Ok,
Downloaded, and looked through it. Here's my first thoughts.
Artwork - Awesome, I don't think I saw a drawing I didn't like. I liked them all, although a couple of changes to 'iconics' may take me a bit to get used to, but I think I can do so (although the original troll jaws from Bestiary one still bothers me).
Character races - Very nice, I like the four elementals especially. It looks like a couple of others could be used without modification, but only at higher level, where the bonuses don't matter (I'm thinking specifically of the two CR 1 fae).
Dragons - Very VERY happy with the neutral dragon types. Something I'd asked for in the thread James started about what people wanted in the B2.
Mothman - Am I the only one that thinks he looks like Ultimate Big Chill from Ben 10??? :) :)
Templates - I wish there'd been more templates, but there were a couple. So I'm happy with that.
EDIT : Oh, also, YAY Dhampir's. :)
Ok,
Downloaded, and looked through it. Here's my first thoughts.
Huh... how did you download it if according to this site, the PDF will be available on approx. Dec 29 ?
Subscribers get access to the PDF as soon as their shipment is ready to be shipped from Paizo's warehouse. This usually happens a couple of weeks prior to the release date. One of the perks of being a subscriber. :)
Oh, I see...
Sorry about that, I just thought that MDT, you know, illegally downloaded the Bestiary 2.
My bad...
Oh, I see...
Sorry about that, I just thought that MDT, you know, illegally downloaded the Bestiary 2.
My bad...
LOL,
No worries.
What are your thoughts on the new dragons?
What are your thoughts on the new dragons?
I like them a lot, still reading through. But I love the concept that the neutral dragons are older, primordial dragons. The chromatics and metallics are the descendants of the neutrals, under that premise.
I always liked the gem dragons from 3.5, because they were neutral, but didn't really like the way they were implemented. The new ones seem much more in line with dragons to me. And the artwork for them is awesome. You can kind of see a hint of the other two types in each one, the way a jaw is shaped, the way a tali looks, but they're unique on their own.
I like them a lot, still reading through. But I love the concept that the neutral dragons are older, primordial dragons. The chromatics and metallics are the descendants of the neutrals, under that premise.
How does this mesh with the Apsu/Dahak origin story for metallics and chromatics?
Creative Director
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I like them a lot, still reading through. But I love the concept that the neutral dragons are older, primordial dragons. The chromatics and metallics are the descendants of the neutrals, under that premise.How does this mesh with the Apsu/Dahak origin story for metallics and chromatics?
Apsu/Dahak are part of Golarion.
Bestiary 2 is world-neutral.
In other words, it doesn't have to mesh at all.
And in OTHER words, there's really pretty much no flavor text for the primal dragons in the book; there's just no room. They're VERY generic on how they fit into any one particular game world, so you can make them be whatever you want to be; they're CERTAINLY not presented as the source for the chromatics and the metallics (that was something MDT made up, as far as I can tell—it's certainly an interesting idea, but it's not from the book).
Well, they were described as being ancient primordial dragons, primordial to me means a predacessor. Granted, I could be misremembering (I got to read it for two hours yesterday), so maybe I'm misremembering the primordial part.
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Creative Director
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Well, they were described as being ancient primordial dragons, primordial to me means a predacessor. Granted, I could be misremembering (I got to read it for two hours yesterday), so maybe I'm misremembering the primordial part.
The fact that we skew our dragon entries so hard into the "here's the stats for LOTS of stuff" means that we don't have much room for flavor text for them (which is something that disappoints me, but that's for another post)... but that means I can quickly copy all of what we say about primal dragons here:
"Though chromatic and metallic dragons are the most widely known, other categories of true dragon exist. Presented on the following pages are the five primal dragons—powerful creatures that hail from the elemental planes and the Plane of Shadows."
No big deal, in any case. The primal dragons are pretty undeveloped as for their "world niche" in any event.
