Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: NPC Codex (OGL)

This sounds like a great book, much more useful than any of the Bestiaries from my purposes.

Please keep the names generic, so the stats can be used as references.
For example:
"Drüzzt, CG Halfling Paladin Veteran(NPC Codex)" makes more sense in my notes than "Drüzzt, CG Halfling Saint (GM Guide)".

In this case: Bland is good.

A warning: Let's please try to keep discussion about other products and what you think Paizo should produce to other threads/forums.

For the love of Pathfinder and Paizo can you please, please, please keep human NPCs to a bare minimum.

Between the Game Mastery Guide NPCs various Pathfinder adventure paths, individual adventures, and guides there are more than enough human NPCs for any GM to use.

At 320 pages there should be no more than 20 pages of human NPCs.

It would be nice to have a diverse offering of non-human NPCs.

Give me dwarves, elves, half-elves, half-orcs, gnomes, and halflings. Give me the playable races from all three Bestiaries. Give me goblinoids, orcs, gnolls, and monstrous humanoids with personalities and classes.

As a GM running two Pathfinder campaigns there is nothing more time consuming than creating non-human NPCs with class levels.

Golarion is a large diverse world populated by numerous races, yet humans continually trump all other races in spades when it comes to NPCs in Pathfinder products.

Paizo you revisited all the classic monster races in the various guides. It's now time to bring forth the individual personalities from those races. Where are the monstrous heroes and villains?

A robust section of racial templates as well as quick class CR adjustments would be nice. Yes, I know there is the Advanced Race Guide, but as a GM its nice to only need 1-2 books to build NPCs.

And for once can we have some NPCs built using the NPC classes: adept, aristocrat, commoner, expert, warrior.

Thank you.

Golarion is human-centric with humans making up over 80% of sentient population, so it's no wonder that they dominate Golarion-specific books. However, the NPC Codex will be setting-agnostic, so it might have some more demihumans.

I can safely at least one section has many more non-humans than humans. I believe most sections are the same. Whether the final balance of things will be sufficient to please any particular customer you'll have to decide for yourselves.

I would think that in a fantasy world like Golarion the racial mix would be much more varied and diverse. If humans make up 80% of the sentient population that leaves only 20% for all the other non-human, humanoid, and monstrous races and creatures. That seems rather low for the amount of other races appearing in the Inner Seas Campaign Guide and other Pathfinder material.

I prefer to run Golarion as 40% humans, 30% non-humans, 30% humanoid and monstrous. Otherwise there is not going to be much for adventuring parties to do if everything is so humanized and settled.

80% humans also doesn't explain why there are so many dangerous creatures roaming around. Three Bestiaries worth of creatures would have a hard time existing and living in a world of 80% humans.

Come on folks Golarion is a fantasy world, write to the fantasy NPCs that live, love, and adventure there. They want their characters and personalities to fill the pages of the NPC Codex.

Thank you.

I would think that in a fantasy world like Golarion the racial mix would be much more varied and diverse. If humans make up 80% of the sentient population that leaves only 20% for all the other non-human, humanoid, and monstrous races and creatures. That seems rather low for the amount of other races appearing in the Inner Seas Campaign Guide and other Pathfinder material.

I prefer to run Golarion as 40% humans, 30% non-humans, 30% humanoid and monstrous. Otherwise there is not going to be much for adventuring parties to do if everything is so humanized and settled.

80% humans also doesn't explain why there are so many dangerous creatures roaming around. Three Bestiaries worth of creatures would have a hard time existing and living in a world of 80% humans.

Come on folks Golarion is a fantasy world, write to the fantasy NPCs that live, love, and adventure there. They want their characters and personalities to fill the pages of the NPC Codex.

Thank you.

That's 80% of civilized humanoid population, I should have been more precise. So, comparing to Earth which is 100% humans, Golarion is 80% humans 20% demihumans. That's a deliberate world building decision, Golarion is much more human-centric than, say, FR or Eberron.

