I’m not going to do some sort of search-and-analysis on the existing Pathfinder monster spread, but Bestiary 5 feels like it has an emphasis on the planar front, including some high-end concepts – the four manasaputras guide the enlightenment of souls, two aeons promote balance, two agathion’s defend Nirvana, anemoi represent the cardinal winds, anunnaki shape civilizations, apkallu protect lawful civilizations, hundun trying to unmake the universe, four sahkil (rebellious psychopomps) who seek to corrupt, and titans to hold up the multiverse. Plus there are three kinds of angels, two archons, two azata, two demodands, three demons, three devils, five esoteric dragons (astral, dream, etheric, nightmare, and occult). The appendices, in addition to a slew of indexes sorting the monsters by CR, habitat and so forth, include reprints of material like templates, universal monster rules, and creature types, so you’ll never have to jump to another book to see what everything in this book does. And a couple dozen creatures use the rules from Mythic Adventures. A number of creatures have an occult flavor as presented in Occult Adventures, including the Occult Dragon (one of the five true dragons), the unfettered phantom (which is the kind of phantom that merges with a spiritualist), and the egregore (a psychic hivemind that looks like a clump of brains, and that gets bonus points for another phrenology reference, which apparently continues to amuse me). The afore-mentioned ghorans, androids, and skinwalkers are discussed in Inner Sea Races. Additionally, one of the appendices repeats another eight basic templates for nudging monsters up and down in CR.īestiary 5 also includes a number of tie-ins to other recent Pathfinder products. New templates include the mummy lord, mutant, plagued beast, taxidermic creature, tulpa, and vahana.

Characters looking for animal companions will find 13 options. Characters with the Leadership feat can potentially access another 21 possible cohorts. Spellcasters get six new standard familiar options (chicken, flying fox, penguin, red panda, seal, trilobite), as well as more options for use with the Improved Familiar feat: chuspiki (a gliding mouse), clockwork familiar (pretty nifty and exactly what it sounds like), liminial sprites (tiny fey with moth wings), and xiao (think the winged monkeys from Wizard of Oz). Potential player-character races include androids, astomoi (faceless, mouthless humanoids who experience and interact with the world rather differently), caligni dark folk, deep one hybrid (half deep one, half normal humanoid), ghoran (humanoid plants), orang-pendak (simian), retpoids (reptilian shapechangers … stage your own Skrull invasion), liberated shabti (originally Egyptian-style copies of the rich, designed to take the spiritual punishment in the afterlife, but now freed of that connection), and skinwalkers (not-quite-lycanthropes). In addition to creatures, there are a few additional character options, and also some templates to apply. The back of Bestiary 5 advertises over 300 new monsters the count is probably more like 275 or 280 if you don’t count multiple closely related creatures (such as four or five elemental versions of one basic concept). And some, like the five new true dragons or some of the manasaputras, get two pages for one. A few monsters get double-booked on a page (or more over two pages) if they’re closely related, such as a queen and swarm version of the same monster. In standard fashion for a Pathfinder Bestiary, most creatures here get one page, with as much as necessary taken up by the stat block and the art, and the rest devoted to descriptive text.

This full-color hardcover retails for around $45. Weighing in at over 300 pages, Bestiary 5 provides another giant helping of foes, allies, enemies, options, and opponents for your Pathfinder campaign. Bestiary 5 is … wait for it … the fifth bestiary book for the Pathfinder RPG.

Clan lord bestiary