WTF, D&D: The Goofiest Monsters of Pathfinder’s “Bestiary 3”
Pathfinder is a role playing game based around a modified D&D 3.5 rule set. With a huge setting spanning hundreds of books, it has grown to become one of the most popular fantasy RPGs ever made. There is something for everyone. If you want to spend $15 on a 60 page book about troll hats, there is probably a Pathfinder book for you. Bestiary 3, released in 2012, includes a mixture of original monsters, monsters from Dungeons & Dragons (including the Flumph) and mythological creatures. Not surprisingly, some of them are pretty fucking goofy.
Zack: Have we talked about Pathfinder before?
Steve: Mentioned it, surely, but I don’t remember doing any of the books or a play through.
Zack: Other than Call of Cthulhu it is the game I have played most recently with an actual gaming group.
Steve: And it’s one of my favorites.
Zack: So you explain it.
Steve: Okay, like, 3rd/3.5 Edition D&D came out and proliferated to all these weird games because of the Open Gaming License, or OGL, where people could license the system from Wizards. So there is a huge boom in the early 2000s where all these games come out and most of them are cheaply produced.
Zack: Get to Pathfinder.
Steve: Right, so Wizards decides “okay, we’re done here, time for 4th Edition” which is a pretty big departure from 3.5 and actually, in hindsight, 4th Edition is one of the worst D&D systems. Like bad enough that 5th Edition is trying to come back to be more like 3rd.
Zack: The point is, when 4th came out people wanted to keep playing 3rd and there was Paizo with Pathfinder, which combined the rules everybody liked by that point with production values that rivaled and sometimes exceeded Wizards.
Steve: Yeah, that’s right. So now you have Pathfinder which may not be as culturally known as D&D but there are probably more people playing Pathfinder than any one edition of D&D.
Zack: It’s pretty good.
Steve: I love it. They keep building out the world and adding stuff to it. Like not long ago they added a bunch of space stuff.
Zack: Seriously?
Steve: Yeah, totally. They do these big adventure paths which are like 6 linked adventure books and they’re always themed to some new part of the setting they’re introducing. So space was one of them. And there were robots and stuff.
Zack: That sounds ridiculous.
Steve: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, baby! That’s classic D&D to have scifi stuff.
Zack: So the point here today is that Pathfinder is like the re-evolution of D&D. You’ll see lots of familiar stuff and lots of weird stuff.
Steve: Yeah, it’s like alternate timeline D&D. Sometimes it tries to be more mature or adult or whatever, but it still falls back on chainmail bikinis and wizards shooting fireballs.
Steve: This thing is literally a killer whale crossed with a wolf.
Zack: Going to earn me mega points on Dogspotting.
Steve: The monster design sort of works, but it’s still one of those “X+Y = OOGA BOOGA” monsters.
Zack: I must have skipped the Algebra classes on OOGA BOOGA math.
Steve: Oh, yeah, it’s a whole discipline of math, dude. You stick Hulk Hogan arms on an ostrich and OOGA BOOGA it’s a Grostrich.
Zack: So you’re saying you cross two huge pythons with an ostrich.
Steve: 24 inch pythons.
Zack: Ya know, brother, I may not be able to fly, but I’ve got these guns that make up for it.
Steve: I’ll be including the Grostrich in my Hell in the Cell adventure module.
Zack: Ecology: The Grostrich prefers to drive wide body trucks in Florida. It eats like a pig. It is commonly found in a gym, poolside watching over its offspring’s tan, or on Gawker cuckolding a Love Sponge.
Zack: I should have been a pair of ragged claws / attached to the side of a freaking huge whale
Steve: Moby Dick would have been a much shorter book if that whale had giant crab claws.
Zack: Call me Ish- AAAAUGGH!!!
Zack: You can just tell this guy’s life is hell. It might be the expression or the posture or something, but it seems obvious to me.
Steve: He looks like a long-suffering doorman.
