I can never, ever get enough monsters for my RPGs. Never. I will fill entire bookshelves, binders, and hard drives with nothing but monsters. I suspect I’m not alone, so check out this gallery of creatures from the upcoming Pathfinder Bestiary 5.
If you’re somehow not convinced that five volumes of Pathfinder monsters are truly necessary, Paizo publisher Eric Mona makes a pretty convincing argument:
When we started working on Bestiary 5, even I was a little bit skeptical. We’d already produced four hardcover Bestiaries, each with more than 300 monsters. Were there really enough cool monsters to fill a fifth monster book? It turns out I needn’t have worried.
Between original creatures that debuted in Pathfinder Adventure Path adventures and Campaign Setting volumes like the hideous hag eye ooze [pictured above, art by Jason Rainville] or maggotlike grimslake to wholly new creatures that fill important mechanical niches like new demodands, golems, and mythic monsters, to a raft of creatures designed to work with the psychic magic system introduced in the recent Occult Adventures hardcover (like five new “esoteric” dragons: astral, dream, etheric, nightmare, and occult), we had no shortage of amazing fantasy critters.
And, as has become a tradition for Paizo, we’ve heavily researched the mythology and legends of the real world to tease out amazing “real” creatures like Chile’s cherufe, Finland’s etainen, Slavic household spirits like domovoi, dvorovoi, and ovinniks, and scores of others. Add in a heaping helping of cryptids like grays, reptoids, and orang pendak, and you end up with a book that not only convinced me, but that I think will convince everyone else as well. My skepticism is cured, but the problems for my player characters are only just beginning.
Guys. Nightmare dragons. (Sadly, not pictured.)
Lipika Aeon (Lord of Karma) by Eric Belisle.
Annunaki by Eric Belisle.
Death Coach by Jorge Fares.
Deep One by Dave Allsop.
Ghoran by Aleksey Bayura.
Gray by Maichol Quinto.
Orang-Pendak by Daniel Lopez.
Wihsaak Sahkil by Jose Parodi.
Sha by Ben Wootten.
Xiao by Namanja Stankovic.