Hyborian Bestiary
- Thread starter The King
- Start date
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Mongoose
Do you have an ISBN for this book? 
I got the Bestiary. A little review:
Most of the monsters are fine and the book is certainly useful for any GM. About half or more of them are reprints from other books, mostly from the first edition regional source books. Thus if you have all of them, the Bestiary might not be as good for you money. Overall, I think it was a good purchase. However, there are some details that I don't like...
1) There are 30 pages of animals. There are full stat blocks and verbal describtions for animals like ravens, foxes and cattle. Now, it might be useful at some point to know what kind of statistics would a sorcerer have if he shapeshifted in to a raven... but 30 pages? Every animal has a small description and so forth. It would have saved some space to put them in a more statistical block with less verbal explanations. Everyone knows what a fox looks like and what kind of animal it is. One oddity - giant kangaroos? In Vendhya? What?! Is there some terrible pastiche out there with Vendhyan kangaroo cavalry?
2) Several monsters could have used better background with hints how to use them. For example, the Man-Brute (Ogre) is just a general big guy with a big club. It does not stand out of the text as nothing I'd want to ever use because it lacks special spirit and doesn't feel very Howardian. A few short examples how to weave them in to the campaign in a plausible way might have made the difference. This space could have taken from the too thick animal section...
Most of the monsters are fine and the book is certainly useful for any GM. About half or more of them are reprints from other books, mostly from the first edition regional source books. Thus if you have all of them, the Bestiary might not be as good for you money. Overall, I think it was a good purchase. However, there are some details that I don't like...
1) There are 30 pages of animals. There are full stat blocks and verbal describtions for animals like ravens, foxes and cattle. Now, it might be useful at some point to know what kind of statistics would a sorcerer have if he shapeshifted in to a raven... but 30 pages? Every animal has a small description and so forth. It would have saved some space to put them in a more statistical block with less verbal explanations. Everyone knows what a fox looks like and what kind of animal it is. One oddity - giant kangaroos? In Vendhya? What?! Is there some terrible pastiche out there with Vendhyan kangaroo cavalry?
2) Several monsters could have used better background with hints how to use them. For example, the Man-Brute (Ogre) is just a general big guy with a big club. It does not stand out of the text as nothing I'd want to ever use because it lacks special spirit and doesn't feel very Howardian. A few short examples how to weave them in to the campaign in a plausible way might have made the difference. This space could have taken from the too thick animal section...