Production Update July 24th: Fulfillment Commencing!
almost 5 years ago
– Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 07:00:43 PM
Volume 1 PFRPG Complete
ABRE Volume 1, Pathfinder Edition is complete. 686 pages, 266 creatures, 1,064 full statblocks.
PDF fulfillment commencing later tonight. I cannot begin fulfilling hardcopy orders until after all six volumes are completed, but I will have photos along the way of how each hard proof turns out.
Please check the Credits section in the beginning of the book and advise if you would like your credits name changed.
A Quick, But Genuine, Thank You
I am obscenely proud of this. But, I realize that it has been a long time coming. I also realize that there is yet a long way to go. As the first tangible product to be completed in this vein, it represents the culmination of a huge amount of work and anticipation.
I've never tried something so ambitious. At various points, this has seemed insane. Insane, often, but impossible? Never. Not once, not for a single moment, did I think this wasn't going to happen. From the first time I sat down to Quad-Stat a monster for Dark Obelisk 1, I knew this is what I wanted to do eventually.
And thanks to you all, it has become a reality.
I know that not everyone has been happy with the timeline, here, and as I've said all along, I respect that. As a backer of more than 500 indie RPG projects on Kickstarter myself, I know a thing or two about scams, shady practices, disappointments, and timeline shifts. I've already produced a ton from other projects, but risk is inherent in this approach to creation, and I recognize that there's a desire to get what you've paid for sooner rather than later (okay, much later).
But it's a testament to all of you--each and every backer--that although I've certainly accrued (and earned!) some negative feedback along the way in terms of the schedule, it has in every single case been constructive, concerned, or otherwise well-meaning.
You can have concern, and yet still have confidence. You can point out a faltering, but still have faith. I welcome constructive feedback, honest reactions, and the like, because it can only make this and other products better.
I don't for a day take for granted that none of the many hundreds of you has ever explicitly doubted my ability to produce. Your support, confidence, and patience mean everything. And I hope that you feel the results are worth it.
What Work Remains on Volume 1
- There are some pieces of artwork I'm hoping to add to the book.
- I expect some edits to the Credits section based on feedback (see above).
- If you see glaring errors or edits, please feel free to message me so I can include them.
Book Introduction Snippet
And now, without further preample, a snippet from the book itself.
About This Book
For convenience, and for those who won't be getting a copy of the Pathfinder edition, I've copy/pasted and reformatted the "About this Book" section from the book's introduction.
ABRE has thus far turned out exactly, and even better, than I had envisioned it, and hoped it to be. I could not be prouder, or happier, with the results.
It's unrealistic that what I've come up with will delight every single person who has been patiently waiting for what they are owed. After all this time, there is a certain degree of anticlimax that may settle in.
But in terms of what I set out to achieve, I do not believe it could have turned out any better. Hopefully you agree!
What Is This Book?
This book is intended to be any or all of the following. These are listed in no particular order.
- An authoritative listing of monsters for use in any campaign setting, for adventuring parties of any size, and any level.
- A means of using any existing monster with adventures of any level and difficulty.
- A compendium of newly-created monsters, born of inspiration from existing beasties you may already know and love.
- A single-source reference and repository, listing every single possible monster in easy-to-reference alphabetical order.
In short, how you use this book is really dependent upon you and your needs as a GM.
Strengths
This book is immensely valuable for GMs who want to introduce a truly formidable amount of creatures into their campaign, and to do so in a flexible manner.
Prep Time: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm is a peerless resource for GMs who want to minimize preparation time, or who want to through new, unexpected combinations of monsters at their players.
Crunch: There is no other work that assembles, generates, and makes available this level of pure crunch, of instantly-usable gaming statistics in an accessible format.
Single Point of Reference: Each monster entry is designed to be self-contained, as much as possible: in nearly all cases, you should be able to use the creature’s entry on its own, without referencing any other publications or materials.
