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i'm curious about where to post things like typos and such from the bestiary. i'm sure there are plenty of people running around trying to point out flaws and such, and i'd hate to post something if someone has already pointed it out or noticed.
There's already a few threads here and there, but we at Paizo are pretty slammed with other issues at the moment (namely, getting our schedule back on schedule), and haven't yet started to look at colating Bestiary errata. When we do... I suspect we'll just have to knuckle down and wade through all of these posts. We'll probably officially make an official errata thread at that point... we probably should have done that already.
In any event, if you see something you think's an error and are eager to point it out, it'd be best to just seek out the largest errata thread of them for now and post there. We'll find it.
I have some questions and I do not know if they have already been answered. One of the biggest advantages of having the bestiary is that it saves word count for other awesome things in the main adventure paths. Will the Bestiary II be considered core? I know that a lot of the other books from the Pathfinder role playing game subscription will not be and I think that is a good thing, but future Bestiaries being core would open up a lot of word count space for the Adventure paths, especially the higher level ones. Just think if you wanted to ever do an Epic adventure path, how could you get all the stat blocks to fit? What about any future adventure paths on the other planets in the solar system or on the other continents? Will an Asian adventure path need all the Asian themed monsters stated up in their entirety for the whole adventure path? This is also not an all or none proposition either, maybe just the bestiary II will be core to fill in the last of the SRD and common pathfinder monsters and the rest will not be.
I think DMs would not be opposed to this since we always tend to get all the monster books anyways, but players would be a different story.
I also think this would raise the issue of would you want the bestiary II to go into the PRD, if it is core it probably should but I do not know if that makes financial sense for Paizo.
Bestiary is GREAT! There are a good number of monsters that would be very common in a standard fantasy setting, and some other random stuff that can be thrown in. I also like the Level Adjustment being taken away from things like the Aasimir, Tiefling, and Drow. One thing I did notice was the lack of Mind Flayers. They're pretty popular, but they weren't in the book. Maybe this question has been answered, but I was just wondering why the Illithid didn't appear.
Hate to sound the downer, but at this point I'm just hoping I get the book sooner or later. :) The fact that I see a pending charge on my card again is a good sign.
At this point, I'm somewhat concerned at the timing between the shipping of the October set of books and the rather large (according to my subscription page) November set. Are these planned to ship reasonably close to each other at this point?
Let me just add to the accolades, and point out a very nice set of features from the PDF too.
I got my book on Friday, right after a conversation with one of my players trying to pin down the date for our next session. That brought to mind that I really needed to finally quantify some of the ambiguous threats I had been dangling out as plot points... that is, I needed a dungeon to point them at that started things rolling on a bigger plot thread. I knew where things were going in the big picture, how do I get them started?
So I flipped through the book. Oh -- Nagas! I love those monsters, and the illustration of the Spirit Naga was excellent. Yes, I could "sell" this monster, and the CR was just about right as a big challenge for my 5th level group. We'd center the adventure around a Naga. That worked great, since I wanted this to be an aberration of some sort.
I set the book down, and returned later to view the PDF on my laptop as I was taking other notes. That's when the noticed the very nice linkages in the appendices -- I could view the whole list of aberrations and see at a glance what sort of aberrant minions I could give the Naga! Oh, joys! I say "Choker" in the list, and realized I wasn't really deeply familiar with that monster -- would it work? I just clicked the link, went to the Cloaker page, and saw that yes, they would be perfect! Oh, fast movement -- they can move as fast as the barbarian! Excellent, that will come in handy!
Flip back to the index, go to the Naga page, and re-read the description... hmm... Charming Gaze. Excellent -- she can have minions that are duped into believing she is a good Naga! I went to the lists of monsters by CR and monsters by role, and selected a Cyclops and his Worg companion as the guardians of her lair. Hmm... maybe the Worg should be Advanced or Giant? Have to play with the numbers and see if that would be over-kill, but the Template rules lay it out nicely.
In one short session, I had pulled out four well-detailed monsters and constructed the basis of an adventure. I returned to it this morning and saw that perhaps an ooze would make sense to include too -- it reinforced the aberrant nature of this lair, and the index showed me at a glance what all my ooze options might be. I'm loving this book and the PDF is awesome!
And thus, is my faith restored. :) Just happened to check my downloads area (not that I haven't been doing that multiple times daily in recent days :) ) and noticed the PDFs for this shipment including the Beastiary.
At least now I can look through it and have happy player-killing (I jest!*) thoughts while I wait for the physical book to arrive.
* - Maybe
Anyone know when this gonna be release in a formal way i means in the store all over the rpg shop/store/librairy??? cuz i dont have credit card to buy the pdf online and i realy want the bestiary well thx for answers :)
The book's official release date through retail and other sources was October 21st. I suggest that you talk to your local game store and/or library to see if you can get them to order it for you, if they do not yet have it on the shelf.
