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Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm: Volume 1 (OSR)

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Short & Sweet: This book is Volume 1 of a 2-volume set that brings together every monster published for Pathfinder, painstakingly and rigorously converted to OSR format.  It also adapts each and every monster so that it can be used with adventuring parties of ANY level.  830 monsters, 3,320 complete statblocks, ready to use in ANY OSR adventuring campaign.

Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm is the largest, most comprehensive, most flexible, and most ambitious fantasy roleplaying bestiary ever conceived.  6,400 complete statblocks, comprising 1,600 monsters, each fdsfddsfdsgiven the Quadded Statblock treatment, enabling them to be used in any campaign setting, with PCs of any level.

After enormous initial success with editions for Pathfinder First Edition, Pathfinder Second Edition, 5E/Fifth Edition, and now, OSR.

Add to this a thoroughly innovative and massively expandable AI system to guide monster behavior, and you have what just might be the most impressive and valuable creature resource ever to hit Pathfinder, 5E, Pathfinder Second Edition, and OSR.

(Please note that Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm in its entirety is a 2-volume set.)

This book is intended to be any or all of the following:

  1. An authoritative listing of monsters for use in any campaign setting, for adventuring parties of any size, and any level.
  2. A means of using any existing monster with adventures of any level and difficulty.
  3. A compendium of newly-created monsters, born of inspiration from existing beasties you may already know and love.
  4. A single-source reference and repository, listing every single possible monster in easy-to-reference alphabetical order.

This book is immensely valuable for GMs who want to introduce a truly formidable amount of creatures into their campaign, and to do so in a flexible manner.

  • Prep Time: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm is a peerless resource for GMs who want to minimize preparation time, or who want to through new, unexpected combinations of monsters at their players.
  • Crunch: There is no other work that assembles, generates, and makes available this level of pure crunch, of instantly-usable gaming statistics in an accessible format.
  • Single Point of Reference: Each monster entry is designed to be self-contained, as much as possible: in nearly all cases, you should be able to use the creature’s entry on its own, without referencing any other publications or materials.
  • Flexibility: If you’ve always been frustrated by the restrictions of a given adventure being appropriate only “for levels 4-6”, then this bestiary is for you!
  • Rigor: Each and every one of the statblocks in this tome was constructed using published game mechanics, templates, rules, and resources. Most have been playtested in actual gaming groups, or simulated in extensive combat scenarios across a range of PC compositions, levels, and sizes. Although every single monster is not going to pose the identical challenge to every party—see “Weaknesses”, below—every creature is constructed as best as possible to represent that monster at that level of difficulty.
  • Intelligence: FlexAI is a revolutionarily complex, yet accessible, means of simulating dynamic, contextually-appropriate monster behavior in combat encounters. Each and every monster includes full FlexAI rules, including its combat Role and variation, so you know how it is likely to behave in combat. This mechanic and approach takes the place of the somewhat more pedestrian “Combat Behavior” description that most bestiaries include alongside statblocks. This concept is explored in full, with hundreds of additional resources and references, in the FlexAI Guidebook, usable on its own, or as a valuable companion tome to this bestiary.
  • Novelty: Of the 6,400 complete statblocks in this bestiary, 4,800 of them are entirely new, forged using existing game mechanics, guidelines, templates, resources, and rules. A full 75% of the creatures described herein were created solely for the purposes of letting GMs use monsters for party levels above, or below, the levels “intended” originally when the monsters were published to begin with. In this sense, this work is not only an assemblage of monsters in a single repository, but also the single largest source of new creatures ever conceived.
  • Thoroughness: Every monster. Ever. Assembled in a single place.
  • Integration with FlexTale: All Infinium Game Studio adventures and other products use the FlexTale approach to adventure content. This innovative approach attempts to make all adventure content accessible and appropriate to all PC parties, of all levels. Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm enables FlexTale support for every monster, ever published.
  • Making Existing Adventures Dynamic: If you have published adventures that do not use the FlexTale approach, you can use this bestiary to adapt them to parties of any level.
  • Construction: Each and every monster has been “built” or “constructed”, rather than simply fabricated. The meaning here is a little obtuse, so in more detail: each monster has been incarnated from its starting statblock, and then modified up and down as appropriate to generate the resulting quartet of statblocks you find herein. Hit dice have been modified, feats granted, and other tricks to produce contextually-appropriate scales of challenge. Statblocks have not simply been “fiddled with”, but rather templates and other tools have been applied to generate the results you see. It would have been easier—SO MUCH easier!—to simply fabricate statblocks and boosts, but this approach results in much richer and more true-to-the-rules mechanics.

