Review at Random: Alien Bestiary (Starfinder)
Welcome to Reviews at Random, today weāre not doing a video game. Today, instead, weāre doing a third party product for a tabletop role-playing game. Iāll try my best to make this friendly for people who donāt know about Starfinder, but whatever.
The Alien Bestiary product is published by Legendary Games, made for the Starfinder system (a space fantasy system made by Paizo, the Pathfinder people) and fueled by Kickstarter (including me, full admission). It came out between the Alien Archive (the first official monster book) and Alien Archive 2 (the second official monster book). This makes it... interesting in how it relates to the official products.
Near as I can tell, the intent behind this product is twofold: One, to port some of the more obscure Pathfinder monsters over to Starfinder, and Two, to serve as a dedicated monster book for Legendary Gamesā Aetheria setting. Thatās not a bad thing, setting-specific monster books can be lots of fun as long as theyāre not too tied up in the lore of the original setting, keeping people from understanding the lore of the monsters, and they donāt make you read a different book to use the monsters in your game.
But! Weāll come to that later. For now...
Presentation
The art and design of the Alien Bestiary are fine, the art is from a few different artists and one or two didnāt get the message that the art is for a Sci-Fi product, but itās overall nothing too jarring or ugly. At least, not artistically ugly; abominations are all suitably hideous. Apart from that, thereās a few typos around (last I checked) and while theyāre rare and mostly harmless they can be annoying on the occasion you find one.
Final Presentation Score: B-
Itās not really a super pretty book, but whatever it works and works well.
Mechanics
RPG books have less āgameplayā per se, and more Mechanics. In this case, the mechanics of the monsters in question. And for the most part the mechanics seem fine... except that they relate to the official Paizo Products oddly.
Alien Bestiary came out after the Alien Archive, but was set in stone before Alien Archive 2 came out. Alien Archive 2 brought with it a lot of cool space-like creatures from Pathfinder that were really neat. See where this is going?
While Alien Bestiary neatly avoids overlap with Alien Archive, thereās some things in 2 where the overlap is notable, and for the most parts Alien Archive 2 wins out. You might say to yourself, āBut if the two stat blocks are different, they can be used for different things!ā and you would be right but theyāre mostly NOT. Since both companies went off of the Pathfinder version as a cheat sheet, theyāre strikingly similar save for some stat changes.Ā
Now, I havenāt side-by-sided many of the overlapping monsters, but my bias is to default to the Paizo stats, because at this point Starfinder is still young enough that Paizo has the best handle on their own system. And if you are the sort to side-by-side them, you still need to put forth that effort and decide which is better.
Otherwise, things like wild animals, dinosaurs, and dragons give Paizo an edge because Paizo doesnāt just give dozens of Dragon stat blocks at various ages and colors, but instead a system that lets you plug-and-play dragons fast. Will that result in samey dragons? Maybe, but if youāre worried about dragons feeling unique youāre likely putting some effort in tweaking them anyway. Same with dinosaurs, herd animals, predators... with the creation system in the Paizo products, you can just MAKE custom dinosaurs using the super easy monster creation system from the FIRST Alien Archive. If you have an obscure dinosaur youāre super fond of, the Paizo system will let you use it without trouble!
Though the Alien Bestiary has dedicated stats for a dunklesteosis, which is free brownie points from me.
...That and the soulbound shell, which is like a sorcerās spirit encased in a robot, and thatās pretty darn neat!
See, when you get into third-party books, especially monster books, thereās going to be overlap. Whether you buy a given book is more about whether thereās enough from that book that you care about.
So, what does the Alien Bestiary have, specifically?
Traditional abberations like intellect devourers, aboleths, cloakers, chokers, and flumphs!
Meteor Dragon!
Allips and a host of other undead who died in exceedingly evil ways!
Phycomid!
Moon Flowers and Moon Beasts!
Various Giants!
Kytons!
More Kytons!
SERIOUSLY this book has 11 different Kytons in it!
The Alien Archive 2 has one Kyton, under a different name, but none of these Kytons overlap with it.
Thereās even rules for tweaking other Kytons fit the rules for the Aetheria Setting Kytons!
Who needs this many Kytons?!
Golems.
DOWNSIDE: Still using the whole āgolems are immune to spellsā thing.
Fairly creative monsters specific to the Aetheria Campaign Setting.
New robots!
WHAT IS IT OH CRIPES GET ME OUT OF HERE
Clockwork Constructs!
Daemons?
John Carpenterās The Thing
Obligatory Great Old Ones
Starship stat block for Cthulhu!
Trappers and Mimics!
Mobster leeches!
I TAKE IT BACK THIS ONE IS WORSE GIVE ME THE FREAKY HEAD BACK
A TON of other classic and original (or at least obscure) monsters!
So, yeah, even with the overlap this book has a LOT to offer.
However! Be aware that this is a dedicated monster book, and NOT the Alien Archive. There isnāt really any bonus material like items or PC options with a very few exceptions. This is standard for Monster books, yes, but I thought it worth bringing up in case you got used to Alien Archive.
(Though I hope that they give PC-usable rules for the poisonous squid people in a different product sometime.)
Final Mechanics Score: B+ C-
Though I canāt vouch for the balance of the book, for all I know itās a mess, I didnāt see anything immediately alarming and the selection of monsters is very wide. Itās possible that the makers were more using Pathfinder design philosophy than Starfinder, but the two are close enough that shouldnāt be really damaging.
HEY THERE! Future Kobold here! I was going over the thing for session planning/another post on it, and was looking closely at the stat blocks. Turns out that the mechanics are split about 50/50 on whether theyāre a complete mess or not. Even the ones that arenāt messes tend to have presentation problems that might be confusing for new GMs. A lot of entries are missing space/reach, too. This is really disappointing, and Iāve amended the grade to account for it.
(Who needs 11 different Kytons? Iām not sure if the original Pathfinder Bestiary had 11 different Demons, sakes alive...)
Writing
So, for some of you, it will be enough for me to say āit has a Bullette in itā and you will go buy it. Other people will wonder if the monsters are usable in their stories, mainly that they have solid descriptions so the GM knows how to present and run them. And... yes, they do. Some more than others, and thereās one or two that are so out there that I have no idea how to put them in other than as an extra random encounter.
Other than that, while this book WAS made as a monster book for a specific setting, nothing really shackles it to that setting. The few monsters with setting-specific mechanics have those mechanics detailed in the indices of the book, and the mentions of in-universe organizations arenāt really too complex. With a little bit of creativity and replacement, you can pretty well swap things out without too much strain.
Overall, I do wish a few of those odd monsters were better explained, but itās no real lost traction.
Final Writing Score: B
Overall
While it lacks the polish of Paizoās first party products, the people involved knew what they were doing. Everything is fine. Nothing is really amazing, but something doesnāt need to be amazing to be good. It has some fun ideas, and it does cover a lot of bases the official products donāt while both pandering to the classics and showing some originality itself.
(Or at least knowing obscure enough classics that they count as in-jokes, whichever)
Presentation: B-
Mechanics: B+ C-
Writing: B
FINAL GRADE: B C+
Release some old terrors on your players. And then some new ones, just to keep them guessing.
Awards:
MAXIMUM KYTON
