Mythic Monsters: Inner Planes

This installment of Legendary Games’ Mythic Monsters-series clocks in at 34 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page ToC, 3 pages of introduction/how to use, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 24 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Now sometimes, a mythic monster installment features some cool, unique supplemental idea – this one provides a code of symbols (similar to what e.g. gypsies used back n the day, though much more obvious) for planar gates to help the wary planeshopper decide on whether to jump through the portal. Quite an array of solid, full-color glyphs with obvious meanings are provided here, covering e.g. the inner planes and negative/astral/ethereal planes, but also providing some symbols for portals that are one-way, lead to djinn, sahuagin etc. Nice.

Now fans of cheesy horror classics may get a chuckle out of the nomenclature of the wishmaster ability for mythic djinn – those beings are the keepers of their races and essentially the wishing police – these beings may even undo the wishes of other djinn. Yeah! Now let’s take a look at the respective mythic creatures and what sets them apart!

At CR 10/MR 4, the Noble Djinni Vizier comes with a mastery of gravity and its manipulation, cannot be easily contained and gets some neat SPs. AT CR 12/Mr 5, the mythic Malik (i.e. noble efreeti) may cause non-mythic fire resistance ignoring conflagrations, shroud themselves in clouds of embers and are never blinded by smoke etc. – nasty for line of sight/effect tricks. Spell-like abilities powered by mythic power and the iconic arrogance also get neat signature abilities here.

At CR 5/MR 2, mythic Janni actually are rather neat – they can change the elemental properties of magic items and spells they use via swift actions and summon forth powerful elemental support. The CR 14/MR 5 Noble Marid Shahzada may desiccate targets via water’s fury and craft deadly prisons of ice. Their liquefying touch, insanely accurate senses under water as well as their utter superiority in the realms of underwater creatures ensure that these guys are awesome terrors to behold.

The CR 16/MR 6 Noble Shaitan Pasha can force creatures to land, calling to swimmers and flyers – but what about those with a burrow speed? Apart from that oversight, the collective of cool legalistic wordsmithing, superior metalworking etc., a grand beast of a foe. Have I mentioned the ability to push targets into stone, melding them with the surroundings? Now that is creepy imagery.

Mythic Ghuls at CR 6/MR 2 gets a cursed, special, selective cloud of obscuring mists as well as superiority over hyenas and hyena-like creatures and temporarily grant these subordinate pack creatures teamwork feats. At CR 9/ MR 3, the iconic invisible stalker gets the exceedingly cool ability to activate an electrical shield that damages targets depending on the amount of metal they wear and also use this field to see targets. Its nigh unstoppable tracking also helps make this one a full-blown success.

The CR 6/MR 2 Mercanes come with a second extraplanar decoy chest and constant mind shielding, making them appropriate hagglers. Now mythic salamanders, at CR 8/MR 3 get imho one of the most iconic abilities – regeneration that can only be suppressed by mythic cold effects or weapons forged by their own mythic brethren – so simple, so elegant, so awesome. Of course, that are not all of their tricks, but it’s the coolest in my book and rife with storytelling potential.

At CR 6/MR 2, the Mythic Tojanida get toxic ink, which is a rather cool idea, especially considering the option to power to enhance the damage with mythic power. The dreaded mythic Xill at CR 8/MR 3 can abduct non-helpless targets, may implant eggs on targets grappled and may switch teamwork feats in a limited manner, adding a strange component to the creature appropriate for the dreaded creatures. Compared to that, making earth waves and bludgeoning earth-eruptions for mythic Xorns (at CR 8/ MR 3) feel a tad bit more conservative.

Now my personal highlights in the mythic monster series tend to be Legendary Games’ unique, new creatures and this time around, we get the CR 10/MR 4 Liminal Hound, a superb hunting dog of silverish hexagonally-scaled skin that not only is a glorious tracker, but which may also highjack grappled creatures trying to teleport away, interrupt those trying to get away, function perfectly in even zero gravity. As a nice bonus, we get a new armor made from their skin as well as a full-blown 1-page artwork of the most glorious quality. While not the best of Legendary Games’ unique creations, I do like this critter’s tight planeshopper-hunter-focus.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good, I did not notice truly annoying glitches, though e.g. the Tojanida, Ghul, Malik and Genie-statblocks lack their respective ecology entries. Layout adheres to legendary Games’ 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes with two great full-color artworks and some cool symbols. The pdf has no bookmarks – a comfort detriment.

Jonathan Keith delivers a fine array of elemental-themed adversaries, with a tight focus on all those non-elemental denizens of the often neglected Inner Planes. Indeed, the overall takes on the respective mythic creatures, often drawn from folklore and pop culture, can be considered iconic and the new mythic toys to play with are neat. On the other hand, even though the adversaries herein often have a rather unique additional tool (or even a whole array of them), not all blew me away. Add to that the minor glitches and we arrive at a good installment of the series, if not a perfect one – well worth a final verdict of 4 stars.

You can get this selection of mythic adversaries here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop.

Endzeitgeist out.

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