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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary (OGL)

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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary (OGL)
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Here there be monsters!

What is a hero without monsters to vanquish? This 328-page book presents hundreds of different creatures for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Within this tome you'll find fire-breathing dragons and blood-drinking vampires, vile demons and shapechanging werewolves, sadistic goblins and lumbering giants, and so much more! Yet not all the creatures in this book are enemies, for some can serve lucky heroes as allies or advisors, be they summoned angels or capricious nymphs. And it doesn't stop there—with full rules for advancing monsters, adapting monsters to different roles, and designing your own unique creations, you'll never be without a band of hideous minions again!

The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is the must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.

The Pathfinder RPG Bestiary includes:

  • More than 350 different monsters
  • Dozens of monstrous variants to modify creatures and keep players on their toes
  • Numerous lists of monsters to aid in navigation, including lists by Challenge Rating, monster type, and habitat
  • Extensive rules for creating effective and balanced monsters
  • Rules for advancing monsters by hit dice, template, or class level
  • Universal monster rules to simplify special attacks, defenses, and qualities like breath weapons, damage reduction, and regeneration
  • More than a dozen feats tailored especially for monsters
  • Suggestions for monstrous cohorts
  • Two dozen additional animal companions
  • More than a dozen different wandering monster encounter tables
  • ... and much, much more!

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The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary is available as:

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60125-183-1

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Last Updated - 9/12/2011

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Without Opponents, Combat Sure Wouldn't Be Much Fun!

5/5 —

Bestiaries are Pathfinder's version of the D&D Monster Manuals: reference books containing descriptions and stat-blocks for hundreds of new creatures for PCs to battle, bother, or befriend. They're not designed to be read cover to cover, but that's exactly what I did for this review. The Bestiary weighs in at 327 pages and contains (according to the back-cover) over 350 different monsters arranged in alphabetical order.

The book starts with a two-page Introduction, and it's actually worth reading because it explains what the (28!) different categories of information in a creature's stat block mean. It also introduces the the "Monster Icons" scheme, wherein each monster receives three different icons to visually denote its creature type, terrain, and climate. I like the idea of the icons, but I find them too small and similar to be useful, and I'm not interested in flipping back to page 5 too figure out what they mean. I'm happy just reading the corresponding entries in the stat block.

For monsters, we start with Aasimar on page 7 and run through until Zombie on page 289. This is what the book is all about, but it's a challenging thing to review as my notes are full of bits of scattered remarks about dozens of different monsters. As I can't figure out a coherent way to synthesize them, I'm going to take the unusual tack of just including them as a sort of impressionistic picture of what's in the book. Skim to the bottom for more of the review.

"A"

--aboleths are a lot tougher than CR might indicate!

--Not officially Golarion, but flavour in entries generally compatible

--backdoor cosmology with angels stuff

--really good write-up of Solar Angels

--Army Ant Swarms are pretty nasty!

--like archons--I've never really seen them used outside of summoning, when no RP is involved

--azatas: CG celestials

Bs

--cool how barghests become greater!

--bebiliths: wow, awesome art for an awesome creature!

--bugbear artwork is weird, but fascinating bit on "The Nature of Goblinoid Evil"

Cs

--creepy Choker

--good mixture of animals and various types of monsters

--a lot of classic ones, but some new ones (like chuul) as well

--like history of cyclops and flash of insight power

Ds

--dark folk and dark stalkers?!?! humanoid subtype with language--never heard of them...

--demons! Good, engaging, clear explanation

--don't argue with a balor demon!

--great stories for demons--quasit familiars taking master's souls!

--devils! emphasis on hierarchy

--a good variety of tough foes, with lots of HP and resistances

--great writeup of lemure devils

--fantastic artwork all the way through!

--Devourers are pretty nasty for their CR!

--too many dinosaurs!

--dragons! stat blocks are so long, there's very little description

--driders and drow: underused

E

--elementals

F

--familiar (no idea that was here!)

--froghemoth--really?

G

--gelatinous cubes are really dangerous!

--genies

--love Shaitan genie art

--ghosts: emphasis on story-based customization, 2 page spread

--Giants!