Innovation

This product incorporates several innovative and creative tools your gaming group can use to use the content for a party of any size, and any level.

Infinium Game Studio has released several free booklets as rules accessories to help GMs understand (or to help prospective buyers experience) these tools:

Quadded Statblocks for Variable Challenge:

Check it out here.

FlexAI Guidbook Free Sample:

Check it out here.

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Reviews (2)
Discussions (7)
Customer avatar
Anthony T September 22, 2023 4:08 pm UTC
Any discounts on POD.? I have bought pretty much everything in pdf and want to go back to print when possible. Just got the Full DM Atlas in hardback and would like to get more, but 150 for the set….sorry for the big but the wallet insists
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Customer avatar
J. E September 22, 2023 6:30 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hiya—no worries. If you email me at infiniumGameStudios at gmail, include your order # for the PDFs, and I’ll shoot you a discount code to grab the hardcovers at cost.

Thanks for reaching out and hope you’re enjoying everything!
Customer avatar
Josh F May 12, 2023 12:29 am UTC
PURCHASER
received my POD copies, they are amazing. Had a question: Is there a list of random encounter tables using these books for terrain type/dungeon etc.?
Customer avatar
Josh F April 09, 2023 10:13 pm UTC
PURCHASER
will there be a pod version of this? maybe combining them both for osr?
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Customer avatar
J. E April 10, 2023 1:23 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Josh! Yes, sorry; I had actually published the POD versions a while ago and for some reason they were tagged as Private, not Public.

Corrected! You should now be able to order hardcovers. If you already own the PDF versions, stay tuned for an hour or so, though; I'll be sending out DISCOUNT LINKS to order them more cheaply.

There are more than 1,600 monsters in the set, so it was physically impossible to have them in a single book. But I recognize that some folks want a single physical book nevertheless.

Your options are either a two-volume complete set, or the single-volume Abridged version. All three books are now available for hardcover order:

Complete, Vol 1 (840 pages):
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/335294/Aquilae-Bestiary-of-the-Realm-Volume-1-OSR

Complete, Vol 2 (840 pages):
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/337090/Aquilae-Bestiary-of-the-Realm-Volume-2-OSR

Abridged, single volume (430 pages):...See more
Customer avatar
Michael C April 03, 2022 10:51 am UTC
PURCHASER
Where are the icons next to the monster names defined? Thanks.
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E April 03, 2022 12:40 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Michael--Good question! I now realize that I didn't include an explicit section on some of those symbols.

They're icon versions of the information in the grid right underneath.

From left to right:
Organization: Represents whether the creature is typically encountered as either Solitary or in a Group.
Terrain: The environment(s) in which the creature is found.
FlexAI Role: The combat role that the creature typically holds. This can be used with the FlexAI rules to dynamically define combat behavior (if you're running a solo game, or if you're interested in having tables determine behavior as a traditional DM).

Hope this helps!
Customer avatar
Gorgar W November 27, 2020 9:51 pm UTC
Purchaser here. I've barely started looking over these and there are serious issues. This and Volume 2 both seem to have omitted #of attacks from the stat blocks. Completely. For example, Hydra has " XXX 1d8 " listed but nowhere does it indicate how many bites the creature makes. For real? Furthermore, some of the creatures are missing special abilities that they should have. Like Bear (all of them) are missing Hug, for a classic example. Adherer is missing its "stickiness" — the one gimmick it has! For an obscure example, Abaia doesn't show any of the spell-like abilities called on its entry on the PFSRD. There's a lot of talk in the Intro how this is Authoritative and a Single Point of Reference. I'm just not seeing either. In nearly all cases, I'll need to reference my other OSR books or the PFSRD to use - any - of the monsters in this book.
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Customer avatar
Gorgar W November 27, 2020 10:16 pm UTC
AND I don't see creatures' damage resistances or spell resistances anywhere.
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Customer avatar
Stacie W December 08, 2020 9:07 am UTC
We're these problems ever fixed?
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Customer avatar
J. E December 08, 2020 12:56 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Ho Gorgar--Thanks for the feedback! Not every retroclone uses the same mechanics and/or statblock elements. Although I tried to present a pretty fair amalgam of standards, some pieces are not present.

