I skimmed Bestiary 5 and it seems to be a great book overall. But I saw quite a few familiar faces: Monsters and player races from Inner Sea Bestiary, Blood of the Moon and Lords of Chaos. From GM's and player's view this can be good or bad, depending on priorities. My main issue is: The transfer is incomplete. If you want all the content, you will still have to get the original sources. And at the same time you pay for the pages of Bestiary 5 (not much, but you pay).
So I'd prefer a cleaner approach, either:
a) Include them, but all of them from the sources in question. And please tell us about it.
b) Don't include previous creatures into bestiaries. Mentioning where's more might be good for both sides.
c) Don't include them, but make up a separate big book only containing monsters which were already in other sources (beside B1, B2 etc.).
Personally, I'd prefer c). I would even pay the usual price for a 300 pages bestiary full of recycled monsters. While I am mostly a PDF buyer, other might feel the same way.
What do you think?
Creative Director
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We've been including creatures from previous publications like this from the very start; it's not a new practice. There are two big rbonuses for including them:
1) Their stats go onto the PRD once they're in a Bestiary, which makes it a lot easier for us to use our own content in future adventures.
2) The softcover books they debut in don't get reprinted if they go out of print, and even when they ARE in print are exposed to a LOT fewer gamers, simply because of the wider distribution of the hardcover rulebooks.
When you DO see us include something from a prior book, most of the time it's because it's a monster one of us here at Paizo really likes and wants to give a bigger public push to.
But sometimes, these monsters are necessary for more mundane reasons. For example, if a new monster we intended to put in the book ends up being unworkable because the art was terrible or the design was unsavable or even because the monster got renamed... that leaves a blank page in the book that we need to have SOMETHING in. In this case, we often go to "pick up" monsters from prior books, since these discoveries generally occur late in the game when we don't have time to order new design or new art for a replacement.
Thanks for the explanations. Given them, I am glad most playable races make it into the hardcover books sooner or later.