--fun gibbering mouthers artwork

--goblins

--golems

Hs

--half- templates

--occasionally the titles aren't the most intuitive: "Herd animal, bison" for example

--need full stats for combat-trained horses

Is

--intellect devourer--WTF!

Ks

--kytons are cool/creepy

Ls

--lamia artwork is regrettable

--lich: gotta have 'em!

--linnorms are nasty, especially curses and poison!

--lycanthrope template

Ms

--medusas, minotaurs, mimics--all the classics!

--mummy rot sure is nasty!

Ns

-- nagas look dumb

--neothelids are intriguing! need more

--nymphs have cool boons

Os

--Oni need better explanation

Ps

--good amount of player detail for pegasi

Rs

--rakhasa: a lot of potential in the right campaign

--retrievers are scary

--rust monsters!

Ss

--sea hag artwork is great! (and evil eye comatose ability!)

--shadows can be quite more lethal than CR

--touch ACs are so low because of artificial natural armor bonuses, making Alchemists and Gunslingers especially powerful

--shoggoths arent very scary for CR19

--skum have surprisingly interesting write-up

--giant slugs too goofy

Ts

--tarrasque: bad pic, underwhelming

--troglodyte pic is great!

Us

Vs

--vampires: elaborate template

--vargouille's kiss is nasty

Ws

Xs

--xills are awesome!

Zs

--zombie pic is hilarious

Hm, that was embarrassing. Sorry!

After the monster entries are a series of appendices, and these definitely add value to the book.

Appendix 1 is Monster Creation, and it offers a very thorough and clear guide to monster creation. There are a *lot* of moving parts to creating balanced monsters in Pathfinder, so this will take some time until you get the hang of it. Appendix 2 is Monster Advancement, and this is another important part of the book because it shows GMs how to adjust creatures in the book to make them more or less powerful by adding simple templates (like "Giant" or "Young") and by adding racial hit dice or class levels. Appendix 3 is the section of the book I use more than any other, and it's indispensable: Universal Monster Rules. In order to save space and avoid repetition in stat blocks, common monster abilities are fleshed out here: everything from Darkvision to Damage Reduction to Incorporeal and more. Only very, very experienced GMs should try to run creatures just from the stat blocks without remembering to double-check what their monster abilities do, precisely, in the Universal Monster Rules. The same appendix also contains creature Types and Subtypes, which are like packages of basic information that all creatures of a particular category, such as demons or animals, share. Again, this is to save space in stat blocks. Appendix 4 is very short, and provides some advice on Monsters as PCs. I've never used it. Appendix 5 is Monster Feats, though some PCs may actually legitimately use some of them like Craft Construct. If you notice that a monster has a feat you can't find in the Core Rulebook, that's probably because it's listed here. Appendices 6 and 7 list Monster Cohorts (for the Leadership feat) and Animal Companions (for druids and rangers), respectively. Appendices 8-12 are indexes that help a GM who is looking for monsters of a particular type, CR, terrain, etc. Really useful information that most people who just use online databases probably never realized was available. Finally, Appendix 14 contains Encounter Tables broken up by terrain. These include average CRs for an each table, but I still think it'd be foolish to actually roll on them: in a Hill/Mountain, region, for example, your PCs could run into CR 3 orcs or CR 12 fire giants. A party that is challenged by the former would be curb-stomped by the latter. Good random encounter table design needs to have a narrow range of CRs before they become feasible.

I'm not a huge monster guy like some people, but I definitely enjoyed reading the Bestiary and I learned a lot about the core monsters of the setting. I know there are five later books that expand the selection far more, but much of what I see in APs and PFS still draws from this book. Along with the Core Rulebook, it's safe to say that the Bestiary was one of the releases that helped to solidify Paizo's reputation as a company that publishes the highest calibre of RPG books in terms of writing quality, artwork, design, and layout. It's not indispensable since there are multiple websites that present the same information, but for ease of use (and the joy of skimming), the Bestiary is one of those books that every GM should have.

It all starts here babee

5/5 —

One only two books you require to jump in and play Pathfinder, it is the essential meat in the gaming stew. As important and the core rulebook is, it is nothing with out this work.

