"Legality" of monsters


Rules Questions


Not sure if this should be in rules questions, 3rd party or homebrew..

There's strict rules for monster creation. A magical beast always have darkvision, and so on... for example...

Review of bestiaries found on the internet often talk about errors about the wrong skill ranks, things missing...

But at the same time, all these calculation often end to the numbers you wanted. For example, you want 20 AC, but the monster has 18, you add +2 natural and that's it. You want one more feat, "bonus feat" and voilà. You want more skill points : "racial modifiers"...

That's for the "normal" rules.

Now there's also unchained simple monster creation. Now AC, attack bonuses and all things... Everything is arbitrary and not from calculations.

Are these monsters supposed "wrong" ?
Let's imagine a 3rd party releases a bestiary with monsters following "unchained simple monster creation rules".. Is it "wrong" ? A bad choice because monsters would be "wrong" regarding maths ?

Moreover, there's some limits to unchained monster creation, a lot of special abilities doesn't exist.
If you add your own... it is still considered following the "right" rules.

And now, we are using unchained rules with arbitraries values. Adding special abilities from other monsters but not available into the unchained monster creation rules...
How far are we from just "writing what we want" to do the exact monster we want ? A magical beast without darkvision for example.

Will it be reviewed as "stat blocks full of mistakes" ?

I'm not talking about doing whatever I want at home (I once used 4e goblins...), but what is considered "right" or "correct".

Pathfinder unchained was released a long time ago, and there's no 3rd party bestiary following unchained simple monster creation rules, although it could permit some interesting critters. Is it because it should be considered as "wrong" or "illegal" monsters ?


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Creating monsters is more of an art than a science. Most unique abilities aren't things picked from a list, for example. Personally, I think it's far more important to have interesting foes to fight than to worry about whether they have a few more skill ranks than they should, or if there's a rule about just giving them extra natural armor to get them to where they're wanted. XD


there ment as a tool for gms to use to make interesting and unique monters that will pose a challenge for their pcs to fight


There probably isn't a "bestiary of unchained simple monsters", because it's probably best to make simple monsters for your own games because of how minimal they are, they wouldn't be worth much compared to "real" monsters.


ok, maybe I have too much talked about unchained simple monsters..
the point I wanted to make with it is "there's some alternative rules where "AC <> 10 + dex + whatever".

But if I release, for example, a magical beast living in bright light, and WITHOUT darkvision, it would be considered a stat block with errors.

I have also the example of templates that add INT points, but doesn't change the type of the creature, so, you could have a templated animal with 6 INT. (element-infused creature with fire, for example, type does not change but +4 INT)

But if I want to make a smart species of rat, it automatically becomes a magical beast or is "wrong" but the difference is that its name is "genius rat" and not "fire-infused rat".

I agree with GM Rednal BUT these "interesting foes" could be more interesting than "mathematically right ones" but still considered "full of mistakes".


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I figure that "Rules for the GM" are more or less synonymous with "recommendations".

Many of which, of course, are excellent recommendations but no one ought to be bound by them if they do not wish to be.


mekka2000 wrote:
But if I release, for example, a magical beast living in bright light, and WITHOUT darkvision, it would be considered a stat block with errors.

Specific beats general, so you can have magical beasts that lack darkvision without it even being considered an "error". Monsters can break "the rules" a decent amount because you can just say "it works like x" and it works like x, regardless of if oozes are normally mindless or undead are damaged by positive energy or whatever.

Quote:

I have also the example of templates that add INT points, but doesn't change the type of the creature, so, you could have a templated animal with 6 INT. (element-infused creature with fire, for example, type does not change but +4 INT)

But if I want to make a smart species of rat, it automatically becomes a magical beast or is "wrong" but the difference is that its name is "genius rat" and not "fire-infused rat".

Increased intelligence doesn't change an animals type. An example of this is if you get an animal companion and put all it's ability increases into int, it still remains an animal.

Quote:
I agree with GM Rednal BUT these "interesting foes" could be more interesting than "mathematically right ones" but still considered "full of mistakes".

To be honest, anyone can make interesting monster ideas. You don't need statblocks for that sort of thing. If I buy a product for monsters, I want their stats to mainly be correct otherwise I'd rather make it myself.


"Correct" usually means "more-or-less within the guidelines unless you have a reason for something to be outside of them". XD Basically, the final result should be appropriate for the creature's CR. Everything else is basically flexible.


I'm not sure how to say it without looking "offensive" (sorry, english is not my first language...) but there something "almost" hypocritical to determine AC = 20 because of +3 dex and... ohohoh let's add +7 natural because I want AC = 20, instead of just "AC = 20 because I want this monster to have AC 20."

For darkvision and magical beast, if I just remove the "darkvision", it's an considered an error.
I have to add a few lines like "bad sights (Ex) : The smarlugoublou doesn't have darkvision.".

And for animals and intelligence, yes, an animal going from 2 to 5 is still an animal, but creating from scratch the same statblock and there's an error. Or maybe a "Gifted Animal (Ex) : the smarlugoubok is more intelligent than others animals and has more than 2 INT" line solves the problem.

