Kerry Allen's page

Greetings all and hope you are having a wonderful day so far!

I've been DMing my own campaign for a while, which was based off of 3.5 D&D, and I am seeking advice on the creation of Monsters, as detailed below.

I am in the process of writing a Pathfinder 2E campaign with an eye to rewrite the Threshold Campaign setting (ie, my campaign setting) into Pathfinder.

For some background, I have already gone through the Core Rulebook, Bestiary, and Gamemastery Guide and did not find precisely what I seek, though I'm aware there are general rules for monster creation in the Gamemastery Guide.

In 3.5, as people may be aware, you have races, templates and classes. The templates and classes can be added to races in order to facilitate the creation of anything. So, if one wanted to make a level 16 Fighter Ogre, one would do that...or create a level 15 Corpse Creature (sentient zombie) Fighter Ogre, that was also possible.

How do I do the same in Pathfinder 2E? Or, will I need to write my own independent rules for this? I realize that each creature gives you 1-3 options for them, but those options may not fit what I wish to do in my game.

Thank you so much for any assistance. Or, if someone has already created a functional version of said rules, this would be great. And, also, a place where you can get the base racial stats for different Pathfinder races that are typically monstrous races, that would be great too, if it exists.

As it stands, it seems I'll have to somehow reserve engineer the things I want to use. Just starting the campaign, it seems that I might have to reverse engineer "Rats" for my first encounter. (First encounters must always be rats. It's tradition!)

Thanks again!

Regards,

Kerry

OK...so, I have a tale of woe to weave, and maybe someone can help with my situation. Or, maybe not. The interwebs are strange environs nowadays. But, I can be hopeful!

I've been running a 3.5 game for over 20 years using my own campaign setting. The PHB for my campaign setting for 3.5 is over 400 pages long-ish, mostly written while on long deployments back prior to me retiring.

Recently, I decided to switch to Pathfinder. Why? Well, 5e. The popularity of 5e has made it difficult to find players over the past year after 20 years of rarely recruiting and never having enough seats. To add to the issues, the players that do show up know nothing of roleplay and expect an easy game where the players are never challenged. They take requests to use their brains as a personal affront. Thus, I gave up and decided that I would run away from D&D and struggle to make camp elsewhere. I shut down my D&D game and decided to rewrite my PHB for Pathfinder, a daunting task to be sure, but I am retired now.

So, I went to this site and bought some rather nice looking books...players handbook, dungeon masters guide...monsters manual...Now, I could really care less about the Monster's Manual as I'm going to be creating my own monsters, not to mention races and classes, because that's what I do. I have my own setting. I write my own stuff.

I've been busy lately. So, the rather pretty looking books (and quite expensive) have sat in their plastic for a few months. I've started up a Mechwarrior game. So it took me a bit to code the character sheet for that. But, I finally have a project in which having a book to read would be nice. So, I decided to finally take them out and start reading them.

I pop open the Player's Handbook. I see some classes and races, which I flip past without interest. After all, I have my own races, and I'll either adopt classes or not or...then, looking at the side of the page, a horrid reality struck me.

There are no rules in this book.

Now, I was aware that the rules were online, but reading books of rules online has about as much interest for me as being clubbed over the head with a herring until I fall into a coma. I wanted to chill and learn the new system so that I can start writing. But...there was literally nothing of value to me in this pretty and expensive book. Literally. Nothing.

I feel like a fool.

I go to my bookshelf and draw out the DMG. The rules are in here, I guess? I mean, maybe the players have to read the rules on their phone or something, but surely I don't have to...

...

...

Oh, no.

I flip through the second pretty book. There's nothing of value in here. Nothing. At all.

Dejected, I return to my bookshelf, stacks of RP books over the years on each shelf, all containing rules for various systems. I sit. I stare at the ground.

I just wanted a book of rules that I can read and then keep near while I run my game.

Does such a thing exist?

Also, what do I do with these things? Keep them as collectors items, I guess. Who knows!

What are they supposed to contain, and what am I supposed to do with them. What I do see looks like gibberish.

Anyways, I'm sure that my neck will ache and my eyes will burn by the time I look up the rules for this thing online. Is there a printed copy of the rules for this game, or is my printer about to get a workout? Is there a .pdf, at least?

*sigh*

Thanks for the help!

Regards,

A DM who maybe won't be anymore because this really is getting to be too much.