Monster Core Preview: Monsters Resurrected!

Awesome points, Sibelius.

Also, most Fiends are not really born evil. Many are the evolution of evil souls from mortal creatures who chose to do evil deeds.

So, it is still evil by choice rather than evil by nature.

That is undercut a bit by fiends normally not remembering their past. You could say that the people whose essence gets turned into fiends deliberately chose evil, but a fiend is created out of "essence of evil" and therefore did not get to choose.

About the talk of the "always" evil stuff in Pathfinder, WAY before the remaster, we already had a city full of planar creatures with different alignments than their peers, like non-chaotic proteans, non evil devils, etc... Baskaral!

So no need to change anything... ALL creatures could always change alignments, and/or be an alignment that is not the one written in the bestiary, that mainly contain a description of the kind of individual that adventurer are most likely to fight. So yeah, there could probably be non-holy angels, and non-unholy devils. xD ... Non unholy undead now becomes the less likely though, as there have been a clear distinction that "phantoms" and other spirits were usually the non void-using "not alive" creatures... and for undead, the "unholy" trait migth work more as a "burden", like... the trait doesn't do anythign by itself. Some holy attacks don'T even do anything special on an unholy creature, if it doesn't have any specific weakness to it... so I could see a good, kind, generous undead still having the unholy trait just because its body uses void energy to fuel its fake life.

(And heck, if a Demon Lord could change to non evil and ascend as full deity... yeah... would be weird if ANYTHING was fixed forever... xD )

I'm very curious to see what post-Remaster Aeons look like. I don't expect a lot of changes, but with cosmic Law de-emphasized, their role becomes a little more interesting.

and for undead, the "unholy" trait migth work more as a "burden", like... the trait doesn't do anythign by itself. Some holy attacks don'T even do anything special on an unholy creature, if it doesn't have any specific weakness to it... so I could see a good, kind, generous undead still having the unholy trait just because its body uses void energy to fuel its fake life.

(And heck, if a Demon Lord could change to non evil and ascend as full deity... yeah... would be weird if ANYTHING was fixed forever... xD )

But holy and unholy AREN'T designed to be meaningless tags at all: "The holy trait indicates a powerful devotion to altruism, helping others, and battling against unholy forces like fiends and undead. The unholy trait, in turn, shows devotion to victimizing others, inflicting harm, and battling celestial powers."

"Effects with the holy trait are tied to powerful magical forces of benevolence and virtue. They often have stronger effects on unholy creatures. Creatures with this trait are strongly devoted to holy causes and often have weakness to unholy."
" Effects with the unholy trait are tied to powerful magical forces of cruelty and sin. They often have stronger effects on holy creatures. Creatures with this trait are strongly devoted to unholy causes, and often have weakness to holy."
So no, "a good, kind, generous undead still having the unholy trait" simply can't exist at all. Someone on the border, conflicted, on the path to redemption in the story - maybe. Really good - just no way.
Also gods and their servants can be unholy. Actually about half (or third) of them are. Well, probably not gods themselves as they don't have statblocks and real traits, only their servants and allies.

I think the thing with Fiends is that Hell is lawful and evil, and devils are made from Hell stuff so they're generally lawful and evil, but each individual devil is still an individual thus the way they are lawful and/or evil is specific to that individual. Like you can have a devil who believes that Asmodeus should rule over all reality in strict hierarchy where rulebreakers are punished, but since we don't live in that world yet the devil is patient with mortals who don't yet know better, but whose cruelty towards those who should know better (i.e. other devils) is troubling.

The fact that Hell is itself lawful and evil is just the integration of everything that makes up Hell.

At least, that's how I would handle Outsiders.

Awesome points, Sibelius.

Also, most Fiends are not really born evil. Many are the evolution of evil souls from mortal creatures who chose to do evil deeds.

So, it is still evil by choice rather than evil by nature.

Yeah unholy fiends aren't what I'd call "deterministically evil" or "born evil" or anything like that.

They're the natural evolution of truly vile mortals justifiably damned to the netherworld upon death. The alternative is that mad scientists and mass murderers get to go to heaven same as everyone else... which is pretty gross.

Or to put it another way, a pit fiend isn't "born bad." She probably started out as a corrupt corporate executive, died, went to Hell, and worked her way up the chain of command with thousands of temptations and hundreds of atrocities.

The Raven Black wrote:

Awesome points, Sibelius.

