Advanced Bestiary (D20 System)

Rating:
Summary: Go beyond the base monster!
Review: The core creatures of D&D are well known to every player. That's as it should be. Everyone would rather fight a minotaur whose legend extends back to the dawn of civilization than a smeerp which the DM thought up on the spur of the moment because he was frustrated that his players always knew all the abilities of the monsters in advance.

The Advanced Bestiary offers a great solution: a host of templates that can add surprise to any of the classic monsters. By using these guidelines to modify a base creature, DMs can let their players experience the satisfaction of fighting a legendary creature like a bulette - and re-experience the fear that comes from not knowing what its limits are, since this bulette has the War Machine template and is thus actually an artificial construct.

Each template comes with a sample creature that you can use right out of the book, just like the Monster Manual. But it's also a toolkit that you can use to soup up your own monsters, aided by the authors' notes and guidelines. There's not a lot of "fluff" - but if you've got an active imagination, you'll find plenty of inspiration here as you come up with stories to explain how this remorhaz became a Thunder Child!