The Tome of Horrors Complete

By Paco Garcia Jaen

Scott Greene and Erica Balsley have been very busy for a very long time. And they have this amazing book to show for it.

The Tome of Horrors Complete, from Frog God Games, was announced not too long ago as a limited kind of printing. It comprises several years of work and it attempts to be a truly comprehensive bestiary for Pathfinder. Well, it is.

This hefty tome is nearly 800 pages of monster goodness (and badness!) and a few pages of advertising. It is just as heavy, btw… don’t think you’ll be taking this book in a pocket any time soon.

So what do you get? You get hundreds and hundreds of creatures to use in your campaign. There are two main parts to this book, the magic creatures and several appendixes at the back of the book that cover non-magical animals, templates for all sorts of aberrations and creatures, hazards, variants for snakes and venoms, one appendix dedicated to the N’gathau (pretty nasty extraplanar creatures), another appendix for Planes of Existence, another one wit new feats and subtypes, and lastly an appendix with all the monsters by type and challenge rating. Everything from  little fey creatures to humongous and immensely powerful creatures.

One thing that really impressed me and thought it’d be very useful, were stats to use some appropriate creatures as player characters. This will no doubt add a lot of possibilities for both players and GMs to use them in their adventures. Very nice touch!

To be honest, there is little else to say about this book. It is fantastic and probably the only bestiary you will ever need. Although the illustration style is all over the place and sometimes they appear pixelated, I can forgive them that. These creatures and illustrations have been created in the last few years and the obvious pixilation in many illustrations tells me they weren’t expecting to print this at this level.

Does it matter? Not really. It doesn’t detract from the quality of the book or the description of the creature. It would have been a nice touch to have the artwork unified, but, considering how enormous this book is, that task would be close to impossible.

If you like Pathfinder and want to make sure you never run out of all sort of creatures and tons of useful information, get this for Christmas. I promise you won’t regret it! Well deserved 5 stars!

The Tome of Horrors Complete is available from: