For the most part, they have stated that they will not be doing stats for characters and items from the novels because a lot of times they do things outside of what the game actually allows.
I hadn't seen that posted. Do you have a link you could share or thread title?
I seem to recall Paizo stating that the opposite would be true when they launched Pathfinder Tales -- that it would adhere to the conceits of the game world. Wizards would have to prepare spells, etc. The Forgotten Realms novels were certainly guilty of ignoring the game whenever it felt like it but I hadn't seen that yet in PT.
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It was a while back, when Prince of Wolves came out, and I am not sure if it was only on the PF site. They pointed out that they wanted things like the tiefling guy (main character, can't think of his name) and the potentially a Cleric, Oracle, Witch, or unique class mute Ustilavian woman to remain a mystery, because if they had to adhere to the game, they simply couldn't do things that they did in the book.
The idea was that it was easier to right if the rules where not involved, and if things where identifiable, they would somehow become less interesting.
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Ironically, seeing as I statted up Radovan for Kobold Quarterly, I actually really, really dislike statting up characters from fiction in an official capacity. The problem is that it ends up tying your hands more than you might like, and a character's stat block is only a single snapshot of the character's development. It's one thing to stat up a character from a classic series who's no longer being used. But statting up a character that's still being written has a tendency to either disappoint the fans (when the character abilities change over the course of a series, making the stats outdated) or hogtying the author into never letting his or her character grow or advance.
That said, however, I'm a HUGE fan of fan-generated stat blocks for fictional characters. So while you won't see stats for Jeggare from us any time soon, we'd dearly love to see yours! :D
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Actually, the reasoning was a bit different there. It's VERY important to us that the characters within the Pathfinder Tales books work within the rules of magic/class/etc. that we've created. After all, if you're not going to play by the rules, why bother writing fiction set in a shared world?
The reason I'm reluctant to post character stats isn't that they don't obey the rules, but rather that the characters aren't static. In the same way that your characters are constantly growing and changing throughout the course of a campaign, characters in novels are always growing, sometimes even over the course of a single book. Yet if we publish a stat block for a character, I fear that people will consider those stats "the" stats for the character, rather than simply a snapshot in time, and thus will be angry if those stats don't remain current. For instance, Radovan gains significant monk levels in Master of Devils... but we can't presume that everybody's reading the books in order, or as they release. So do we stat Radovan as he appears at the end of Master of Devils? Prince of Wolves? Queen of Thorns? Plus I think it keeps everything a little more interesting to keep the nitty-gritty behind the author's GM screen.
Anyway, that's my reasoning, but it doesn't mean we'll never release stats--I statted up Radovan in Kobold Quarterly a few years ago, and the short stat blocks for Pathfinder Tales characters have shown up in Inner Sea Magic (and will show up again in Inner Sea Combat).
Hope that helps answer the question!
...and having said that, Chris Jackson totally just told people the stats for his main characters from Pirate's Honor. Which I'm totally fine with--authors are welcome to "out" their characters if they want, I just don't want to pressure them into it. ;)
...and having said that, Chris Jackson totally just told people the stats for his main characters from Pirate's Honor. Which I'm totally fine with--authors are welcome to "out" their characters if they want, I just don't want to pressure them into it. ;)
Okay, I didn't really stat them, but was asked class and level, so I gave the basics. I didn't go so far as to outline abilities, feats, skills, etc., and won't. I guess I should have used a Spoiler tab.
Keep in mind that what James said above is key. Characters grow, change, and mature...but we *do* follow the rules.
Completely off topic, but am I the only one who picture Ari Marmell as an over-the-top show-wrestler in full rage on account of the all-caps user name?
I didn't say it was a bad thing. :)