Well, they were described as being ancient primordial dragons, primordial to me means a predacessor. Granted, I could be misremembering (I got to read it for two hours yesterday), so maybe I'm misremembering the primordial part.The fact that we skew our dragon entries so hard into the "here's the stats for LOTS of stuff" means that we don't have much room for flavor text for them (which is something that disappoints me, but that's for another post)... but that means I can quickly copy all of what we say about primal dragons here:
"Though chromatic and metallic dragons are the most widely known, other categories of true dragon exist. Presented on the following pages are the five primal dragons—powerful creatures that hail from the elemental planes and the Plane of Shadows."
No big deal, in any case. The primal dragons are pretty undeveloped as for their "world niche" in any event.
Ah, sorry then. Primal not primordial. Shows what happens when you read it over lunch at work. :) And I haven't had a chance to download at home and go through in detail.
What can you tell us on the elemental player races?
What can you tell us on the elemental player races?
I'll give a bit on each of the player races. Not direct copies, but enough info to whet appetites. :) I'll go in alphabetical order.
Dhampir
+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Con
That's a bit counter-intuitive to me, I always thought of Dhampir as hardier than humans. But they explain it that the undead part of them makes them closer to death.
First player race with both low-light and darkvision (60).
Bonuses to Bluff and Perception
They don't like light.
Because they are undead, they reverse positive/negative energy.
They can cast detect undead some each day.
And they have a resistance to level drain.
I'm curious whether a vicious weapon would heal them. Not sure if the vicious is using negative energy or not. In 3.5 I think it did, but it says disruptive not negative.
EDIT: For those who are not aware, Dhampir are offspring of vampires and humans.
Fetchlings
Fetchlings are descended from humans who have lived on the Shadow plane for generations. The picture shows a really nasty looking guy, despite the attribute boosts. Granted, Cha is partially force of personality, so I guess that guy is either atypical, or else they have REALLY forceful pursonalities. :)
+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Wis
Again, not too sure about the cha based on the picture, but hey, not all world leaders are attractive. :)
Darkvision, duh, 60 ft. And, our second player race with both dark and low light visions.
Bonuses to Kn(Planes) and Stealth
They get a big boost to their miss chance in dim light (that is, there's a bigger chance of someone missing them in dim light).
They get cold and electricity resistance
They can cast disguise self once per day
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Quick question for James, if you're still reading.
None of the races have the 'Count as Human for feats etc' text. But, dhampir's are half-human (like half-elves), and fetchlings and elemental races are decended from humans. Do they all count as human for taking feats and traits and so forth?
Another question. The Grig appears to be a NG fey that looks very appropriate as an advanced familiar, very similar to another fey in the book as an improved familiar.
I think it would be appropriate as an improved familiar as well, just wondering if that was an oversight, or I'm missing something on why it wouldn't be.
Grippli
These are a small character race, they are basically anthro tree frogs. I liken them to poisondusk lizardfolk myself.
+2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Str
Pretty standard for 2 foot high talking walking frogs. :)
Speed 30 feet (fast for small race, those legs allowing them to leap faster I guess).
And our first player race with Climb speed!
Darkvision (60)
Stealth bonuses in forests and swamps
They can move through swamps at normal speed
They're proficient with nets.
All in all I really like them as a replacement for poisondusk lizardfolks.
Ifrit
These are the first of the elemental humans. Fire obviously.
The picture is awesome, orange skin, flame for hair, and horns on his head. Expect a lot of elemental sorcerers of these races in your games, you'll see why.
+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Wis
Note the Cha bonus for sorcerers
Darkvision (60)
Burning Hands once per day
Fire resistance
Sorcerer's get a boost to their cha when determining spells and class abilities if they are elemental. Those with Fire Domain use their domain spells and abilities at a higher CL. I'm a little surprised there's no bonus for wizards though, evokers for example. Oh well.
Oread
These are the earth elemental humans. The picture, again, is awesome. This woman made entirely of stone with slate spikes for hair. Her clothes are grey and black to match her skin,a nd she's shooting a bow.
+2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Con
Can't argue with those stats, makes sense for earth.
Darkvision
Magic stone once per day
Acid resistance
Same sorcerer/domain bonuses as the Ifrit
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Creative Director
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Quick question for James, if you're still reading.