Expanded and tweaked off the OGL 3.x material, its cleaner, better organized and tweaked for the Pathfinder rules. Every hero needs a foe, every damsel in distress needs a captor, and every GM needs a source of badies to keep the group on their toes. You will find it all here, between these pages is years of destruction and mayhem.

No matter if you playing Pathfinders own setting, one of your own design and creation, or another publishers material, this is the must have companion to your CRB.

They need more monsters

5/5 —

not as useful as the advanced raced guide for the monsters you could play as it does have a lot. i own this and well do my best to keep it hidden from my players. they keep trying to make them fight dragons... they are lvl 5

great reference book

5/5 —

This book has all the monsters you would need on a starting campaine

The standard by which all monster products will be judged by.

5/5 —

By now, there are several Bestiaries out in print, but when this book first came out you arguably needed to own it to play the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Was it worth the purchase? Decide for yourself!

Crunch
When we talk about a book's crunch, we're looking at its game rules, mechanics, and similar stats. As a monster book, the Bestiary is 99% crunch, and for Paizo's first real Bestiary, it is absolutely fantastic. There isn't a whole lot you can really say about monster stat blocks; they work perfectly and there aren't any monsters that feel ridiculous for their challenge rating (CR). The book also includes several new races that are appropriate for player characters; in this book, we have aasimars, the tieflings, and drow, as well as the applicable but seldom appropriate deurgar, drow noble, and svirfneblin. The book stays true to the rules of its predecessors; when you look at a drow, you recognize it as a drow from previous games. Because of the significant power up that the core races received these classically "OP" races aren't very far out of line with your traditional player characrers, and as a result we don't see the Level Adjustment system in Pathfinder. If you're unfamiliar with the term, in older editions of Dungeons and Dragons, some races were deemed so powerful that you had to actually forgo class levels in order to be a member of the race. For example, if you wanted to play a drow, you had a LA of +1, meaning that your race counted as 1 class level when determining your party's level. This either meant you were more powerful than your friends or (and more commonly) your GM had you start at a lower level to compensate. And believe me, it is not fun to be a sorcerer of an LA race because of how far behind your party is! The racial benefits seldom made up for the loss of character levels and it was a pretty terrible mechanic all around, so good riddance.

Although the book's theme is classic monsters, Paizo manages to add its own spin on fantasy games by including weird and amazing monsters. A perfect example is the froghemoth, which is basically a giant aberrant frog-monster. As a huge Lovecraft fan, I was ecstatic to see monsters like the shoggoth creep up in Pathfinder as well. For a first Bestiary, the spread of monsters is well-chosen and you could definitely run a game with only this book if you really wanted to.

What probably amounts to the best change of all, in my opinion, is the changes to the rules for building your own monsters. These rules are difficult to comprehend and enact in other games, but the Paizo team does an excellent job of laying out step-by-step every detail in crafting your own monsters by including handy charts and tables. For a game that knew it wasn't launching with much material and that it wanted to be backwards-compatible with older products, it was a very wise choice to streamline monster-making as much as they did and its probably the best reason to keep a copy of Bestiary I in your library alongside future monster tomes. 5 /5 Stars.

Flavor
When we talk about a product's flavor, we're talking about its fiction content, its style, and its overall feel. This section is always very opinionated, because even though I whole-heartily enjoy Lovecraft and his works, there are those who don't like their minds thrust into insanity and the mere sight of a shoggoth or whatnot. When you read the Bestiary, the one thing that becomes very clear is that there simply is not much room for flavor. Most monsters get a paragraph and a half of descriptive text and a beautiful picture, but that's about it. Honestly, however, that's all this product needs. The monsters that are detailed are classic monsters, so the information provided about them tends to be enough that classic gamers can recognize the creature for what it is and new players can get a sense of wonder and learn enough about the monster to be on the same page with the veterans. The art is fabulous in this book and supplements the descriptions perfectly, even when the monster concept is weird text-wise a beautiful illustration helps to sell it to you personally.