It's like you can do whatever, THEN justify it (add natural armor, add bonus feats, add racial modifiers, add special abilities to go from general to specifics.
Isn't it a useless step ?

It's almost like :
"- Think of a number between 1 and 10 and I will guess it.
- Okay...
- That was 6
- No that was 8 !
- Yeah, that's what I said, that was 6+2, because I have to add 2 to all my divinations, didn't you know this rule ?!
- Marvelous, you didn't say anything at random, there was a mathematical formula to explain your divination powers !"


On the contrary, maybe it's needed in order to avoid monsters with 20 feats or 40 AC, by making the author think "maybe adding arbitrarly +22 natural AC is too much..."

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
mekka2000 wrote:
I'm not sure how to say it without looking "offensive" (sorry, english is not my first language...) but there something "almost" hypocritical to determine AC = 20 because of +3 dex and... ohohoh let's add +7 natural because I want AC = 20, instead of just "AC = 20 because I want this monster to have AC 20."

Keep in mind that such decisions have more effects than just that 20AC.

It also means 13 Touch AC, 17 Flatfooted, and having a natural armor bonus prevents a few obscure attacks from affecting the creature.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

In most places their not legal until their over CR 18 however in Alabama I think its only CR 17.


mekka2000 wrote:

It's like you can do whatever, THEN justify it (add natural armor, add bonus feats, add racial modifiers, add special abilities to go from general to specifics.

Isn't it a useless step ?

Not from my perspective. Pathfinder is a rules heavy game with many interactions between many systems.

This causes there to be two major benefits to everything being clear and saying things like the reason behind exemptions rather than just stating the result:
1) People know the exception is intentional rather than a typo or the result of forgetfulness. The large number of rules make it very easy for developers and designers to forget something now and then, so if something looks like it might just be a typo or the dev's made a mistake, many gamemasters may end up just adding the "missing" stuff or removing the changes which the writer of the monster actually intended the creature to have.
2) Integration with the rules. I'll use a recent issue I had with the Simple Monster Creation rules as an example for this. I used it's system to create an Oni which wears the flesh of an elf rather than a human or a giant, since my players are in a region with no humans but many elves, this went well. But later, I wanted to make a mythic example of one of these "Simple" oni as a deity of the region, but the rules for adding mythic tiers to creatures flat-out does not work with "Simple monsters", because it requires interaction with various stats of the monsters that simple monsters lack. So now, I have to make a "real" version of that Oni simply because I need to know the actual math of the creature rather than just the surface results.


Bestiaries 'strict' rules wrote:

Creating a monster is part science and part art...there are many exceptions.

Building a Monster
The following guidelines are provided to assist in monster creation and to help balance a creation for its CR.

Even by the strict guidelines, you set the AC where you want it to be for the CR of creature you want to create, then work out how to break it down appropriately - ask yourself questions like "is this creature agile or heavily armoured?" "What makes this beast different?" if you are going outside the guidelines ask yourself "why?" and "how do I balance this?"

The creator of a creature is responsible for balancing a creature to it's stated CR. Lets be honest, even in the bestiary some are better balanced than others - I'm not judging, it is not an easy thing to get right without every creature being identical.

And if there is a creature that should have darkvision, then without a line telling us "bad sights (Ex) : The smarlugoublou doesn't have darkvision." There is no way to tell if the omission of darkvision from a stat block is an error or deliberate. GM has to make the call.


In general I'd prefer to know that my opponent's Touch and Flat Footed AC are calculated by a logical system rather than random numbers made up by the GM, because then my tactical decision to switch to alchemical weapons or turn invisible can be made on something other than blind guessing.

Having said that, departing from the standard enemy creation rules can have advantages. For example, if you want minion enemies who have very low hit points, and boss enemies who have very high hit points, it's quite hard to do that in Pathfinder without also giving them very low / high offensive capabilities (or doing weird stuff like making guards with a Constitution of 3).


The "making sure it's intentional rather than a typo" part seems right to me. If I want a monster with a TERRIBLE weakness against touch attack for example, that's right, with AC 20, TOUCH 3 without explanation could look like a typo BUT, we're not limited to "not possible sorry", we could "Easy to Touch (Ex) : The creature suffer a -12 malus to touch attack" and that's it.


mekka2000 wrote:
The "making sure it's intentional rather than a typo" part seems right to me. If I want a monster with a TERRIBLE weakness against touch attack for example, that's right, with AC 20, TOUCH 3 without explanation could look like a typo BUT, we're not limited to "not possible sorry", we could "Easy to Touch (Ex) : The creature suffer a -12 malus to touch attack" and that's it.

Yes, you can do that. It's just ugly and lazy and there's not much point purchasing a product where all the stats are like that, because then you'd just use the Monster Creation table rather than wasting the money.


mekka2000 wrote:
If I want a monster with a TERRIBLE weakness against touch attack for example, that's right, with AC 20, TOUCH 3 without explanation could look like a typo BUT, we're not limited to "not possible sorry", we could "Easy to Touch (Ex) : The creature suffer a -12 malus to touch attack" and that's it.