The illithid/mind flayer is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast (so are beholders, carrion crawlers, displacer beasts, yuan-ti, githyanki, githzerai, and umber hulks). Paizo can't legally use these creatures.
Huh. I'm actually surprised about that. I thought that if Drow, the Tarrasque, Aboleths, the Bulette, and a few of the others were in there, then the Illithids and Beholders shouldn't have a problem getting in. Ah well. I still have the 3.5 Monster Manuals, so I can just do a bit of conversion on my own. Thanks for telling me, though.
The illithid/mind flayer is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast (so are beholders, carrion crawlers, displacer beasts, yuan-ti, githyanki, githzerai, and umber hulks). Paizo can't legally use these creatures.Huh. I'm actually surprised about that. I thought that if Drow, the Tarrasque, Aboleths, the Bulette, and a few of the others were in there, then the Illithids and Beholders shouldn't have a problem getting in. Ah well. I still have the 3.5 Monster Manuals, so I can just do a bit of conversion on my own. Thanks for telling me, though.
Drow and the Tarrasque are from real world mythology, more or less, so WotC would have had a tough time claiming them as their intellectual property. Aboleths and the bulette are PURE D&D though, and I frankly am a little surprised they didn't claim these as their own... but I suspect they didn't because they didn't at the time want to completely gut the selection of open content monsters. They just picked the dozen or so they thought were the most iconic to their needs and let the rest go free.
Had the decision of what to include and what to not been made today, I really do suspect that they would have retained the intellectual rights to more monsters than a mere dozen.
The illithid/mind flayer is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast (so are beholders, carrion crawlers, displacer beasts, yuan-ti, githyanki, githzerai, and umber hulks). Paizo can't legally use these creatures.Huh. I'm actually surprised about that. I thought that if Drow, the Tarrasque, Aboleths, the Bulette, and a few of the others were in there, then the Illithids and Beholders shouldn't have a problem getting in. Ah well. I still have the 3.5 Monster Manuals, so I can just do a bit of conversion on my own. Thanks for telling me, though.Drow and the Tarrasque are from real world mythology, more or less, so WotC would have had a tough time claiming them as their intellectual property. Aboleths and the bulette are PURE D&D though, and I frankly am a little surprised they didn't claim these as their own... but I suspect they didn't because they didn't at the time want to completely gut the selection of open content monsters. They just picked the dozen or so they thought were the most iconic to their needs and let the rest go free.
Had the decision of what to include and what to not been made today, I really do suspect that they would have retained the intellectual rights to more monsters than a mere dozen.
I gotcha. I've just never heard of the Tarrasque or the drow outside of DnD anywhere, that's all.
Let me just add to the accolades, and point out a very nice set of features from the PDF too.
I got my book on Friday, right after a conversation with one of my players trying to pin down the date for our next session. That brought to mind that I really needed to finally quantify some of the ambiguous threats I had been dangling out as plot points... that is, I needed a dungeon to point them at that started things rolling on a bigger plot thread. I knew where things were going in the big picture, how do I get them started?
So I flipped through the book. Oh -- Nagas! I love those monsters, and the illustration of the Spirit Naga was excellent. Yes, I could "sell" this monster, and the CR was just about right as a big challenge for my 5th level group. We'd center the adventure around a Naga. That worked great, since I wanted this to be an aberration of some sort.
I set the book down, and returned later to view the PDF on my laptop as I was taking other notes. That's when the noticed the very nice linkages in the appendices -- I could view the whole list of aberrations and see at a glance what sort of aberrant minions I could give the Naga! Oh, joys! I say "Choker" in the list, and realized I wasn't really deeply familiar with that monster -- would it work? I just clicked the link, went to the Cloaker page, and saw that yes, they would be perfect! Oh, fast movement -- they can move as fast as the barbarian! Excellent, that will come in handy!
Flip back to the index, go to the Naga page, and re-read the description... hmm... Charming Gaze. Excellent -- she can have minions that are duped into believing she is a good Naga! I went to the lists of monsters by CR and monsters by role, and selected a Cyclops and his Worg companion as the guardians of her lair. Hmm... maybe the Worg should be Advanced or Giant? Have to play with the numbers and see if that would be over-kill, but the Template rules lay it out nicely.
In one short session, I had pulled out four well-detailed monsters...
What a superb example of iterative adventure design. Thanks for sharing this experience you had with the .pdf. I will do the same for my next session.
I also have to give a big shout-out to the D20 PFSRD site -- being able to cut and paste content from there (and the official Paizo site) and make the cheat-sheet for all the adversaries was invaluable. I could cut, paste into a doc file, and tweak to my heart's content simply and easily. When I got stuck on something ("Hmm... how do I make a venomous snake swarm?"), I could always find something to use to "wing it" (in that case, I copied the physical stats of a bat swarm and the poison DC and duration of the centipede swarm, only changing DEX damage to CON damage with that -- it will suffice for this encounter).