The elephant in the room is that Pathfinder wants to have its own identity as much as it wants to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors. This means that every so often the Paizo team completely re-imagines and redefines the traits of a specific monster. Usually this happens to a relatively unknown or under used monster (we'll talk more about this in Bestiary III), but there is one monster in particular that is relatively well-known and got the Paizo makeover in a big way. That monster, which has become Paizo's mascot of sorts, is the goblin. To give a little bit of background, traditionally goblins have admittedly lacked character; they were little more than evil halflings in most settings. Paizo's very first adventure path, Rise of the Runelords, shook this up by drastically changing the image of the goblin; they were now psychotic savages who were obsessed with fire and scared of dogs and horses. They sang Children of the Corn style songs about death and murder and often filled a role as comic relief in many of the adventures they have been featured in while simultaneously managing to inspire fear and terror in many a party. In my experience, you either love or you hate the new look of goblins. Many classic gamers that I've played with deplore the "new" goblin if only for the art design; big heads, small bodies. Honestly, however, it doesn't bother me much; my gaming generation includes Warcraft's techno-suicidal goblins and Warhammer's hordes of insane, suicidal goblins; next to those, Paizo's take on the goblin fits in rather nicely.

For being limited to several paragraphs of text per monster, the Bestiary gives you everything you'd expect and more flavor-wised. Its a book of monsters that feel threatening and believable; there's nothing too dumb or too far out there unless you're a hard-core medieval traditionalist. 5 /5 Stars.

Texture
When we talk about a book's texture, we're talking about its grammar and layout, among other things. As someone who has actually sat down to try and write a bestiary, let's be clear that if there's one thing I get, its that stat blocks are HARD. They're hard to format, they're hard to standardize, they're even hard to spell check because of the sheer amount of text that a book like the Bestiary has. All of its complex jargon, half of it made of surreal naming conventions. With all this mind, if there's one place that the Bestiary is amazing, its the texture. There is almost no errors of any kind in this document. Perfect grammar. Perfect spelling conventions. Perfect formatting. Everything is perfect.

As you can see in the picture I included, the Bestiary breaks from traditional monster books in that it limits one monster page, with only a few exceptions (mostly animals and familiars). There is extreme attention to detail in the text placement, and its very impressive that the book manages to be as descriptive as it is with as little space as it has; almost every monster is illustrated, after all, so not only are you juggling stat blocks, but you're also juggling them with text descriptions and illustrations. This book is a marvel of editing and layout and nothing less. 5 /5 Stars.

Final Score & Thoughts
Crunch: 5 / 5
Flavor: 5 / 5
Texture: 5 / 5
Final Score: 5 / 5

This book does everything right. It is the shining star by which all monster-based products should be judged. For a first attempt, Paizo smashes their monster book out of the park, past all expectations. It makes me excited to start looking at the future Bestiary products.

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Dark Archive

Penthouse

of

page 7.
Zootcat wrote:
Any chance that there will be a pronunciation guide for the not-so-obvious names, such as tiefling, erinyes, hamatula, vargouille, etc.?

TEEF-ling, ERRIN-nee-ess, HAMMA-tyula, var-GWEEL :)

The Exchange

I am curious if there will be a Lore section in the Bestiary, such as those found in the later 3rd edition Monster Manuals.
Paizo Employee Director of Game Development
Jacob Blackmon wrote:
I am curious if there will be a Lore section in the Bestiary, such as those found in the later 3rd edition Monster Manuals.

If you are talking about a chart listing Knowledge DCs and bits of info given for the critter, I am of the understanding that that information will not be included. However, with that space there will be varying amounts of critter information available.

Jacob Blackmon wrote:
I am curious if there will be a Lore section in the Bestiary, such as those found in the later 3rd edition Monster Manuals.

Personally, I'm kind of hoping there isn't. I'd rather if someone makes a knowledge check, they find out what they are actually wondering about a given monster.

"How can I hurt this thing?"

::23 on the Knowledge roll::

"Well, according to the Lore chart, you know it hates halflings and prefers to eat hot apple pie."

"But I wanted to know how to kill it . . . "

And of course, the reverse is true as well.

"How do I feed this cubs if I want to raise them?"

"Well, according to the chart you can kill them with cold iron."

