Fell Beasts Volume II Review

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64693[1]By Thilo Graf

This book from Adamant Entertainment is 21 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page of advertisements, leaving 17 pages of content for the monsters, so let’s check them out!

I do know that this book has been published in the very beginning of PFRPG and thus suffers from some problems of the first publications for any system. I picked this up at a fire-sale and thus didn’t pay full price. The 3 fell beasts-files have since been lying around on my HD and I only recently unearthed them. So, how well has this book aged? Let’s take a look at the critters:

First, we get Cecaelia, a kind of merfolk with the lower torso of an octopus. While they are a cool idea and come with information to make Cecaelia characters, their racial traits don’t adhere to the PFRPG attribute standards and some special abilities in the section are not reprinted, but rather refer to the stat-block.

Next up are 4 creatures that are versions of the undead elementals and suffer from one fact: They have been done better. In both FFG’s 3.5.-elemental-book and the 3.5.-Ravenloft-book we had takes on the idea and both were better, more iconic etc. Fear Mongers are a kind of strife-causing incorporeal undead. Another nice idea that has been done better in other publications.

Next up is a genie, the Hayula. This is actually one of the coolest genies I’ve seen in quite some time – they can rend elementals from their victims and control the separated elementals. Nice mechanics for their signature abilities.

Malachite gargoyles are strong versions of gargoyles and come with information for the DM to make characters.

Masters of Coils are humanoids that can summon serpents as weapons and can summon cobra swarms (stats provided). Another cool and original idea.

Puppet Spiders are insects that animate the dead. I’ve also seen this done better in a Ravenloft book and in Urban Creatures & Lairs there is a better, more imaginative version of the puppeteer.

The Vile Mandrake, is a great take on the mandrake plant. It’s an awesome idea and has some rather unique ability to establish a sympathetic bond.

Conclusion:

Layout, formatting and editing suffer from the same glaring problems as the first installment of the series. (See my review of Fell Beasts I) However, there are several iconic, new creatures that I did enjoy and while I didn’t like several of the creatures, I can see myself using some of them. Due to the serious editing, formatting etc. glitches and some rather clunky mechanics, I’ll settle for 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 for the purpose of this platform.

Fell Beasts Volume II is available from:

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