Bestiary 5 for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is out now! But should you buy it? As a general rule of thumb for Pathfinder Bestiaries or D&D Monster Manuals, the higher the number in the title, the less useful it is. This is something I learned before I ever started playing D&D. When I went over to my friend Marc's house in junior high school, I would flip through his monster manuals and marvel at the strange collection of beasts therein. I soon realized that, while there were some pretty weird creatures throughout all the books, it was the higher-numbered ones that were more likely to contain cheesy, dumb, or downright bizarre monsters destined never to be included in a random monster table or emblazoned on some knight's shield. It was Monster Manual IV, after all, that famously gave us the ice-skating dragon.
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Each monster could earn a point in three main categories: Utility, Personal Preference, and Precedent.
A monster earned a Utility point if I could picture a GM using it in his or her game. Obviously, in a good bestiary, every monster should score a point here.
A monster earned a Personal Preference point if I could see myself using it in a game. An ideal bestiary for me would have a perfect score in this category as well, but more likely it would fall somewhere around 75-80%, because every bestiary needs monsters that appeal to different styles of game and campaign setting.
A monster earned a Precedent point if it derived from mythology, folklore, or literature (like the Celtic firbolg, or the Lovecraftian deep ones), was based on something in nature (like the giant assassin bug or the prehistoric Kaprosuchus), or it was an adaptation of a legacy monster from an earlier edition of D&D (like the thought eater or the mummy lord). A monster doesn't necessarily need to score a point here to be a good monster. On the flip-side, a monster scoring a Precedent point wasn't necessarily a good monster. But it's useful to know how many monsters in a bestiary have some sort of grounding in mythology or legacy and how many are made up on the spot.
Finally, I decided to give out Bonus points to recognize particularly well-designed monsters or monsters that particularly grabbed me. This would give an original monster an opportunity to earn three points even though it didn't have Precedent. However, I soon realized that I also needed to subtract Penalty points for bad design, baffling choices, or particularly dumb monsters.
How did Bestiary 5 do? Here are the results:
First of all, you may notice that while Bestiary 5 boasts "More than 300 different monsters," I've only counted 264 here. That is because I left out monster variants that didn't have stat blocks (like the cave mantis shrimp), I evaluated dragons as a whole rather than by each age category (no separate score for the adult esoteric astral dragon and the ancient esoteric astral dragon), and I lumped monsters that were basically the same together (so air wysps, fire wysps, water wysps, and so on were all rated under 'wysp').
88% Utility: Ouch. 88% may seem high, but that means that there were 30 monsters in this book (about a tenth of the total) that I couldn't see anyone using in their game. For reference, these monsters were: Othaos (Aon), Choral (Angel), Megapon Ant, Anunnaki, Apallie, Apkallu, Gate Archon, Astomoi, Gancanagh (Azata), Raelis (Azata), Bagiennik, Chuspiki, Fastachee, Ghoran, Eclipse Giant, Moon Giant, Nuno (Gremlin), Domovoi (House Spirit), Manu (Manasaputra), Maharishi Manu (Manasaputra), Rishi Manu (Manasaputra), Moon Dog, Muse, Rope Dragon, Seilenos, Koto-Furushini (Tsukumogami), Kasa-Obake (Tsukumogami), Boroboton (Tsukumogami), Undigested, and Veela. Maybe you'll prove me wrong by getting really excited about one or more of these monsters. In fact, I hope you do prove me wrong, because people spent a lot of time and energy making those monsters and putting them in this book.
44% Personal Preference: This is actually a lot worse than I expected, even as I was reading through the book. I think the really good monsters that got me excited sort of erased the lackluster monsters from my brain. One of the reasons that there are so many monsters that I wouldn't use in Bestiary 5 is that the book chock full of aliens and extraplanar beings and sci-fi robots that just aren't right for the kind of games I run. There are also a lot of high-CR (CR17+) monsters, and high-level gameplay just doesn't appeal to me. Finally, and most importantly, a huge amount of the monsters in Bestiary 5 are meant to tie in to the recently released Occult Adventures, which I do not own and probably will not be incorporating into my campaigns, so those monster stat blocks are meaningless to me. If you want to run a campaign with sci-fi elements, buy Bestiary 5. If you are excited about Occult Adventures, definitely buy Bestiary 5. Personally, I would have preferred if Paizo had released a separate Sci-Fi Bestiary and a separate Occult Bestiary.
Wait, they did release an Occult Bestiary? Then why are there so many damn occult monsters in my Bestiary 5, Paizo?
52% Precedents: As I said above, there's nothing wrong with making up new monsters. That said, there are tons of beasts from world mythology that have yet to be statted up. I would expect big a bestiary like this to be about 25% made up stuff, not 48%. If you are wondering, the most represented mythologies in Bestiary 5 are (in no particular order): Japanese, Hindu, Ancient Egyptian, and Slavic. There are also a lot of monstrous or giant versions of natural creatures, plenty of dinosaurs and megafauna, and a fair number of legacy monsters (mostly old psionic monsters like thought eaters and brain moles, if you're into that sort of thing, but also cool stuff like muckdwellers and mummy lords).
Oddly enough, there are two examples of a mythological creature that was adapted twice into separate monsters in Bestiary 5. The Ketesthius (p150) is obviously based on the Greek Ketos, but so is the Cetus (p54) with its allusions to the Andromeda myth. More obscurely, there is a Welsh monster called a water-leaper, or llamhigyn y dwr, that is clearly the inspiration for both the Lamhigyn (p154) and the Water Leaper (p275). That just seems lazy.
0.5 Bonuses/Penalties: I really tried to be generous with my bonus points and stingy with my penalties. I ended up giving a lot of both out. I was surprised to see that the bonus points and the penalties nearly cancelled each other out! Apparently I gave out 21.5 bonus points and 21 penalty points. I also wrote little notes giving my reasoning behind the bonuses or penalties. Here are a few of those:
On the Bagiennik, a Slavic newt creature that has an acrid, disease-curing nose spray ability: "-1: Literally a living bottle of nasal spray."
On the Death Coach, which is exactly what is sounds like: "-1: Death Coach should be a construct or something. A coach and a driver and two horses are not one monster."
On the Delgeth, a burning forest fire elk: "+1: Burning elk is cooler than the original Navajo myth of carnivorous elk."
On the Kasa-Obake, a Japanese umbrella monster that I've made fun of before: "-0.5: Holy shit, they statted up the umbrella monster. Only deducting half a point, because that takes balls."
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Ghoran, a cheesy playable plant race that can plant a seed that grows into a new version of itself with different skills.
Rope Dragons: finally, a dragon with all the majesty and power of a length of hemp rope!
The monsters with the best total score (4) are:
Amphiptere, a wyvern-like dragon with a skewering tail
Therizinosaurus, a wickedly clawed dinosaur
Kawa Akago, a carnivorous water lily
Mngwa, an feline hunter that stalks the African night
Mummy Lord, a more powerful mummy. Enough said.
If you want to see the complete spreadsheet I used to score each monster, check out the attachment to my post on patreon here.
By my metrics, Bestiary 5 gets a 61% total score. But there are other things to consider. For one thing, Bestiary 5 has some great art in it. Sure, there are a few bad paintings in there (turn to page 45 to see the laziest painting in the book), but overall the art has greatly improved from the early days of Pathfinder. My favorite illustration is probably the Jungle Drake on page 100. Speaking of great art, d20 despot's own Kent Hamilton contributed artwork for the Cherufe, Ovonnik, Kurobozu, Shabti, Skinwalker, Tulpa, and Uraeus!
Another great thing about Bestiary 5 is that there is a lot of text. I have always loved how older monster manuals, like 2nd Edition D&D's Monstrous Compendium, gave you plenty of text describing each monster, how it fights, how it hunts, what it eats, what its society (if any) looks like, etc. Bestiary 5 has a lot of that for many of its monsters. There are still a few monsters that have only a sentence or two devoted to them, and one (the megapon ant) that has no information about it beyond its stat block. Many of the monsters are rather complex, and they are spread out over two pages just full of juicy stats and text and ecology. Unfortunately, most of the monsters that get two pages are monsters I just don't care about. I don't need two pages describing how the alien Anunnaki manipulate the development of civilizations, or a lengthy discussion of different theories about the origins of Twilight Pitri Manasaputras.