Zack: Yeah, like the kind outside of a really old hotel.
Zack: Or maybe a night club that nobody is lining up to get into.
Steve: “IT ISSSSSSS LADIESSS NIGHT.”
Zack: “HALF PRICCCE COLADASSSSSS!”
Steve: You know he gets in a huge argument with the manager about wearing that helmet before his shift starts.
Zack: “Luprecco, you have to wear the helmet. It’s part of the whole image. It’s what people want to see. You’re giving them a fantasy.”
Steve: He puts on the helmet and starts flicking that tongue around all angry.
Steve: Making a mess.
Zack: “If you knock over any of the Colada glasses with that tongue it’s coming out of your salary!”
Zack: I would hate to run the bodega this guy goes to for his coffee.
Zack: Ay dios mio! Here come the no skin man again. I tell him to stand on the plastic, he no stand on the plastic, he want to go pick out just the right churro.
Steve: “Hey Pedro, how’s it going?” He comes in flinging blood all over the place. “Just going for my morning jog.”
Zack: Totally. This guy is ripped up like crazy. He probably spends half the day at the gym and eats a literal ton of cod like the Rock.
Steve: I don’t even want to think about the bloody dumps he takes from eating all that cod.
Steve: But now I’m thinking about a bloody toilet.
Zack: That reminds me that the Rock hasn’t eaten candy since 1989. No joke.
Steve: What was the candy?
Zack: I think it was a Twizzlers.
Steve: That’s a bad choice. That’s like never eating a sandwich again and the last sandwich you eat is a plain cheese sandwich.
Zack: Fortunately the Rock still eats tons of sandwiches, so long as the sandwich is a cod sandwich and also the bread is cod.
Zack: Ahhhhh horniness levels are rising!
Steve: Dang look at this hot babe combined with a scorpion.
Zack: This reminds me, this guy who will not be named emailed me this PDF of a monster manual he had made and invited us to review it. And I looked at it and it was like half pictures like this, only way more extreme, like huge boobs and weird head pieces and stuff. There were several that were like headless insect monsters that still had huge bobs. It was crazy.
Steve: You didn’t tell me about this!
Zack: I told you about it but I never showed it to you, because I told him “we’ll be happy to review your weird sexual issues monster manual” and he told me he didn’t want us to review it.
Steve: You honored that?!?
Zack: Yeah and worse, I have since lost the PDF, so I can’t even tell you what the title of it was. But trust me, somewhere out there is a monster manual sort of book where fully a third of the monsters have weird sexual boob issues going on.
Steve: You’re just making me mad! What a missed opportunity!
Zack: I’m afraid you will have to console yourself with that bodacious scorpion babe.
Steve: I’m starting to think there might be a pattern here.
Zack: You mean bodacious babes combined with animals?
Steve: I mean, I get it, hot babe, fierce beast. Combine them for OOGA BOOGA.
Zack: Are you calling Hulk Hogan a hot babe?
Steve: It gets disturbing after a while though. I mean, not even getting into whatever weird hangup is going on, but I can just see walking into room after room in a dungeon and finding all these topless babes and being like, “Please, before we fight, can you put a shirt on?”
Zack: I think the answer is going to be a resounding “no” on that one. Do you think some woman who is 3/4ths scorpion gives a damn about a shirt? She can’t even walk into a shop. Nobody is going to sell her a shirt.
Steve: Yeah, but this one could wear a robe or something.
Zack: She’s tastefully blocking her chest with a sword.
Zack: I can’t believe I’m the one arguing in favor of boobs!
Steve: Oh, dude, I am not anti-boobs. By all means: boobs. It gets distracting though. Let’s see something without boobs.
Steve: This is the most claymation looking thing I have ever seen in a monster manual.
Zack: It’s Large Marge!
Steve: Oh, yeah, the eyes are the same.
Steve: You know, I really love this one. It is goofy, for sure, but it’s original and cool.
