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The other day I was rolling for a random encounter using the table provided with the module we were playing and rolled a Young Adult Black Dragon. So, that's cool, everybody loves a dragon. Well, I flip through the Beastiary to the entry and find that the Young Adult version hasn't been statted out. After a few minutes of trying to work it out, I just skipped the dragon and rerolled.
Granted, i'm somewhat inexperienced, and this was probably easier to do than I was making it out to be. But it just seemed too complicated to do on the spot (and moderately complicated to do at all).
My question is, does anyone know if there's a resource for getting dragon stats that have already been figured out? I'm not sure why they didn't just include stat blocks for each age category, frankly.
I'm not sure why they didn't just include stat blocks for each age category, frankly.
Well, let's see. 10 Dragon types x 12 age categories = more than a third of the book's pages, just on Dragons!
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Well, let's see. 10 Dragon types x 12 age categories = more than a third of the book's pages, just on Dragons!
I was thinking just stat blocks for some of the intermediate ages. They could do four to a page that way. But, yeah, I see your point. It still works out to 20-25 more pages.
jreyst, Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, they only have the same ones that are in the Beastiary.
Well, I suppose I could just spend a saturday working them all out for myself. :P
jreyst, Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, they only have the same ones that are in the Beastiary.
Oh... woops. When you said Young Adult, I heard Young OR Adult lol We'll stat those out eventually or...
Well, I suppose I could just spend a saturday working them all out for myself. :P
When you do can you send them to us? Or better yet, I give you access and you post them directly so that others can benefit from your efforts?
Just as an FYI, I put in a request on the d20pfsrd.com messageboards to see if one of the crew can get this statted out for you. No promises but maybe one of the team has some time to whip that bad boy out :)
A table per dragon could do it the 3.5 books used a half a page per dragon
d20pfsrd.com collaborator CAWright has agreed to stat that guy out. Not sure how long it will take him but I'd check back off and on over the next few hours to see if its up yet.
Dragon stats are always a pain to fit into a hardcopy. You've got the base 10, but sense people want to play them at all levels of the game without pulling out "Advancing Creatures by HD" in order to do so.
So you've got 120 basic variation without even getting into feat, skill and spell selection. Tack on wealth and each dragon write-up eats up a ton of real estate. Look at some of the high CR dragons in the AoW and SC APs. They took up a huge word count.
So instead they provide 3 broad age brackets and assume that you will cutomize as needed.
As to the organization of the Bestiary I personally think that 2e was the high point in Monster Manuals (high fluff content and 1 page per simple monster) and that 3.x and 4e really fell down in comparison. By using at least 1 page (or 1/2 page for variations) Pathfinder is returning to that tradition. Unfortunately 3.x statblock are so large that they tend to eat up a lot of word count and thus reduce fluff but I guess that's why Paizo makes the "x monster revisited".
Even though it sucked when the pages fell out, and they were only black and white, I did really think the 3-ring binder concept was handy. As DM I could always remove the pages for the monsters I intended to use in a session then replace them after the session. The problem I had was when they released later sets and there was a monster that alphabetically should appear between two creatures from the Monstrous Compendium 1 but the two monsters it should appear between were on opposite sides of the same page.
Thank you, and thank CAWright as well. It looks like your site is gonna come in very handy. :)
He's getting started now and he's pretty quick at these things so I wouldn't expect it to take too long. And glad you like the site.
Even though it sucked when the pages fell out, and they were only black and white, I did really think the 3-ring binder concept was handy. As DM I could always remove the pages for the monsters I intended to use in a session then replace them after the session. The problem I had was when they released later sets and there was a monster that alphabetically should appear between two creatures from the Monstrous Compendium 1 but the two monsters it should appear between were on opposite sides of the same page.
I was actually referring to the later hardcopy version of Monster Manual.
The Monstrous Compendium was okay but in general the utility wasn't there for me. Binders like that get damaged and taking pages out for a session just seemed like an excuse for ripping pages and damaging the holes so that they no longer stayed in the binder.
I guess you could put on those little hole protectors but as a high-school freshmen that seemed like a lot of work.
Fortunately a laptop and pdfs give me that sort of utility without making it so easy to lose/damage things.
I will admit, I had a TON of loose pages laying around everywhere because I was always too lazy after a session to put them back in lol
And, by request, here he is, the young adult black dragon!
All thanks go to CAWright!
Any other requests (for something not ALREADY on d20pfsrd.com)?
Edit: He asked me to mention that his conversion philosophy was to treat the Black Dragon entry as snapshots in the life of one dragon, so he used the Young and Adult entries for feat, skill and spell choices.
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And, by request, here he is, the young adult black dragon!
All thanks go to CAWright!
Any other requests (for something not ALREADY on d20pfsrd.com)?
Edit: He asked me to mention that his conversion philosophy was to treat the Black Dragon entry as snapshots in the life of one dragon, so he used the Young and Adult entries for feat, skill and spell choices.
Nice! Pass on my heartfelt thanks. :)
Will do!
Nice! Pass on my heartfelt thanks. :)
You're most welcome. :D (I decided to use my real name and not "Pale" over at the project.) ::goes back to bestiary mines::