I have amended the intro to clarify the assumed rules on attacks--i.e., unless otherwise specified, monsters may attack with each of their natural attacks. I also have added a section on magic resistance to clarify.

Publishing these updates soon. Thanks again for the feedback!
Reply
Customer avatar
Gorgar W December 09, 2020 8:34 pm UTC
Jason, my examples were the tip of a very large and expensive iceberg. Its not *just* number of attacks, spell resistance, etc. Unless a monster is completely bereft of specials, so... so many of the entries just don't include them. No attempt was made at converting them, EVEN WHEN a creature exists in nearly every iteration of the original game/OSR (ex: "bear" always has some mechanic for "hug" -- but not yours).
Here you are claiming "some pieces are not present" while selling the material as "thorough" and "painstakingly converted". I shouldn't have had to drop 50 bucks to learn the truth was the former.
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E December 09, 2020 8:54 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Gorgar--I can assure you I have indeed spent hundreds of hours on the Bestiares, and that all content has been rigorously converted to OSR using a heuristic that's now been documented here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/338296/Content-Conversion-Guide-Pathfinder---5E---P2E---OSR---DCC---d20-35

The vast majority of monsters do indeed contain at least one special ability that has been mapped, again following those guidelines. There's even a published list of all 4,800 special abilities and attacks across all 1,660 monsters; in each and every case, the Pathfinder mechanic has been adapted to the target rules system and documented. You can find that mapping organized in a massive Excel document here:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/338297/Content-Conversion-Mapping-Inventory-Pathfinder---5E---P2E---OSR---DCC---d20-35

I think the real disconnect here is expectations: There are over a dozen retroclones that purport to the "OSR" title. I picked a happy medium...See more
Customer avatar
Jeremy R November 13, 2020 6:26 am UTC
As someone who did this for about 200 PF monsters (in my Found Folio) I am really impressed at how much work was involved. Bravo
Customer avatar
Badger B November 07, 2020 2:38 am UTC
Is it at all possible to have a sampl that covers at least 1 of the monsters please?
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E November 07, 2020 3:04 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Absolutely! I had initially configured it requesting pages 1-30 to be previewed, but it appears as though that isn't enabled. I've just re-enabled it and it should preview correctly now.

Also you can check out the free sample PDF here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/334474/Aquilae-Bestiary-of-the-Realm-for-OSR-Sample-Monsters

Thanks for the heads-up!
Reply
Customer avatar
Badger B November 08, 2020 9:43 pm UTC
Thank you very much. The 30 page preview was excellent.
I was intending to buy it, if it looked an easy conversion to 5e. It isn't.
If I played PF or OSR though this even at full price would be a truly amazing bargain. I love the formatting and layout. Its incredibly easy on the eye but contains all the neccessary information per page.
Bravo! I commend the mammouth work and the effort gone into making it.
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E November 08, 2020 9:57 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks so much for the kind words! Glad you like it.

There is a complete dedicated 5E version if you're interested.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=aquilae+bestiary+5e&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E November 08, 2020 9:58 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
If you play multiple systems as it sounds, you can save a ton by getting the Multisystem Bookshelf, which includes Pathfinder, P2E, 5E, OSR, and DCC (forthcoming shortly).

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/310387/Aquilae-Bestiary-of-the-Realm-The-Multisystem-Bookshelf-Pathfinder-5E-P2E-OSR
Reply
Customer avatar
Badger B November 08, 2020 10:11 pm UTC
I found your website and just sending you an email.

Give it about 5 minutes and check it please.
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