If you are not happy with just 400 monsters, Infinium sells a two-volume set with over 1,600 monsters. Where the abridged set features only the classics, these two books encompass everything and are ideal for the true completist. They are nice volumes, and I have been giving these books a little more thought over the last day or so.
The fact that these monsters are a shade weaker than their DCC counterparts does change the game, almost as if you placed a mod on DCC and are playing it a new way. Across the board, hit dice, hit points, damage, AC, and attack values are lower than those of the monsters in the DCC book. To summarize:
- Lower hit points and hit dice.
- Lower AC values.
- Lower attack ratings and damage values.
But here is the rub. These monsters have three things going for them:
- Many have a "number appearing in an encounter" stat.
- Many have multiple action dice.
- Many have multiple special abilities, defenses, and attacks.
The first bullet point is critical. DCC typically assumes "each monster in the world is unique," and you only get one troll or ogre in a campaign. So the DCC values in the core rulebook will be higher for each monster, since each one is the representative "boss monster" for its type.
In this bestiary, we are back to the B/X assumptions. You roll for a "number appearing" in an encounter. So our ogre listing in these bestiaries is: single, double, a gang of 3-4, and a family or tribe of 5-16. All of a sudden, you will be wishing each ogre were easier to fight as the party encounters four instead of just one. You will love the fact that each ogre has a lower AC and fewer hit points, and your fights against groups of them will feel more heroic.
Also, remember that this "number appearing factor" will more than make up for the lower hits and damages. One monster with multiple action dice will be making numerous attacks on the party! Multiply that by the number appearing, and you will have a ton of damage coming your way.
On top of that, the special attack conditions each monster could inflict will take up an attack, but potentially be lethal to the party, as paralysis, poison, stuns, entangles, ongoing damage, special attacks, ability damage, and all the new options built into these foes start taking effect on the party. Multiply each special effect by the action dice and the number of monsters in the encounter, and this could get very lethal, very quickly.
Mix the monsters in an encounter where their abilities synergize (entangle, ongoing damage, and ranged attacks), and an encounter of what you think are "weak foes" turns deadly very fast. This is not 5E! We approach encounters differently here and consider attack synergies instead of CR as a balancing factor.
These books are not intended to augment or add to the core monsters in the DCC book, not unless you use those as the boss monsters. These bestiaries are better seen as a "B/X mod" to DCC, where you just use the monsters from these guides instead of the DCC monsters. You will be defeating more of them in each fight, but you will also get swarmed by them if you are not careful.
If I sounded negative, and I apologize if I did, it was because I realized how differently these books were balanced, and they are not supposed to be "official DCC versions" of the monsters in the core game. These books are more of a "more monsters mod" to DCC, and the fact that they are easier to defeat, but also much more deadly in number of appearances, action dice, and special attacks, sort of puts a new rebalance to the monster game, more in line with traditional B/X assumptions.
This is a strange case of DCC's "one monster per world" assumption clashing with the B/X design theories of "many monsters in the world." With DCC, each monster is a boss monster. With Aquilae's bestiaries, we are back to the traditional "many monsters of a type" world.
The best way to look at these books is like those old-school Diablo 2 mods that multiply the monsters, make them easier to defeat, give them many special status attacks, and throw hordes at you so you can feel like a hero as you cut your way through swaths of them. If you are not careful, you will get swarmed, piled on, debilitating conditions piled on you, and killed in the blink of an eye.
If you are more in line with the DCC thinking, these may not be the best option for you.
If the monster-swarm style is more your type of game, I highly recommend these books.
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