The cards are beautiful and they work artfully together to generate characters. But, they all arrived stinking of cannabis. What's up with that?

The original Atlas Animalia was an excellent supplement, with plenty of great ideas that made it both very adaptable and very creative. I was very excited to have some stats to match with those ideas--I'm not the sort of DM who likes to sink too much time into creating and tweaking statblocks, when I can avoid it.

Unfortunately, buying this book didn't really help me avoid that. The statistics included are badly written and badly edited, even if one swallows some of the broader questionable decisions made about Challenge Ratings. There are several creatures here whose stats aren't even finished--their ability scores are all still at 10, or they're identical to chunks and traits from other statblocks which were clearly copied in some early stage for planning or formatting, and never finished. As you can see in the comments, this has already been pointed out and known to the authors for several years, and there's been no update. (I waited a couple years myself before writing this.)

Even if you were willing to purchase it for the 90-95% of creatures whose stats are actually finished, those finished stats aren't reliable for your games. They're severely imbalanced, in both directions. For instance, the CR1 Rust Lice Swarm deals an average of 12 damage in a single attack; and while it only has one per round, it's a Large swarm, so it can deal that damage simultaneously to everything in four squares. RAW, it oneshots most first-level characters in a single hit. Give this thing one round of poor positioning, and it'll wipe a party itself. Keep in mind that most parties should be able to fight more than one creature of their level's CR per day. And that it's got 37 HP. To fight level 1s.

If you're reading this and you don't own the Atlas Animalia, you should absolutely go buy that! It's an excellent resource--it'll not only make your fantasy biology immediately more convincing, it'll also show you by example how to do more of the same yourself. But this 'statbook' is not worth your time unless for some reason you really want to drop $6 on statblocks you'll still have to change about half of each. Just write your own off the original product's abstract info. They'll probably fit your campaign needs better anyway.

Re: all of the Baby Bestiary line of products: the art is incredible, the effort put into finding that many species-appropriate synonyms for "baby" is impressive, and the mechanics in the Companion Rules are interesting, but the way the series explicitly describes and treats fully sophont entities with intelligence equal to or greater than humanoid PCs as animals to be tamed and kept as pets is, to put it mildly, extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely problematic.

This book has given me more ideas for interesting characters than any other book that has come out in years.

Why I bought the book

• Competitive Cooking Rules
• Cooking and eating monsters
• two seperate adventures that are just cooking shows mixed with D&D. LOVE IT!

What Surprised me.

• The Druid Subclass is truly something special. The idea of sharing beast shape through potions is well thought out and I was amazed at the care taken to keep it balanced.
• The art for the Paladin of Beauty always makes me smile.
• The layout for the adventures are glorious.
• The sheer number of backgrounds available for working class. Farming, shipping, cooking, serving, butlering. All wonderful ideas that I am happy to see explored.

The bad.

• Kickstarter flubbed my email address so I never got my digital copy.
• That's it. The worst thing I have to say about this book is that my players like the magic items more than I like them.

Are the D&D 5e cooking rules flawed. Yes. Does this book fix all of D&D's skill problems? No. Buy it anyway. This book is amazing.

This is so cute, well thought, and just plain wholesome. I expect to either run or play with this class on a couple of sessions in a couple of weeks and I'm very excited about it.

LOVE this book! I got the PDFs and the art is wonderful I've used the animals for a few one shots and just for funsies but there is a lot of great info in here for the babies!

LOVE this book! I got the PDFs and the art is wonderful I've used the animals for a few one shots and just for funsies but there is a lot of great info in here for the babies!

I received this book as part of the Baby Bestiary 2 Kickstarter. It does an incredible job adding emotional depth and personality to a lot of fantasy creatures we perceive as throwaway encounters leading up to the big fight. The expressions between parent and child "monsters" are captured in amazing detail, and has crippled any future character of mine from just charging in to a fight and going for blood. This is a must for every GM!

I Kickstartered the Baby Bestiary 2 after seeing samples of BB1. I cannot say how well this book does, adding emotional depth and personality to a lot of fantasy creatures we perceive as throwaway encounters leading up to the big fight. How the expressions of the "monsters" are captured between parent and child is amazing, and I think has crippled any future character of mine from just charging in to a fight and going for blood. This is a must for every GM!

Currently the material is great but why do I get sent to metalweavegames.com whenever I click on a link in the book.

If this gets resolved I will raise my rating.

This Review was made after I bought both parts of the Baby Bestiary and used it in multiple One Shots aswell as one Campaign

Ill Focus my Review on 3 Aspects: The Art, The Writing and the Overall experience in Play

The Art: The Art in this Books is stunning, every Creature gets its own Full Page Artwork. There is not really much to say about how awesome the Artwork featured in this Book is, you just have to see for yourself.

The Writing: Most of the Book focuses on a "Field Guide" and explains how to handle each Creature with the Beginning of the Book acting as an Introduction to the Life of a Beastmaster and overall Rules on how to handle Baby Beasts.

The Experience: Adding the Book to any homebrew world is as easy as it gets, the Baby Bestiary works for every kind of player and since the Baby Beasts are more roleplay focused you dont have to worry about planning encounters with them. If you wish to add some combat capabilites to your little beast I would also recommend the Baby Bestiary 5e Beast Companion also made by Metal Weave Games.

So Overall I can only recommend this Product.

I immediately kickstarted this product when a friend linked me to its campaign; as a huge fan of the Soulsborne series, this supplement does a fine job of painting a new world and style of play for your fantasy RPG of choice.

As of this writing the supplemental guides for Dungeon World and D&D 5e are still being developed by Metal Weave Games. That being said a good GM will find the standalone book packed with interesting quest seeds, compelling and evocative art, and plenty of inspiration for building and roleplaying your own NPCs, boss encounters, and Magical Items.

While I did notice a few minor misspellings and typos here and there, the layout and quality of writing text make for a very compelling read. The Cycle of Ember will stay with you long after you put the book down.

While I would love to see some more mechanical details added to the product, or perhaps even an additional expansion in the future, I'm very pleased with the book that I got and can't wait to spring a Souls-inspired campaign on my players in the next few weeks.

My player absolutely adores her baby fire elemental spider, thank you so much for making all the fun moments with it possible!

A systemless expansion of monsters, all familiar yet entirely new. Things like, "sure we have owl bears, but what about a snow owl-polar bear (Powlbear)?".

If you read the Baby Beastiaries, you know the quality Metal Weave Games is known for but if you haven't, this is the perfect place to start.

Beautifully put togather and just what I needed for my campaign. The player's love their little mascot and now they can enjoy raising her.