Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5e

If you like Cthulhu [Check!], 5th Edition [Check!], Monsters, and Madness [Check], you will love this book! [:)]

Hello, I am sorry if I am using the wrong way for my question. A French translation is published by Edge but only a physical version. There will be a PDF version? If so, do you have a release date? Thank you

I am not a huge Lovecraft fan, but I do like a few of the Mythos monsters, and so when this was on Kickstarter, I backed it at the PDF-only level. After seeing the PDF (which was delivered shortly after the kickstarter campaign ended) I upgraded my pledge to get a physical copy.

There's a lot of really good material here. In particular, several of the subclasses (in particular, the trap-focused rogue, ritualist wizard, and mystery warrior fighter) cover specific fictional touchstones that extend far beyond the Cthulhu Mythos itself. The new spells are super interesting and creepy as heck, and the treatment of the monsters and various elder evils of the Mythos are extremely well done.

In addition, the production values are even higher than official WotC books, which is just bizarre to say, but absolutely true. One of the best third-party books put out for 5e. Heartily recommended. Even if you're not a Mythos fan, you'll find plenty to use in here.

I got this product from Kickstarter, and therefore can't leave my review on the review half of this page. I however wanted to put my opinions of the product out there. This is the best most comprehensive tool for adding lovecraftian elements to your campaign, and while that alone would be nice Sandy Peterson goes the extra mile with respect to adding said content, regardless if you just want to treat this as a book to add some elements like a xgte-esque book, an extra monster manual, or a full on campaign setting it can work very well in all three capacities. So I will quickly break down my opinions on how this book can be of use to both players and GM's

Extra content for players: There are 22 new subclasses added in, with 5 of them being racially restricted or locked in some capacity. They are all fairly well balanced, but it is important to note that not all of them are combat focused and thus might be a little weaker in some combat situations, but shine more and make up for it in mystery solving...See more or Role playing portions.

As for the races they are all really cool, but the balance is more questionable here than with the classes, the only two major concerns I personally have are with the Gnorri and the Dreamland cat. With respect to the Gnorri they are a large race, and have a lot of cool and weird abilities on top of that, this alone is very strong, but with builder magic and each subrace giving even more unique abilities on top of that makes things kind of dicey for balance, that being said I wouldn't say they are the most busted race ever, as Half-Elfs for comparison are also really strong, but if you are a DM reading this I would say check twice if a player is picking Gnorri just to make sure you are okay with the abilities before allowing them into your campaign. The Dreamland cats issue is more simplistic, they have 9 lives or in game terms 8 times they can resurrect themselves. There are a lot of variables to consider when doing so, so it isn't something players can necessarily spam without worry, but I know that can be an issue depending on the type of campaign you are trying to run so just keep that in mind when allowing players to play dreamland cats.

For GMs: There are a lot of monsters here. In the 400+ pages of this book about half of it is dedicated purely to the monsters of the Mythos and the cults that worship/support them. One can easily brew quest-lines with the information on the cults contained within, but if you just want to use this book as a glorified monster manual to throw curve-balls at your party you certainly can. It also has a lot of new magic items that you could use as cool or madness inducing rewards depending on the type of campaign you wish to run. There is also new spells and a new way of casting them called formula magic. Formula magic are ritual spells anyone could in theory cast, but has a very decent chance of backfiring if you don't know what you are doing. A nice inclusion, but I know not every GM would want to run magic that could be used by everyone regardless of the danger to the players who are attempting formula magic.

Overall I love this book a lot and highly recommend it regardless if you are a player or a GM.

POD