I’ve been a long time fan of Limitless-Adventures.com, and their products continue to improve and evolve but remain true to their design: to reduce a Dungeon Master’s prep time before their sessions. They first started with encounters in various environments, eventually, they formed their first omnibus through Kickstarter, and later they created a compendium of NPCs to use for your adventures. This time around, the Limitless team returns with a new Kickstarter project: Limitless Monsters. It was successfully funded, and I’ve had the digital reward for some time but recently received my physical copy (which can only be ordered during their Kickstarter) in the mail. I was stupendously thrilled because we have a brand new cover but still the same beautiful Limitless format with some additions besides the monsters.
You can read my reviews of their previous products:
Limitless Encounters (PDF) | Limitless Encounters Vol 1 | Limitless NPCs
Some Backstory
Limitless-Adventures started with a group of long-time friends back in 2015 and entered into publishing D&D materials for both new and veteran Dungeon Masters. Their goal was to reduce the overall preparation time many Dungeon Masters underwent when designing a D&D session. Encounters, especially combat ones, could take anywhere from two to four hours on average to set up. Their initial products consisted of encounters for every environment imaginable. Their Further AdventuresTM prompts provide additional story hooks to expand into larger narratives and inspiration.
Their site continues to produce new encounters and content. New sign-ups have access to several PDFs that are for free. Even if you are interested in their products, you can sign-up with a free account and judge for yourself. From encounters to small adventure modules, the Limitless-Adventures.com team continues to grow with the continuing mission of reducing prep time for the Dungeon Master. Definitely worth checking it out.
Monsters and Where to Find Them
One of the biggest jumps from previous Limitless products was the new art cover by David Auden Nash along with dozens of illustrations by Bartolomeo Argentino. I’ve discussed the new offerings of this product in a previous feature for their Kickstarter (click here). There were many anticipated features this time around, including new harvest mechanics, monster tactics, and pre-rolled treasure to alleviate setup time. We’ll cover those in-depth in this article. While not every creature or monster or NPC foe were given these above features, each entry was tailored with an appropriate feature from the three mentioned.
The monsters and creatures featured were fresh and appealing, covering a variety of types and species. You have new dragon types, plenty of undead foes, humanoid enemies, and even some deities that are statblocked. I really appreciate the pre-rolled treasures for creatures that you would expect to have a sizeable horde, like dragons. The new Electrum Dragon is something fun as a hybrid between gold and silver dragons that have a steam breath attack. Some of my other favorites include the Void Lich, which essentially is a lich that has become tainted by the Far Realm and has returned as some terrible aberration. I was very stoked to see Primordial Elementals in all four elements along with the goddess Nyx statted.
The harvest mechanics are simple skill checks that can reveal anything from treasure to components for some of the creatures, while it’s not as in-depth as many would expect it does help to draw up more ideas for yourself when brainstorming. Monster tactics are also something nice to see but again, it’s not in every entry, though it helps especially for higher Challenge Rating creatures like deities for example. I am pleased with the variety of CR 10+ monsters, which is something sorely needed when only having the default Monster Manual on your side. Having higher challenges is in short supply due to the current design philosophy and approach by Wizards of the Coast. You can find plenty of challenging creatures up to CR 12 and a few up to even CR 14 but you’ll find seldom entries beyond that point and in many home games, DMs are running low on inspirations and ideas to really challenge their players and reach those epic tiers of play. Other third-party products have stepped up to the challenge, and I’m equally pleased to see the Limitless team join the ranks.
There are tables for knowledge checks to allow a player character to possess or research information about the various monsters in this book. If you do not have this mechanic occurring often in your campaign, I would even suggest some sort of bonus for the party when facing this creature depending on their result.
Let’s not forget the 300 Further AdventuresTM hooks in this supplement either, for they are the bread and butter of what you come to expect in Limitless products. Each monster entry has three and they are all to help inspire and expand adventures surrounding these monsters which something no other monster supplement has offered. I cannot praise this product feature enough, I’ve had some great ideas strung from these story hooks across many of their products and it has changed some of the ways I do game prep as well.
The Sky’s Not the Limit Anymore
I’m once again pleased and amazed at how the Limitless team continues to evolve and expand their range. Monsters are in great demand, having challenging (or challenge appropriate) foes has gone into scarcity and many third-party content creators spend a vast amount of efforts to provide creatures and foes for DMs to utilize in their games. Besides random encounters, you need monsters to fill your encounters and dungeons, sometimes you need powerful ones to serve as powerful main villains or even just fake ones for even greater entities. The material provided can help spark ideas and new mechanics to implement in your games even if you don’t use all of the creatures within. If you’re unsure, sign-up for a free account at Limitless-Adventures.com, several files are free to download right away. You can see their formatting and organizational style before taking the plunge.
Check them out on their respective Facebook and Twitter too.
Special thanks and praise to the Limitless team again for crafting another fun and amazing product. Great job and I’m super stoked for the next one!
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