Do you guys, over at Paizo HQ, have a definative list of monsters that your going to work over? or are you just playing it by ear!!
If there is such a list will we, the humble consumer (ok some of us are not so humble ;o)), get to see a compliled list?
Ta!!
Erik Mona Day II, Attack of the Mona, coming soon to a message board near you!!
Creative Director
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Do you guys, over at Paizo HQ, have a definative list of monsters that your going to work over? or are you just playing it by ear!!
If there is such a list will we, the humble consumer (ok some of us are not so humble ;o)), get to see a compliled list?
Ta!!
We're mostly playing it by ear, and letting the writers pick what monsters they want to create or use in adventures they write for us. We do pick and choose, at times, what monsters are and aren't allowed... but for the most part, pretty much everything you see in the 3.5 Monster Manual or back in the 1st edition Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, and Fiend Folio could have a place in Golarion. Provided they have open stats we can use.
We don't have a list, though, so we can't really share something like that.
Two that I would like to see are the Hook Horror and the Skeletal Warrior. Now what slant would Paizo put on these?
But my all time favourite from 1st edittion that i'd like to see has to be the Giant Slug!!! That just creeped me out when I used to be a player and ever since i started reffing I have loved using the beast.
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Creative Director
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Two that I would like to see are the Hook Horror and the Skeletal Warrior. Now what slant would Paizo put on these?
But my all time favourite from 1st edittion that i'd like to see has to be the Giant Slug!!! That just creeped me out when I used to be a player and ever since i started reffing I have loved using the beast.
Hook Horrors, alas, aren't open content. We can't touch them.
Skeletal Warriors have been done in the Tome of Horrors, though, and I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing some of them before Curse of the Crimson Throne is done...
Giant Slugs are here and there in various d20 products as well. They'll show up eventually, I'm sure.
We've seen the Tome of Horror series, The Advanced Bestiary, and The Book of Fiends (well for a monster with class levels) used so far, but what about other books. I know that you said that The Book of Erotic Fantasy was out (badly designed monsters anyways, a CR 12 monster able to summon a CR 20 monster, WTF), but what other OGL sourcebooks are being used?
Ok, here's a question for James... How exactly do you tell if a monster is open content? Maybe i'm missing the obvious here and if i am then just call me a dumb ass englishman, but what makes it that you can use a goblin but not a mindflayer etc... Are beholders open content? I'd just be realy intrested to know.
Contributor
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Ok, here's a question for James... How exactly do you tell if a monster is open content? Maybe i'm missing the obvious here and if i am then just call me a dumb ass englishman, but what makes it that you can use a goblin but not a mindflayer etc... Are beholders open content? I'd just be realy intrested to know.
If it's put out by WotC and is in the SRD it is open. If not, it's not.
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Creative Director
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Ok, here's a question for James... How exactly do you tell if a monster is open content? Maybe i'm missing the obvious here and if i am then just call me a dumb ass englishman, but what makes it that you can use a goblin but not a mindflayer etc... Are beholders open content? I'd just be realy intrested to know.
There are a dozen or so monsters in the Monster Manual that aren't open, including: Beholders, mind flayers, kuo-toa, yuan-ti, carrion crawlers, githyanki, githzerai, slaadi, umber hulks, displacer beasts, and maybe one or two more I'm forgetting about. Pretty much everything else Wizards produces is not available to us—that includes everything in Dragon and Dungeon.
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Ok, here's a question for James... How exactly do you tell if a monster is open content? Maybe i'm missing the obvious here and if i am then just call me a dumb ass englishman, but what makes it that you can use a goblin but not a mindflayer etc... Are beholders open content? I'd just be realy intrested to know.If it's put out by WotC and is in the SRD it is open. If not, it's not.
and if it's not put out by wizards, you have to read the OGL license in the book it came from to see what in said book is OGL (I beleive).
Another question : is there a way for the descriptions to included a usessimilar to what they do in Creatures of Freeport? I don't see this being useful for all of the bestiality, but the non-intellegants if there is use for their bodies it would be very interesting (I also loved the uses of dragon parts article in the Mag about a year and a 1/2 ago)
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Creative Director
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We've seen the Tome of Horror series, The Advanced Bestiary, and The Book of Fiends (well for a monster with class levels) used so far, but what about other books. I know that you said that The Book of Erotic Fantasy was out (badly designed monsters anyways, a CR 12 monster able to summon a CR 20 monster, WTF), but what other OGL sourcebooks are being used?
So far, we've also used Green Ronin's Plot and Poison in Pathfinder 5. We've also used Tome of Horror II and III.
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Contributor
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and some of the other 3rd party monster books.
There are two forces at work against us delving too deeply into that stock. First, a LOT of stuff out there is just bad. Second, that said, there is a LOT of good stuff out there as well. The problem is, there's just a lot of stuff, and we don't have the resources to scour through dozens of books to find just the perfect monster.
That's not to say we don't keep looking, though. :)
I'm really pleased with the amount that you're delving into the third-party stuff. If I understand correctly, the first path uses:
The Advanced Bestiary
The Book of Fiends
Plot & Poison
Tome of Horrors I
Tome of Horrors II
Tome of Horrors III
That's five new sources in six volumes. I'm good with this rate.
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Creative Director
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Yeah, like Mike said, we don't have time to sift through all of the d20 books and find the stuff we like AND fits Golarion. For Pathfinder, I've been going to d20 books that I am already familiar with. I've never looked through the Book of Templates, and the Advanced Bestiary does a very similar thing (and I trust its design theory and crunch) AND it has the advantage of me being familiar with it for several years already.
With each Pathfinder, we're adding 6 new monsters. With each GameMastery module, we're adding 1 or 2 more. In time, I suspect that those monsters will become the primary source of monsters for us after the SRD, but the SRD monsters will remain the primary source. They're the baseline, after all.