to do with being cave-dwelling.

Still, clawed squid are realistic.

No, they don't have claws, for some reason. I guess the tentacles didn't count as an arm, wing, fin or similar.

[hamishspence]

That is odd. Where are the claws on cave squid?

[Volthawk]

That is odd. Where are the claws on cave squid?

Cave Squid don't have any, despite the fact tentacles count in my mind, Green Ronin evidently disagreed. They just have the standard arms (0 damage, just grapples), and the normal bite.

[AtlanteanTroll]

Fear the Tarrasque swarm my PCs. Fear it.

[Volthawk]

Fear the Tarrasque swarm my PCs. Fear it.

Remember Apocalypse Swarm too.

[Malfunctioned]

So could you apply the Creature Swarm template to the Tarrasque and then apply the Apocalypse Swarm template to the swarm on tiny Tarrasques?

See if you can throw in the Amalgam template to cross it with a Black Pudding.

A swarm of tiny Tarrasques that can also split into more tiny Tarrasques if they take enough damage?


I bet this is gonna be an illegal usage somehow.

[Volthawk]

So could you apply the Creature Swarm template to the Tarrasque and then apply the Apocalypse Swarm template to the swarm on tiny Tarrasques?

See if you can throw in the Amalgam template to cross it with a Black Pudding.

A swarm of tiny Tarrasques that can also split into more tiny Tarrasques if they take enough damage?


I bet this is gonna be an illegal usage somehow.

Nope. All good so far. Then you add in Gigantean (later on in the book), bringing the swarm up to Huge size.

[Makiru]

Nope. All good so far. Then you add in Gigantean (later on in the book), bringing the swarm up to Huge size.

And somewhere, some party's collective brain exploded.

Seriously, I love the templates in this book. I think they're even more wacked out than the ones in the Book of Templates, which I might just LR at some point myself. I can't wait for the reactions you'll get for some of the coming up ones.

[The Glyphstone]

What do Solar-Blessed get?

[Rappy]

Seriously, I love the templates in this book. I think they're even more wacked out than the ones in the Book of Templates, which I might just LR at some point myself. I can't wait for the reactions you'll get for some of the coming up ones.

Good luck if you do. It took me three tries before I got a binder large enough to hold the printout of my PDF copy of the Book of Templates Deluxe Edition 3.5 in its entirety.

What do Solar-Blessed get?

Not to steal questions from Volthawk, but since I have my copy ready, lessee here...

...Ah, yes. The solar-blessed gets a one per day save-or-die "slaying strike" ranged attack, as well as the ability to cast discern lies thrice per day. It's LA +3.

[Makiru]

Good luck if you do. It took me three tries before I got a binder large enough to hold the printout of my PDF copy of the Book of Templates Deluxe Edition 3.5 in its entirety.

I appreciate the vote of confidence from the person that started this fad.

[Leon]

What do Solar-Blessed get?

A fear of Cloudy Days

[AtlanteanTroll]

I now need to buy this book. Huge Apocolypse Swarm Tarrasque that was can divide into a larger swarm. Hehe.

[Malfunctioned]

I think the final result of a party attacking the swarm leads to the group fighting hundreds of Fine 1HP Tarrasques that don't stay dead.

[Rappy]

I appreciate the vote of confidence from the person that started this fad.

No problem. I have a professed love of the Book of Templates anyway, so you picked a winning book.

I think the final result of a party attacking the swarm leads to the group fighting hundreds of Fine 1HP Tarrasques that don't stay dead.

And that doesn't even begin the logistical nightmare of putting those templates on a high epic creature...

Anyway, some thoughts on the templates from the last post in here, rather than heres and theres:

Cave Creature: You can really mess with your players by giving this template to things like goblins, creating a situation in a dungeon they don't necessarily suspect; and even if they do, a climbing, twitchy orc clumsily skittering along on the shadowed walls like some sort of distorted ape is certainly a creepy atmospheric touch.

Celestial-Blessed: Note that there is no restriction beyond that the creature must be of Good alignment. This is just begging for someone to have an NPC that is a solar-blessed solar who smites while he smites.

Clockwork Creature: Better than the clockworks of the Tome of Horrors, IMHO. I like variability.

Creature Swarm: This is a fun, but very, very abusable template, as we've already discussed.