An Endzeitgeist.com review

The second installment of the Monster Advancement-series clocks in at 19 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages SRD, leaving us with 15 pages of content, so let's take a look, shall we?

In case you haven't read my review of the previous Monster Advancement-installment - the basic premise of this series is simple: provide a concise, template-based toolkit to customize your creatures and make them more interesting than slapping a bland simple template on it - instead, the goal of these book and their achievement lies within the construction of a concise, big toolkit for GMs to use when crafting the respective monsters.

As in the previous installment, novice GMs do receive some advice on properly codified DR-stacking and researching the unique abilities sported by the modified fey featured herein and yes, there are obviously some thematic overlaps with the previous installment on undead - you will find breath weapons herein (again, with 3 damage-entries per CR), abilities that allow you to create fey with elemental themes and obviously, basic monster abilities like regeneration et al. are mong the tools a GM can add to fey via this toolkit.

Now if you think that this constitutes a carbon copy of the previous installment, you'd be wrong - obviously, the divine holy/unholy component is less pronounced here and mastery of animals and plants can be found in a multitude of cases herein. The general theme of luck/misfortune and curses also suffuses the modifications available within these pages. Intoxicating frolicking, commanding confused characters and euphoria-inducing abilities complement the themes of the fey further, while evasion and scavenging in bardic trickery, poison kisses and the like also feature herein. If, like me, you enjoy supplements and publishers actually cross-promoting, psioncis and pact magic-support will most certainly bring a smile to your face.

In the case of the optional flaws that reward PCs doing their legwork and the option for fey to go into dormancy, further options enhance the respective creature types further. Now if you've been designing monsters, you'll run into one issue: Fey traits pretty much suck. Not as bad as giants, but oh boy. Thus I pretty much enjoyed the fact that fey may scavenge in the properties and immunities of other creature types. Thankfully and unlike just about every monster book I've read, general suggestions to improve fey without changing the component of fragility and trickery can be found herein - though personally, I consider it a pity that no rules for super-illusion fey-glamers are provided.

The pdf also provides advice on properly using the template and 6 sample creatures made with the rules herein.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to Purple Duck Games' printer-friendly 2-column b/w-standard and the pdf has no artworks beyond the cover art, but needs none. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Julian Neale had a tough task in this pdf - I'ma huge fan of fey and loathe how much they tend to suck in PFRPG and how the basic fey fail to convey the component of alien psychology that ultimately renders fey distinct and memorable. Well, the former is not fixed, but that is not the task of a crunch book; what is fixed, though, would be an array of problems regarding predictability when exactly that concept should be anathema to fey. The toolkit presented within these pages is fun, concise, easy to use and over all, a good addition to a GM's arsenal. At the same time, though, I found myself wishing more than once that there was slightly less overlap with the undead and, more importantly, that this sported a means for fey to expand their penchant for illusions beyond the capabilities and providence of mortals. It should also be noted that this toolkit does not cover the abilities traditionally associated with the unseelie - shadowtheft and changeling-making, undead mastery and time-control would not be aspects found herein, rendering the toolkit very much in tradition with the depiction of mainstream fey by necessity of design-assignment.

At the same time, though, I felt as though exactly this rendered the overall toolkit feeling slightly less encompassing than the previous one, even though it is longer. However, at the same time, this pdf actually tries to do what few pdfs try - fix something that is not working as it should. This is a pretty big deal for me, for especially novice GMs should certainly find some sound advice herein to make their fey last longer and feel more efficient...and magical. Hence, I can still award this 5 stars + seal of approval, for what is here, is rather great.

Endzeitgeist out.