None of the races have the 'Count as Human for feats etc' text. But, dhampir's are half-human (like half-elves), and fetchlings and elemental races are decended from humans. Do they all count as human for taking feats and traits and so forth?
Tieflings and aasimars are also descended from humans, but they don't count as humans either.
The "Counts as human for feats, etc" stuff is pretty much limited just to half-orcs and half-elves.
Dhampirs and fetchlings and the elemental races are their own races now, not a truly hybrid race.
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Creative Director
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Another question. The Grig appears to be a NG fey that looks very appropriate as an advanced familiar, very similar to another fey in the book as an improved familiar.
I think it would be appropriate as an improved familiar as well, just wondering if that was an oversight, or I'm missing something on why it wouldn't be.
The brownie's an improved familiar option because it was in earlier editions of the game. The grig was not.
Not every tiny creature needs to be or should be a familiar option either—in fact, if they all were, then the ones that ARE such options get a little less special.
Sylph
These are human air elemental types. The picture, need I repeat, is awesome. :) Bone white woman with elven type ears. Her hair is actually a cloud. Not 'floats like a cloud'. It's a freaking cloud. :) Her skin is covered with sky blue rune like markings.
+2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Con
Again, can't argue with that, fast and smart but frail.
Darkvision
Featherfall once each day.
Electricity resistance
Same elemental sorcerer/domain boosts as Ifrit.
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Creative Director
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One other thing that I keep saying...
These races are built first as monsters. As NPCs that the GM can use in his or her game. They have not been playtested as player characters, nor have their powers been specifically designed and developed to be 100% balanced with those of the core races. They're no more player character races than drow, tieflings, tengus, or svirfneblin. Some are more powerful than others.
I prefer to call these types of creatures "zero HD creatures" becasue that's more accurate and doesn't imply that we at Paizo are undermining every GM's ability to decide which ones are appropriate as PC races.
Quick question for James, if you're still reading.
None of the races have the 'Count as Human for feats etc' text. But, dhampir's are half-human (like half-elves), and fetchlings and elemental races are decended from humans. Do they all count as human for taking feats and traits and so forth?
Tieflings and aasimars are also descended from humans, but they don't count as humans either.
The "Counts as human for feats, etc" stuff is pretty much limited just to half-orcs and half-elves.
Dhampirs and fetchlings and the elemental races are their own races now, not a truly hybrid race.
I can see that with fetchlings, but Dhampir's are explicitly the offspring of a human and vampire. This is the same as half-orc and half-elf (one parent of each race). Shouldn't they at least have the 'counts as human'? It's not like Dhampir's have cities of nothing but dhampirs.
One other thing that I keep saying...
These races are built first as monsters. As NPCs that the GM can use in his or her game. They have not been playtested as player characters, nor have their powers been specifically designed and developed to be 100% balanced with those of the core races. They're no more player character races than drow, tieflings, tengus, or svirfneblin. Some are more powerful than others.
I prefer to call these types of creatures "zero HD creatures" becasue that's more accurate and doesn't imply that we at Paizo are undermining every GM's ability to decide which ones are appropriate as PC races.
Perfectly acceptable. However, when it has a section called '<race> Characters', to me, that's a PC race. Sorry if I offended you by using that term.
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Sylph
These are human air elemental types. The picture, need I repeat, is awesome. :) Bone white woman with elven type ears. Her hair is actually a cloud. Not 'floats like a cloud'. It's a freaking cloud. :) Her skin is covered with sky blue rune like markings.
+2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Con
Again, can't argue with that, fast and smart but frail.
Darkvision
Featherfall once each day.
Electricity resistance
Same elemental sorcerer/domain boosts as Ifrit.
Yeah i liked the art for the Sylph too.
Undine
These are the aquatic humans. They look kind of like mermen, but with legs instead of tails. Of the four elemental races, I admit I like this one's artwork the least. Not to say it's bad, it's a blue-scaled man with fins for ears holding a giant gold trident. Just that it was not as eyepopping as the other four.
