General Thoughts from Playtesting - Creatures

[ConanM]

Here is my second issue. Creatures.

While the monster creation rules are a good idea and an easy way to handle monsters without requiring a huge book, basic familiars and summon creatures are a problem.

Basically without having the Monster Manual, the Beta rules are seriously lacking due to having powers that create creatures for which there are no stats for.

Are there plans to rectify this with the final publication? It's not a big issue, but one that occurred to me during play. I thought about how people who don't have access to the MM for 3.5 would be able to handle those particular abilities.

Conan

[Jagyr Ebonwood]

Well, the SRD is still available online. And for the most part, monsters aren't going to be changed very much for Pathfinder.

[Quandary]

As well as the ones you mentioned (Familiars/Animal Companions, and Summon X creatures), all the Animals (mounts, dogs) in the Equipment sections need real stats. Horse load capacities & movement are listed (although nowhere I looked at first), but there's no combat/ skill stats.

As well as the Summon X creatures, the Reincarnation spell needs to have it's non-Core Humanoids stat'ed out, or it's a broken spell (it gives the basic STR/DEX/CON adjustments, but nothing else, even though it says you gain all abilities associated with the new form, "including forms of movement and speeds, natural armor, natural attacks, extraordinary abilities, and the like".

...But this is why it's still very early in Beta :-)

[ConanM]

Jagyr Ebonwood wrote:

Well, the SRD is still available online. And for the most part, monsters aren't going to be changed very much for Pathfinder.

Firstly, I'm always strongly against relying too heavily on the SRD. I think a PDF supplement of core animals and templates for summons/familiars/animals is a good idea.

If Paizo wants to keep the 3.X system (or their variation thereof) alive, a creatures book or stats for creatures in the core rules is going to be a must. That's the point of playtesting - it shouldn't be reliant on the people playing to already have those books or be willing to download the SRC and convert the creatures themselves.

I guess I'm not satisfied with "there are sources to draw on." I would like to see Pathfinder treated as a complete product and line in its own right, and I suspect Paizo has a similar viewpoint. :)

It's not like I'm expecting to log in tomorrow and see a creature manual PDF. I'm more making an observation - again from our game - where the lack of stats meant that there was scrambling around to find a book with stats and then convert those over.

Just making an observation as to how things could be improved for ease of play and playtesting.

Conan

[Kyrinn S. Eis]

I'd have to agree with the OP, given that the Creature Creation guidelines (290-299 in Beta) say that existing stats for 3.x critters are not fully in-line with Pathfinder's approach, and that re-working existing Creatures and NPCs is necessary.

Beta pp. 298-299 wrote:

Conversion There are two ways to convert existing 3.5 OGL adventures, monsters, and other game content to work

with the Pathfinder RPG. The first option is incredibly simple and requires next to no work on the part of the GM. The second option requires a small amount of work, adjusting options and rules that are altered for the Pathfinder RPG.

Option 1: Quick Conversion
The simplest option in converting existing material to work with the Pathfinder RPG is to use the content as is.
The Pathfinder RPG is designed with ultimate flexibility in mind, and many of its changes are in smaller subsystems that are easily substituted. Despite this, there are still some things to keep in mind.

Monsters and NPCs will be slightly less powerful than their Pathfinder RPG counterparts. They have a few less abilities, feats, and skills. While this shouldn’t unbalance encounters too much, you might want to make a few on-the-fly adjustments when needed, such as giving an important high-level villain a few extra feats, powers, and hit points appropriate for his class. Bards, rangers, rogues, sorcerers, and wizards should all receive 1 additional hit point per level. Make sure to also add 1 additional hit point for each level the character has in its favored class.

Some of the rules systems work a bit differently. For example, the listed grapple modifiers for creatures do not exactly match the same creature’s combat maneuver bonus unless the creature is Medium. It is important to remember that a number of skills have changed. Keep the
bonus for these skills and allow use of the new combined skills normally, treating them as trained if the converted creature or character possesses any ranks in the equivalent skills from the old system.

Existing adventures assume the fast experience point progression. If you want your campaign to follow one of the slower progressions, you will need to adjust the difficulty of longer adventures which assume that the PCs reach a certain level by the conclusion. This can be accomplished by reducing the challenges they face or by adding additional encounters to allow the PCs to gain more XP, or you can always continue to use the existing XP charts.

Converting characters is simple as well. Most classes don’t lose abilities and most gain a number of new powers.
Simply add these new powers to the existing characters.
Each character will also need to rebuild their feat and skill selections. To determine a character’s current XP total, determine if the character is beyond halfway to his next level. If he is, set his XP total to the halfway mark between his current level and the next level. If he is not, set his XP total to the beginning of his current level’s XP total. If you prefer a more precise method, use percentages instead.