So, should you buy Bestiary 5? If you want occult monsters and sci-fi creatures, definitely yes. If you are a completionist, you need it for your collection. But really, Paizo should have released separate Sci-Fi and Occult Bestiaries for people who wanted those kinds of monsters and left them out of Bestiary 5. Bestiary 5 is watered down and full of weird stuff most GMs will probably never need, but there are some great monsters in there, too. I'm glad I have mine, I just wish it was more useful to me. I shouldn't have to dig so hard to find a reason to like a new bestiary.
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Who Statted It Best?
Longtime readers of this blog might recognize a few familiar monsters in Bestiary 5. Yes, some of the creatures I have statted up for Monster Mondays over the years have now been officially statted by Paizo game designers. But who did it best? Obviously, I am the best and most impartial judge for this contest, so let's begin:
d20 Despot's Gegenees vs Bestiary 5's Gegenees
This should be easy. Gegenees was one of my early efforts, so I don't expect it to hold up too well. The Bestiary Gegenees earn some points for having the Awesome Blow feat and the Clobber and Extra Attacks special abilities, making good use of this six-armed giant's many fists. I also found this bit of description amusing: "gegenees are particularly infuriated by creatures that attempt to copy their tattoo patterns for aesthetic purposes, as this is tantamount to laying claim to the family legacies of the gegenees." Apparently, gegenees should have Favored Enemy (Cultural Appropriation).
My gegenees, on the other hand, are sort of clumsily statted, using unarmed strikes instead of slam attacks. What I do like about my gegenees is that they are natural climbers, scaling mighty cliffs with their six powerful arms. I also think punching is more a gegenees' style than a greatclub and two heavy picks and two slams. Plus, my gegenees have rock throwing and rock catching, which Bestiary 5's gegenees do not for some reason. In the Argonautica, the classical source for the gegenees myth, one of the only things they do is use rocks to block a ship in a harbor, so I think statting these giants up without rock throwing was a major oversight on Paizo's part.
The Winner: Bestiary 5!
Looks like I'll have to go back and give my gegenees a fresh coat of polish.
d20 Despot's Chalicothere vs Bestiary 5's Chalicotherium
The chalicothere is another one of my earlier efforts, but it holds up pretty well. The Bestiary version is a lot stronger and has a CR 6 vs my CR 4, which is probably a better representation of the creature. Other than that, they are remarkably similar. I'll give myself a bonus point for including a variant chalicothere that has a bony dome on its head to slam fools with.
The Winner: Bestiary 5!
It was close, but 26 Strength just makes more sense than 19 Strength for a prehistoric clawed horse-beast.
d20 Despot's Chicken vs Bestiary 5's Chicken
The Bestiary version wins points right off the bat for the drift ability, which limits the chicken's flight in a more realistic way than my version does. Other than that, the stat blocks are pretty similar. I would argue that giving a chicken an Int score of 1, as I did, is more correct than giving it 2 Int, as the Bestiary did. Hey, both of these are familiars, so let's compare the bonuses that they grant their masters. Bestiary chickens grant their masters +3 hit points. Boring. My chickens grant their masters a +3 bonus on Profession (cook) checks. I definitely win that one.
The Winner: It's a tie!
My bonus to Profession (cook) checks is fun, and I think I have a better assessment of the intelligence of chickens, but I also inadvertently made them much better fliers than they should be.
d20 Despot's Wadjet vs. Bestiary 5's Uraeus
The Uraeus was a symbol used to represent the goddess Wadjet in Egyptian mythology. Wadjet was a protective deity associated with the sun who took the form of a winged cobra. Both my wadjet and the Bestiary's uraeus spit blinding poison into the eyes of their enemies, but my wadjet can also set things on fire with its gaze attack, which I think you'll agree is awesome. Also, my wadjet has the appropriate number of heads (one). The only downside to my wadjet is that for some reason I didn't give it the ability to fly, even though it clearly has wings.
