Review: Battlezoo Kickstarter Preview

 

Today we're looking at the Kickstarter page for Battlezoo from Roll For Combat. Yeah, this one's a little different. Work's been rough and I'm traveling this week so I'm being lazy.

Battlezoo is a collection of 3 books that includes a bunch of new monsters, some new player options and rules for harvesting monster parts. At least two of the books, "Strange and Unusual" and "Elemental Storm" appear to be converted from D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e. ♬One of these things is not like the other♬

The Kickstarter page tells us "All three books are guaranteed to follow all existing Shadowdark rules and themes and have been designed by legendary third-party Shadowdark designer Michael Putlack!" We also get an endorsement from Kelsey Dionne herself: "Roll For Combat pulls out all the stops with their production values and has the design chops to back it up." Let's see how those statements hold up!

I really don't care about new classes so I'm going straight to the monsters:

The Fungal Raptor has a +3 to hit with its beak and +4 to hit with its claws. Maybe that would make sense if one were a ranged attack but they are both melee attacks and the difference between this monsters STR and DEX is 2. The DC for resisting its disease is 14 instead of the standard 12 or 15. But my real issue is with the Diseased Wake ability. "1/day, while flying for one turn, raptor releases deadly spores which last for 10 rounds. Creatures within its space or 15 feet below check for disease, explodes; creatures within close DC 18 DEX or 4d10 damage."

I can visualize what the designer is describing but they haven't given the details I need to run it, or put the mechanics in a Shadowdark context. The rules for deciding who is affected are unclear and not stated in a way that is consistent with the Shadowdark core rules. And what kind of idiot would still be standing in the spores after 10 rounds?! 

I would write it like this: "While flying, release spore cloud that fills up to a near-sized cube. Creatures inside make a Disease check. Spores explode after 3 rounds, DC 18 DEX or 4d10 damage." It's fewer words, and I know how to run it right away.

Moving on to the Skeletal Monstrosity. We get another non-standard DC. We have an explicit grapple ability which is just a contested STR check - something any monster can attempt. The screech ability has a range of quadruple near. Probably just could have gone with "far" there. 

The really baffling part is the Splinter Burst ability: "Monstrosity exhales sharp bones in a half near cone." Someone, please, get in the comments and tell me how to adjudicate a half-near cone in Shadowdark. Because that makes no sense to me. What does make sense is that someone converted this monster from 5e without actually understanding how area effect attacks work in Shadowdark. And furthermore, Splinter Burst isn't listed in the monster's attacks, so it's unclear whether it is used in addition to its other attacks or in place of them.

If you miss the bloat of 5e monster stats maybe this is right up your alley. But the similarity between 5e and Shadowdark has been vastly overstated. I am wary of any Shadowdark product that is a 5e conversion and Battlezoo only reinforces that prejudice. The core philosophy and gameplay loop are miles apart. Just because they both have a "d20, roll over" mechanic doesn't mean you can ctrl-f find and replace "15 feet" with "half near" and call it a day. There is some excellent advice for monster design within the Shadowdark mechanics and core philosophy in the Arcane Library discord. In fact, designing monsters for Shadowdark is blessedly easy. But trying to convert from 5e or Pathfinder is fitting a square peg in a round hole. 

I'm sure someone has already noticed these discrepancies and brought them up in the Kickstarter comments, right?

Welp.

On a scale of 2-12, Battlezoo gets 4 stingbats.