I would think that in a fantasy world like Golarion the racial mix would be much more varied and diverse. If humans make up 80% of the sentient population that leaves only 20% for all the other non-human, humanoid, and monstrous races and creatures. That seems rather low for the amount of other races appearing in the Inner Seas Campaign Guide and other Pathfinder material.

I prefer to run Golarion as 40% humans, 30% non-humans, 30% humanoid and monstrous. Otherwise there is not going to be much for adventuring parties to do if everything is so humanized and settled.

80% humans also doesn't explain why there are so many dangerous creatures roaming around. Three Bestiaries worth of creatures would have a hard time existing and living in a world of 80% humans.

Come on folks Golarion is a fantasy world, write to the fantasy NPCs that live, love, and adventure there. They want their characters and personalities to fill the pages of the NPC Codex.

Thank you.

The Roleplaying Game line doesn't assume that Pathfinder/Golarion is your setting. So the Bestiaries/NPC Codex are setting neutral.

Not sure if this has been answered but will the NPCs in this book be similar to how they are in the Game Mastery Guide. I make use of the Game Mastery NPC section a lot in my games.

As a "on the fly" GM myself... I highly approve of this product.

As a diehard 3.5 DM who doesn't buy Pathfinder (but does get quite of few of the GameMastery product), this might be a buy for me.
You can never have enough NPCs, especially on the fly. I'll take care of the personalities, just give me fully fleshed out stats, abilities, and gear.

I have mixed feelings on this, but I'm hopeful it will be a useful product.

I would like to know how it will be organised. Will there be builds of each class for different the races? What about various builds (tank, blaster, preparing for prestige class X)?

Maybe that's a tall order, but if the book is designed for flexibility, rather than 'Fighter, 5th level type, 1 each' it would make it a lot more useful.

I'm probably going to buy it, regardless, just for the time savings in set-up time. Take what's written, add tweaks, throw in a little fluff, shake well..

I'm 100% for this being only the core rulebook. Very, very rarely am I making an NPC witch, or cavalier, or gunslinger, or what-have-you.

I'm virtually always adding rogue, fighter, wizard or cleric levels to a creature, or looking for a similar NPC. This will make the effort to add cleric levels to a giant, fighter levels to an awakened golem, or wizard levels to a daemon very simple.

Bravo!

Golden-Esque wrote:

BlackKestrel wrote:

What reason is there for me to buy this book? I don't need 320 pages of stat blocks. I'm tired of seeing generic NPCs showing up in my Pathfinder Chronicles books (not to mention the 4 NPCs statted up in every AP volume now) as it is. What is your compelling case for me to purchase the NPC Codex? As it stands I'll be skipping this book in my subscription (much like I did with the Beginner's Box last year).

If you do not need 320 pages of NPC stat blocks, then you are clearly not a GM! I'm giddy with the thought of how much time this book is going to save me.

I am a GM and I am NOT excited about this book. I enjoy player material for my PCs to have fun with or Bestiaries, which are much more awesome than an NPC book ever will be.

Here is the thing, you are not going to change Paizo's mind in them publishing this. So while you are NOT happy as you put it, does not mean that others would be disappointed in it. I am always grateful for having generic NPC's with some sort of background going on. While yes it is an NPC and I may or may not use it does not mean I do not want the book to come out or I would not buy it as I most certainly WILL buy it.

So you are not the target audience.. not a bad thing and enjoy sir :)

First post on Paizo HP ever since I bought the two core books from Amazon(is it actually cheaper here in the Paizo HP, and does it ship all the way to South Korea?). Probably this is the type of book that I've been waiting for.

A bestiary-like book for non-racial-HD races, CORE and non-supplemential for easy reference even when the PRD(Internet) is cut(my parents have total control upon it :( sadly). Way to go for me, for I had a hard time designing NPCs, and judging from the GameMastery Guide's NPC Gallery section, there weren't enough NPC samples to test upon.

