"Savage Species" Rulebook Conversion


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Has there been any effort to adapt the "Savage Species" rulebook to Patherfinder? I think this book was very well done and give an excellent example of how to handle adapting monsters to PCs without over-powering.
Discuss!

Sovereign Court

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The only people who can really decide if a monster is powerful enough or too powerful are the people playing at any particular table. One of the best changes from 3rd edition D&D to Pathfinder was the removal of the level adjustment system and the pushing of that fact. If you want to let your players be minotaurs or vampires, then that's the decision that has to be made between players and GM's.

Plus the Savage Species book wasn't OGL so you couldn't adapt it over.


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also since Pf uses Cr not La to determine monster viability as a PC alot of the monster classes are not really suitable any more.


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We have done some work on this with our In the Company of Monsters series, making the monsters a 1st-20th Level paragon class progression balanced with the core classes. So far we have done Giants, Gargoyles, Minotaurs, and Kappa. Tengu is in layout right now.


The Pseudodragon is on the list, yes?


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Rite Publishing wrote:
Tengu is in layout right now.

Isn't the Tengu already a playable character race in Pathfinder? I see a PRD entry that says as much.

Or is this a different conversion?


Yes,

What "In The Company Of Tengu" will do is expand on this with Racial Archetypes, a 1-20th level paragon racial class, favor class variants, racial feats, and deal with its specfic roal in our Kaidan (japanesse horror) campaign setting.


For D&D purists it’s annoying that Paizo have labelled Kenku as Tengu. I imagine it was done for intellectual property reasons. If they’d named Kenku as something other than Tengu then it wouldn’t clash with our memories of the flightless vs. winged raven-headed humanoids.

You can see the original Kenku here which matches Pathfinders ‘Tengu’.
While the real D&D Tengu is the awesome winged raven variety from Oriental Adventures. You can see a picture of it here.


Rite Publishing wrote:

Yes,

What "In The Company Of Tengu" will do is expand on this with Racial Archetypes, a 1-20th level paragon racial class, favor class variants, racial feats, and deal with its specfic roal in our Kaidan (japanesse horror) campaign setting.

Oh I am very much liking the sounds of this


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Silke wrote:
For D&D purists it’s annoying that Paizo have labelled Kenku as Tengu. I imagine it was done for intellectual property reasons.

Um ... Er ...

For mythology purists it's annoying that Wizards of the Coast had labelled (crow) Tengu as Kenku. I imagine it was done because they weren't exactly mimicking crow tengu, or so I hope.


Yes its the same problem with the D&D monster known as a Gorgon, which is what a Medusa really is, Medusa was an individual name for a Gorgon (one of three), a D&D gorgon should properly becalled a Brazen Bull but you know....


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Rite Publishing wrote:
Yes its the same problem with the D&D monster known as a Gorgon, which is what a Medusa really is, Medusa was an individual name for a Gorgon (one of three), a D&D gorgon should properly becalled a Brazen Bull but you know....

The Bull-Gorgon is is from early modern bestiaries, where it may have been confused with the Catoblepus (which actually shares some similarities in the MM). The conflation of the two is described by TH White [here, but the error is so old (it's 16th century, found first in Edw. Topsell's History of Four-footed Beasts; the passage may be found here), Gygax and Co may be forgiven for it...

BTW Topsell's book is pretty interesting. A complete copy is here.

Contributor

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I have been working on a full conversion of most creatures in Beast I and II into levels.

Here is a sample of it:Sample.


Zerzix that is good quality work. Complete the book and you will be THE person that provided SAVAGE SPECIES for Pathfinder.
It will be very handy for use as a granular 'Young Template' and also for players of monster classes.

It would be awesome if you included rows for each monster that advanced them via additional hit dice (i.e. beyond those of a normal adult and typically increasing their size category after 50% more HD). So far I'm just applying Young and Advanced Templates to monsters when what I really want to do is add and subtract hit dice.

Any chance you could do Fire Giant, Hill Giant, Hell Hound, Troll, Gnoll and Red Dragon over the next two weeks?

P.S. How are you removing the black background from images copied from Pathfinder Bestiary PDFs? PicPick (Editor) is a good free online tool but it's still a pain to clean up each image.
Do Paizo have a picture gallery for all book images like WotC did for their 3.5e books?

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zerzix wrote:

I have been working on a full conversion of most creatures in Beast I and II into levels.

Here is a sample of it:Sample.

It looks nice, but the first thing I noticed is that your saving throw progressions are all over the place. Minotaur starts with 2/0/0 and ends up with 4/5/5....?? Also, when you have 1 HD per level (which, I think, yay! FINALLY, someone gets), you don't really need to put the standard level progression gains (feat at every odd level, for instance) in the class progression chart. As long as your base attack bonuses match the creature type (I didn't check and I don't have them memorized), I'd say it looks pretty good so far.

