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With the recently released monster creation rules I thought it would be helpful to have a tool that integrates these rules and spits out a nice stat block.

Introducing Monster Builder 1.0! This tool turns all of the tables in the monster creation rules into a series of drop down menus that output a recommended value for each of the monster's statistics. You can tweak these to a final value of your liking. Once you are finished there is both a plain text output as well as an HTML output that mimics the formatting of monster stat blocks on Archives of Nethys.

If you find any bugs, or have comments or feature suggestions let me know!

This post will have lots of spoilers for Book 2 (Seven Days to the Grave) (don't say I didn't warn you).

My players are reaching the end of Seven Days to the Grave and I'm having some trouble deciding how Davaulus & the physicians will react to what the players have done.

The Setup: The players spoke with Davaulus but weren't buying his claim that he thinks the plauge was started by some were-rats in Old Korvosa, so they decided to sneak in at night. Using invisibility potions and infusions of Monkey Fish they were able to sneak around the Blessed Maiden fairly freely, but on a short clock. One of them made their way upstairs and threw a thunderstone down the stairwell to draw the Gray Maiden guards away from the door and was able to sneak into the Experimentation Ward where the true nature of the Queen's Physicians became apparent. The character grabbed the research notes from the table but was detected in the process. He and the other characters, still being invisible, were able to run away without being seen, and in the commotion break their way out of the back room onto the street. The characters retreated back to a safe location and perused the notes, discovering the secret (the Cult of Urgathoa) of Davaulus and the physicians. They then rested and spoke to Croft in the morning who was able to issue them a few guards to block off the area.

My question: What would Davaulus and the physicians have done in the intervening ~12 hours? They know what was in the research notes and therefore know that somebody (but not exactly who) knows their secret. I'm sure they would either kill the Varisians from the Experimentation Ward or relocate them down into the Temple, but what of the rest of the infected down in the Sick Ward?

I'm tempted to say that they kill all of the infected (and bolster their ranks of undead), and go into lockdown mode now that the secret is out. This makes sense story-wise to me, but 1) it makes the encounter harder and 2) it's a bit of an emotional slap to the players who now know that 60+ people are dead because of a minor screw up on what was actually a pretty decent plan on their part.

As I see it, the second option is that the physician's try to maintain the appearance of being a Hospital as long as possible. This gives them more time to freely move about the city continuing their research, but leaves them a lot more vulnerable.

Assertion: As written the Weapon Proficiency feat is useless for martial characters.

Assumptions: We are either a fighter or a different martial class with the Weapon Proficiency feat to become trained in an exotic weapon. I’m ignoring the fact that all exotic weapons are uncommon and assuming you can gain access to them somehow.

Proof: For non-fighters, when we initially take the Weapon Proficiency feat to become trained in our exotic weapon of choice everything is A-ok. However, as soon as we gain expert proficiency in martial weapons from our class we don’t gain it with our exotic weapon so we are always -1 or more to hit with it. For fighters our exotic weapon proficiency always lags behind martial by 1 step, so in either case the exotic weapon has to give us a benefit that is worth at least a +1 to hit to be worth using over a martial weapon.

Exotic weapons:

• Dwarven Waraxe - This is a bastard sword with sweep. Sweep gives a conditional +1 to hit, so is always worse than a constant +1 to hit.
  
• Gnome Flickmace - As a 1-handed reach weapon this is fairly unique. I guess an argument can be made for this one
  
• Orc Necksplitter - This is a longsword with forceful. Forceful gives you +1-6 damage on your second attack and +2-12 damage on your third+ attacks. This is a decent damage increase, but unlikely to be better on average than a +1 to hit.
  
• Sawtooth Sabre - This is a shortsword with twin. Like forceful this gives extra damage on the second or later attack, but only when using a pair of them. Again, it’s unlikely to be better than a constant +1 to hit. As a side note, I don’t know how you can actually gain access to this weapon or other uncommon weapons that don’t have an ancestry trait or monk trait.

Conclusion: The Weapon Proficiency feat should allow you to treat 1 exotic weapon as martial, similar to how the Weapon Familiarity (Ancestry) feats work, rather than making you trained in an exotic weapon. This allows the exotic weapon to scale with your class level, so that it’s not a downgrade compared to martial weapons.
If we still want fighters to use exotic weapons we could give them the new Weapon Proficiency feat for free at first level so they still get access to one exotic weapon.
This allows a character to choose to invest in an exotic weapon that is slightly better than a martial equivalent at the cost of a feat, rather than spending a feat to use a weapon that is typically worse for them than the martial equivalent.