Bestiary 2 v B3: The Besting

[Kudaku]

I just cashed in my vacation pay and rather than spend my days basking in the sun sipping some remarkably girly drink it looks like I'll be spending my time indoors trying to house train a remarkably stubborn puppy and overindulging in Pathfinder. Step one towards that scenario is to pick up a bunch of pathfinder books, however I find myself at an impasse.

I'm looking to buy one of the new Bestiary books, but I'm not sure which one I should get. And so I turn to you, fellow Playgrounders, and hope you can answer my questions :smallsmile:.

Are they completely similar?
If not, what makes them different? Are there themes, flavours or focuses?
Are there groups of monsters like Outsiders, aberrations or humanoids that are over represented?
Which book would you consider more essential to a party that already has access to the first Bestiary?

[Craft (Cheese)]

The thing you need to know about Bestiary 3 is that it has a bunch of Eastern-themed monsters. Eastern-style Imperial dragons, Shinto Kami, some weird Hindu-god-like-things, and some other stuff. Still has many more traditional western-themed monsters, but I'd say the eastern-inspired stuff takes up at least half the book (too lazy to do an exact monster count).

This may be perfectly appropriate for your campaign, or it may not. If you're like me and aren't into that sort of thing, you may want to look at Bestiary 2 instead.


As for the quality of the monsters mechanically... well, as a DM I normally only use the fluff and mostly ignore the statblocks. So I can't really comment on that much, sorry.

EDIT: Oh, by the way, in case you didn't know, if all you're interested in is the mechanics you can find all the monsters from Bestiary 2 and 3 in the Pathfinder SRD (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary3/monsterIndex.html) with all the fluff stripped out.

[Rappy]

Well, really, it depends on what you are looking for.

Bestiary 2 is notable for:

Outsiders. Lots and lots of Outsiders. Various breeds of demons, daemons, devils, archons, azata, aeons, and more.
Lots of legacy monsters. Thanks to the Tome of Horrors, the Open Game License crowd got access to a large number of 1E and AD&D monsters, and a fair amount of them appear in Pathfinder Bestiary 2 such as the aurumvorax, crypt thing, mobat, and rock troll.


While Bestiary 3 is notable for:

Monsters from Asian mythology, such as the Chinese imperial dragons, the Hindu asura, Solomon Islands' adaro, and the Filipino manananngal
Lots of monsters from other non-American mythologies as well, such as the Inuit adlet and akhlut, Hebrew dybbuk, South African grootslang, and the famous sasquatch.
The behemoths, a trio of land, sea, and air monsters with lots of resistances, immunities, and general destructive power. Their inspiration is drawn a bit from both kaiju and Jewish folklore, and are some of the bigger stars of the title.
A larger amount of new animals, including familiars, marsupials, megafauna, and some more dinosaurs.


So really, it's between which style you personally like more.

[Chained Birds]

Bestiary 3 = Cannon Golem.
Cannon Golem = Gunslinger Robot
Gunslinger Robot = AWESOME!

With just that 1 monster, I support Bestiary 3.

[Kudaku]

Thank you all for the feedback! Especially the part about eastern monsters and outsiders was exactly what I was looking for. In the end I realized since only one player needs the bestiary at a time, I can pick both up on PDF and use them via tablet :smallsmile:.

Thanks again guys!