Contributor

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Thanks for the kind words and the editing notes (I totally need them!) For right now I put in the lil detail stuff like feats and every odd level just for book keeping purposes in the outline, but will prob take them out at the end. Just alot to keep track of with each build and I would love for any additional advice on it!


Quote:
RE: "you don't really need to put the standard level progression gains (feat at every odd level, for instance) in the class progression chart."

If the author just left the word "feat" then I'd agree with this statement. What's desired is specifically listing the order that each race learns their feats...and at what point they gain racial bonus feats (if any).

Taking this a step further it would be awesome to include the expenditure of skill ranks as well. Currently it's a chore (and even a challenge) to reverse engineer the breakdown of skill bonuses to see where the designers allocated skill ranks.

Why do it? This information is useful when you want to customise monsters - which is exactly what you’re making possible here. People can contribute such information to make your job easier, and point out errors for correction.

Sovereign Court

Has anyone converted the Pathfinder Djinn ?

I need to develop this for one of my players, but if someone has done it already, that'd be a lot easier.

Contributor

Currently working on Djinn, Fire Giant, Hill Giant, Hell Hound, Troll, Gnoll and Red Dragon =)

Contributor

Christopher Dudley wrote:
RE: I noticed is that your saving throw progressions are all over the place

Been running through alot of the builds and fixing up the save progressions...one thing I noticed thats a little weird is the Ref save progression of the Silver Dragon....follows pretty normal until 7th level then jumps a bunch to catch up when it hits 11th. Not a "normal" progression, but then again - it wasn't really built for level by level play. lol Anyone care to double check it for me?


zerzix wrote:
RE: Anyone care to double check it for me?

Sure.

Dragon Type has all good saves.

At 1HD base saves for Fort/Ref/Will should be +2/+2/+2 and you have +2/+1/+1
...and so on.
At 11HD base saves for Fort/Ref/Will should be +7/+7/+9 (including +2 for Iron Will) and you have +7/+7/+10 (including +2 for Iron Will)

BTW: Fort/Ref/Will should only show the creature's ‘base save bonus’ thus bonuses from feats, traits, ability scores, magic items and other sources should be left out of this calculation (unlike the Bestiary where it shows totals). Thus the above should read +7/+7/+7 at 11HD.

On another note I'd only list monster levels by HD progression (which you are already doing). Back in Savage Species they had ‘adjustment levels' where you didn't gain HD. Don't want that.

Contributor

Ah HA! Thats what I over looked! The damn feat! lol Thanks, =)

Contributor

Be gentle...lol Here is a stab at the Genie - Djinni

Click right here --->Djinni.

Sovereign Court

Thank you ! oh, thank you !

This saves me a lot of time !

I'll discuss this with my players at next week game, and let you know what they think.


Rite Publishing wrote:
We have done some work on this with our In the Company of Monsters series, making the monsters a 1st-20th Level paragon class progression balanced with the core classes. So far we have done Giants, Gargoyles, Minotaurs, and Kappa. Tengu is in layout right now.

The name Tengu derives from a Japanese emperor trying to say thank you in English after biting his tongue in a horseriding accident.

Contributor

Another monster down, only a hundred or so more to go...lol

My take on the Fire Giant by levels: Fire Giant.


zerzix wrote:

I have been working on a full conversion of most creatures in Beast I and II into levels.

Here is a sample of it:Sample.

It looks like you are doing a great job.

Contributor

Disregard the Fire Giant entry above - had a few corrections to make so here is my take on Hill giants and Fire Giants.

Hill and Fire Giants.


Wow!! This is great work, thank you.


Hi zerzix,

Firstly thanks so much for the work you are doing and thanks again for preparing an example of Fire Giants racial progression. I still have no idea what thought process you are using to determine monster saving throws but it is incorrect. None-the-less you have inspired me to create the perfect breakdown of monster progression a-la Savage Species style. It is presented below to you and the forum in the hope that all monster progressions can be flesh out with this degree of detail and care. Mind you this one monster did take me ten hours of work.

Fire Giant Racial Progression

Quote:
Ever wanted to fully customise your monsters but balk at it because you don’t have a detailed breakdown of their racial progression? For example why should every fire giant in a complex be boring “joe average”? Are you sick of just slapping on simplistic giant, young and advanced templates to simulate variety? Well now you can easily create infant, child, adolescent and adult fire giants, not to mention old, middle aged and venerable, all with different skills, weapons, armour and feat choices. From there you can easily add templates, NPC and class levels. All you needed was a handy two page summary of the racial breakdown. Now your fire giant complex is filled with a wonderful array of unique and flavourful opponents ready to engage your PCs.

