...and so, we tracked the evil necromancer Marrowglass through uncharted wilderness and over treacherous mountains, attempting to right the wrongs that were done in his name. We did bloody battle with his minions, losing not a few comrades along the way. We found his stronghold and stormed it in righteous fury. We clashed with the foul wizard in a battle that will live in song long after we fade from this world. We vanquished the villain through our might and our craft…
And then we ate him.
Welcome to the Noble Wild!
Take a look at fantasy adventure from a new perspective. Living secretly alongside the humans, elves, dwarves, and even orcs, Noble Animals are descended from god-touched bloodlines, capable of accomplishing amazing things. The Pathfinder edition of this Ennie Award-nominated book grants players and game-masters alike a new element to an ongoing campaign, or perhaps the foundation for an all-new campaign.
Features of this “Animal Player’s Handbook” include:
More than 60 playable species of Noble Animal
Adjustments to basic character classes, skills, feats, and magic to allow for animal characters
A new Basic Class, the Greater Familiar
New prestige classes, from the Alpha to the Man-Eater to the War Mount
A new concept, Deeds, that gives characters the opportunity to acquire magical abilities by performing heroic actions and paying an experience point cost
Illustrations by dozens of artists, including Sharon Daugherty, Todd Diamond, Carter Dippold, Phil Kightlinger, Russell Prime, Ryan Rouse, George Sieretski, Geoff Weber, and Kira Woodmansee
Created by Lee Garvin, author of Control and the acclaimed Tales From the Floating Vagabond, this book introduces comprehensive rules for playing intelligent animals. It will appeal to everyone from groups that want to try all-animal or mixed animal-humanoid parties, to players who want to expand their animal companions and familiars, to gamemasters who wish to spring interesting and unexpected foes against their players.
The Noble Wild: Free Your Beast
Product Availability
Fulfilled immediately.
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at
store@paizo.com.
Want to play an animal? Well this book will let you do it.
This comes with racial stats for around 70 different animals plus some special rules for how they work. They seem as balanced as you could possibly make a system where an elephant and a mouse can be in the same party, which is not very but it makes enough sense. Some of the species have their own mini-paragon class which can grant some universal monster rules and whatnot.
Then you get to how to handle animals in your basic classes, which is where the hilarity begins. Non-core classes don't get any support but the changes set kind of a precedent for how to handle further classes. Most of the time Craft is switched out for Survival as a class skill, they use runes instead of spellbooks and will use blood components instead of material components for spells. Also if you would gain an animal companion or familiar, you can instead get a Humanoid Companion or Humanoid Familiar. (I cant wait to play my Wizard Mr Peabody with his little boy familiar Sherman.) There is even a new base class where you can play a familiar yourself, and prestige classes including becoming a Rise of the Planet of the Apes intelligent ape.
This is followed by new skills and skill uses for animals and new feats. Then feat-like boons that can be bought with experience points (boo!) New spells, and rules on old ones, and some NPCs to work with.
Honestly this will be a blast for your goofiest players. Having animal PC rules on hand is incredibly useful. If you're into that thing. The rules themselves feel kind of dated with some weird terminology every now and then plus the boons being accessed by spending XP is terrible and outdated. The book opens a lot of possibilities and a lot of comedy and wonder but being kind of an old book it doesn't cover things like how a dog can use alchemist's extracts but it covers enough to be useful when the subject of 'Can I be a bear' comes up your options are open.
The Deed section sucks too much and the book itself despite being a resource that opens up so much potential it has dated language and a lot of tweaking needs to be done to get your animal up and working and some of it conflicts with more recent paizo rules, making me want to pass this book on three stars. Its useful for what it is but I wouldn't bet on just anyone liking it.
I wouldn't suggest using everything in the book and dropping it into just any campaign, but the concept is so broad and interesting that its pretty easy to use piecemeal in a lot of campaigns.
If you have a unique animal that is intelligent, and you want to give it class levels, you are covered. If you want to go the full Monty and run a Narnia style campaign with full on intelligent animals as common as other intelligent races, or if you want your Faerie realm populated with intelligent animals, you have more than enough information for that too.
As an example of what I mean by using things piecemeal, the first part of the book deals with the stats that animals have compared to other races. You can use this easily with the normal rules and make up a character.
If you want to, you can use the information on separate magic for animals and other races and blood magic, but you can also just use the animals as is for their statistics.
One of the first things that this product made me think of was going back to the 1st edition concept of reincarnation allowing for animal reincarnations, and another concept that this book helps to support is the idea of awakening an animal and using it as a cohort for someone in the party.
That having been said, for what might be a niche campaign, its a sizable investment. Not that its not well done, or fun to read, but its not something that will appeal to everyone ( . . . says the man whose wife has often said she hates any "talking animal" fantasy stories).
If you are really interested in how you might play animals as viable characters in a Pathfinder RPG campaign, its really well done and worth a look. If you are just looking for more general campaign information, or more on "standard" animals, its might be a bit too much of a "fringe" product for what you are looking for.