+2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Str
Not too sure what I think of that. To me, things that swim are usually stronger than things that aren't, they have to work five times harder than surface dwellers to move. Personally, I would have dumped Cha or Int, but I'm not the dev. :)
And, we have another Swim speed race. 30 feet
They are resistant to cold.
They can cast Hydraulic Push once per day
Same sorcerer/domain boosts that Ifrit get.
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Creative Director
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I can see that with fetchlings, but Dhampir's are explicitly the offspring of a human and vampire. This is the same as half-orc and half-elf (one parent of each race). Shouldn't they at least have the 'counts as human'? It's not like Dhampir's have cities of nothing but dhampirs.
That's certainly one way to stat them up. It's not the route we decided to go with though. Doesn't mean you can't houserule it in, obviously.
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Creative Director
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Perfectly acceptable. However, when it has a section called '<race> Characters', to me, that's a PC race. Sorry if I offended you by using that term.One other thing that I keep saying...
These races are built first as monsters. As NPCs that the GM can use in his or her game. They have not been playtested as player characters, nor have their powers been specifically designed and developed to be 100% balanced with those of the core races. They're no more player character races than drow, tieflings, tengus, or svirfneblin. Some are more powerful than others.
I prefer to call these types of creatures "zero HD creatures" becasue that's more accurate and doesn't imply that we at Paizo are undermining every GM's ability to decide which ones are appropriate as PC races.
You didn't offend me at all.
I'm just trying to manage expectations. I'm not really interested in creating false buzz that Bestiary 2 is filled with "official PC race options."
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Perfectly acceptable. However, when it has a section called '<race> Characters', to me, that's a PC race. Sorry if I offended you by using that term.One other thing that I keep saying...
These races are built first as monsters. As NPCs that the GM can use in his or her game. They have not been playtested as player characters, nor have their powers been specifically designed and developed to be 100% balanced with those of the core races. They're no more player character races than drow, tieflings, tengus, or svirfneblin. Some are more powerful than others.
I prefer to call these types of creatures "zero HD creatures" becasue that's more accurate and doesn't imply that we at Paizo are undermining every GM's ability to decide which ones are appropriate as PC races.
You didn't offend me at all.
I'm just trying to manage expectations. I'm not really interested in creating false buzz that Bestiary 2 is filled with "official PC race options."
WooHoo, you heard it hear first. James is saying the Bestiary two is filled with official PC race options. ;p
I can see that with fetchlings, but Dhampir's are explicitly the offspring of a human and vampire. This is the same as half-orc and half-elf (one parent of each race). Shouldn't they at least have the 'counts as human'? It's not like Dhampir's have cities of nothing but dhampirs.That's certainly one way to stat them up. It's not the route we decided to go with though. Doesn't mean you can't houserule it in, obviously.
Oh, I intend to. :) Just curious why you didn't. Sounds like it wasn't a 'should we shouldn't we' thing, just more of a 'it never occured to us' thing.
The dhampir's I'll deffinately be houseruling to half-human. The others will depend on whether I integrate them as races, or byblows (human parent + elemental parent). If the former, then no. If the latter, then yes.
My players are going to go nuts with glee once they realize there are elemental humanoids, shadow humanoids, and freaking half-vampires.
Sorry James, it's not going to matter what you say as far as they will be concerned.
I personally hate half-vampire tropes as they are usually munchkin wet dreams come true (all the strengths with none of the weaknesses!). Hopefully, that's not the case here (though the flavor still rubs me the wrong way regardless).
My players are going to go nuts with glee once they realize there are elemental humanoids, shadow humanoids, and freaking half-vampires.
Sorry James, it's not going to matter what you say as far as they will be concerned.
I personally hate half-vampire tropes as they are usually munchkin wet dreams come true (all the strengths with none of the weaknesses!). Hopefully, that's not the case here (though the flavor still rubs me the wrong way regardless).
Not in this case, if nothing else, this makes it a difficult race to play.
