Review: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 4

15% cover art.

For better or for worse, the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters line has been a little bit inconsistent in what to expect from the titles. Better because sometimes you get cool surprises; DFM2 had some really neat stuff. Worse because sometimes you don't know that there is cool stuff under the covers; I didn't get DFM2 for forever because it sounded pretty boring from the title alone. This book though, Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 4 - Dragons is everything it says in the title; it's monster dragons 4 (for) Dungeon Fantasy. Ok, let's take a closer look.

Overview

This is a 23 page pdf split into 4 chapters and an appendix. Subtracting 3 pages of front matter, table of contents, and the intro; subtracting 2 pages of backmatter including the index, we have 18 pages of stuff. Chapter 1, 3 pages is four basic dragons of various size; chapter 2, 4 pages, has options for customizing breath attacks; chapter 3, 4 pages, is about adding cool things besides to a dragon; chapter 4, 3 pages, is about how to make combat with a  dragon interesting; finally, the appendix, 4 pages, is 4 worked examples of following the rules to produce some memorable NPC encounters, and are interesting characters in their own right. If you already have DFRPG, you already have the "template dragons" from the first chapter, but the rest of the information is pretty new. This book is a tool to help GMs create interesting dragon NPC most suited for combat, and doesn't contain many surprises like other books. I enjoy this book though because it is in the vein of teaching how to fish instead of just throwing fish at me until I'm bloated like some of the other catalogs in the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters series. Let's take a closer look at the chapters now.

Yer Basic Dragons

This chapter describes 4 archetypical quadrupedal winged dragons ranging from small (SM+3) to "gargantuan" (SM+6.) with an aside on some rules of thumb for creating even bigger dragons. There's nothing good or bad to say about this chapter really. The monsters are straightforward and make sense, but they are simply primed canvases ready for a real coat of paint as described in the next two chapters.

Dragon's Breath

Primary weapon of a lot of dragons is an elemental breath weapon, and this chapter goes into a lot of detail on appropriate means of customizing it, perhaps as an area effect attack, cone, or a beam; perhaps with some elements. Each of these customization options, meant for the dragons in the previous chapter, has a thoughtful slew of extra options to make a holistically styled dragon that fits the image evoked by the chosen element and attack style. It's a pretty interesting way to stretch 4 dragons into innumerable iterations.

Distinguishing Your Dragon

This chapter goes a step further than developing a signature attack and gives a whole lot of options for really making a dragon in progress something that will really stand out; combat traits, social traits, special abilities, and magic among others for example. There's bits of soft advice too to make the dragon more than a page of numbers and traits. It's hard to describe why, but this chapter was really enjoyable, and even if some of the options in the book are a little basic, I was simply inspired just reading it and thinking, "eh, more ST isn't that great of a thing, I'd rather a dragon that could do..." and before I knew it, I found myself coming up with bunches of neat ideas.

Dragons in Action

Probably the most valuable chapter in the book, this one talks about how to use the physiology, smarts, and powers of a dragon in a way that will make the fight more than your bog-standard "I slug you, you slug me" combats that you should never see in a "boss encounter." I think I'll be applying some of this advice in fact in a few of my games involving super-fauna in fact, so the timing of this supplement is a really fortuitous coincidence.

Not Your Average Dragons

This appendix includes four well rounded, well thought out dragons that are more than a really big token on the map. They all include a short backstory and a detailed stat block. I don't have much critical to say about this, but on a subjective level, I found each of them to be evocative and unique, and they would probably be good major NPCs for an entire arc just as written.

Other Thoughts and Conclusions

There isn't much for players that want dragon stuff, but frankly, most of the stuff is easy to reverse engineer if you really wanted to do so, and really expensive pointwise beside. If you want to be a dragon you can use Pyramid #3/72 which has a playable dragon template, or you can use Dungeon Fantasy 3 for the Dragon-Blooded racial template, so those options exist. Perhaps this book can inspire some power-ups for those templates? Dunno! Overall, I think this is a decent buy. I'd say it's a good impulse buy, but you might skip it if you were missing some of the more important Dungeon Fantasy volumes like Wilderness Adventures or The Next Level; especially if you already have Dungeon Fantasy RPG making a good portion (but not all) of the book redundant.