I have this book/pdf. I love the game concepts in it. I have managed to convince my GM to allow me to run one of these characters in an adventure. I will be running a Noble Rat cleric of Zon Kurthon sporting a tiny sized spiked chain(which allows him to attack adjacent enemies as a tiny creature). I had to create a good backstory before I got approved, and she liked my character concept. There are a lot of neat ideas in this book, many of which allow your characters to overcome the shortcomings of an animal adventurer in a humanoid adventuring world.
Thanks for the answer, Shar Tahl. Hmm, then it's not for anthropomorphic critters? Pity about that; I would love to see someone do something about making anthro races for Pathfinder.
Still, it sounds good -- and I am seriously curious as to how you convinced your DM to allow you to run a rat cleric of Zon-Kuthon with an otherwise normal (?) PC group.
Yeah, it's not so much like Redwall type creatures, but more extraordinary, intelligent animals. The book also details how every core class works with the animals and has about 10 prestige classes, new feats, new skills and sub-skills. It really has a lot of good content
I had the good fortune of getting to help playtest these rules as they developed thanks to having plenty of blackmail material on the author. I will shamelessly boast that my very first character (rabbit barbarian whose name is a part of copywrited material elsewhere) was instrumental in inspiring the Larger Than Life deed tree, which helps animals with fixed Strength scores of 3 and less such as rabbits, rats, mice, and the like become potentially powerful fighter-types. This, plus the ability to pick up Boons from other animals (it's disturbing when the canary Paladin suddenly sprouts Elephant tusks) make them very viable (and amusing) front-line fighters. Since they suffer no penalties to Constitution, generally, they have the same number of hit points as larger races...
I've enjoyed playing my rabbit Barbarian, Tiger Paladin, and Condor Monk rather a lot. Very very crunchy supplement. Game balance can seem skewed at first wash, so GMs beware. Er, be aware.
Is there an errata for this product? The Noble Canines are more than a little confusing with regards to size increases and the stats for wolves are ridiculous (+8 Dex? really? not even Noble Cats get that).
Is there an errata for this product? The Noble Canines are more than a little confusing with regards to size increases and the stats for wolves are ridiculous (+8 Dex? really? not even Noble Cats get that).
Sorry guys, This got past us. If you replace the wolf's stat line with the following, you will get a much better result:
Remember, these are the stats for a 1st level, size Small wolf, barely past a pup. when he gains his size threshold, he gains some Strength and Constitution, and loses some Dexterity.
Hey folks, If you are curious about The Noble Wild and will be at GenCon, make sure to stop by the Skirmisher booth, where I'll be running demo scenarios created just for the con!
I would be more inclined to buy this if the PDF came bundled with the book. I like a hard copy to read, but prefer to not have to carry around another book, computer problems make a PDF a risky investment IMO.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Daniel Moyer wrote:
I would be more inclined to buy this if the PDF came bundled with the book. I like a hard copy to read, but prefer to not have to carry around another book, computer problems make a PDF a risky investment IMO.
All PDFs purchased from Paizo.com can be downloaded for as long as the original publisher allows them to be available, which in most cases will be forever
Okay, looking over the chart I made for the Advancement of a Noble Bunny Rage Prophet(because I can, that's why), I noticed the feat Size Substitution mentions the Noble Rabbit using it's Dexterity bonus for Jump checks... something that doesn't exist in Pathfinder.
Other than that, has anyone made(or wanted to make) a thread for strange Noble Wild characters? Much like the Rage Prophet mentions above...
Okay, looking over the chart I made for the Advancement of a Noble Bunny Rage Prophet(because I can, that's why), I noticed the feat Size Substitution mentions the Noble Rabbit using it's Dexterity bonus for Jump checks... something that doesn't exist in Pathfinder.
This one is easy: apply your Dex to acrobatics checks ONLY when making those checks to jump. It's like having conditional modifiers to saves (such as +2 to will vs sleep effects or something like that). Jump as a skill doesn't exist, but you still make checks to jump. :)
Okay, looking over the chart I made for the Advancement of a Noble Bunny Rage Prophet(because I can, that's why), I noticed the feat Size Substitution mentions the Noble Rabbit using it's Dexterity bonus for Jump checks... something that doesn't exist in Pathfinder.
This one is easy: apply your Dex to acrobatics checks ONLY when making those checks to jump. It's like having conditional modifiers to saves (such as +2 to will vs sleep effects or something like that). Jump as a skill doesn't exist, but you still make checks to jump. :)
I know that, I was just pointing out that something was missed when they updated the book to Pathfinder.
*Watches Spirit Hopper, Rage Prophet Rabbit, hops into battle and rips apart an entire platoon of humans*
Thanks for the answer, Shar Tahl. Hmm, then it's not for anthropomorphic critters? Pity about that; I would love to see someone do something about making anthro races for Pathfinder.
If you find anyone running 'Redwall', you may want to pick up a box of these then.