Oh, I wish Paizo never forgets to make additional NPC Codexes for supplemental sources like APG, UM/UC. NPCs are never plentiful, and the more interesting they are, they also make up more interesting foes in battle!

...does it ship all the way to South Korea?

We ship worldwide. (And welcome to the boards!)

First post on Paizo HP ever since I bought the two core books from Amazon(is it actually cheaper here in the Paizo HP, and does it ship all the way to South Korea?). Probably this is the type of book that I've been waiting for.

A bestiary-like book for non-racial-HD races, CORE and non-supplemential for easy reference even when the PRD(Internet) is cut(my parents have total control upon it :( sadly). Way to go for me, for I had a hard time designing NPCs, and judging from the GameMastery Guide's NPC Gallery section, there weren't enough NPC samples to test upon.

Oh, I wish Paizo never forgets to make additional NPC Codexes for supplemental sources like APG, UM/UC. NPCs are never plentiful, and the more interesting they are, they also make up more interesting foes in battle!

If you have access to a Tablet I believe that there's a couple apps that let you download a hard copy of the PSRD to the device if you need it.

If you have access to a Tablet I believe that there's a couple apps that let you download a hard copy of the PSRD to the device if you need it.

Anyone know what apps these are? (for iPad would be ideal)

Alexander Augunas wrote:

If you have access to a Tablet I believe that there's a couple apps that let you download a hard copy of the PSRD to the device if you need it.

Anyone know what apps these are? (for iPad would be ideal)

I use the PFR by ufisk

Hey what's at the bottom off this barrel...SCRAPE...SCRAPE.

Sorry guys but you have lost me with this one. I'll be skipping it( and any product like it in the RPG range).

Hey what's at the bottom off this barrel...SCRAPE...SCRAPE.

Sorry guys but you have lost me with this one. I'll be skipping it( and any product like it in the RPG range).

Definitely to each their own opinion. It's always interesting to see how news about different types of products is received so differently by different types of gamers. Personally, I was very excited to hear about this product and I view it as a natural evolution of where the Pathfinder RPG game is currently.

In some ways, news of this product seems to generate opinions similar to what I expect news of a ruleset for level 21+ gaming will: much rancor, hand wringing and derision from some, but also much celebration, acclaim and joyful anticipation from (many) others.

Alexander Augunas wrote:

If you have access to a Tablet I believe that there's a couple apps that let you download a hard copy of the PSRD to the device if you need it.

Anyone know what apps these are? (for iPad would be ideal)

The Core Rule PFSRD is available as a PDF at the d20srd site.

Hey what's at the bottom off this barrel...SCRAPE...SCRAPE.

Sorry guys but you have lost me with this one. I'll be skipping it( and any product like it in the RPG range).

Sorry that you think 400+ complete NPC stat blocks is useless. *shrug*

I cannot tell you how valuable this book will be to me and the other GMs in my gaming group. I applaud Paizo on this different type of "crunch" to the Fall RPG line-up this year. Hopefully every other year we can get another one of these types of books (which would also help expand on NPC's of other classes outside of the Core rulebook). Please keep up the good work :)...

Looking forward to being able to add some more pre-made special sauce to my games.

Looking forward to this and the accompanying token set.

For me, at least, the pawns will get far more use.

Is there any way the tiles can be sold together with this book at a reduced price?! Cuz that would be awesome!!

For the love of Pathfinder and Paizo can you please, please, please keep human NPCs to a bare minimum.

Between the Game Mastery Guide NPCs various Pathfinder adventure paths, individual adventures, and guides there are more than enough human NPCs for any GM to use.

At 320 pages there should be no more than 20 pages of human NPCs.

In my current campaign, we have session 13 coming up. The PCs have killed 3 named villains (and who knows how many unnamed villains), have made friends with 15+ NPCs. 20 is NO WHERE near enough for a campaign.

Thousands to choose from would be better.

DM Wellard wrote:

Hey what's at the bottom off this barrel...SCRAPE...SCRAPE.