Also, most Fiends are not really born evil. Many are the evolution of evil souls from mortal creatures who chose to do evil deeds.

So, it is still evil by choice rather than evil by nature.

That is undercut a bit by fiends normally not remembering their past. You could say that the people whose essence gets turned into fiends deliberately chose evil, but a fiend is created out of "essence of evil" and therefore did not get to choose.

It's also undercut a bit by how most fiends are made. Devils get tormented until they devolve into lemures; daemons arise from souls who are mercilessly and ceaselessly hunted until Abaddon warps them; demons are born from the Outer Rifts, which are sentient and evil, ingesting their souls and contorting them, maybe even splitting them, into new forms. It's arguable how much opportunity any of those souls have for redemption when those kinds of circumstances are lined up against them. Iunno, it'd be a fun thing to play around with in a home game, at least.

I'm very curious to see what post-Remaster Aeons look like. I don't expect a lot of changes, but with cosmic Law de-emphasized, their role becomes a little more interesting.

Maybe they'll fall back more on the narrative role as the cosmos' immune system, and be less cosmic cops. That'd be neat.

One thing I've been curious about for a while now and figured I'd ask - for those of us who use Foundry VTT and have purchased the Betiary token pack - will that module be updated to reflect the new Monster Core monsters or will you be releasing a new module to cover the new Remastered content?

We're still working out the details, but the most likely scenario is that a Monster Core token pack would be a separate release that maps to the actors that will be included in the upcoming Monster Core compendium, while the tokens in the current Bestiary token pack will continue to map to the actors in the three existing Bestiary compendiums.

It's possible (but not guaranteed) that we might be able to enable some crossover so that, say, if you had the Bestiary pack but not the Monster Core pack, you would see tokens mapped to Monster Core actors representing Bestiary monsters that didn't get new art (and vice versa). But for the most part they'll be treated as different collections of monsters, since, well, they are.

About the talk of the "always" evil stuff in Pathfinder, WAY before the remaster, we already had a city full of planar creatures with different alignments than their peers, like non-chaotic proteans, non evil devils, etc... Basrakal!

Indeed, Basrakal is a really interesting place! It was one of the planar locations that made me start paying attention to specific sites in the planes as places in their own right rather than focusing on the general vibe of the plane as a whole and the places within as miscellaneous examples of that theme.

Somewhat relatedly, I've come to think of immortals/the-creature-type-formerly-known-as-Outsiders as something like a weird magical form of AI built out of Spirit and therefore also incidentally self-aware. Like, I imagine the original angels, devils, proteans, etc. were basically created (for a relative definition of created) as lumps of spirit given a certain behavioral script written into their very being, but I like to imagine that because of the very nature of spirit, you can't really have a spirit and a mind without also getting a personality, so with whatever room is left over from the basic commands and specific roles (like "this demon is the sin of wrath", "this psychopomp's job is to guard the Boneyard from threats") is free space to store memories and individuality of the being. Each immortal might be different, with some dedicating themselves to being nothing more than their role, while others find wiggle room within their basic job description... and of course some rare few end up breaking from their assigned role so severely that it changes or breaks part of their code and they leave or become something else.

Elfteiroh wrote:

About the talk of the "always" evil stuff in Pathfinder, WAY before the remaster, we already had a city full of planar creatures with different alignments than their peers, like non-chaotic proteans, non evil devils, etc... Basrakal!

Indeed, Basrakal is a really interesting place! It was one of the planar locations that made me start paying attention to specific sites in the planes as places in their own right rather than focusing on the general vibe of the plane as a whole and the places within as miscellaneous examples of that theme.

Somewhat relatedly, I've come to think of immortals/the-creature-type-formerly-known-as-Outsiders as something like a weird magical form of AI built out of Spirit and therefore also incidentally self-aware. Like, I imagine the original angels, devils, proteans, etc. were basically created (for a relative definition of created) as lumps of spirit given a certain behavioral script written into their very being, but I like to imagine that because of the very nature of spirit, you can't really have a spirit and a mind without also getting a personality, so with whatever room is left over from the basic commands and specific roles (like "this demon is the sin of wrath", "this psychopomp's job is to guard the Boneyard from threats") is free space to store memories and individuality of the being. Each immortal might be different, with some dedicating themselves to being nothing more than their role, while others find wiggle room within their basic job description... and of course some rare few end up breaking from their assigned role so severely that it changes or breaks part of their code and they leave or become something else.

There is no spoon.

For those asking about pawns.