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Sunday, September 8, 2013

Mini Review - Tome of Horrors 4 (S&W Monster Book)



I'm a big fan of The Tome of Horrors Complete for Swords & Wizardry. It's a hefty tome, but it adds so many options for OSR styles gaming as far as monsters go, it's almost indispensable. Almost. The price is a horror for many, even if the hard cover includes a PDF copy in the price.

Did I mention my wonderful cat knocked a glass of water off the desk and onto my copy of The Tome of Horrors Complete below? That was a year or so ago. Damage was minimal and obviously she (the cat) still lives.

ToH Complete isn't so complete anymore, with the addition of Tome of Horrors 4. $44.95 for the print + PDF (and 5 bucks for the Pathfinder version and 50+ pages - Pathfinder certainly can be a bloated system). Is it worth you dollars?

It depends.

Are you a completist? If you own ToH Complete, you'll certainly want ToH4.

Are you a monster junkie? This is a well presented monster book with awesome art and an adventure seed for each monster.

Are you writing your own adventures for you group? You can keep them on their toes by introducing monsters from the ToH series.

Are you running a published campaign / series of modules / megadungeon? Much less valuable for you.

ToH4 is very well done and is worth the price for me, but it may not be for you. It's a bit of a niche product. Monstrosities is probably the monster book to start with if you need a basic monster book for your OSR campaign.

1 comment:

  1. Reasonable short review, and I agree, of the two products, Monstrosities is definitely more of what you NEED, rather then want.

    ReplyDelete

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