Sorry guys but you have lost me with this one. I'll be skipping it( and any product like it in the RPG range).

Sorry that you think 400+ complete NPC stat blocks is useless. *shrug*

My home group won't play PF, PFS doesn't require it and I don't run home brew PbP's therefore all this book would do would be sit on a shelf unopened. So yes Sean it would be useless to me

If your group won't play Pathfinder, why do you care what products are released for Pathfinder?? I could not give a rip what's coming out for World of Synnabar this year for the same reasons.

After buying the GMG, NPC guide, and Rival Guide, as well as most of the AP volumes since Kingmaker, you might think I have plenty of NPCs. You would be wrong, thank you so much Paizo for this book! I don't even mind that it's only core options, though I love all the archetypes and feel more or less good about the new classes I can see how fitting this many NPCs into one book will be hard enough with just the core rules. This book will be a must buy for me, I'm always grabbing stat blocks at the last minute to deal with surprising situations from my clever and unpredictable players, and between all the bestiaries, the AP bestiaries, and the Tome of Horrors I think I have enough monsters for now.. Ok, that's a lie, there can never be enough monsters, but I think this book will be at least as useful as a 4th bestiary, probably much more so in my games, so thanks again Paizo!

Updated cover image to final version—enjoy!

Amazing cover. Absolutely amazing.

Very cool cover. I like the violin player and the chick hitting on the half/orc.

I'm just going to throw this out there, but personally I never feel the need to rebuild or even alter a preconstructed NPC's race if I want, say, a human to be a halfling or whatever. I've found that if I do my job well, my players don't notice a +1 or a -1 to a given stat; its not worth the extra effort on my part and all that stuff is on my side of the screen where they can't get to it, anyway.

So yeah, I personally don't care what the human to gnome to dwarf to kitsune ratio is. I'll use the builds as whatever I want, so to people like me a variety of fighting styles and character builds is far more valuable then having "elf sword fighter, halfling sword fighter, gnome sword fighter, etc."

A helmetless Kyra appears!

Alexander Augunas wrote:

If you have access to a Tablet I believe that there's a couple apps that let you download a hard copy of the PSRD to the device if you need it.

Anyone know what apps these are? (for iPad would be ideal)

FWIW, I've heard that you can run Android apps in the Google Chrome browser. So there's a way to get tablet stuff on your PC.

Steve Geddes wrote:

Alexander Augunas wrote:

If you have access to a Tablet I believe that there's a couple apps that let you download a hard copy of the PSRD to the device if you need it.

Anyone know what apps these are? (for iPad would be ideal)

I use the PFR by ufisk

Cheers.

If your group won't play Pathfinder, why do you care what products are released for Pathfinder?? I could not give a rip what's coming out for World of Synnabar this year for the same reasons.

Because I run 3 games on these boards and play in 5 and I'm a PFS member.There are products I can use and products I can't the next three in the RP line fall into the latter..Not that I actually have to justify myself to anyone in truth.

Actually it occures to me wll this book follow the same idea as the previous 3 Bestiary's In that statblocks in this book will be getting used In Adventure paths and such? (Since it seems this would help solve some of the problem of getting Ap's to higher lvl.)

A helmetless Kyra appears!

...to be conforming to the social norms of misogynistic cultures!

Hopefully she's just in a headscarf to keep the desert sun from giving her sunstroke.

...inside a building...

sigh

Mikaze wrote:

A helmetless Kyra appears!

...to be conforming to the social norms of misogynistic cultures!

Hopefully she's just in a headscarf to keep the desert sun from giving her sunstroke.

...inside a building...

sigh

?

Nothing inherently misogynistic about a woman wearing a hood/headscarf/anything else. If it was compulsory, yeah, but that's not really the way Kyra's culture swings from what's available so far(it has problems *cough* slavery *cough*, but that isn't one of them), what with the matriarchal norms. She might very well be wearing it just because it's her style. Or it's the custom of her faith's particular sect that raised her. I'd expect to see it now and then, just like I'd expect some Iomedaean priestesses to maybe dress similar to European nuns while also not being a universal standard for that particular faith.

