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Swarms (the bane of many a PF1 adventuring party) are composed of a mess of tiny critters (insects and the like). Swarms and troops are, at least to my mind, more interesting, allowing a bunch of smaller things to pose a challenge for a higher-level group. So on the one hand you get bison, camels, crabs, eurypterids, fish, foxes, kangaroos, monkeys, moose, narwhals, opossum, pangolin, porcupine, ram, seahorse, skunks, sloths, snakes, squirrels, vultures, weasels, and on the other you get androids, azarketi, kitsune, several varieties of leshy, aphorites, ganzi, sprites, and strix. Got to have enough animal selections for those who want to use them, got to have at least one basic NPC version of each ancestry/versatile heritage. The first and the third of these are, to some extent, filling in checkboxes. There are three other categories of entry that come up repeatedly – normal/giant animals, troops/swarms, and NPC versions of the ancestries/versatile heritages introduced in the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide. The Tan Xian and/or Asian-inspired offerings include asura, betobeto-san, imperial dragons, hyakume, jorogumo, kami, kappa, kirin, kitsune, kuchisake-onna, kurobozu, nagaji, penanggalan, rakshasa (yes, I know these appear in fantasy RPGs regardless of Asian influences), rokurokubi, samsarans, terra-cotta warriors, tsukumogami, vanara, vishkanya, and wayangs. And those are just the obvious ones. The PF1 Bestiary 3 came out around the time of the Jade Regent Adventure Path, and just as the PF2 Bestiary 3 is hitting the Ruby Phoenix Tournament Adventure Path is warming up. On a broad level, the 2E Bestiary 3 is following in the footsteps of the 1E Bestiary 3, because there are a lot of Asian-inspired entries (note that the influences range across East, Southeast, and South Asia – Tian Xia is a big place), which we saw in the 1E Bestiary 3 as Tan Xia was becoming more developed. But I greatly value high-quality and thematic illustrations in my RPGs, so I wanted to in some way call out my favorites here. And I don’t have a convenient way to even link you to who the individual artist is for each of those pieces. This isn’t an art show, so it’s not like you can see them. Speaking of art, maybe it’s entirely subjective, but let me shout out my favorite pieces from the book (in order of appearance): amalgamite, android, azer, clockwork mage, giant hermit crab, doru, locathan hunter, myceloid, and hesperid. (Wow, you don’t realize how many there are until you decide to write them all out.) The clusters represented in the book (and not otherwise referenced below) include agathions (the furry Neutral Good celestials from Nirvana), animated objects (silverware swarm, furnace, trebuchet, colossus), arboreals (tree-like forest guardians), bore worms, caligni, clockworks, couatl, demon, devil, div, wisp elementals, ennosites (denizens of the Astral Plane), giants, girtabliu (like centaurs, but scorpions), gremlins, grioths, guardian beasts, hags, house spirits, living symbols, mortics, nymphs, owbs, sahkils (rebellious psychopomps), siktemporas (emotion-based beings from the Dimension of Time), skelms, sphinx, spirit guides, titans, werecreatures, and zombies. Standard entries exactly one page, with clusters of entries combined across multiple pages (e.g., three types of div across four pages). All of the supplementary information you need included in the book. Every sort of index you might want (challenge level, alphabetical, that sort of thing). Fabulous art, and there’s an illustration for every single entry. Bestiary 3 is, as always, for a Pathfinder Bestiary, technically well-executed. So, does Bestiary 3 actually live up to that introduction? Let’s get the basics out of the way.
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Note that the 320-page Bestiary 3 is being simultaneously released in both the normal hardcover version and the paperback pocket edition (plus the fancier special edition). Not that the plain old Bestiary isn’t still the best, but Pathfinder 1E managed to keep this up through Bestiary 6, so that bodes pretty well for the Pathfinder 2E Bestiary 3. And yet every Bestiary manages to include an intriguing array of foes both familiar and new (the level of “classic” goes down over time, of course). You would think that there’s some sort of limit to how many interesting books for of monsters/antagonists you can make. I’ve come to consider Pathfinder Bestiaries to be minor miracles.