It's not like it's hard to get that using standard monster creation. Here's an even more extreme example than yours:

Living Lake CR 22 N Colossal ooze
AC 23, touch 2, flat-footed 23 (+21 natural, -8 size)


That was just a stupid example, yes ugly and lazy, don't kill it for me, I neved did something like that :D
It was exaggerated and not very well thought, a way of saying "the rules are not limiting us, we could make written exceptions".

But now i'm curious. How to do a medium monster with a higher than average AC for its CR and a low touch AC ?
Let's imagine I want a monstrous humanoid using a bow and able to teleport. First idea before he's teleporting, is going into melee.
In melee you hardly touch him, and moreover he teleports a few squares away.
The secret weakness is that he is absolutely helpless against touch spells from afar.
This not seems a crazy concept to me.
Let's say it's CR 4 with AC 20 (+2 dex, +8 whatever you want), 14 DEX (+8 to shoot with a masterwork bow : +2 dex +5 bab +1 mwk)
How can I have him avec a touch AC lower than 12 ?


You'd have to do some weird jury rigging to pull that off. Something like set his dex to 3 and give him a special ability that lets him perform ranged attacks off (insert other stat here). Or just cut the middle man and just give him an ability that gives him a penalty to touch ac.


mekka2000 wrote:

The secret weakness is that he is absolutely helpless against touch spells from afar.

This not seems a crazy concept to me.

The thing is, to an experienced Pathfinder player it is a pretty crazy concept without further explanation. The only normal reasons to have low touch AC are being very big, or having low dexterity.

What reason would this guy have to be easier to hit with a touch spell than the average peasant? We've established that he's not a big target, or particularly clumsy. So why is he vulnerable? Is he intentionally throwing himself into harm's way? Is he magnetically attracting ranged touch attacks? If it's some kind of curse, that makes some sense:

"(Su) Magical beacon: This creature is cursed by Nethys. Ranged touch spells used against him get +8 to hit."

That would be more of an explanation than "Easy to touch".


So we agree, it's not doable using standard monster creation, we have to invent a special ability that contradict the general rules, mathematically speaking, no matter the fluff... be it "easy to touch", "overconfident", "magnetically attracting magic" or "shut up it's magic" !

Anyway, I always do monsters 100% mathematically right when I write a stat block (even if in my home game I like to throw 3.5 monsters from obscure bestiaries, and even sometimes 13th age or 4e monsters), and I was thinking about the "hypocrisy" of doing exact calculations BUT adding whatever I want after that (natural armor, bonus feats, racial modifiers...) but, as some said, that's the only mean to know if there's a mistake in the stat block that the GM need to correct or if the numbers are good, so I changed my mind about it and feels better :D


Many monster abilities are special abilities that contradict the normal rules. XD Anything that's not a Universal Monster Rule is probably a custom one created for some reason or other. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing this.


"Easy to touch" is a description, not an explanation. "Overconfident" shouldn't affect Touch AC and nothing else. "Magnetically attracting magic" wouldn't lower Touch AC unless he also magnetically attracts thrown vials of acid. "Shut up it's magic" only applies to the Silence spell...

The precise fluff seems important here because if you start modifying numbers without good reason it harms both the 'simulation' aspect of the game (because things are happening without logical cause) and the 'game' part of the game (because the players cannot make logical tactical decisions when the normal rules of what should be effective aren't being applied).


mekka2000 wrote:
So we agree, it's not doable using standard monster creation, we have to invent a special ability that contradict the general rules, mathematically speaking, no matter the fluff... be it "easy to touch", "overconfident", "magnetically attracting magic" or "shut up it's magic" !

Thing is, this is a rules heavy system that tries to have mechanics match the fluff. If you want a character to have abilities that they shouldn't, like a guy who is super agile yet is really easy to hit with touch attacks, it's going to require explanation because it doesn't make sense rules-wise or fluff-wise.


Ok, I think there's something lost in translation :)

My point was : "Why pretend numbers are the result of a lot of calculation if in the end, after all the calculations, you just add whatever you want : +X natural armor, +X racial modifiers, bonus feat to add more feat than supposed, special abilities to contradict the result of calculations and change whatever values or abilities if we want".

Whatever the fluff behind it (I assume we could always find the right fluff to justify the numbers), nothing changes : you made the calculations following the rules, THEN change all the numbers calculated via +X natural armor, +X racial modifiers, bonus feats and special abilities.

But after reading many points of view about it, my conclusion is :
a) it's a good way to see if there's a mistake in a stat block or if it was a design choice.
b) even if you can add whatever you want, it helps you stay "realistic". Saying "let's say.. 20 AC, I want this CR1 be hard to hit" is countered by "10+DEX = 11... adding +9 natural is a lot.. same as full plate... maybe it's too much.. dodge as a bonus feat and +2 natural armor suit better the fluff of my monster and... maybe 20 AC was really too much for CR1, even if the fluff means it's harder to hit than average".

Hope I'm clearer :)
I have been enlightened and changed my mind and understood the advantages of "lots of calculations to do, even if you change all the stuff after", not thinking "that's the way to do it but it's hypocritical and time consuming for nothing" anymore.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / "Legality" of monsters All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.