Monsters of Faerûn, Part 1 (Aarakocra to Banedead)

Alright, finally. Working sixteen-hour days sucks. Anyway, let's dive into this collection of monsters from the magical land of Faerûn. You'll notice I have found the quick-key to put the accent on that 'u'. It's much easier to type that word now.

The first thing I notice about this book is that it doesn't look at all like a Forgotten Realms book. Instead, it looks like a core rulebook, doesn't it? Complete with the spine and gems. I wonder if they did the same thing and made an actual book to photograph for the cover art? Looking online, I don't see it; this might just be how they did the art. It certainly looks cool, though. As far as I know, this is the last 3rd edition Forgotten Realms product that doesn't have the distinctive trade dress that would appear with the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book.

So, the table of contents is very similar to that in the Monster Manual, with an alphabetical list of all the monsters within and a breakdown of the monsters by type and subtype. And it looks like all the types are represented here, even the oozes and plants get new additions. The whole book is only 96 pages, which is probably why it's a softcover. You wouldn't go hardcover on such a thin book.

The introduction drops a bunch of Realms locations to whet the appetite, but the next section is basically reprinted from the Monster Manual, explaining all the monster stats and types. That takes us all the way to page 10, which I think is a waste of space. I can't imagine anyone bought this without having a copy of the Monster Manual already, so that's eight pages of reprinted material that could easily have been taken up with more monsters. It's not like the Realms don't have more anyway. The only new thing in this section is that there's an In the Realms section added to many of the Descriptive Texts to tie the creatures into the setting. And that's one single paragraph out of eight whole pages. Not good.

Anyway, let's get to the monsters. Most of these date back to 2nd or even 1st edition, but there are some new ones. First up...the aarakocra. This first appeared in the original Fiend Folio in 1981. They are Medium-sized Monstrous Humanoids, basically bird-men. They have 1 HD and a CR of ½; they're basically a playable race. In fact, they have fighter as their favored class, and their clerics have access to the Air, Healing and Sun domains. There's really nothing spec--wait, what? Summon large air elemental?! Where the hell did that come from? Apparently, a group of aarakocra that includes at least one cleric can cast a summon monster VI and bring an air elemental to town. And...holy crap, that actually does go all the way back to the original appearance in 1981. Except they didn't need a cleric to do it. I've never noticed that before. I feel ashamed.

Next up is the Aballin. This is a Large Ooze with 3 HD and a CR of 4. These are basically living puddles of water that can drown their victims. Well, that's not nice. At least they're clean; no muddy waters here. They can advance up to 9 HD and Huge size.

The Abishai are devils, and there are five of them, all Medium-sized Lawful Evil Outsiders. They correspond with the five colors of evil dragons, and they serve Tiamat; they are the torturers and wardens of the first two layers of Hell. Or Baator, as it's called in 3rd edition. Just call them the Nine Hells, already. I recall the original abishai in 1st edition were inverted; the red was the weakest, and the white the strongest. Now, they've just made them the equivalent of their dragon color; the white are the weakest (4 HD, CR 5), followed by black (5 HD, CR 5), green (6 HD, CR 6), Blue (7 HD, CR 7) and Red (8 HD, CR 8). I like the inverted idea better, but since they're so closely tied to the Queen of Evil Dragons, it makes sense to do the change. They all have a sting that does damage based on the breath weapon of their dragon color, as well as spell-like abilities, immunity to dire and poison, and a few other basic abilities.

Next is the Alaghi, a Medium-sized Monstrous Humanoid with 9 HD and a CR of 4. That's a low CR for a 9-HD monster. These guys look like Sasquatch variants, live in the forest, and like to become druids. They sometimes live in villages, but those alaghi tend to be evil; it's the loners that lean toward good. They advance by character class, and have no special abilities at all.

The Asabi are desert-dwelling reptilian humanoids of medium-size. They have 3 HD and a CR of 1. They are not pleasant company (lawful evil), and while the average asabi has no special abilities, they do have a 'big brother' called the stingtail, which is a much larger but dumber cousin to the asabi who has a poison tail and is immune to enchantment spells. And they're better fighters, having 7 HD and a CR of 3. Asabi can advance to 6 HD and Large size, while stingtails can become Huge with 21 HD.

Now we have the Banedead, a Medium-sized Undead with 6 HD and a CR of 3. They have a vicious claw attack that not only does damage, but it also drains Dexterity. They also have damage reduction of 15/+1, so they're tough to hurt. They can be created by evil clerics of 12th level and up who serve the god Bane, but I can't imagine there would be all that many of them since it requires twelve volunteers to be transformed into these things. Yikes. They are servants of the cleric who created them, although the clerics can lease them out to powerful wizards who worship...oh, it's not Bane. It's his kid, Iyachtu Xvim who makes these through his clerics. Okay, then.

And that will do it for tonight. I know we're only 20% of the way through the book, but there's plenty of time left this month, and I will continue on next time.