She Can Blow My Trumpet Any Day

Today’s entry in my critique of all the monsters in the Bestiary brings us to the last of the archons, as well as the strongest and best-looking of them. So without further ado, here’s the…

TRUMPET ARCHON

You know, I almost typed the word “trumpet” in that header with an “s” in front of it, and if you’re looking at the picture of this particular creature, I think you’ll understand why. Yes, we’ve officially come to Pin-Up Girl #2 – another monster that would make most adventurers say – to quote someone else – “man, I’d like to roll d20 to hit that.”

Leaving aside the dirty jokes that can be made about this monster – and believe me, there are many – I’m a bit disappointed that Paizo didn’t focus on the musical aspect of this particular creature more. I mean, her trumpet is a weapon that can not only play destructive music, but can also turn into a sword. Now, that’s not as cool as some other musical weapons, but still pretty badass.

And yet, the rest of her character doesn’t deal with this theme at all. There’s no powers about singing or dancing; even her spells are drawn from the cleric spell list, rather than the bard’s. Seriously, there’s no ingenuity here; given that (for reasons previously discussed), good creatures in general, and archons in particular, take a background role to help support mortals, I would have thought that they’d have made the trumpet archon fill a role like so:

You have to admit, our trumpet archon here is already dressed for this role. So I ask you Paizo, where are our Elite Beat Archons?

Tags: archon, Bestiary, Pathfinder, pin-up girls, trumpet