It's happened to every Game Master. You spend hours setting up the perfect encounter, your players are out for blood, the swords are drawn—and then you realize that you've forgotten to build statistics for the enemy characters. Or perhaps your players go left when you expect them to go right, leaving you without any encounters prepared.
Such problems are a thing of the past with the NPC Codex. Inside this tome, you'll find hundreds of ready-made stat blocks for nonplayer characters of every level, from a lowly forest poacher to the most majestic knight or ancient spellcaster. Whether you're planning out future adventures or throwing together encounters right at the table, this book does the work so you can focus on playing the game.
Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and open playtests 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 320-page Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex includes:
Statistics for more than 300 characters, including at least one for every level of every class in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.
Tactical suggestions for every character, ensuring that you get the most out of each individual's gear and abilities in a fight.
Tons of flavorful names and backgrounds to give characters personality, plus ideas for using them in both combat and roleplaying situations.
Statistics for characters with lower-powered NPC classes to help populate your world with ordinary people, as well as characters with specialized prestige classes.
Animal companion statistics for druids and rangers, from level 1 through level 20.
Multiple versions of each Pathfinder iconic character, perfect for pregenerated player characters.
Encounter groups for conveniently crafting battles on the fly.
... and much, much more!
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-467-2
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
How many times have you needed pre-generated NPCs for an adventure?
How many times has someone bailed at the last minute, leaving the party without a Cleric (or Wizard, Fighter, whatever)?
This book provides just the answer to those questions. Every single class gets full write-ups from Level 1 to Level 20. Fantastic art accompanies them, providing lots and lots of utility!
Recently used this in a high level Mythic playtest, and I was able to pull 4 fully formed, professionally designed Level 20 characters out in no time flat!
If you're a GM, you want this book. Even better, the PDF is beautifully bookmarked and allows you to find what you're looking for at the drop of a hat!
Once again PAIZO provides GMs (and players) with another valuable tool/resource for every occasion. This book should boost the confidence level of new and experienced gamemasters everywhere, and make the next 1000 NPC encounters more interesting, detailed, and inspired! Extreme attention to detail, high production value, and based on content--the first of its kind yet so useful it feels like you've always needed it.
Nicely done.
After spending about an hour reading through pages, looking at the artwork and taking a few moments with NPC stat blocks that jumped out I was able to turn some notes into an initial review for those curious…
This is a fantastic resource. I was initially disappointed to hear that content was limited to the Core Rulebook. After reading and reflecting it is clear why this decision was made, and I support it. My primary concern was potential limitations suffered by the NPCs. Limitations that players would likely not suffer. And don't get me wrong, the breadth of material that has arisen since the Core Rulebook's release is not trivial. However, much of it is relatively painless to swap out. A feat here, a spell there, heck, even an archetype or race. You get the point... Limiting the NPC Codex to core content allows it to maximize compatibility. The most glaring loss are the Advanced Player's Guide classes and archetypes. For this reason I will not be upset to see an Advanced NPC Codex or NPC Codex 2 in the coming year(s). I'm not holding my breath though.
Many of these NPCs can be brought into a campaign with no additional prep time. Unfortunately, when an author is given even less than a full page it is impossible to add in something like a preferred Wild Shape stat block for an NPC. For many circumstances the book will be enough. In others, you're going to have to make some additional notes, even if it is a post-it-note. At the very least an NPC will provide a solid jumping off point. There are hundreds of character builds at various levels of progression. If you wanted to tack on a few more levels (don't forget the option of multiclassing) it won't take as long as building a character from scratch.
The art is really great. I mean, it's really great! Just like the bestiaries, its a pleasure simply to look at the familiar races of Golarion. I'm disappointed that not all races received the same treatment. Many, but not all, of the Half-Orc illustrations leave something to be desired. This is something that a half-orc lover is most likely to notice though ;)
The Appendices could be very useful on the fly, particularly the "Encounter Groups" where you pick a theme and encounter CR. Then flip to the appropriate pages and your NPCs are prepped and ready to run. The idea to build the druid with domains and allow you to swap the domain out for an animal companion from the appendices was a great idea.
My concluding "initial impression" is that this resource is like the legos we had as kids. Sometimes you get a kit that's just perfect. Some kits inspire you to create something more personal to you. And still other times you pull ideas from multiple sources and build something completely new. The content in NPC Codex is nothing short of inspiring and time saving. Kudos to everyone involved with this project. Paizo, you and your contributors put a lot of love into your work and it shows.
But hide armor has a movement rate of 20 ft, so wouldn't Fast Movement only bring her back up to 30 ft? If not, I've been doing it wrong this whole time
Sorry if this has been pointed out already but how exactly is Amiri able to wield a LARGE bastard sword? Also, and again sorry if it's been mentioned before, but the Iconics don't seem to be built on a 20-Point Buy at all. Many of their ability scores don't make sense to me. Am I right on this or am I just seeing things here?
Sorry if this has been pointed out already but how exactly is Amiri able to wield a LARGE bastard sword?
From the Core Rulebook:
Inappropriately Sized Weapons: A creature can't make optimum use of a weapon that isn't properly sized for it. A cumulative –2 penalty applies on attack rolls for each size category of difference between the size of its intended wielder and the size of its actual wielder. If the creature isn't proficient with the weapon, a –4 nonproficiency penalty also applies.
So their letting Amiri slide past the the "Inappropriately Sized Weapons" rule because technically she can treat a bastard sword as a one-handed weapon and therefor a large-sized bastard sword is in fact still considered a two-handed weapon to a medium-sized creature who is proficient with it?
So their letting Amiri slide past the the "Inappropriately Sized Weapons" rule because technically she can treat a bastard sword as a one-handed weapon and therefor a large-sized bastard sword is in fact still considered a two-handed weapon to a medium-sized creature who is proficient with it?
So their letting Amiri slide past the the "Inappropriately Sized Weapons" rule because technically she can treat a bastard sword as a one-handed weapon and therefor a large-sized bastard sword is in fact still considered a two-handed weapon to a medium-sized creature who is proficient with it?
Nope...I'm pretty sure she's taking the -2.
She is. BAB is +1, STR modifier is +4, but she's +3 with the Large-sized bastard sword.
When I said Inappropriately Sized Weapons I meant the rule that says you can't wield a large weapon that you'd treat as more than two-handed. You know, the rule that basically makes the Titan Mauler archetype not plain work whatsoever?
When I said Inappropriately Sized Weapons I meant the rule that says you can't wield a large weapon that you'd treat as more than two-handed. You know, the rule that basically makes the Titan Mauler archetype not plain work whatsoever?
Ah...in that case, you're right. As a medium creature, she has the option to wield it 2-handed (instead of 1-handed), but should probably use the 1-handed damage die.
I'm not familiar with the Titan Mauler archetype. Wow.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
I think I found a minor error in the "Black Ice" gnome shadowdancer on p. 238, aka Skal Wistalvak. It looks like he took Spell Focus (illusion) and Greater Spell Focus (illusion) as his two bonus wizard feats, but these are not in the legal list of "metamagic, item creation, or Spell Mastery".
Not that I would be against these being legal wizard bonus feats, but I can't find anything that says that they are.
This is a bit of a thread necro, but the NPC Codex is now available for Fantasy Grounds. If you already have the PDF here, you get $9.99 off your purchase at the link below after syncing.
