It’s happened to every Game Master. You spend hours setting up the perfect encounter, your players are out for blood, the swords are drawn—and then you realize that you’ve forgotten to build statistics for the enemy characters. Or perhaps your players go left when you expect them to go right, leaving you without any encounters prepared.
Such problems are a thing of the past with the NPC Codex. Inside this tome, you’ll find hundreds of ready-made stat blocks for nonplayer characters of every level, from a lowly forest poacher to the most majestic knight or ancient spellcaster. Whether you’re planning out future adventures or throwing together encounters right at the table, this book does the work so you can focus on playing the game.
Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and open playtests featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.
The 320-page Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex includes:
Statistics for more than 300 characters, including at least one for every level of every class in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.
Tactical suggestions for every character, ensuring that you get the most out of each individual’s gear and abilities in a fight.
Tons of flavorful names and backgrounds to give characters personality, plus ideas for using them in both combat and roleplaying situations.
Statistics for characters with lower-powered NPC classes to help populate your world with ordinary people, as well as characters with specialized prestige classes.
Animal companion statistics for druids and rangers, from level 1 through level 20.
Multiple versions of each Pathfinder iconic character, perfect for pregenerated player characters.
Encounter groups for conveniently crafting battles on the fly.
AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!
Authors: Jesse Benner, Jason Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, Alex Greenshields, Rob McCreary, Mark Moreland, Jason Nelson, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Patrick Renie, Sean K Reynolds, and Russ Taylor
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This book represents a useful tool to many GMs (especially those that don't deviate that far from the norm of 15 point buy and standard wealth by level), with (almost) fully developed stats for characters from every core class and of every level. I say almost fully developed because there are large (and glaring) omissions that escaped my initial examination of the book.
The worst of these is the omission of spellbooks from every wizard in the book - both NPC and PC, but other issues exist throughout the book and include NPCs missing components for prepared or known spells and bonuses that are slightly off.
While I'm sympathetic to the tediousness of running out spellbooks for ~30 wizards, not having spellbooks for stats that are supposed to be dropped in the game to make a GM's life easier is pretty annoying. What happens if one of these guys is dropped into the game as an enemy and the party tries to loot him? Do I now have to draft up a spellbook for him on the fly? Come on now. It also undercuts the idea that I could use the PC wealth stats as pregens for people on the fly.
The book also loses its application for people the further they move from the assumed norm (e.g. higher point buy or wealth) as the NPCs rapidly fall behind. Use of books beyond core also undermines the ability of these NPCs to provide real threats even to PCs many levels lower than them. This problem is amplified in many martial characters that are poorly built by any measure (not simply optimized).
That we get pre-genned PC versions of characters that only cover 3 levels as a whole (1st, 8th, 12th) is also slightly annoying, as it sharply limits the advertised 'pregen' usefulness of this. Adding even a single higher level version of each (say, 16th or 18th) might have helped a great deal in that extent.
Advertising 'tons of flavorful names and backgrounds' also seems misleading - many 'characters' have a single generic sentence or less. As a few examples "The master universalist draws power and knowledge from all schools of magic", "These wizards are steeped in the evil of their profession", and "These wizards protect underground communities". Flavorful backgrounds indeed (especially for 20th, 16th, and 18th level characters).
Finally, the lack of anything but core - though advertised - is somewhat disappointing. Not even iconic stats for other classes? I understand that including everything would have turned this into a monster book, but some of the decision on what stayed and what went is vexing to me.
Fantastic book, worth the buy and saves the GM a world of trouble
The NPC codex saves me so much time for other things. Premade encounter groups, per level premade characters, and even personalites for some of them! Even if I don't have anything specific in mind for an encounter, the NPC codex provides me with useful ideas that keep the game fun. I of course recommend this book to GM's everywhere, and grant it a FIVE out of FIVE
After using this book for a few months I have to say I have used this book alot. For my style of gaming it is incredibly useful to have stat blocks for NPCs at my finger tips(instead of in my head).
True I still stat out the major NPCs and such...but for their minions this cuts down on my work.
This book, cover to cover, is incredibly useful. Changing the description, alignment, race, gender, spells or weaponry is a fast and easy way to have this book enhance any gaming table for years.
It is exactly what it claims to be.
This book is as useful as the NPCs in the GMG (x20)
This volume contains what is needed to flush out any adventure with a rogues gallery of serfs to sorcers. I find the information well laid out and easy to find.