I have the 3.5 version of the PDF (that I've bought BTW), and how does the Pathfinder version deal with the "savage progression"-like races ? I am asking this since the 3.5 version used something akin of the Level Adjustment... which hasn't been used by Pathfinder [yet], so how does this version is compared to the previous one on that matter ?
Will there be a supplement released on how to do noble animals as classes from the APG? Granted most of the classes seem easy to convert but I wonder how to make a noble alchemist, (or if it is even possible). Thanks!
If it helps, a Noble Alchemist could use the rules for Juju and the like for his Extracts and Mutagens. Eat a certain flea or tick and gain +2 Con. Don't know how it would work for bombs though.
I agree about needing to have a print/PDF combo price. I'm not opposed to an author getting paid for his work, but $42 to get both print and PDF is pretty out there. Publisher, make it happen.
Are we likely to see an update for this including classes from the APG? I would really like to see some official rulings on stuff like itches Hexes etc.
^^ I'd like to know too. For anyone that has this book, how has it lasted a few years? Is everything still good? How does it work with the new classes from APG?
& another further question I'll ask in the forums..
Thanks for the answer, Shar Tahl. Hmm, then it's not for anthropomorphic critters? Pity about that; I would love to see someone do something about making anthro races for Pathfinder.
There already is. See 'Fursona—The Definitive Guide to Creating Anthropomorphic Characters', available for download from this site.
I picked up a copy of this book a while back in the second-hand rack at my local FLGS. Reading it, some things seem to work fairly well, but there's also a decent amount of 3.5isms remaining in the text. Has the PDF been updated/revised since the print version was produced, or is this still in a 3/4 PFRPG, 1/4 3.5 -like state?
A question in case the developer ever happens to stop by. Do Noble Animals live longer than normal animals of their species or do they have the same life expectancy? The entry for the Noble Tortoise seems to indicate that Noble Animals have an extended lifespan over the normal animal versions.
I have a post at http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pbca?Refactoring-Noble-Wild where I'm thinking through a refactoring of The Noble Wild more for the Pathfinder campaign setting. I will do that there and not here.
I got this book in PDF, and I wonder about it. I see a hi-res version in the "root" directory, with the date 01-14-2010 in the file names. There's a sub-directory called "9onbf" which contains a hi-res AND low-res version, with the date 02-16-2010 in the titles. Is there a reason there are two hi-res versions in there? Is there a difference between the "root" and "9onbf" versions? What does "9onbf" mean?
For those that have this book, how well does it stand up now that it's been out for a few years?
Not well. The only thing I'd use it for is racial statistics. The magic item creation methods aren't that great (my ability points are pretty bloody important, thank you very much), and the fluff is... not good. By "not good" I mean that the deer have it as their greatest ambition to be eaten.
How well do you think that would fit if you had elves thinking it their greatest ambition to be eaten by orcs, and had it portrayed as anything OTHER than awful?
The "magic invisibility" is ridiculous too. Apparently noble animals have a different sort of evil than normal people, since detect evil doesn't detect evil noble animals.
I've noticed some stark differences between what's presented on the PFSRD and what's written in the book, namely in the ability score modifiers. For instance:
I've noticed some stark differences between what's presented on the PFSRD and what's written in the book, namely in the ability score modifiers. For instance:
Am I missing something? These are quite different.
The copy of The Noble Wild: Pathfinder version I am looking at has the racial ability score modifiers listed for the PFSRD? What is the revision date in your copy?
Also, I don't think the PFSRD has the Noble Wild content live on the site.
The file is named Noble_Wild_hires_01-14-2010_.pdf
The site that seems to give the stats online is: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/caedwyr-s-lab/noble-wild -species/noble-animal-species/noble-bear
The file is named Noble_Wild_hires_01-14-2010_.pdf
The site that seems to give the stats online is: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/caedwyr-s-lab/noble-wild -species/noble-animal-species/noble-bear
That's annoying. I have one with a 2010 publication date (hardcopy), but it has the statline shown on D20PFSRD.com. That also shouldn't be publicly viewable, since it is a Work in Progress.
I can't find any errata documents either. If you see anything else with issues like that, please send me a PM
Hey Caedwyr, I have no idea if you still need your answer, but Noble Animals normally have a lifespan of around 100 years, unless the natural animal's lifespan is already longer than that. So for tortoises, for instance, it would be the same for both natural and Noble.
- Lee Garvin
Caedwyr wrote:
A question in case the developer ever happens to stop by. Do Noble Animals live longer than normal animals of their species or do they have the same life expectancy? The entry for the Noble Tortoise seems to indicate that Noble Animals have an extended lifespan over the normal animal versions.
So, I was just gifted this not too long ago and I adore the book but is there a general formula/trend/template to apply to allow this to go with other animals that I've missed, or even Web Enhancements/expansions squirreled away somewhere?
My playgroup is requesting things like Penguin, Duck, and Platypus which sadly do not show up in the book and I am a little lost on how to answer their requests fairly/ in line with what is printed.