Zack: I like that it matter-of-factly states “oh, yeah, it’s 18 feet tall and weighs 12,000 pounds.”
Steve: That’s a big girl.
Zack: Wouldn’t it be even better if it had boobs?
Steve: No!
Zack: I think we’re having some sort of breakthrough, Steve. It’s like you have been innoculated.
Steve: I never want to be immune to boobs.
Zack: You can’t be immune, just resistant.
Steve: Fanged monkey head, viper tail, tiger body? Take how much I like the last one and reverse it.
Steve: It’s not “Nue” it’s just a bunch of parts we’ve seen before all mixed up.
Zack: The emerging from a cloud of black smoke part it sort of new.
Zack: But I’ll agree about the laziness. It seems lazy, even if this is probably based on some real mythological creature.
Steve: Yeah, but that only makes it worse! People back in 500 AD in India or wherever had only seen monkeys and tigers and snakes. That’s the best they could come up with. We’ve got all sorts of context. We shold be able to come up with something way better like a squid man with knife hands and he’s constantly barfing.
Zack: That doesn’t sound that good, Steve.
Steve: He’s barfing up… tiny little versions of himself. That burrow into your body and seek out your brain!
Zack: Ahhh! What happens when they get to my brain?
Steve: You work for them now, buddy. Full time.
Steve: At the squid factory.
Zack: Ahhhhhhhh!
Zack: Here you go, Steve. Something different!
Steve: Somebody decided to play chess during the brainstorming session.
Zack: Even with the glowing eyes and fangs, it would be impossible not to call this thing wiggle pony.
Steve: Now, stay with me for a second, dude… what if we could attach this thing to the tail of a tiger?
Zack: Whooooaaa my mind is exploding.
Steve: Now, what if, bear with me, what if the tiger had a huge rack? What then?
Zack: Is she wearing a shirt?
Steve: Oh, no way, you were right. There’s nowhere for a creature like this to buy a shirt. They’re just flapping out there in the breeze, tentacle horse flipping around like an eel. Pretty cool, right?
Zack: Actually, yeah. At least creepy.
Steve: And you thought my knife hands squid that barfs was lame.
Zack: This one is a little bit of a grudge for me, so you can take a back seat.
Steve: Oh, so you’re going to make people mad by saying a bunch of stuff about Lovecraft?
Zack: No, I think his star hs fallen lately as everyone recognizes that he was a big old racist. I’m more concerned with the so-called Great Race of Yith.
Zack: Look at this fucking thing, Steve.
Steve: I’m looking at it.
Zack: Out of all of Lovecraft’s weird creatures, it is the stupidest. First of all, do you really expect me to believe that a cone with crab pincers created a hyper-advanced civilization that can time travel? These things can’t even turn the page of a book.
Steve: Psychic powers, dude.
Zack: Yeah, sure, wizard it all away. These guys spend all their time in a library and those books would look like taco lettuce with these gross cones sliding around pinching them.
Steve: Don’t they switch bodies with humans?
Zack: Yes and their plans are unknowable when they switch bodies with humans, but I think we know their plan. I would want a human body if I were a cone with crab claws. Imagine all the things you can’t do with crab claws for hands.
Steve: I could hold cigarettes. I saw a video of a crab doing that.
Zack: I didn’t know you smoked.
Steve: I don’t. I did vape once. It was a pizza flavored vape.
Zack: Did you like that?
Steve: About as much as you like space cones.
Steve: This is me at the pizza buffet at CiCi’s.
Zack: This is not a very scary monster.
Steve: You’re not a slice of Hawaiian pizza.
Zack: That’s it, folks! Thanks for supporting our Patreon and we will have some new backer rewards to announce next week, including name a character in a game we play and more.
Steve: Yeah and if you’re waiting on a reward or have a question about one go ahead and email me at wtfdndsteve at gmail dot com.