Flexibility: If you’ve always been frustrated by the restrictions of a given adventure being appropriate only “for levels 4-6”, then this bestiary is for you!
Rigor: Each and every one of the statblocks in this tome was constructed using published game mechanics, templates, rules, and resources. Most have been playtested in actual gaming groups, or simulated in extensive combat scenarios across a range of PC compositions, levels, and sizes. Although every single monster is not going to pose the identical challenge to every party—see “Weaknesses”, below—every creature is constructed as best as possible to represent that monster at that level of difficulty.
Intelligence: The next section of this book introduces FlexAI. This is a revolutionarily complex, yet accessible, means of simulating dynamic, contextually-appropriate monster behavior in combat encounters. Each and every monster includes full FlexAI rules, including its combat Role and variation, so you know how it is likely to behave in combat. This mechanic and approach takes the place of the somewhat more pedestrian “Combat Behavior” description that most bestiaries include alongside statblocks. This concept is explored in full, with hundreds of additional resources and references, in the FlexAI Guidebook, usable on its own, or as a valuable companion tome to this bestiary.
Novelty: Of the 6,400 complete statblocks in this bestiary, 4,800 of them are entirely new, forged using existing game mechanics, guidelines, templates, resources, and rules. A full 75% of the creatures described herein were created solely for the purposes of letting GMs use monsters for party levels above, or below, the levels “intended” originally when the monsters were published to begin with. In this sense, this work is not only an assemblage of monsters in a single repository, but also the single largest source of new creatures ever conceived.
Thoroughness: Every monster. Ever. Assembled in a single place.
Integration with FlexTale: All Infinium Game Studio adventures and other products use the FlexTale approach to adventure content. This innovative approach attempts to make all adventure content accessible and appropriate to all PC parties, of all levels. Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm enables FlexTale support for every monster, ever published.
Making Existing Adventures Dynamic: If you have published adventures that do not use the FlexTale approach, you can use this bestiary to adapt them to parties of any level.
Construction: Each and every monster has been “built” or “constructed”, rather than simply fabricated. The meaning here is a little obtuse, so in more detail: each monster has been incarnated from its starting statblock, and then modified up and down as appropriate to generate the resulting quartet of statblocks you find herein. Hit dice have been modified, feats granted, and other tricks to produce contextually-appropriate scales of challenge. Statblocks have not simply been “fiddled with”, but rather templates and other tools have been applied to generate the results you see. It would have been easier—SO MUCH easier!—to simply fabricate statblocks and boosts, but this approach results in much richer and more true-to-the-rules mechanics.
When to Use This Book
In short, turn to this book as a gaming tool when:
- You want to run an adventuring session quickly, with zero preparation.
- You want to run an Infinium Game Studio adventure, or another published adventure that leverages the FlexTale approach to dynamic, scaled adventure content.
- You want to introduce a monster that is not commonly associated with the level that the PCs in your gaming group currently are.
- You want to surprise seasoned players with monsters that they may dismiss as far beyond, or far beneath, their capabilities.
- You want the ease of having a single, authoritative compendium of every single monster, ever, in a single bookshelf of volumes.
- You want to introduce random, but contextually appropriate, artificial intellligence-driven behavior to monsters in your adventures.
What This Book is NOT
This book is intended to be a plethera, and not necessarily a panacea. It sets out to create the most flexible, most complete, and most ambitious set of monsters ever assembled in a bestiary, and in that regard, it excels without peer.
Many bestiaries of entirely new, custom monsters include rich artwork, lavish backstories, and other features. That is not the goal of this book, and it does not set out to achieve this in any way. Other adventures, books, and products from Infinium Game Studios include this approach and level of detail; for the monsters included in Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm, this approach would not be appropriate.
Artwork: It is neither logistically, nor financially, feasible to include artwork for each and every monster. In most cases, the monsters in question are either well-known to veteran players, or existing artwork is easily available for reference in other sources.
