DCC: Cyclopedia of Common Animals

This new book for Dungeon Crawl Classics is a bestiary featuring common animals, dinosaurs, and even fairy animals. It is a massive tome of 252 pages, and amazingly comprehensive and complete. There are stats for everything, along with knowledgeable notes on almost every animal.

Best, there are story hooks in here related to the animals! How to involve them in stories, how to make them feel special, how to handle them in spellcasting, what parts are valuable on each, and a bunch of information is given to make the 'background animals' in the world add to the depth and storytelling of the world. We even get details like how to harvest frog poison and what that does, so even thieves and assassins can benefit from a lot of the information here.

There are tips for making special animals memorable, not overdoing it, and breaking immersion. Suppose every deer is a six-legged moss-brook deer. In that case, the world becomes too fantastic; everything becomes a monster, and having nothing normal takes players out of the world, losing opportunities for storytelling.

We get dinosaurs and fairy animals, too! Encounter tables, animals by terrain and climate, and a bunch of other information on how to make an area of the world believable by choosing the creatures that live there.

This book is elevating my DCC experience and raising the immersion of my worlds to a point where DCC will eclipse worlds made with first edition rules, which is currently the king of immersion for me. This is a great book that goes into detail about my worlds, giving me a palette of animals to paint into the background of the world and make everything feel grounded and real.

Primitive worlds are all about their animals! I see a lot of D&D art, and not one animal is present. People here in the modern world have little contact with animals outside the domesticated few we have in our homes. In an actual fantasy world, there will be many more animals in the environment. It's as if the artists behind these games are too invested in Uber and Starbucks, forgetting the holistic, country, and pastoral aspects of life in these worlds.

Highest recommendation, this book is an invaluable resource for creating a believable, grounded, realistic world with a world of creatures playing background roles, parts of the story, and as monsters themselves.

DCC Day: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm (Volumes 1 & 2)

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.

DCC Day: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for Dungeon Crawl Classics, Abridged

While I love the idea of Pathfinder OGL monsters being converted over to Dungeon Crawl Classics, and having all the monster abilities laid out for DCC is nice, this book is different from the main DCC bestiary in a few critical ways.

First up, the hit dice are too low. An elite stone giant in this bestiary has 6d8+6 hit points. In the DCC rulebook, this is 12d10 hit points.

Second, the damage and attack numbers are too low. The same stone giant in this bestiary can do one of three attacks: a +7 melee attack for 3d8+4, a +2 rock attack for 1d8+6, or a +7 slam for 2d6 + 4. In the DCC rulebook, this is a +18 melee attack for 3d8+10, or a +10 hurled stone for 1d8+10.

Third, the monsters have a few strange action dice entries. In DCC, all monsters start on a d20 on the dice chain. In this bestiary, giants and two action dice (for the elite, again), of 1d20 and a 2d24 roll. 2d24 means two d24 attacks, and not one 2d24 attack. I got very confused by this.

The AC is also low, with the stone giant being a 12-14 in the bestiary, and a 17 in the DCC core book.

To use this, a few adjustments are required.

First, pick a scaling factor for hit points and multiply by one to three times, depending on the size of the creature.

Second, ignore the action dice and multiply the given attack bonuses by one to two times.

Third, add another 0% to 30% to their attack damage, which is up to another whole damage die for most monsters. Some monsters at the lower levels do a bit too much, such as the orc.

Up the AC of all monsters by +0 to +5.

I am using the stone giant here, but this is a generally good baseline example. A few monsters, like the orc, are very close to DCC and work fine. Having action dice for monsters is nice, but I wish they were more varied, with the d14 and d16 used more often for some additional but weaker humanoid and low-level monster attacks.

DCC is an odd game; it has monsters with similar hit points, attack values, and damage outputs to 3.5E or Pathfinder 1e monsters (And the Aquilae Pathfinder compilations have numbers closer to DCC). Pathfinder's AC values are too high and need to be reduced by two-thirds (multiply the PF 1e AC by 0.66) and capped at 10. In this case, it is a more straightforward recommendation for the Pathfinder bestiaries by the same publisher as the DCC ones, but I wish the DCC books were more in line with the DCC rulebook.

It still is a nice book as a compilation, but you still need to go by the DCC rulebook to get your monster's stats in the correct ballpark for the game, "as intended." A great selection of monsters, but some tweaking is needed to keep them from being pushovers. We are supposed to tweak everything anyway, so if you don't really care much about the numbers and want something that gets you close enough, this book works.

I still love this book, though. It's a hard one to put down, since it gives me so much. I love the monster abilities listed under each entry. The different levels of creatures are fun. The quality level is very high.

Here is the critical factor. This book assumes a different baseline for the conversions, though. You also need to factor in "number appearing," which, if a bunch of the DCC monsters, as is, appeared, the fights with ten stone giants would take forever using the DCC official stats, versus these with the lower hit points, AC values, and lesser damage attacks. Lower hit point monsters would be quicker, more epic, and heroic fights, where you can take on hordes without the game dragging. Since the AC values are lower, you will hit more, and the fights will be faster.

Conversions are hard!

And the number of creatures in a fight matters.

This may be for a different type of DCC entirely. Used as a consistent bestiary, it may be a fun game. the numbers are not DCC-like, but DCC assumes each monster is the only one in the world, and this bestiary assumes they are one of many.

The balance does change with multiple creatures in a group, and if all you used were these numbers, but tweaked slightly, you could be fine. Keep the monsters consistent and from one source.

In short, a helpful book that will enhance your game, perhaps for the better. Just keep consistent and use only these monsters, and see how it goes!