"Um, I don't want to kill them, I want to feed them and train them to adulthood."
Paizo Employee Creative Director
Jacob Blackmon wrote:
I am curious if there will be a Lore section in the Bestiary, such as those found in the later 3rd edition Monster Manuals.

Each monster will have some amount of information about it; for a few, this is only a few sentences, but for the majority there's a fair amount of flavor text.

If, as mentioned above, you're looking for a table that summarizes what's learned about a monster with a Knowledge check, that WON'T be in the book. Partially because those tables take up a lot of room and because they tend to waste space by repeating information (or leave out information entirely), but mostly because they're not really worth the trouble. Especially since it seems to suggest to the GM that there's a specific order in the information that should be rewarded. Much better for the GM to be able to customize the results of Knowledge checks as needed so that if a player wants to know about a monster's defenses or hunting habits, he won't get information about its mating habits or special attacks.
The Exchange Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
James Jacobs wrote:
Especially since it seems to suggest to the GM that there's a specific order in the information that should be rewarded. Much better for the GM to be able to customize the results of Knowledge checks as needed so that if a player wants to know about a monster's defenses or hunting habits, he won't get information about its mating habits or special attacks.

Thanks. In published tables like that, it always seems like the most likely things to be known are put at very high DCs (such things as "trolls regenerate").

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
Russ Taylor wrote:
Thanks. In published tables like that, it always seems like the most likely things to be known are put at very high DCs (such things as "trolls regenerate").

Thanks for the spoiler, Russ!

Russ Taylor wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Especially since it seems to suggest to the GM that there's a specific order in the information that should be rewarded. Much better for the GM to be able to customize the results of Knowledge checks as needed so that if a player wants to know about a monster's defenses or hunting habits, he won't get information about its mating habits or special attacks.
Thanks. In published tables like that, it always seems like the most likely things to be known are put at very high DCs (such things as "trolls regenerate").

THEY WHAT!?

The Exchange Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6

And purple worms will EAT YOU!
Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
Russ Taylor wrote:
And purple worms will EAT YOU!

LA LA LA! I can't HEAR you!

Knowledge (the planes) DC 10: Earth elementals know how to rock.
Sovereign Court
Arakhor wrote:
Zootcat wrote:
Any chance that there will be a pronunciation guide for the not-so-obvious names, such as tiefling, erinyes, hamatula, vargouille, etc.?
TEEF-ling, ERRIN-nee-ess, HAMMA-tyula, var-GWEEL :)

Many gamers "know" how to pronounce names because they've been saying them in their head a certain way every time they read it for many many years. Or maybe it's because that is how their gaming group has always said it. They now believe that their pronunciation is the only correct way. So, how do you know that those are the correct pronunciations?

An official pronunciation guide would be great for a couple of reasons.
1] I can trust it to be accurate. Take tiefling for example. Wolfgang Baur coined that term. He is in a close relationship with Paizo. So, if James Jacobs tells me it's pronounced TEEF-ling, then I know I can trust him.
2] It will get everyone on the same page. I don't want to go join a new gaming group and have them all insist that it's pronounced TY-fling, and tell me that I am the one who's saying it wrong. This actually happened to me. It was almost impossible to convince them that I was indeed saying it correctly.

So, Arakhor, I appreciate the help, but I hope you'll understand if I take your pronunciations with a grain of salt. ;)
Dark Archive
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I would like to see a pronunciation guide for all things Golarion as well as the monsters book ect.

But it is not a priority and might be better as a free PDF anyways. That way they could add to it over time as new stuff comes out.
Dark Archive
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
Zootcat wrote:

Many gamers "know" how to pronounce names because they've been saying them in their head a certain way every time they read it for many many years. Or maybe it's because that is how their gaming group has always said it. They now believe that their pronunciation is the only correct way. So, how do you know that those are the correct pronunciations?

An official pronunciation guide would be great for a couple of reasons.
1] I can trust it to be accurate. Take tiefling for example. Wolfgang Baur coined that term. He is in a close relationship with Paizo. So, if James Jacobs tells me it's pronounced TEEF-ling, then I know I can trust him.

There were actually a series of audio files released by TSR (or else really early days of WotC-owned D&D) for Planescape and Birthright with the proper pronunciations for just anything you can think of that would trip people up. Also the Planescape "A Player's Primer to the Outlands" came with an audio CD that had a lot of the pronunciations as well.