Conciseness: By nature, definition, and intent, this bestiary is not perfectly efficient. There is repetition. There is repetition.* Some special abilities and apply to more than one mosnter, so their descriptions may appear multiple times throughout the text. This is by design, and for two reasons: first, to ensure that each entry is self-contained as much as is feasible. And second, because even though the majority of a creature’s special ability description may be shared with that of another monster’s, it may vary slightly.
* Bad jokes about game mechanics are hard to come by.
Variable Difficulty: It is a lofty goal, to have every monster appropriately presentable to PCs of any quantity and level. Although this bestiary accomplishes everything it sets out to do in this regard, it is simply impossible to effect this perfectly.
All monsters are not meant to be an equal challenge to every level, but to represent a roughly equivalent challenge at any level. Badgers, no matter what you do to their statblocks, will always be little more than a nuisance. Similarly, a Tarrasque should always represent a potential party-annihilating setpiece foe. Trying to make all monsters be all things to all parties would be A) impossible, and B) inappropriate.
“Squishiness”: This word is a common shorthand, and refers to how PCs of higher levels can easily defeat monsters and other threats of lower levels. Some of the monsters herein are indeed “squishy”, in that although they may say they are “Elite” level, PCs of higher levels may not view that creature as a legitimate threat to their capabilities. This is frankly unavoidable, as to a certain extent, some monsters are simply tougher than others. Making a Chicken into a threat appropriate to face Level 20 PCs would mean it is unrecognizable as a Chicken. Instead, interpret an “Elite” Chicken as one that should be presented to higher-level characters. They will still be able to slay it just as easily, if not much more easily, than they could the Low-caliber Chicken’s statblock when they were lower level.
“Impossibles”: Some monsters are completely, entirely, inappropriate for lower-level adventurers, even if they’re listed as “Low” difficulty level. Level 2 PCs cannot hit a monster with an insanely high Armor Class, no way around it. In these scenarios—most often with monsters with Combat Roles of Elite or Solo—the monster is, and should be, considered beyond the capabilities of characters of those lower levels.
Instead, consider deploying the lower-Difficulty iterations of such monsters as easier-to-defeat threats for higher-level PCs, or as “plot blockers” for low-level PCs. Facing a Tarrasque at Level 4, even in the context of the FlexTale approach to things, should signal certain defeat to any party.
Weaknesses: When NOT to Use This Book
Although Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm was designed to be the most complete, extensive, ambitious, and flexible bestiary ever created, there are still cases where it’s perhaps not the best solution.
When faced with the following scenarios, you may wish to consider other alternatives.
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Story: There is no adventure here. Or, rather, there is fodder to help fuel thosuands, endless, adventure... but no true plot to speak of. You knew that when you saw the word “Bestiary” on the title, though.
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Adventure Hooks: Some smaller bestiaries include suggestions of how a given monster might be best incorporated into your adventuring. That was not the intent in this tome. There is no room for this, and besides, in many cases, such tools are already available.
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Background, Context, and “Flavor/Fluff”: This is a work of crunch—of pure game mechanics, rules, and guidelines. It is not a story, and does not provide a great deal of flavor text for the monsters. Most are well-known; descriptions or “soft content” for others are already available elsewhere.
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Exacting Level-Scaled Context: This book strives to make every creature available for use with any adventuring party. That’s not mechanically, or sanely, possible to achieve to perfection. In a gaming group that is ruthlessly Rules as Written (RAW), with no flexibilty for fudging dice, rounding up or down, or otherwise bending the rules to ensure a good time versus compliance with mathematics, then this bestiary is probably not the best tool... and neither is the FlexTale approach to things in general.
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Perfect Challenge Rating Adherence: If you are using the rules for creating encounters that use Challenge Rating as an explicit mathematical guideline, then you may wish to apply additional review and rigor to your process when using Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm (see How to Use This Book, below).
Onward!
