I purchased the Bestiary for the same reason I purchased other Hero System supplements--to save time preparing for play. Since the Hero system requires you build everything beforehand, any time-savers are appreciated. And because the Hero System rules are so complex, it helps me become a better builder when I see the pros build things like centaurs, giant frogs, and living chests (mimics). For instance, it was cool to see how the dracodemo has wings built as a small multi-power: they help it fly and they can attack with those wings, but not both at the same time.

Another reason I bought the Bestiary was because the Villains 3 book I purchased mentions it. There is a monster there able to summon a certain number of character-points worth of creatures from the sea and it mentions the Bestiary.

I believe this was one of the rare PDF-only purchases I made from the Hero System. Like any good PDF, it is searchable and does not seem to rely on OCR (optical character recognition) that comes from scanning pages.

As far as the organization of the book is concerned, it is pretty well organized, but it can be hard to find things, even though it's a PDF. For instance, while there is a Table of Contents, there is no index. Take the imp, for example. The two-page, small-text Table of Contents shows imp under demons and devils. While I understand why it's found there, where could I go to easily find imp alphabetically? If I search the PDF for imp, I'll find words like "chimpanzee", "improve", and "important." So let's say that I check the box that says "Whole words only", then I'll find it. Looking for bear has similar problems. I find it when used as a synonym for carry, and in words like werebear. In the Table of Contents, it is on page 2, under Chapter Six - Mundane Beasts, under Bears. So, yes, while I agree with the organization, search helps would make the book and PDF better.

The art is okay, but I didn't buy the book for the art. However, while I kind of expected a black-and-white printed version (as it was with the Hero System handbooks), the Bestiary PDF itself is black-and-white! There are drawings of dragons, apes, and demons, all of which look to have been drawn in a single color. But like I said, I didn't buy the book for the art.

Great book! Collects and updates creature write up from just about all the different 5th edition Hero System books and does great conversions and updates to 6th edition. I like to get my books in PDF, and a lot of the 5th edition books that this gathers creatures from were not available in PDF at all. Great value; good, detailed write-ups, nice illustrations, and good coverage of multiple genres as well as extra rules for custom hit locations and how to use for different genres.

The summary of the Hero System Bestiary (6th Ed.) for the TLDR crowd: This book is the epitome of it's form, and you should own it. The longer version goes something like this:

I love monsters. Not just in a gaming sense, but in a wholistic fascination and obsessive way. I keep books on monsters, make studies of the "other" and watch plenty of B-movies. So when I say that the Hero System Bestiary is a magnificent example of what might be done with the book form, you know where I'm coming from.

First, this book opens with basically all of the tips and tricks I've devised over time as a GM, to use the bestiary to it's best effect. How all of the creatures can be generalized to fit any scenario you can envision, and then how to implement them into your game to utilize them all for the best effect. And this doesn't even begin to get into the actual monsters!

This book breaks down nearly 500 pages of monsters by genre, type, and literary source. An impressive amount of research goes into this more-than-complete book that focuses on giving the GM the tools to populate his world appropriately. It includes precisely what you need to know about the animals/monsters without drowning you in excessive detail.

This book focuses on GM usability, and is probably the best I've ever seen. There are some minor misses in the bookmarks of the electronic edition; but if you go directly by the table of contents you'll be fine. I've also mentioned this to the folks at Hero Games, and they are looking into it and will probably release an update.

Five Stars.