Dark Archive

I have the CD somewhere.

I see September here, but I saw July somewhere else in the forums (sorry for the lack of link, I got lost amongst so much text) I was just hoping I could get an "official" date. Also, for those of us buying the core rulebook from another source (amazon.com, as I have gift cards there, and it's the only way I can afford the books now, besides, the money gets back to Most Glorious Paizo) will said sources be shipping out the items at the same time the Paizo warehouses do, or will there be a delay? I guess I'm asking if 3rd party suppliers will be getting copies in advance, so everyone releases at once? Sorry for the rambling, it's late and I'm excited to get my greedy hands on the Pathfinder RPG.
Silver Crusade
Kvantum wrote:

There were actually a series of audio files released by TSR (or else really early days of WotC-owned D&D) for Planescape and Birthright with the proper pronunciations for just anything you can think of that would trip people up. Also the Planescape "A Player's Primer to the Outlands" came with an audio CD that had a lot of the pronunciations as well.

The CDs that came with the Mystara-Glantri box and the starter rules box were downright hilarious.

The captive male elf in one of them sounded like a young Doctor Smith from Lost in Space. More camp than Crystal Lake.
Paizo Employee CEO
Canticle wrote:
I see September here, but I saw July somewhere else in the forums (sorry for the lack of link, I got lost amongst so much text) I was just hoping I could get an "official" date. Also, for those of us buying the core rulebook from another source (amazon.com, as I have gift cards there, and it's the only way I can afford the books now, besides, the money gets back to Most Glorious Paizo) will said sources be shipping out the items at the same time the Paizo warehouses do, or will there be a delay? I guess I'm asking if 3rd party suppliers will be getting copies in advance, so everyone releases at once? Sorry for the rambling, it's late and I'm excited to get my greedy hands on the Pathfinder RPG.

First off, thanks for jumping onto the messageboards!

The Bestiary will be releasing in September. We originally had it releasing in July, so you weren't imagining things, but moved it to September for quality reasons, mostly having to do with making sure the core rules were finished before we edited the Bestiary.

As for the release date of the core rulebook, we will be shipping books out so that they are in stores by the 13th of August should all go right, though hiccups could happen that are outside of our control (like a shipment getting lost). We have been told that the book stores, of which Amazon is a part, will be releasing the book on the 19th of August because they always release on a Wednesday and that is the first Wednesday after the official August 13th release.

I hope this info helps!

-Lisa
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Lisa Stevens wrote:
As for the release date of the core rulebook, we will be shipping books out so that they are in stores by the 13th of August should all go right, though hiccups could happen that are outside of our control (like a shipment getting lost). We have been told that the book stores, of which Amazon is a part, will be releasing the book on the 19th of August because they always release on a Wednesday and that is the first Wednesday after the official August 13th release.

...and we have no idea why Amazon is listing September 2 for the Core Rulebook.

Liberty's Edge
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have a design question. And I'm not sure if it's been asked before, if it has please point me in the direction of the answer.

Regarding Monster Advancement. Are you keeping the same basic style of advancement for monsters? A new way or nothing at all?

Thanks!
Paizo Employee Creative Director
mattdroz wrote:

I have a design question. And I'm not sure if it's been asked before, if it has please point me in the direction of the answer.

Regarding Monster Advancement. Are you keeping the same basic style of advancement for monsters? A new way or nothing at all?

Thanks!

There'll be several ways to advance monsters, but the basic "add Hit Dice or change size" method remains in the game as the baseline method, if you will. There's a few options for simpler, faster methods to adjust a monster as well.

Lisa Stevens wrote:

[...]

As for the release date of the core rulebook, we will be shipping books out so that they are in stores by the 13th of August should all go right, [...]
_Lisa

Hope they hit the shelfs in Stockholm Sweden the same date :-)

James Jacobs wrote:
There's a few options for simpler, faster methods to adjust a monster as well.

Oooh. That is fantastic news. I have a group of players that crave more high-level play, and the MM 3.5 is simply not up for the task.

