Nord Games’ Ultimate Bestiary: Revenge of the Horde is a creature encyclopedia packed with stat blocks and lore for monstrous creatures drawn to collective hunting, combat, and survival.
I noticed a lot of similarities between Revenge of the Horde and Volo’s Guide to Monsters (VGtM). Both books thrive on giving new flavors to existing creatures or creating more powerful versions. In Revenge of the Horde, you do this for bugbears, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs, and trolls, among others.
“Revenge of the Horde” also includes a species of creature they themselves created, the Okiti, which we talked about last week. They are a race of humanoids with rat-like features, found primarily in the slums of coastal cities. They share many mechanical similarities with kobolds and goblins.
This is a treasure trove of stat blocks, lore, and other goodies for D&D 5e Dungeon Masters. That’s not to say there’s nothing in Revenge of the Horde as it has some things for players, but this book is definitely made for DMs looking for new creature options and lore. I am.
Note that they are participating in the last few days of the latest Kickstarter for the next book in the Ultimate Bestiary series, The Dreaded Accursed. If you’re interested in Revenge of the Horde, be sure to check it out.
A quick disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Nord Games, but this did not influence my review of this book in any way, shape, or form.
Full of neat formatting and great artwork
You all know by now how much I love well-formed PDFs. Revenge of the Horde is beautifully formatted and extremely readable. The pages themselves are neat and professionally polished, with plenty of photos, tables, excerpts, and subheadings to break up the walls of text.
The PDF version is fully searchable and comes with tons of bookmarks to jump to the specific section you need. A well-made PDF like this is a godsend for someone like me who plays RPGs entirely online.
This book is full of amazing artwork, with at least one on almost every page. The majority of the book’s art consists of full-color images of the creatures themselves, but there are also landscape paintings to show off the creatures’ environments or to set the scenes for the chapters.
The art style itself has a “D&D-like” feel to it, like something you’d find in an official WotC book. I think that’s what works in this book’s favor more than anything. As I said before, this book reminds me of VGtM. It feels like an extension of the Monster Manual, and the artwork definitely helps set this tone and feel.
By the way, all the artwork in this article comes directly from Revenge of the Horde. If you like what you see, you’ll probably like what you find in the book.
New Creature Statblock Horde
For the most part, this book focuses on low to low-medium CR creatures, but it also includes some medium and high CR creatures. Most creatures range from CR 0 to 6.
The balance as a whole is also very well put together. There may be a few outliers here and there, especially at higher CRs, but overall it’s well balanced. These creatures clearly have a professional level of polish.
A significant number of these creatures hit slightly above their respective CRs compared to the official source creatures. However, this is by no means a negative opinion of this book. If anything, I feel like the creatures in the official sources can be too weak at times.
I find that many third-party creatures and resources give a little more weight to their stat blocks. A common way Revenge of the Horde adds a bit of combat ability is by not being afraid to give lower CR creatures higher AC. A kobold with half plates and a shield? Knock yourself out, of course.
From a game design perspective, often when you have creatures with high AC, combat can seem to drag on because it’s harder for your party to land a blow. However, to counter this, creatures with high AC in Revenge of the Horde typically miss out on having a large health pool. Creatures with high AC and low CR tend to worry me, but Nord Games has made a careful effort to balance the creatures with this in mind.
Properties, properties, and more properties!
My favorite thing about all the stat blocks in this book is their properties. Most living species share common characteristics among most members of the species. For example, all gutter gnolls have the contagious property that forces non-gnoll creatures to make Constitution saving throws or infect them with disease when they come into contact with the gutter gnoll.
In terms of flavor, traits help mark the differences between the different types of creatures in Revenge of the Horde. Gutter gnolls have contagious, plains gnolls have sprinters that increase their maneuverability, and rock gnolls have rocky camouflage that helps them ambush unsuspecting prey. A single trait brings a lot of flavor to a stat block. It carves out a niche for each type of creature in the book and the corresponding creature in the official sources.
Not only are these traits flavorful, but they also add spice to a creature’s stat block, creating a more appealing playstyle. When players encounter Gutter Gnolls for the first time, they will likely change tactics to avoid dealing with the contagion. This differs from the typical gnoll killing strategy of dispersing the formation to prevent Rampage from taking advantage of it.
Rich lore about each type of creature
Each species of creature has a section describing its general personality, behavior, and culture. Usually this is reserved for more general discussion about the species as a whole.
