Close
Close
Please choose which option you would like to add to your cart.
Advanced Search

Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm: Volume 1 (Fifth Edition / 5E)Click to magnify
Quick Preview
/gs_flipbook/flip.php?xml=/demo_xml/300954.xml&w=500&h=326
Full‑size Preview
https://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/300954-sample.pdf

Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm: Volume 1 (Fifth Edition / 5E)

ADD TO WISHLIST >
Selected Option:

Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm is the largest, most comprehensive, most flexible, and most ambitious fantasy roleplaying bestiary ever conceived.  6,640 complete statblocks, comprising 1,660 monsters, each given the Quadded Statblock treatment, enabling them to be used in any campaign setting, with PCs of any level.

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 and 5E.

(Please note that Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm in its entirety is a six-volume set.  This publication is the first of those six volumes, and contains 1,064 statblocks comprising 266 monsters.)

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.

pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
 
 Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
Reviews (2)
Discussions (5)
Customer avatar
Isaiah M September 28, 2020 2:25 am UTC
Is there a chance for a PoD, lol?

I'm serious.
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E September 28, 2020 2:42 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Oh, yes; absolutely! That's coming soon. I'll be sending out a discount code that makes the hardcover at-cost for those who already have the PDF versions, and the PDF will come free with the hardcopy version.

As I type this, actually, I am generating the print content file for Volume 1. :)

Stay tuned! :)
Reply
Customer avatar
Isaiah M September 28, 2020 6:44 am UTC
Will the hard copy have larger font for reading? Honestly, I'm fine as it stands, I'm simply just curious.

God's speed in your endeavors with this project!
Customer avatar
William S June 19, 2020 1:11 pm UTC
A great collection of books overall for challenging and messing with your players! It would have been even greater with some pictures and lore for the creatures, but I understand that would have made the books even bigger and costlier, and it was mentioned that it was only statblocks so I knew what to expect.

Only big issue I have with right now is that with five out of the six books out, and each books having hundreds of similar looking pages, it can be very hard to find the specific monster you need for a given situation. That problem should be solved at one point though, as I think we’re supposed to get an ‘Index’ book for those who bought the bundle once the six books are out that should make it easier (Hopefully it’ll have tables by CR and/or biomes and/or roles).

A quick thing I noticed because these monsters are very important in my setting, the Behemoth (Thalassic) statblock seems to be identical to the Behemoth (Tempest) statblock in tome 1. While I find the idea of a...See more
Customer avatar
Kite L March 21, 2020 6:19 am UTC
PURCHASER
How many monsters in this book have accompanying artwork? Actually, I just realized that I can find the artwork for these monsters online whether or not their artwork is present in the book!
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E March 21, 2020 12:17 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Kite--Admittedly, very few, like around a dozen per volume. The aim of the book is different than typical bestiaries, in which you may be used to seeing artwork for nearly every critter. ABRE covers all of the 1,600 monsters published in the Paizo Pathfinder 1E era, so artwork and descriptions / fluff are commonly and freely available in most cases. Hope that helps and thanks for your interest!
Customer avatar
J. E March 06, 2020 3:08 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi all--FYI I am aware of the issue that some customers have reported, that the CR/Challenge values are a "standard spread" (4/8/12/16) for EVERY single monster. Certainly that is not the intent! I am in the process of updating the PDF and will publish the revision ASAP in the next few days hopefully. My apologies for the mix-up! To be optimistic about things, get ready for the book to become even MORE valuable as a result :)

DriveThruRPG should send you an automated notification when I upload the updated PDF so you can grab it once it's available. Onward!
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E September 28, 2020 2:42 am UTC
PUBLISHER
FYI, this was fixed months ago; neglected to post an update to this comment when it was.
Customer avatar
Robert B January 21, 2020 4:52 pm UTC
PURCHASER
You always get more bang for your buck with Infinium Game Studio books!
Reply
Customer avatar
J. E January 21, 2020 5:31 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks so much for the kind words! Thrilled that this stuff is useful for folks :)
Narrow Results
$ to $
 Follow Your Favorites!
NotificationsSign in to get custom notifications of new products!















Product Information
Copper seller
Author(s)
Pages
590
Publisher Stock #
IGS-AQ-ABRE1F
File Size:
46.7 MB
Format
Original electronic Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.
pixel_trans.gif
Original electronic format
These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.
File Information
Watermarked PDF Click for more information
Watermarked PDF

These PDF files are digitally watermarked to signify that you are the owner. A small message is added to the bottom of each page of the PDF containing your name and the order number of your purchase.

Warning: If any files bearing your information are found being distributed illegally, then your account will be suspended and legal action may be taken against you.

Here is a sample of a page from a watermarked title:

File Last Updated:
September 29, 2020
This title was added to our catalog on January 20, 2020.