Negative Energy Affinity (Ex) The creature alive, but
reacts to positive and negative energy as if it were undead—
positive energy harms it, negative energy heals it. Format:
negative energy affinity; Location: Defensive Abilities.
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Creative Director
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I can see that with fetchlings, but Dhampir's are explicitly the offspring of a human and vampire. This is the same as half-orc and half-elf (one parent of each race). Shouldn't they at least have the 'counts as human'? It's not like Dhampir's have cities of nothing but dhampirs.That's certainly one way to stat them up. It's not the route we decided to go with though. Doesn't mean you can't houserule it in, obviously.Oh, I intend to. :) Just curious why you didn't. Sounds like it wasn't a 'should we shouldn't we' thing, just more of a 'it never occured to us' thing.
The dhampir's I'll deffinately be houseruling to half-human. The others will depend on whether I integrate them as races, or byblows (human parent + elemental parent). If the former, then no. If the latter, then yes.
We didn't give them this because we wanted the race (all of them, not just the dhampir) to feel more like their own race, rather than a composite. But more to the point, there simply wasn't room to add relatively boring abilities to these races—it's already hard enough fitting a zero HD race into a 1 page format while retaining the "mosters as characters" text and STILL having enough flavor text to not totally leave them super bland. The human traits thing is simply not interesting enough for a new monster in this case in my opinion, and instead we used that space to talk more about their other abilities or features.
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Creative Director
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My players are going to go nuts with glee once they realize there are elemental humanoids, shadow humanoids, and freaking half-vampires.
Sorry James, it's not going to matter what you say as far as they will be concerned.
I personally hate half-vampire tropes as they are usually munchkin wet dreams come true (all the strengths with none of the weaknesses!). Hopefully, that's not the case here (though the flavor still rubs me the wrong way regardless).
Doesn't bother me at all. In fact, ALL of the zero HD races in this book would be great player characters. Most of them would work fine in the majority of Golarion's cities, even—most of them aren't that much more crazy looking than tieflings.
What bothers me is when you have parties consisting of circus acts—a human, a minotaur, a naga, an awakened badger, and a half-celestial unicorn party of adventurers simply rubs me the wrong way.
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Creative Director
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My players are going to go nuts with glee once they realize there are elemental humanoids, shadow humanoids, and freaking half-vampires.
Sorry James, it's not going to matter what you say as far as they will be concerned.
I personally hate half-vampire tropes as they are usually munchkin wet dreams come true (all the strengths with none of the weaknesses!). Hopefully, that's not the case here (though the flavor still rubs me the wrong way regardless).
Not in this case, if nothing else, this makes it a difficult race to play.
Negative Energy Affinity (Ex) The creature alive, but
reacts to positive and negative energy as if it were undead—
positive energy harms it, negative energy heals it. Format:
negative energy affinity; Location: Defensive Abilities.
I actually played a cleric in Erik Mona's Age of Worms campaign who essentially had this same ability. Further, she channeled negative energy, which made it a bit more difficult to heal on the fly. So not only was she more difficult to heal, but the rest of the party didn't have as easy an access to healing.
The character, Tyralandi, was GREAT fun to play. One of my favorite characters ever, in fact. So in this case, I would argue that "more difficult" = "more fun"!
What bothers me is when you have parties consisting of circus acts—a human, a minotaur, a naga, an awakened badger, and a half-celestial unicorn party of adventurers simply rubs me the wrong way.
Oddly enough, a party like this sounds like alot of fun to me.
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What bothers me is when you have parties consisting of circus acts—a human, a minotaur, a naga, an awakened badger, and a half-celestial unicorn party of adventurers simply rubs me the wrong way.Oddly enough, a party like this sounds like alot of fun to me.
I like the sound of the group as well. I'd enjoy any of those characters except the unicorn.
When my wife used to game with us she played a bronze dragon wyrmling and her character was quite interesting. I had another player play a very young fire giant and that character also was great in play. Of course, the goal for these characters wasn't power but creating a character to match a backstory and concept.
