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Behemoth3 comes out of the gate strong with an interesting concept for their first set of books: taking classic Dungeons and Dragons monsters, and updating them with logical ecology, predators and prey, and other influences. The Masters & Mutants series is meant to be both a homage to the 30 year history of D&D, and a resource for players and DMs who not only enjoy new monsters, but like to know the reasons why those monsters act the way they do.
I prefer this kind of PDF, picking a specific aspect of an existing system and enhancing it, rather than authors who attempt to rewrite the entire RPG genre in a 48 page PDF. But do we need a book entirely on Stirges? Will gamers be willing to pay $7.50 for a book about just one monster?
I received a code from Behemoth3 at GenCon, allowing me to download this book as a PDF for free. However, they didn’t ask me to review it, and I’m doing so on my own initiative. I’ll try to avoid any bias.
Impressions
The cover and internal art are both good-looking, and the book is laid out cleanly. A nice touch is that much of the art that would be in black-and-white in the print book is reproduced in color on the PDF. Behemoth3 scores major points for filling every inch of the page with hyperlinks, either going to other pages in the PDF or to the D20 SRD. What does ‘flat-footed’ mean? Click and you’re there. What page were Ashmalkin on? It makes the PDF much more useful, and takes advantage of the PDF format. My only complaint is that clicking anywhere on the cover page takes you to the index on p.58, which threw me off the first time I tried to read the document. (I tend to click my mouse wheel, then move the mouse to scroll on PDFs.)
One matter of note is that this book is not just about the Stirge. It introduces several new monsters, including a mature, egg-laying Stirge (the Blood Bloat), Stirge riders (Ashmalkin) and the reanimated husks of Stirge attacks (Hollow Husks). All in all, there are five monsters detailed in the book (it treats a Stirge swarm as a separate monster) each getting several pages. Some nice touches I appreciated were the designers notes at the end of each creature’s section, and a block of text marked ‘Read this Aloud’ meant to give players a description of what they would see upon encountering a new monster. The section on creatures takes up 11 pages of the 60 page PDF.
The next big section involves using the Ashmalkin, the Stirge-tamers, as characters. The book freely admits that the Ashmalkin are born and raised to ride Stirges, and many of their racial bonuses contribute to this. My initial reaction is that their racial bonuses are too much, though: -6 Strength, +8 Dexterity, +4 Intelligence, -4 Wisdom. I could see someone making a starting Ashmalkin with 26 Dex! Of course, this is something a good DM will watch out for, and it shouldn’t get out of hand. Page 22 of the book has a nice candid discussion of the Ashmalkin’s viability as a player character from a design standpoint. I wish more companies would ‘lift the veil’ like this and explain why they made the design choices they did.
I didn’t pay much attention to the new equipment and one new spell which were covered in the next few pages. I’m not a heavy D&D player, so I don’t know if these are balanced. The new spell, Share Feeding, is nice, but a little too specific, since it only works on Blood Bloats. Why not make it a general spell for use on blood-drinking monsters or familiars?
The adventure ideas and NPCs that follow are both detailed and useful, and as with everything else, centered around the culture that arises around the Stirge. A unique NPC is presented for each of the five creatures detailed in the book (again, treating a Stirge Swarm as a separate creature). The book is filled with tables for random events, such as random events while exploring a swamp or random events near a wild Stirge nest. Random tables aren’t really my style of DMing, but the tables don’t get in the way.
Tactical Units are a great idea and a useful addition to the book. Basically, the designers mix and match the creatures in the book to present small groups of monsters who complement each other. For example, several Stirges and an Ashmalkin Wing Jockey make up the ‘Aerial Unit.’ Ambushes, patrols, necromancy, and other situations likewise get a suggested group of monsters to throw at the players.
The book doesn’t contain any ‘sample adventure,’ but it does present several dungeon-like Stirge Lairs, complete with traps, treasure, and pre-determined encounters. I would have perhaps liked to see a short campaign that DMs could use to introduce their players to the idea of more complex monsters. I know that Behemoth3 runs a convention adventure which introduces the players to the new monsters one at a time; it might make a good addition to the book.
The Good
The book presents and represents its information in a useful format. The beginning of the book has a small table with the Challenge Rating of each of the monsters in the book, and the page number they can be found on. Several appendixes make up the last 5 pages or so, presenting important information about each monster, suggested encounters for certain character levels, and a table of contents which details all the useful information in the book.
It definitely succeeds at its stated goal – presenting a classic monster with an updated ecology, and creating a horde of other monsters which interact with the Stirge.
The Bad
Ultimately, this book is a DM-only resource. There’s really no useful information in here for the PCs; a new race and a new spell are about all a player can use. I also wonder how much your average player will care about these monsters – will they be interested in the Stirge metamorphosis? Do they care where the Blood Bloats come from? It seems like a DM might expend more effort forcing the Stirge into the story than he’d benefit by doing so.
The Ugly
No glaring flaws presented themselves as I browsed through the book – every section is proofread and laid out well.
All in all, the product definitely seems worth its price as a PDF. I’m not sure if there’s enough benefit here to justify a $15 print book, but fortunately Behemoth3 lets you apply the full price of a PDF to a print book, so there’s no risk there. Behemoth3 has several of these Horde Books coming out, so there’s sure to be some creature in the list that a DM can use. In particular, the next release on minotaurs sounds useful.
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