Download Fire Giant Racial Levels.pdf here

Contributor

Nice work Silke! I thank you you for atleast looking through mine and doing an edit of sorts. Most of my save progression mistakes are just from my A.D.D and carelessness. lol Trying to rush through the builds with the sense of being slowly overwhelmed with the amount of work there is and how many builds there are.

And yeah - so far I have found miscalculations on many of the builds, but thats why I posted them. =) So Your inspiration from me has RE-inspired ME to take more time and detail into them.

Re-up Samples.

But - again, keep in mind these are just first drafts and some not finished.

Contributor

And if you care to join efforts - perhaps take some of these builds off my hand or even if its just editing or doing recalculations on anything I've mocked up or details I have missed. ANY help is great!


@zerzix
To your credit is the volume of work produced in a given time frame, presentation, and a nice touch with the watermarked image; though it has varying degrees of success depending on obscurement by text (i.e. Silver dragon bad, fire giant good).

This effort is indeed a draft. If you really plan to go back and double check everything then I tip my hat to you. The task of correction becomes insurmountable as the number of builds approaches infinity :)
Having said that, to be useful this body of work needs to be as accurate as possible with all details provided so its users can fully customise each monster at every level (hit dice). From a casual preview, readers will post praise but responses with constructive feedback are statistically few and precious. Any posts like the following are gold...

Quote:

Hey for Fire Giants you have "Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Proficient with all simple and martial weapons but not with armor or shields" which is totally wrong. You also have their Class skills as "Skills: (2+Int) Climb, Craft (any one), Intimidate, Perception" which is not the full list.

The full entry would be better written as follows:
- Proficient with all simple weapons*
*An adult fire giant may be proficient with one martial weapon (such as greatsword) by virtue of taking weapon proficiency feat.
- Proficient with all types of armour (heavy, medium, and light), and with shields (except tower shields)
- Class Skills: Climb, Craft, Handle Animal, Heal, Intimidate, Perception, Profession, Ride and Survival

...feedback like that is needed for every monster but in my experience (and I see Paizo's for playtests) is along the lines of say 1 informative post in 10.

Tip: Consider using even numbered increments for ability score progression (i.e. +2 and +4 where needed rather than +1 increments).

I have need of racial levels for Troll and Hell Hound and will post when done so you can rip or compare.

Cheers

Contributor

Coolio, I have already begun to go back through the builds so far and making readjustments. I see on my Hell Hound I need to correct the proficiencies already. lol Again, thanks for your help and input.

Contributor

Here is the write-up of Troll and Hell Hound (I guess it should read *here is the write-up so far*) lol ----> Hell Hound and Troll.

Let me know if anything jumps out that doesnt seem correct =)

Contributor

Mocked up the Red Dragon as well ----->Red Dragon.


I have added racial levels for Hell Hound and made some minor corrections to Fire Giant (namely CR by level). Redownload my Fire Giant Racial Levels.pdf from 2 posts ago to see them.

Again it's taken me an insane 10 hours to perfect just one monster. On the bright side it's amazing what you pick up by being thorough...for example I'm finding previously unknown errors in Pathfinder Bestiary.

Hell Hounds have incorrect Survival Skill bonus
Pathfinder Bestiary omits to add text stating "Hell Hounds and Nessian Hell Hounds have a +8 racial bonus on Survival checks". Thus the true Survival skill modifier for Hell Hounds is +15 and not +7. The entry for Nessian Hell Hounds remains correct (after errata) at +18.
I would applaud Paizo if they corrected this error by adding it to Bestiary Errata PDF.

How to Check

Quote:

Hell hounds have 16 skill ranks. They are spent as follows: Acrobatics 4 ranks, Perception 4 ranks, Stealth 4 ranks and Survival 4 ranks. They have a +5 racial bonus to Stealth and +8 racial bonus to Survival.

...
The Nessian Hell Hound has 36 skill ranks. They are spent as follows: Acrobatics 11 ranks, Perception 8 ranks, Stealth 11 ranks and Survival 6 ranks. They have a +5 racial bonus to Stealth and +8 racial bonus to Survival.

Sovereign Court

Question : for some reason, I am unable to print the whole doc, it refuses to print the sheet at the bottom of the table ?

Any one has a clue ?


This is an awesome work in progress! I am dotting this for now as I am at work. I love monster progressions. Hopefully, I will have time to go through and proof some of these to help out. Keep it up!

Contributor

Stereofm, which document were you trying to print? Mine? Silkes? Is it one particular table that won't print or any of them? I can email the pdf if desired.