Some creature species in Revenge of the Horde don’t have subspecies, so their lore runs a little deeper from the get-go. These additional pages detail its unique culture, environment, and combat tactics. All of these sections are well written, but not very long. They provide the DM with guidelines on how to play these creatures and are sufficient to introduce the players to these creatures.
There are quite a few subspecies of creatures, such as flatland gnolls, rock gnolls, and gutter gnolls. These subspecies have their own separate sections for preferred environments, combat tactics, and culture, in addition to a more general section about the gnoll race as a whole.
Most species in Revenge of the Horde live and hunt in packs, clans, and colonies. There are several paragraphs for each of these three types of communities about the corresponding creatures. They not only provide a lot of great information for using these communities out of the box, but also serve as guidelines on how to build your own communities for these creatures.
Lots of tables and tables!
There are a lot of tables in Revenge of the Horde. Not only are these useful for on-the-spot encounters, but there are also tables to add flavor and flair to the creatures in the book.
First, for each species or subspecies of an organism, there is a set of tables containing pre-built encounters based on CR. If you want a quick fight with difficulty around CR 5, you can choose from one or two pre-made encounters in the table. For example, if you have a broader threshold of 5-8, you might have a table with some pre-written encounters for CR 5-8. Just roll the results and drop them into the game.
There is also a table to determine what ornaments a particular creature wears, or what notable equipment the creature has on its body when the player searches for them. Some creatures may have special ammunition or unique weapons that can be used in battle based on these tables.
There is also a table with descriptions of the creature lairs of each species or subspecies. I actually prefer this layout to the traditional way of describing a hideout in paragraph format. These instructions provide a great foundation for creating your own unique retreat. You can also use several different sides and combine them to create a hideout on the fly.
Additional play areas throughout the appendices
Beasts, weapons, and maps!
Revenge of the Horde is definitely aimed specifically at DMs. It’s no surprise that three of the four appendices are DM-oriented.
The first appendix briefly describes some of the various beasts and animals mentioned throughout the book. This is great because it not only gives you a few more stat blocks to throw in for encounters, but it also gives you some new tools for spells like Beastmaster Ranger and Conjure Animals. Quite a few of these creatures have unique traits and actions that help distinguish them from standard beasts in 5e.
My favorite appendix is the Tools of the Horde, which has various potions, tools, and supplies unique to each tribe, community, clan, etc. in the book. This section has some truly unique items.
The problem with these items is that many of them have random effects tables that the user must roll after consuming the item. The consequences range from doing damage to yourself, imposing mechanical disadvantage on yourself, to actually benefiting from consumables. Don’t worry. There are also many items that work as intended.
The final appendix is a set of 10 unique hideout maps. These are all gridded and can be easily copied and pasted from the PDF and dropped into a virtual tabletop program or printed for in-person play. My only irony with these maps is that I would have liked to know the dimensions to size them with something like Roll20. Anyway, the details are well-crafted and it’s easy to play and use.
Character races for each creature type
There is an entire appendix dedicated to racial options for the various/subspecies characters in this book. Well, provided that it is a small or medium-sized creature. That being said, that’s the vast majority of creatures that appear in this book, so there are plenty of race options to choose from.
Many of these races already exist in official sources, such as goblins, kobolds, and bugbears. In these cases, Revenge of the Horde’s race options focus on a specific subset of goblins. For example, the Kobold racial option is the Warren Kobold, a Kobold with more dragon influences. They are smarter and have pseudo-immunities similar to the dragonborn’s draconic ancestors.
My personal favorite is the Hobgoblin of the Legion. One of their characteristics is that they give nearby allies a +1 bonus to AC when using melee weapons. This fits well with both their military leanings and frontline combatant playstyle.
conclusion
Overall, I really enjoyed Ultimate Bestiary: Revenge of the Horde. This is an excellent foray into some iconic D&D creatures while giving them a new and exciting flavor.
This book is very well written and its excellent format shows that it was professionally developed. The PDF is fully searchable, and if you have a physical copy of the book, it comes with a powerful index to quickly find the creature or topic you need.
This book is full of great flavor and lore about each creature. All are well-written and concise, so after reading a few pages you can become an expert on each of these species and subspecies. This book won’t leave you with information overload, but it will give you all the tools you need to expertly maneuver these creatures.
If you’re a DM looking for a new compendium filled with old D&D favorites, this is a great addition to your collection.
However, if you’re looking for a compendium of undead-filled creatures, you should definitely check out the current Kickstarter for the latest installment in the Ultimate Bestiary series.
