Slayer's Guide Compendium, The #1

Monsters play a big part in many fantasy adventures – they provide fearsome and inhuman foes, nefarious and evil villains, and even exotic sources of aid and wisdom. Many campaign worlds are filled with a myriad of different monster species, from more mundane creatures such as orcs to the truly majestic forms of dragons and spirits. They make fantasy feel fantastic, and provide fun adversaries for the players to try and overcome.

Yet despite their often-pivotal role in a fantasy campaign as a major source of opponents or the propagators of evil schemes, monsters are often left remarkably shallow and undefined. Too many species are relegated to the status of dungeon-filling cannon fodder, placed there merely to provide warm bodies in-between the blades and spells of the heroes and the nefarious villain’s treasure room. There is little thought given to their society or motives beyond vague ideas of tribal hierarchy and an unreasoning desire to throw themselves onto the weapons of passing mercenary bands. Unfortunately, even if a Games master wishes to explore and elaborate on the nature of a monster there is rarely an in-depth look at the species in question for them to draw upon.

The Slayer’s Guide series of supplements provides a solution to this problem. Each book is designed for use in all fantasy-based d20 game systems, and takes an exhaustive and definitive look at a specific monster race. Their beliefs, society, methods of warfare – these things are all thoroughly detailed, providing a wealth of information for a Games Master to draw upon.

Typically, the races looked at in the Slayer’s Guide series are precisely those races that suffer the most from being seen as little more than monsters of the appropriate Hit Dice or Challenge Rating to be thrown into the path of a rampaging party of adventurers. Often all but ignored except for their role as unthinking muscle or tools for some more powerful villain, the Slayer’s Guide series add depth and complexity to the chosen monsters. It looks at what they do when marauding packs of heroes aren’t around, how their culture works and how they think. In doing so, the series also helps turn meetings with such creatures from boring, straight-forward and unavoidable fights against cannon fodder into exciting encounters that demonstrate how monsters are more than just mindless automatons, and have aims, desires and beliefs of their own.

This Compendium is a collection of six classic books from the Slayer’s Guide series – Hobgoblins, Gnolls, Troglodytes, Bugbears, Trolls and Orcs. Many of these titles are now entirely sold out, such is their popularity, and so the Compendium brings them back to the public completely updated and fully compatible with the 3.5 Revised Edition rules.

Also included are two entirely new and previously unpublished works, the Slayer’s Guides to Dopplegangers and Tritons, bringing these oft-neglected races into the limelight with full and exhaustive treatments of each race that delve deep into their origins, beliefs and societies.