I don’t think Stereofm was referring to my document. I just tested it on a colour laser printer and all content printed perfectly…I didn’t even have to resort to “print as image” setting in printer properties.

Updated - Hell Hounds have incorrect Survival Skill bonus
Pathfinder Bestiary omits text stating "Hell Hounds and Nessian Hell Hounds have a +8 racial bonus on Survival checks when tracking by Scent". Thus the true skill modifier for Hell Hounds is Survival +7 (+15 scent tracking) while the entry for Nessian Hell Hounds is Survival +8 (+16 scent tracking). Yes, Survival skill for Nessian Hell Hounds is incorrect, even after Paizo errata stating it should be +18 and not +13.
I would applaud Paizo if they corrected these errors by adding them to Pathfinder Bestiary Errata PDF.

How to Check

Quote:


Hell hounds have 16 skill ranks. They are spent as follows: Acrobatics 4 ranks, Perception 4 ranks, Stealth 4 ranks and Survival 4 ranks. They have a +5 racial bonus to Stealth and +8 racial bonus to Survival when tracking by scent.
...
Nessian Hell Hounds have 36 skill ranks. They are spent as follows: Acrobatics 12 ranks, Perception 8 ranks, Stealth 12 ranks and Survival 4 ranks. They have a +5 racial bonus to Stealth and +8 racial bonus to Survival when tracking by scent. Note that masterwork chainshirt barding adds -1 ACP to Acrobatics and Stealth bonuses.

My downloadable document has been updated with this fix (see earlier post).


Damn it...missed correcting my last post by 1 minute.
Scrap the "Hell Hounds and Nessian Hell Hounds have a +8 racial bonus on Survival checks when tracking by Scent" line. Hell Hound is right with Survival +7. I finally got it right for Nessian Hell Hound at Survival +15.

Nessian Hell Hound has incorrect Survival Skill bonus. Should be +15, not +13 or +18 after errata

Nessian Hell Hounds have 36 skill ranks. They are spent as follows: Acrobatics 12 ranks, Perception 6 ranks, Stealth 10 ranks and Survival 8 ranks. They have a +5 racial bonus to Stealth. Note that masterwork chainshirt barding adds -1 ACP to Acrobatics and Stealth bonuses.

How to Check

Quote:

Ability Scores: Str 27, Dex 15, Con 21, Int 4, Wis 12, Cha 6

Notable Feats: Alertness, Skill Focus (Stealth, Survival)

Acrobatics +16 = 12 ranks (+3 Class, +2 Dex, -1 ACP)
Perception +12 = 6 ranks (+3 Class, +2 Alertness, +1 Wis)
Stealth +21 = 10 ranks (+3 Class, +2 Dex, +5 race, +6 Skill focus, -1 ACP, -4 Size)
Survival +15 = 8 ranks (+3 Class, +1 Wis, +3 Skill focus)
Total Spent: 36 Ranks

Sovereign Court

zerzix wrote:
Stereofm, which document were you trying to print? Mine? Silkes? Is it one particular table that won't print or any of them? I can email the pdf if desired.

Yours for the Djinn, though I don't understand why it does that.

If you could email it to me I'd be extra grateful. It will see some playtesting in three weeks, though it seemed okay to my group.

Spoiler:

my email is (this alias) at hot mail . com

Thanks a lot

Contributor

Nice work Silke! So many numbers floating around - hard sometimes to keep them all straight.

Here is the lil dragon for peeps: Pseudodragon.

Contributor

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Stereofm wrote:
zerzix wrote:
Stereofm, which document were you trying to print? Mine? Silkes? Is it one particular table that won't print or any of them? I can email the pdf if desired.

Yours for the Djinn, though I don't understand why it does that.

If you could email it to me I'd be extra grateful. It will see some playtesting in three weeks, though it seemed okay to my group.
** spoiler omitted **
Thanks a lot

No problem...email sent.

For anyone else here is a new version of all the creatures up til now that I've worked on....

5-31-11 Sample

Sovereign Court

Woah !

New doc is awesome, and the cover ... I love it !

Contributor

I just had to write up another "quick" one... hA! Quickling


New Savage Species pdf is up and it's hard core. If you want to see what 30 hours of work perfecting 3 monsters looks like then here’s your chance. It contains tables to build the following creatures at every hit dice:
- Fire Giant
- Hell Hound
- Nessian Warhound (Hell Hound, Nessian)

It would be great to hear feedback from anyone that uses it to build custom monsters.
Download Pathfinder Bestiary Racial Levels.pdf here

Next monster:
Troll is next creature on the to-do-list.

Contributor

March of the Fey continues! Pixie EAT MY PIXIE DUST!!

Contributor

This one is HOT! lol Nymph

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