Liberty's Edge
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
mattdroz wrote:

I have a design question. And I'm not sure if it's been asked before, if it has please point me in the direction of the answer.

Regarding Monster Advancement. Are you keeping the same basic style of advancement for monsters? A new way or nothing at all?

Thanks!

There'll be several ways to advance monsters, but the basic "add Hit Dice or change size" method remains in the game as the baseline method, if you will. There's a few options for simpler, faster methods to adjust a monster as well.

Thank you! This is great news.

Liberty's Edge
James Jacobs wrote:


There's a few options for simpler, faster methods to adjust a monster as well.

Sweet, I was hoping for something like this! ;)

Liberty's Edge
Lisa Stevens wrote:
Canticle wrote:
I see September here, but I saw July somewhere else in the forums (sorry for the lack of link, I got lost amongst so much text) I was just hoping I could get an "official" date. Also, for those of us buying the core rulebook from another source (amazon.com, as I have gift cards there, and it's the only way I can afford the books now, besides, the money gets back to Most Glorious Paizo) will said sources be shipping out the items at the same time the Paizo warehouses do, or will there be a delay? I guess I'm asking if 3rd party suppliers will be getting copies in advance, so everyone releases at once? Sorry for the rambling, it's late and I'm excited to get my greedy hands on the Pathfinder RPG.

First off, thanks for jumping onto the messageboards!

The Bestiary will be releasing in September. We originally had it releasing in July, so you weren't imagining things, but moved it to September for quality reasons, mostly having to do with making sure the core rules were finished before we edited the Bestiary.

As for the release date of the core rulebook, we will be shipping books out so that they are in stores by the 13th of August should all go right, though hiccups could happen that are outside of our control (like a shipment getting lost). We have been told that the book stores, of which Amazon is a part, will be releasing the book on the 19th of August because they always release on a Wednesday and that is the first Wednesday after the official August 13th release.

I hope this info helps!

-Lisa

I see now that it has been pushed back to October, now. As long as you're producing quality work, than that perfectly fine by me! :-) However with you saying September and the order icon saying October, I now wonder, "Which one is right?".

Kevida wrote:
I see now that it has been pushed back to October, now. As long as you're producing quality work, than that perfectly fine by me! :-) However with you saying September and the order icon saying October, I now wonder, "Which one is right?".

Good catch Kevida.

I'm with you on quality.. but it would be good to know when to expect it.
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

I've increased the page count in the product description. This fabulous tome is so jam-packed we had to bump it up to 328 pages to make room for all the goodness.
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Kevida wrote:
I see now that it has been pushed back to October, now. As long as you're producing quality work, than that perfectly fine by me! :-) However with you saying September and the order icon saying October, I now wonder, "Which one is right?".

We're just about to turn it over to the printer, and they'll give us a better date soon after we do, but my guess is that it'll be early October.

Liberty's Edge
Vic Wertz wrote:
Kevida wrote:
I see now that it has been pushed back to October, now. As long as you're producing quality work, than that perfectly fine by me! :-) However with you saying September and the order icon saying October, I now wonder, "Which one is right?".
We're just about to turn it over to the printer, and they'll give us a better date soon after we do, but my guess is that it'll be early October.

Well Paizo has yet to disappoint. Therefore I won't mind that wait. The only bummer is that I am going to be starting a Pathfinder game come September. Maybe I can convince my gang to hold off until October because I would rather have the Bestiary alnog with the Core Rulebook but I'll somehow manage! :-)

Paizo Employee Chief Creative Officer, Publisher

Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

Congrats to the entire Paizo staff for helping out with this mammoth project, and to all of the great writers and artists who helped to make what I truly believe is the best monster book ever published for a fantasy RPG.

It is really, really amazing.
Grand Lodge
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Erik Mona wrote:
Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

Congrats to you guys Erik.

And don't worry about that typo on page 287 ... it's no big deal. >:)

-Skeld
Erik Mona wrote:
Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

Whoohoo! Congratulations!

So say we all!!!
Liberty's Edge
Erik Mona wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

Congrats to the entire Paizo staff for helping out with this mammoth project, and to all of the great writers and artists who helped to make what I truly believe is the best monster book ever published for a fantasy RPG.

