Crawthorne’s Catalog of Creatures: Werespider

This pdf clocks in at 5 pages, with the front cover sporting the beautiful full-color artwork of the werespider as well as the social media icons and misfit studios-logo and the editorial on the second page; the SRD covers almost 2 pages, with the second page offering about 1/5 of rules-texts from the builds – overall, I am not a big fan of this presentation, since printing out the pdf does mean you have to waste ink on the SRD-page and the front cover material. On the plus-side, there is actually some flavor text on the first page.

The eponymous monster hunter Crawthorne does get to have a say on werespiders as presented here. A big plus: Werespiders gain swap sense, a new ability, in lieu of the woefulyl generalist default lycanthrope template, which is neat indeed. The pdf also sports 3 feats – Potent Poison allows you to improve poison created as Ex or Sus (good job for catching both!), increasing the DC to 10 + HD + Con-mod. The other two feats increase the DC to escape webs and make them stronger and harder to destroy (Hp= 2 your HD, DR 5/-), which makes the webs an actual threat – nice job here!

Beyond three solid adventure hooks, we also get the CR 2 werespider, with a monk 2 as a base creature, statblock provided in both human and hybrid form – kudos! Also nice: The pdf does provide a mini-variety – hunting werespiders replace their web-ability with +8 to Acrobatics checks…though, to nitpick, that should be “racial bonus”, not “racial modifier”.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to a nice two-column full-color standard and the original artwork provided is nice at this low price-point. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length – however, it does come with a printer-friendly version, which is neat indeed for guys like yours truly that print out books – that version has no backgrounds and is b/w apart from those jarring social media icons on the first page- kudos!

Steven Trustrum’s Werespiders are a nice, solid addition to the canon of lycanthropic threats. While personally, I wished this had a bit more space to shine and some further things that set werespiders apart from other lycanthropes, the book still provides a solid creature for a buck. With not much to complain about, I consider this a solid addition to the series and thus rate this 4 stars – a good offering for the price-point, though not one that revolutionizes the critter.

You can get this supplement here on OBS!

Endzeitgeist out.

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