I know I've read that Paizo is against creating many rules to allow monsters to be played as possible player characters but I'd like to see a Savage Species like book. The default suggestion to GMs might be to only allow one monster in a group and the whole group has to agree ahead of time. Monsters as PCs does have it place and some rules and suggestions and playtesting would really help!
I actually ran a very successful monster campaign. Humans (goaded by a coalition of drow, hobgoblins, and orcs) started a big war against the elves and dwarves. When the humans had finished conquering, the rest of the monstrous races swept over them like a tide, and pushed them off the continent (quite literally, the last 20 or 30 thousand built ships and sailed off while the army died to buy them time to do it and get away.
The only hold out was a heavily defended city in the mountains. But they didn't have the population to maintain viability. Over the decades though, neutral monstrous humanoids were allowed in.
A thousand years later, the city is 10 times the size it was, taking up the entire mountain, which is honeycombed with passages. All the monstrous races were represented inside, and the city was still good/neutral. The evil races had turned on each other once the humans, dwarves and elves were dealt with.
So we had one continent of nothing but monstrous races, and the big bad boogie men of stories that mothers told kids at night were humans. Humans were 14 feet tall, shot flames from their nose, and ate any bad hobgoblin/drow/goblin/orc children. :)
What bothers me is when you have parties consisting of circus acts—a human, a minotaur, a naga, an awakened badger, and a half-celestial unicorn party of adventurers simply rubs me the wrong way.
Most of the time our parties consist of core races with one slightly oddball humanoid (tiefling, goblin, tengu). For some reason, centaurs are EXTREMELY popular and we have one of those every other campaign it seems.
About once a year though, we get something really weird like a "wear-rabbit."
I tend not to like "circus acts" either. Essentially, if the party can't enter a humanoid settlement without getting run out or shot at, it's not creativity anymore, it's just disruptive to the game (as they can no longer interact well with any worthwhile NPC).
Not in this case, if nothing else, this makes it a difficult race to play.
Negative Energy Affinity (Ex) The creature alive, but
reacts to positive and negative energy as if it were undead—
positive energy harms it, negative energy heals it. Format:
negative energy affinity; Location: Defensive Abilities.
Does the standard 'if it heals the creature, it cannot crit.' rule apply?
Is there an awakened template for animals and plants with above 2 intelligence? If not, that's ok, maybe next book.
If I can get another gaming group together, I'll ask them up front if I can let Cats, Foxes, and Dolphins all be awakened.
Oread
These are the earth elemental humans. The picture, again, is awesome. This woman made entirely of stone with slate spikes for hair. Her clothes are grey and black to match her skin,a nd she's shooting a bow.
+2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Con
Can't argue with those stats, makes sense for earth.
Darkvision
Magic stone once per day
Acid resistance
Same sorcerer/domain bonuses as the Ifrit
Wait, the earth race has a penalty to Constitution? How does that work?
Wait, the earth race has a penalty to Constitution? How does that work?Oread
These are the earth elemental humans. The picture, again, is awesome. This woman made entirely of stone with slate spikes for hair. Her clothes are grey and black to match her skin,a nd she's shooting a bow.
+2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Con
Can't argue with those stats, makes sense for earth.
Darkvision
Magic stone once per day
Acid resistance
Same sorcerer/domain bonuses as the Ifrit
That's a typo on my part, sorry. That should say -2 Cha.
Not in this case, if nothing else, this makes it a difficult race to play.
Negative Energy Affinity (Ex) The creature alive, but
reacts to positive and negative energy as if it were undead—
positive energy harms it, negative energy heals it. Format:
negative energy affinity; Location: Defensive Abilities.
Does the standard 'if it heals the creature, it cannot crit.' rule apply?
Is there an awakened template for animals and plants with above 2 intelligence? If not, that's ok, maybe next book.
If I can get another gaming group together, I'll ask them up front if I can let Cats, Foxes, and Dolphins all be awakened.
Nothing in the ability says anything, so I'd say the general rule still applies with regards to them being healed by negative energy. I'm guessing a heal spell cast on them could crit however, since it's damaging them.