Really, the care and precision Paizo is using in releasing the supplements is so much more valuable to me than whether they missed a few monsters (yeah, I wanted the hippogriff) or left monster PC rules up to the DM (which, as a niche item, is fine with me anyway). So far, the two books we've seen have been nothing less than works of art, and you can see the real attention to detail. I think with the PFRPG, Bestiary, Tome of Horrors Revised, and a few other key books, I've got all I need to run a very long-running campaign. The future supplements will be icing on the cake...
...although, now that I just realized a prominent NPC makes more sense as an Oracle rather than a Sorceror/Cleric, I'm anxious to see those rules :-).
The gargoyle from the PFRPG Bestiary was the first to see entry into this Monday's game. It was a pleasure having new art, and easy combat maneuver bonus/defense calculations, along with excellent description. Gotta use a gargyle in October, I figured, and it kept the players guessing during combat whether it was using stoneskin, whether it was made of stone, or if it was something new. Ah... the age of fantasy rpg game excitement has thrived! Love the bestiary, and the easy to understand universal monster rules. Can't wait for Bestiary II ;)
Got mine a while ago, super happy about it. I'm curious about one thing (though by no means a critique)
Why make the Rust Monster more roachlike? That really hit my entemophobic wife pretty hard. (that bug being her 'favorite' trigger)
It went from comic to triggery, and I'm rather curious about the decision there.
I'm wondering if there could be a seperate PDF for the creature art? I like showing my group just what the monster they are up against looks like, but dont like to have to use the book to do so.
If you have the pdf, you can use Adobe Reader 8 or earlier to extract the images. Adobe Reader 9 no longer has this functionality. I think that's as good as you're going to get, though, unless Paizo releases monster cards like they're doing with the face cards line. The art in a book is one of the most expensive parts, and past requests for art downloads have been denied. That said, you may check the blog over the last few months, as lots of monster previews showed up there.
If you have the pdf, you can use Adobe Reader 8 or earlier to extract the images. Adobe Reader 9 no longer has this functionality.
Do you mean in general or just with Paizo products? I just tried extracting images from a Paizo PDF and a Wizards of the Coast PDF. It didn't work with the Paizo PDF, as you said, but it did work with the Wizards of the Coast PDF.
Quick question (hopefully) about the list of attacks for the monsters. IIRC the old 3.5 MM listed standard attacks and full attacks separately? Pardon me if that's not the case, as I don't have my books at hand. The new Bestiary just lists attacks, and does not specify standard versus full. Is that right, or am I missing it? Thanks!
Would be nice if Paizo offered a size, scale and weight table for download.Please clarify what you mean by a "size, scale, and weight" table.
I think he means a table that would include all three factors for all the monsters... or maybe an art piece that depicts examples of various monsters of different sizes in comparison to human (medium size) plus simple averages for weight (i.e. 'Large - 1000 lbs.', 'Colossal - 20000 lbs.', etc.)?
I don't know... I thought Bestiary listed size and weight for all the creatures? And if something is, say, 90' tall, I can always show how it relates to a mini (although I would think my players would have a pretty good image how tall that being is).
Please clarify what you mean by a "size, scale, and weight" table.
No problem. I mean something like table 7-1 on p. 314 in the 3.5 Monster Manual, giving the size categories, followed by several game stat modifiers for each category and then each size category's Dimension, Weight, Space and Reach.
Ah. Well, the Creature Size and Scale table on page 195 of the Core Rulebook covers some of that, but I can see the utility of having it all in one table like that (page 149 of the 3.5 PH was a frequent stop for me just for that reason).
Quick question (hopefully) about the list of attacks for the monsters. IIRC the old 3.5 MM listed standard attacks and full attacks separately? Pardon me if that's not the case, as I don't have my books at hand. The new Bestiary just lists attacks, and does not specify standard versus full. Is that right, or am I missing it? Thanks!
The rules for primary and secondary attacks changed a bit in Pathfinder as compared to 3.5, so it really doesn't matter in what order the creature makes its attacks. Thus, if it just gets to make one attack (say, if it moves and attacks), pick any one attack listed. In other words, we're saving a line (and not making a decision for you) by just listing the complete set of attacks; in some circumstances a dragon might use a claw attack if it only had one attack that round, in others it might use its bite.
Quick question (hopefully) about the list of attacks for the monsters. IIRC the old 3.5 MM listed standard attacks and full attacks separately? Pardon me if that's not the case, as I don't have my books at hand. The new Bestiary just lists attacks, and does not specify standard versus full. Is that right, or am I missing it? Thanks!
Since primary and secondary attacks are now a value of each form of natural attack and have nothing to do with when in a full attack action they occur, we can simply list all of a monster's melee attacks in one line. If a monster makes a full attack action it can attack with all the weapons listed. If he makes a standard attack, he picks any one of those and makes that single attack. No need to list separately these attacks, in other words. Doing so lets us save a line of text, which is pretty important for saving space!
Dark_Mistress
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