It's the same as any other priest(ess) keeping custom and keeping their hood up. Or their heads shaved save for a single braid. Or tattoos on their face.

Personally I think she looks good with or without it, but hey, I like the variety.

Besides, Kyra X Merisiel is semi-canon, so...

Besides, Kyra X Merisiel is semi-canon, so...

I think I missed the connection. Does Meri have a thing for exotic headgear or was that just a cunning ploy to distract us from a silly debate? :P

Kyra is wearing her headscarf because she's taking her helmet off, if you ask me. We've seen her with her hair down before, and sharing a bath no less. Geraint's complaint is pretty unfounded. :/

Also holy flumph, Wayne has outdone himself. To think, before I picked up my Core Rulebook I honestly didnt see the appeal of Waynes art... Oh lordy have I been proven wrong over the years. I really like all the NPCs on that cover, and Kyra's never looked better. Great stuff all around! I might even buy the hardcover for a change just to see this puppy on my shelf.

Love the concept, love the cover, I cannot wait to get this book. The GM inside me dances with Glee!

Actually it occures to me wll this book follow the same idea as the previous 3 Bestiary's In that statblocks in this book will be getting used In Adventure paths and such? (Since it seems this would help solve some of the problem of getting Ap's to higher lvl.)

Class leveled NPCs don't scale very well at high levels. Once you throw a character at an PC that has spells like Phantasmal Killer or a power leveled Fireball available, you end up unbalancing a game pretty hard.

Have to remember, a power build PC can one or two shot another PC without trouble.

TwoWolves wrote:

If your group won't play Pathfinder, why do you care what products are released for Pathfinder?? I could not give a rip what's coming out for World of Synnabar this year for the same reasons.

Because I run 3 games on these boards and play in 5 and I'm a PFS member.There are products I can use and products I can't the next three in the RP line fall into the latter..Not that I actually have to justify myself to anyone in truth.

1) PFS players don't need DM-oriented books.

2) Players of Pathfinder don't either.

3) If any of those 3 games you run are Pathfinder, then this book has potential use to you.

Not trying to sell you anything, but I don't get the hate-on for a book that many MANY people are hot to get their hands onto. It's like saying "Ultimate Equipment? Bah, I only play Vow of Poverty monks, I'll never use that book! Boo!! Hiss!!"

??

Besides, Kyra X Merisiel is semi-canon, so...

If by "semi-canon" you mean "in Meri's head..."

DM Wellard wrote:

Hey what's at the bottom off this barrel...SCRAPE...SCRAPE.

Sorry guys but you have lost me with this one. I'll be skipping it( and any product like it in the RPG range).

Definitely to each their own opinion. It's always interesting to see how news about different types of products is received so differently by different types of gamers. Personally, I was very excited to hear about this product and I view it as a natural evolution of where the Pathfinder RPG game is currently.

In some ways, news of this product seems to generate opinions similar to what I expect news of a ruleset for level 21+ gaming will: much rancor, hand wringing and derision from some, but also much celebration, acclaim and joyful anticipation from (many) others.

I think Johnny Fever hit the nail on the head. For me, a book like this is a godsend. Between work and a family, GM prep time is at a premium, and anything that will speed that up I look to with much anticipation. On the flip side, in 20 years of gaming I've played in exactly 1 epic level campaign, Pathfinder/D&D at that level just holds no interest for me.

Paizo continues to delight me with the quality of their products, I may not buy every release, but that's the great thing about them, they make a little of something for everyone.

To each his own style.

Happy gaming,
Duane

Hey what's at the bottom off this barrel...SCRAPE...SCRAPE.

Sorry guys but you have lost me with this one. I'll be skipping it( and any product like it in the RPG range).

For me, this is probably my most anticipated book of the year. The best among several other greats. What's at the bottom of the barrel you ask???

TREASURE!