Scroll of Beasts?

One of the issues I've had with Lunar Exalted has been the lack of example animals for the choice of spirit-forms.  While true, there are lots of wierd and wonderful entries in the gods and beasts sections of various books, there seems to be rather a lack of examples of mundane animals.  I was wondering if there was someone out there who went and statted out a bunch of regular animals and compiled them all in one place?  It seems a logical thing to do to save time on the GMs part.

You can generally extrapolate an animal you want from the existing animal entries found in the core rules or the various Direction books. Exalted, as a system, tends to be generic animal/monster-lite. Whether this was an intentional decision in order to more tightly focus on PC-NPC interaction, a simple desire to avoid falling into the hack-n-slash trap, or lack of interest on the part of the designers I couldn't say.

Back in First Edition there was a book called "Creatures of the Wyld" which covered alot of critters, it also got a PDF release update with a few more monsters.

But people have been talking about needing a Monstrous Manual for Exalted for a long time now. But for the most part it never gets enough interest to warrent a printing.

There have been many designs for the proposed book.

The most recent one I recall had a chapter for each Direction, Yu-Shan, Malfeas, Underworld, Autochthonia, the Underground. Each of those chapters would have both normal and mystical critters statted. The last chapter might contain a system for generating Critters that you see in other media and want to transplant to Exalted.

O's Codex has a small section on magical beasts, I think.  Obviously this is mostly useless for Lunar spirit-forms, but some things in there might be usable or adaptable...

I recommend the various directional books, though. CoCD: The East, say, has a big list of animals at the end.  Great apes, giant bats, emerald monkeys, flying serpents, forest mimics, great rocs, raptor cats, steel shadows...  Ooo, a forest mimic would be fun.  They can reproduce any voice they've heard, and it doesn't seem to be a magical ability.

You can probably just assume that most of those creatures are 'natural' in Creation.  Just because a flying serpent seems unnatural to us doesn't mean that it's unnatural in Creation -- it's just a normal animal, perfectly valid as a spirit-form.

Thoth:

The most recent one I recall had a chapter for each Direction, Yu-Shan, Malfeas, Underworld, Autochthonia, the Underground. Each of those chapters would have both normal and mystical critters statted. The last chapter might contain a system for generating Critters that you see in other media and want to transplant to Exalted.

That sounds like an awesome idea.

I personally like having fairly mundane animals as spirit shapes, the funky Creation animals are pretty cool though.  Some of my best Lunars have been completely ordinary animals, a desert tortoise, an orb spider, a rat.  Though I am rather interested in a Raptor Cat, those things sound cool.

Thoth:

But people have been talking about needing a Monstrous Manual for Exalted for a long time now. But for the most part it never gets enough interest to warrent a printing.

Hmmph.  It's obvious why.  They need to do a five-book series.

The Bestiary of the Illustrious Sage, Volume I:  Creatures of the South and West
The Bestiary of the Illustrious Sage, Volume II:  Creatures of the East and North
The Bestiary of the Illustrious Sage, Volume III:  Creatures of the Blessed Isle and Yu-Shan
The Bestiary of the Illustrious Sage, Volume IV:  Creatures of the Wyld and Malfeas
The Bestiary of the Illustrious Sage, Volume V:  Creatures of the Underworld and Underground

I dunno if five whole books are needed, the one book mentioned previously would probably do, with a create-a-beast chapter for weird and wonderful critters, examples of creatures from various terrestrial or celestial directions, that sort of thing.

The problem is that a five book series worth of Creatures won't sell well enough.

But to do the write ups justice and have plenty of cool pics, you are talking a page count on par with the Core Book, perhaps bigger with full color and all. That will wind up being more expensive than any other singular book in the line, but it will have the best chance to sell.

Verzio:

Thoth:

But people have been talking about needing a Monstrous Manual for Exalted for a long time now. But for the most part it never gets enough interest to warrent a printing.

Hmmph.  It's obvious why.  They need to do a five-book series.

The Wyld book has a chapter devoted to each terrestial direction that borders the Wyld, and material describing the Wyld in more general terms.  The same pattern could be followed for a Beastiary, with chapters for different parts of Creation and other planes.

A bestiary/Monster manual would be a great addition to Exalted.

I'm a hard core fan and have every supplement from both first and second editions, and even I would be irritated at having to buy a 5 part series of monster books.

You're all no fun.  I want 800 pages of monster book.

Lurking_Bowerbird:

with a create-a-beast chapter for weird and wonderful critters

What I would love is a "Create-a-beast" that would work well for normal Creation critters for the easy of coming up with various Spirit Shapes and Heart's Blood forms, in a "balance" and "easy" manner...

Lunars are thematically my favorite Exalted type...
The ability to shape shift into many different critters is one of my favorite things about Lunars...
But mechanically it doesn't have much support...
much of what you get from the varies forms are left complete and utterly up to "GM ruling" and "Common Sense"...

• 1-3 additional, distinct forms
•• 4-10 additional, distinct forms
••• 11-20 additional, distinct forms
•••• 21-40 additional, distinct forms
••••• 41+ additional, distinct forms

So... I have a bunch of different forms... and depending on the knacks... I have even more options for those forms...

But right now it is completely up to the GM and player to make sure the varies forms are "balance" and "fit" for the game with no mechanical support on how to pull that off what so ever...


A critter book that gives templates or guidelines to make many different critters would be a lot more useful to my gaming group than just some sample stat blocks...

Yes... the sidebar on page 129 of the Lunar books has some good rough ideas... but when the PC/NPC has Heart's Blood of 3+... it would be nice to have something to go by... besides the "sit of your pants" and "common sense"... for the stats and bonuses/penalties of all the varies forms...



One idea that I have/had... but not developed overly well... is to use the mutation to to model the varies critters...

As-is... while in War Form you use Mutations to model the animalistic benefit you can gain from your Spirit shape (or the your hearts blood library with the right knack)... but while in your Spirit shape you only have the benefits of those same Mutations if the GM says you do...

It would be nice if there was a base template dependent on size (or some other category) that was then modded with the addition of appropriate mutations...

Using base template+mutations would allow people to create a much larger range of critters than just a small sampling of "stated" critters...

It would be "nice" if All critters had as part of its stat block a list of "appropriate" mutations that could be used to model the critter...


My only issues is I have no clue how to come up with a "Basic" base template to start from for the base of "Critters of creation"... and I don't know if the current list of mutations is up to the task...

Which is way having a pdf (or other fan write up) of "critter creations rules" would be very handy...


Plus it might also help fix some of the other issues involving balance of varies Spirit Shapes and War Forms...

As is... if you take all the critters from all the books that could be used as the Lunar's Spirit Shape... you would have a very small list... and that critters of the lists are no where near as "balance" as the varies weapons and armors lists in the game... note I'm not saying the weapons and armors are currently "balanced"... just that I feel it is more "balanced" than the forms a lunar can gain access to...

A critter pdf could go a long way to fixing that...

Some exalted GMs and players might be fine with the GM coming up with "on the fly"... stats/bonuses/penalties for the varies creatures of Exalted... but it feels as if we... or white wolf... should be able to come up with something better...

I hope this post makes sense... I'm really tired right now... there might be more rambling in the post than I had intended...

Anteros:

A bestiary/Monster manual would be a great addition to Exalted.

I agree with Thyme, a book that lays out a balanced way to build creatures, maybe with an extra list of mutations just to pad out some not quite covered already would be nice, whether it be a chapter of an official product, a web-book, or a fan-based pdf.  Though Thoth's suggestion appeals to me the most, a new artsy book about creatures would be awesome, also because the people I game with tend to be wary of fan-created stuff.