It is really, really amazing.

Ooh-RAH!

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Congratulations guys and gals - make sure you take a little breather before Gen Con - we don't want the big news to be "Entire Paizo Team faints with Exhaustion after record-breaking sale!"... Well.. maybe we do...
Erik Mona wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

Congrats to the entire Paizo staff for helping out with this mammoth project, and to all of the great writers and artists who helped to make what I truly believe is the best monster book ever published for a fantasy RPG.

I don't doubt it. It's very exciting to hear you say so!

Congratulations!
Paizo Employee Director of Game Development

Awesome! I can't wait for this book to be out. It's such a great book to be a part of!
Silver Crusade

Congrats!

Now everyone else get back to willing this thing into being released faster using the power of your minds!

Will harder, dammit!

Congrats.

I look foward to the previews (and the book).

Sweet music to my ears. I can't wait to see the new critters set up to masticate many, many player characters. ~weg~
Liberty's Edge
Erik Mona wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

Congrats to the entire Paizo staff for helping out with this mammoth project, and to all of the great writers and artists who helped to make what I truly believe is the best monster book ever published for a fantasy RPG.

It is really, really amazing.

So, does this move the release date back to September? :::crosses fingers:::

Erik Mona wrote:
Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

Given the two month delay from GenCon to the October release of this book, does that mean that no adventures from Paizo will have anything but Core races/classes as enemies except when a full statblock is included until October? Or will PF25, 26 and Crypt of the Everflame reference page numbers in this book that we won't be able to go to until October?
Sovereign Court
yoda8myhead wrote:
Given the two month delay from GenCon to the October release of this book, does that mean that no adventures from Paizo will have anything but Core races/classes as enemies except when a full statblock is included until October? Or will PF25, 26 and Crypt of the Everflame reference page numbers in this book that we won't be able to go to until October?

Perhaps all of their beasties will be statted out in the books?

Paizo Employee Creative Director
yoda8myhead wrote:
Given the two month delay from GenCon to the October release of this book, does that mean that no adventures from Paizo will have anything but Core races/classes as enemies except when a full statblock is included until October? Or will PF25, 26 and Crypt of the Everflame reference page numbers in this book that we won't be able to go to until October?

What it probably means is that, for monsters appearing in the adventures that don't have their stats fully printed out, we'll preview those pages on paizo.com or something like that. We're not 100% sure how we'll work this out yet, but it WILL have some sort of similar solution.

Scarab Sages
James Jacobs wrote:
What it probably means is that, for monsters appearing in the adventures that don't have their stats fully printed out, we'll preview those pages on paizo.com or something like that. We're not 100% sure how we'll work this out yet, but it WILL have some sort of similar solution.

Don't forget about the PFS scenarios :)

Liberty's Edge

October!?!?!?!?!!

ARRRGGGGGG

And here I was thinking that I would have both the Core and Beasties book arriving together (combined shipping) in the mail at or around my birthday. (sniffle, sniffle).

Oh well, anticipation prolonged increases pleasure obtained I guess ;)
Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
James Jacobs wrote:
yoda8myhead wrote:
Given the two month delay from GenCon to the October release of this book, does that mean that no adventures from Paizo will have anything but Core races/classes as enemies except when a full statblock is included until October? Or will PF25, 26 and Crypt of the Everflame reference page numbers in this book that we won't be able to go to until October?
What it probably means is that, for monsters appearing in the adventures that don't have their stats fully printed out, we'll preview those pages on paizo.com or something like that. We're not 100% sure how we'll work this out yet, but it WILL have some sort of similar solution.

I like that so much better than taking up valuable adventure space with statblocks for unaltered monsters we'll have statblocks for in a few months. And, they'll serve as previews for the upcoming book, if not spoilers for the adventures and such. I knew I could count on you, Paizo!

Silver Crusade
Erik Mona wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, as of about an hour ago, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary is AT THE PRINTER!!!

Congrats to the entire Paizo staff for helping out with this mammoth project, and to all of the great writers and artists who helped to make what I truly believe is the best monster book ever published for a fantasy RPG.

It is really, really amazing.

Can't wait to translate it! :-D

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