A panoply of uniquely dangerous monsters to challenge veteran heroes in the 5th Edition of the world's greatest roleplaying game.
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Alright, it's been a while and we've been a little quiet recently, so let's talk about what's been going on with this project. The short of it is that we're in the final stages of development.
We're cutting through the copy editing and writing revisions, with the formatting to follow shortly thereafter. This means that we're a little behind schedule regarding planned delivery for this project, but not more than a month or two (March or April is very reasonable at this point, with the potential for late February).
As our other projects, we'll be planning to get the PDFs out in front, followed by about a month delay on the print orders, which will ship shortly thereafter.
The great news is...
Between the astounding art (showcased below) and the exciting, unusual, and balanced monster designs, we're confident this will be one of our best works yet. It's been such fun to develop, we're already in talks for the second one!
Let's get some quick art & monster group updates here:
Deep Sea Fey
Through the WotC-published monster compendiums (and those published elsewhere), we've found a lack of certain creature types - be it across the challenge rating spectrum or just fewer of certain types. One of these, the fey, needed some expansion, so you'll find a few of these groups in the Total Party Kill Bestiary. The "Deep Sea Fey" group exist - as their name indicates - far beneath the waves, where the crushing pressure and brutal cold make survival challenging for even seasoned adventurers.
Angels, Angels, & More Angels
Celestials, as another oft-underrepresented monster type, have been included in the Total Party Kill Bestiary in spades. While we tried to include several variants that deviate from the "winged humanoid" stereotype (see previous updates for some examples), we wanted to create a couple of more-standard angel groups with interesting abilities.
The "Hammer Angels" group includes an excess of mobility, being adept at positioning both themselves and their foes around the battlefield.
The "Valkyries" group includes a variety of creatures (inspired by one of our backers' suggestions!) that draw emphasis to resurrection and otherworldly mechanics.
Greater Liches
Let's get *really* deadly - the "Greater Liches" group boasts our second and final Challenge 30 in the Total Party Kill Bestiary, and includes a variety of liches from the conjoined undead paramores to the draco-demilich. These baddies posses impressive spellcasting and unusual mechanics turning them into some of the most dangerous creatures in the book. Good luck...
Our main goal is to bring you the highest quality content 5th Edition on the market, and we're continually striving for that. Second to that, sadly, is our delivery schedule and communication and that's something we definitely have been working on the background. There's been some restructuring here at 2CGaming (as you may have noticed from our other project posts), and we're sorry that it's been impacting our ability to deliver these projects on our planned schedule.
Rest assured, however, that the quality of the projects is not suffering and we have every intent to complete these projects and bring them (and future projects) to their full unbridled potential!
As always, thanks for your continued patience.
Best,
The 2CGaming Team
Hey there folks! We've been hard at work creating new monsters, pushing for a release date late November of this year. We are currently almost done with all of the Alpha monster builds (over 100 monsters!), which are looking VERY dangerous indeed. As a reminder, our development process looks something like this:
As of right now, about 1/4 of the monsters are finalized and past step 3, with 1/2 of the monsters finished with step 2 and awaiting step 3. Our community playtests have been fantastic. We've had a lot of great opportunities to get to know many of you, and feedback has been guiding our designs every step of the way.
Excited to see what fearsome foes you will add to your arsenal?! We have the FULL LIST of every monster in the book, some examples of which are provided below! We guarantee your players will tremble in fear at the sight of these deadly threats.
Imperial Dragons (Dragon, CR Range 15 - 25)
Beasts of Legend Template (Beasts, CR Range 10 - 17)
Living Spells (Construct, CR Range 11 - 29)
The Holy Virtues (Celestial, CR Range 14 - 28)
That's all for now, folks - back to the writing! As always, let us know if there are any questions or concerns!
- The 2CGaming Team
We've missed a month on the updates! Sorry for the lapse. Though we're not attending this year, we hope everyone's GenCon goes well this week!
The main theme of this update is some finalization of our monster groups and artwork!