The Bestiary's uraeus takes its role as a protector too seriously. It's a Lawful Good creature that protects a section of river from threats, killing dangerous river beasts and warning just rulers of danger. That's an adventurer's job! My wadjet is a Lawful Neutral creature which is often set as a protector of tombs, meaning it gives adventurers a good fight instead of depriving them of their livelihoods. As I said in my original post, "Why would I deprive a Good-aligned party of the joy of delving into an ancient tomb and fighting off a trio of winged heat-vision cobras?"
The Winner: d20 Despot!
By a landslide.
d20 Despot's Orang Pendek vs Bestiary 5's Orang-Pendak
The main difference here is that I statted up the orang pendek as a species of primate (an animal), and the Bestiary's orang-pendak is a humanoid and a playable race. I used the orang pendek as a vehicle to introduce the concept of intelligent animals, an animal subtype that lets animals have an Intelligence of 3-4 instead of just 1-2. In general, I am against having too many playable races, and I don't think orang pendeks deserve to be one of them. For one thing, they are too obscure. For another, they are too rare, and separate from the rest of civilization. There is an air of mystery about them. They shouldn't be defined by their class levels.
The Winner: d20 Despot!
But it was close. By the way, Wikipedia prefers my spelling.
d20 Despot's Giant Mantis Shrimps vs Bestiary 5's Giant Mantis Shrimp
Because there are two main varieties of mantis shrimp (descriptively called smasher and spearer), I statted up two different varieties of giant mantis shrimp. The smasher is good at smashing, the spearer grabs you and makes you bleed. The Bestiary giant mantis shrimp are somehow able to grab with their hammer-claws, and both of their claws are hammer-claws. I gave the hammer-claw of the smasher the cavitation ability, which acts similar to vital strike and also stuns the target. The Bestiary version does 1d8 extra sonic damage in a burst and stuns the target. Mantis shrimp have the best eyes in the animal kingdom. Bestiary mantis shrimp have +1 Perception and can see in supernatural darkness, and have blindsight. My mantis shrimp have +20 Perception, can see in supernatural darkness, and can see past illusions and magical obfuscations.
The Winner: d20 Despot!
My mantis shrimps are more true to nature, and nature is awesome.
d20 Despot's Ketos vs Bestiary 5's Cetus and Ketesthius
This isn't fair for two reasons. For one thing, I study sea monsters academically. For another, I made the ketos after reading the cetus and the ketesthius, so I have an unfair advantage. Oh well! The ketesthius is pretty cool because it has an extradimensional stomach. It's also nice that it can control the weather. The cetus has magically infused sea salt in its bite (??) and it can jump 1,200 ft out of the water (????). I do like its Mariner's Misfortune ability though. My ketos, on the other hand, is specifically referenced as an instrument of divine retribution, it has the abilities to seek out particular targets, can control the weather, can swallow people whole and spit them (and other things) out, and its stomach is unbearably hot. I know my mythology, and I use it well, if I do say so myself (that sound you hear is me tooting my own horn).
The Winner: d20 Despot and d20 Despot!
The ketesthius was well done, and the cetus had some cool stuff and some cheesy stuff, but my ketos is the best-os.
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I Snoozed, I Lost
Bestiary 5 is also full of monsters that I was planning on statting up but I either didn't get around to them yet, or I statted them up a while ago and was waiting to improve them before posting them here. These monsters include:
blue whale
cameroceras
ceratosaurus
cherufe
deep merfolk
encantado
firbolg
giant assassin bug
giant scarab
giant termite
kaprosuchus
karkadann
mummy lord
narwhal
penguin
plesiosaurus
red panda
sha
shabti
therizinosaurus
trilobite
troodon
I may revisit some of these if I feel I could bring a different perspective to them, but others are done really well. And hey, I've got tons of other monsters to stat up
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-your horn-tooting d20 despot
All copyrighted material used in this review has been used in good faith under Fair Use guidelines for critics and reviewers.
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