Option 2: Complete Conversion
Complete conversion requires a bit more work, as it requires rebuilding the skills, feats, and powers of all of the monsters and NPCs in the existing product. To help you with this, here are a few simple guidelines.
Apply racial modifiers first, as these have the largest effect on a creature’s stat block. Generally, this means that one ability increases by +2, and all skills and checks related to that ability increase by +1.

Rebuild the creature’s skills. Determine the number of skill ranks the creature should have and use those to purchase all of the skills the creature had before conversion. Apply excess skill ranks to appropriate skills.
In general, assume that any skill that the monster had ranks in before conversion is a class skill for the monster after conversion. Remember that creatures with a natural flight ability always consider Fly a class skill.
Rebuild the creature’s feats. As of this release, monsters do not change in this regard. Since none of the prerequisites for any of the feats have changed, simply check to make sure that a given feat was not removed due to redundancy. Add additional feats to creatures with
levels in a character class, paying special attention to combat feats.

Check hit points. On average, bards, rangers, rogues, sorcerers, and wizards should all receive 1 additional hit point per level. Monsters are unchanged as of this release.
Make sure to also add 1 additional hit point for each level the character has in its favored class.

Calculate the creature’s combat maneuver bonus (CMB).
If the creature has levels of cleric or wizard, remove any bonus spells granted due to domains or school specialization. Add the new abilities granted by domains and arcane schools.

Determine the creature’s XP total. If it is a monster, refer to Table 12-3 to find its XP value. If it is a PC, determine how close the character was to the next level as a percentage and use that percentage to determine the character’s exact XP total using Table 4-1.
Apply the guidelines from the Quick Conversion option as needed.

Power Level
Characters built using the Pathfinder RPG rules (and some of the options from the later 3.5 rule supplements) are slightly more powerful than their counterparts. There are two ways you can account for this. First, you can adjust the challenges in the adventures accordingly, either by adding a few extra monsters or by simply giving the monster more hit points. Alternatively, you can treat characters that use
these rules as one level higher when building challenges or choosing a published adventure. Note that this advantage becomes less relevant at higher levels (above 10th), meaning that fewer adjustments are necessary.

Easy as pie! ;P

[Krome]

Paizo has said that a Monster Book will be forthcoming, but after the Pathfinder RPG final version has been released. All of their energy is turned to the Core book.

Now from what I understand the PRPG will incorporate the PHB and the DMG into one massive book. Once that book is out we will rely upon the SRD for a bit longer. I would expect that they would then turn their attention to revising the Critters to fit with the changes for Pathfinder.

So, in essence, a Monster book is planned, we just have to wait... and I hate waiting. :)

[Jal Dorak]

Krome wrote:

Paizo has said that a Monster Book will be forthcoming, but after the Pathfinder RPG final version has been released. All of their energy is turned to the Core book.

Now from what I understand the PRPG will incorporate the PHB and the DMG into one massive book. Once that book is out we will rely upon the SRD for a bit longer. I would expect that they would then turn their attention to revising the Critters to fit with the changes for Pathfinder.

So, in essence, a Monster book is planned, we just have to wait... and I hate waiting. :)

I have to admit, it makes it a challenge to playtest the system when we don't know what the final monsters will look like.

Then again, we can help Paizo by pointing out monsters that might need tweaking with the new rules!

[Kyrinn S. Eis]

Or creating a slew of new ones that are 'up to snuff' and then Paizo picking the top 100 or whatever.

This gives plenty of opportunity for a 'better MM', perhaps organised by most-common operating environments, etc.

Anyway, just an idea.

[Krome]

Well if nothing else it is just fun to make monsters :)

I think part of the playtest should most certainly be against the SRD monsters, as part of the design philosophy has been to make PRPG compatible with older products, so it needs to play against older monsters as well. Is there already a thread somewhere on making new monsters for PRPG

[Kyrinn S. Eis]

Krome wrote:

Well if nothing else it is just fun to make monsters :)

I think part of the playtest should most certainly be against the SRD monsters, as part of the design philosophy has been to make PRPG compatible with older products, so it needs to play against older monsters as well. Is there already a thread somewhere on making new monsters for PRPG

Hmm. While I respect your opinion, I thought testing the creature Design rules of Beta were more important than re-hashing the SRD. Unless, of course, you mean Updating SRD creatures using the Beta Critter rules, in which case I'll hapily shrug and say, 'six of one, half-a-dozen the other', and buy you a flagon of mead.