The book contains 28 groups (approximately 85 monsters), and we've formally settled on many of these groups, described in brief with some in-progress artwork below!
Utterances of Truespeech. Potent spellcasters, warped by exposure to the underlying framework of the cosmos.
Elemental Archons. The souls of long-dead heroes, enshrouded in elemental magic, banished by the powers that be to roam the material plane.
Lynchwood. Ancient trees, come to life through the vengeful souls of those hung from its branches.
Vermindrakes. Dragon-insect hybrids, created by insane mages and bad luck. You might recognize these from the book's cover!
Sand Dragons. Desert-dwelling dragons, with emphasis on lurking and striking from beneath the sands.
Primeval Fey. Name and light theme change from "Fey Royalty", unique and powerful progenitors of the classic fey concepts, including trickery, fortune, and time.
Imperial Dragons. Many powerful dragons are content to rest on their laurels, hoarding gold and power. Not so for these most ambitious dragons, who prize physical prowess above all else.
Nartheneen. The ancient, now-extinct race of powerful beings, drawing inspiration from Egyptian godhood. The Nartheneen’s obsession with meritocracy has developed their race into a powerful group of superbeings separated into castes, each with a different animal head. Through potent rituals, they can enter a new caste (and exchange their head!), vastly altering their capabilities.
Metallic Oozes. Constructs of powerful alchemy, these liquid constructs are crafted of rare and often volatile liquid metals.
Living Structures. Giant mimics that disguise themselves as structures, consuming portions of the structure and recreating it as their own digestive tract.
Hammer Angels. Watchful celestials that track the sum total of evil deeds committed by a creature, big and small. When it hits critical mass, they come and hit you in the head with a metaphorical brick. Even a tiny evil act can push you over the edge and bring down their divine judgement.
Birds of Paradise. Fey birds with incredibly powerful illusion and enchantment abilities that coerce mortals into long-term effects (such as year-long sleep), allowing the birds to nest around them. Lots of cool real world designs to draw from here, along with filling a niche of fey creatures that are also tiny/small.
Holy Virtues. Creatures built off the physical themes represented in catholic representation of angels, each with game mechanics representing the themes of Mercy, Compassion, and Retribution. Themes still TBD.
Hybrids. While originally an excuse to stat up Sharktopus, a Hybrid system has been developed in the 2CGaming Patreon. Functionally, pick a top half (actions), and bottom half (traits), and slap them together. Shark-bear? Bear-topus? The same top and bottom result in a extremely deadly version of the mundane creature on which it’s based.
That's all for now, folks! We're making steady headway on this; thanks for the continued support. As always, leave questions/concerns/comments below!
Best, Jon Kelly - The 2CGaming Team
Hello all! You're looking lovely today.
Our June update is relatively light, as the last month has been mostly focused around ideation and testing. Here's what we've been working on:
Testing the Elemental Archons, Utterances of Truespeech, Living Structures and Nartheneen. These are four most-likely-to-include monster groups for the Total Party Kill Bestiary, and there's been some great feedback and adjustments on these thus far.
Living Structures
Likely related to Mimics in some capacity or other, these creatures travel stealthily about until they come across a large structure (tower, battleship, castle, etc.), at which point they burrow into the structure and consume it, room by room, replacing the walls, objects, and other inanimate elements with their own facade of the original.
Nartheneen
An ancient meritocratic race of Egyptian-inspired humanoids, these creatures perform complex rituals to adjust their physical and mental features, optimizing them for the various sociopolitical structures of their world.
Our first meeting mere hours ago, we discussed themes and mechanics around the Fey Royalty, aforementioned Living Structures and others, as well as discussing the impact of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes on the contents of the Total Party Kill Bestiary. Lots of fiends from the tome mean fewer in our book, but that leaves space for other options!
Looking forward to the continued development this next month. With luck, we'll get some of the art started for the confirmed groups!
As always, please let us know if there are any questions, comments, or concerns. We're excited to hear from you!
Best,
Jon Kelly - the 2CGaming Team