Goto [ Index ]

Having been quite pleased with the True20 products I had purchased (and reviewed) thus far, I was most interested to see the True20 Bestiary and what new and exciting things it could bring to True20 play.

Sadly, this book was very little of what I had hoped to find, as it could have just as easily been titled “The True20 Guide to SRD Creatures, Plus a Little Bit on How to Make Your Own.”

The Book Itself

True20 Bestiary is a 192 page paperback printed in black and white. A quick flip through shows much of every page devoted to text explaining how the game works, interspersed with B&W art of varying quality. The print is a shade on the small side, but that allows for that much more information to be presented.

While I was excited to see that Kent Burles wasn’t the sole interior artist this time (as he had been for the True20 Handbooks and I am not fond of his art), I was somewhat disappointed at most of the illustrations – most seemed to be little better than filler, and none particularly stood out. The way that the stat blocks are presented are also somewhat daunting from a quick flip-through, as much of it is dense text.

Chapter Breakdown

The chapter begins with how to “Make Monsters,” which largely boils down to what you want said monster to be able to do, how big, how powerful and what “type” it will be. Setting the “Creature Level” seems like it’s an attempt to be a rough approximation of the “Challenge Rating” from SRD D20, where CR = Creature Level. As creatures in True20 don’t have the issue with Hit Point escalation that the D20 ones do, this seems odd to work with.

Following the fantasy types are sci-fi types which do seem to be a good fit for such a campaign; it’s just a shame than none of said types get very well fleshed out examples in the actual “Bestiary” chapter.

The rest of the chapter rounds out the creation of said creature, giving examples for movement types, attack types and creature “traits,” which really would have been better described as “special abilities.” All of the examples are really just adaptations of the D20 SRD creature qualities, and none of them really seem suited for anything other than the fantasy genre.

Chapter Two: Bestiary

Remember my description on what I thought this book would have been better titled at the beginning of the review? That’s what this chapter – and the better part of the book – really encompasses. The next 150 pages of the book are essentially a conversion of the OGC monsters available, and nothing that couldn’t be accomplished on one’s own using either the conversion guide in the Revised Edition or “Appendix C” at the beck of the book.

The adaptation of the dragons was interesting, where the dragon colors were replaced by dragon terrain types (so a Red Dragon becomes a “Fire Dragon,” a Green a “Forest,” Blue a “Sky,” etc.), but otherwise the conversions are pretty much that – conversions.

As the chapter is pretty much all D20 SRD conversion, there aren’t ANY creatures that are specific for a non-fantasy game. Sure, you can use undead in horror games, and the animals can be for any number of genres where you would want to have animals… But there aren’t any generic robots, aliens or anything else non-fantasy. As one of True20’s strengths – in my opinion – is that it can handle so much more than just fantasy, it seems particularly hobbling for this product to basically just cater to those looking to play D&D 3.5 with a slightly different ruleset.

Chapter Three: Creature Templates

As this chapter is basically a word-for-word copy of the SRD material, I will refer you to there: Templates. The specific templates described can be found in the specific monster description of the SRD. Why this information wasn’t included in the previous chapter seems somewhat strange, as they could have saved on space.

Appendix A: Expanded Archaic Weapons

See the SRD Weapon List. I really wish there was more to say than that.

Appendix B: New Supernatural Powers

A handful (little more than half a dozen) of new Powers are presented, all of which are otherwise available in the Adept’s Handbook.

Appendix C: Converting D20 Creatures

The title of this appendix seems somewhat ironic to me, seeing as how it is pretty much the focus of the rest of the book. The conversion process seems somewhat belabored compared to the very concise version in the Revised Edition rules (three pages vs. 6 lines). The conversion of D20 spells is somewhat useful, and I don’t recall having seen it anywhere else.

Overall

Even for completists of the most extreme nature, I would be hard pressed to recommend this book to anyone. As just about all of the material is taken from the original D20 SRD and thus freely available – and the ease of conversion from D20 to True20 – this was so much less that I hoped the product to be. The exclusion of any other than fantasy creature types makes use of this book very limited.

Style: 2

Substance: 2