I was just thinking and something that occured that would be very useful, is a page or two, in an apendix which holds short stat blocks for a variaty of commonly encountered mooks such as average human thugs and average town militiamen. They are something which needs little to know fluff, but having say maybe ten stat blocks which provide easy to reference bandits and thugs for a range of low to mid level CRs would be hugely useful.
Creative Director
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I was just thinking and something that occured that would be very useful, is a page or two, in an apendix which holds short stat blocks for a variaty of commonly encountered mooks such as average human thugs and average town militiamen. They are something which needs little to know fluff, but having say maybe ten stat blocks which provide easy to reference bandits and thugs for a range of low to mid level CRs would be hugely useful.
That WOULD be useful... but something like that doesn't really belong in a monster book, I don't think. A book of "sample NPCs" would be a pretty cool product.
I was just thinking and something that occured that would be very useful, is a page or two, in an apendix which holds short stat blocks for a variaty of commonly encountered mooks such as average human thugs and average town militiamen. They are something which needs little to know fluff, but having say maybe ten stat blocks which provide easy to reference bandits and thugs for a range of low to mid level CRs would be hugely useful.That WOULD be useful... but something like that doesn't really belong in a monster book, I don't think. A book of "sample NPCs" would be a pretty cool product.
Well, i certainly wouldn't complain about getting a book full of useful premade generic NPCs. An apendix would be good, but that would be better.
What made me think of it was re-reading the shadow in the sky.
In the sky uses riddleport theifs and thugs numerous times. Short hand external referance for these, in a book which is nearly universally owned could have made it possible to have increased the variaty of oppenents in shadow in the sky and provide a few extra words of coolness.
That WOULD be useful... but something like that doesn't really belong in a monster book, I don't think. A book of "sample NPCs" would be a pretty cool product.
Oooh! Oooh! Pick me, pick me!
I was just thinking and something that occured that would be very useful, is a page or two, in an apendix which holds short stat blocks for a variaty of commonly encountered mooks such as average human thugs and average town militiamen. They are something which needs little to know fluff, but having say maybe ten stat blocks which provide easy to reference bandits and thugs for a range of low to mid level CRs would be hugely useful.That WOULD be useful... but something like that doesn't really belong in a monster book, I don't think. A book of "sample NPCs" would be a pretty cool product.
Couldn't you open it out as a kindof RPG Superstar style submissions call? I'm sure there's stacks of us on the boards that have some great NPC's up our sleeves...
Plus think of the fun you'd all have sifting through the flotsum and jetsom of Golarian :)
Such an NPC book would need some villians (and a few Heroes) with hooks that could be fleshed out for a campaign as well as generic NPC stats.
Borrowing from the set up in the D20 Modern Menaces Manual, the generic NPCs could be broken down into such groups as:
Hell Knight (low-level, mid-level, high-level)
Pathfinder Explorer (low, mid, high)
Court Wizard
Demagogue
Cultist
City Guard
Etc.
The stat blocks could be quickly tweeked by changing feats or race.
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For the Bestiary, I hope for the Hook Horror! Ok, Probably not available, how about the Linnorms?
Now for a NPC book or entry I advise Jesters, because they're the closest thing to clowns in the game, mind you they are uber-creepy and need to be slain on sheer principle alone. Just be mindful of thise pies! They throw them with deadly accuracy, and the seltzer, or the squirting flower...
But I digress, as every royal court and street corner has known the fool/jester, it wouldn't be proper without one.
(dodges a swarm of pies)
Blasted clowns!
I won't complain about a page for thugs also, this is very very useful and far easier for research than having another suplement.
One page, please?
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Creative Director
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For the Bestiary, I hope for the Hook Horror! Ok, Probably not available, how about the Linnorms?
Now for a NPC book or entry I advise Jesters, because they're the closest thing to clowns in the game, mind you they are uber-creepy and need to be slain on sheer principle alone. Just be mindful of thise pies! They throw them with deadly accuracy, and the seltzer, or the squirting flower...
But I digress, as every royal court and street corner has known the fool/jester, it wouldn't be proper without one.
(dodges a swarm of pies)
Blasted clowns!
The hook horror won't be in the book. It's not open content.
Linnorms are mythical and therefore CAN be in the book... but they'll be different than those in WotC's 3rd edition Monster Manual II (those versions aren't open content).
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Creative Director
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I won't complain about a page for thugs also, this is very very useful and far easier for research than having another suplement.
One page, please?
Nope. one page would only get us 2 stat blocks. MAYBE 3. That's not enough to matter. And thugs aren't monsters.
That said... we do already publish a product EVERY MONTH that has numerous stat blocks for various things like thugs, thieves, city guards, bandits, and cultists. Just because a stat block appears in an adventure in Pathifnder doesn't mean you can't use it somewhere else!
I won't complain about a page for thugs also, this is very very useful and far easier for research than having another suplement.
One page, please?
Nope. one page would only get us 2 stat blocks. MAYBE 3. That's not enough to matter. And thugs aren't monsters.
That said... we do already publish a product EVERY MONTH that has numerous stat blocks for various things like thugs, thieves, city guards, bandits, and cultists. Just because a stat block appears in an adventure in Pathifnder doesn't mean you can't use it somewhere else!
But you get into the eternal cross reference quandary with that.
With regards to the idea that Thugs arn't 'monsters'. Other than the fact that goblins are a monsterous humanoid, what is the difference between lvl 1 goblin warrior and a lvl 1 human warrior? Humans are as capable of filling the role of a 'monster' as any monster is.
Other than the fact that goblins are a monsterous humanoid, what is the difference between lvl 1 goblin warrior and a lvl 1 human warrior? Humans are as capable of filling the role of a 'monster' as any monster is.I think you just solved the "no thug stat block" problem. Just use the goblin stat block minus the darkvision.
Their are other statisitical differences that make that a bad option. The similarities are in how such an NPC is used, not its mechanics.
There should also be brownies and leprechauns.
Sam
I agree!! More Fey creatures would be great. Fey adventures are fantastic and a good reason to spend gold on that cold-iron
I agree!! More Fey creatures would be great. Fey adventures are fantastic and a good reason to spend gold on that cold-ironThere should also be brownies and leprechauns.
Sam
Any mention of leprechaun should include mention of the clurichaun and the far darrig.
The clurichaun is essentially a surly, drunk leprechaun. Treated well, they will protect your wine cellar. Mistreat them and they will wreck your house.
The far darrig is a bit of a mix of leprechaun and red cap. They are cruel and vicious practical jokers. They are probably an Irish variation of the red cap since ther typical dress includes a bright red cap.
Oooo....you changed your preference! Is medusae used in biology? (If an established practice might 'suade you.)
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Oooo....you changed your preference! Is medusae used in biology? (If an established practice might 'suade you.)
It was medusae back in my marine biology days. Used to describe a group or family of Cnidarians (anemones and jellyfish). It may have changed since though, there's been a few naming convention changes in the past few years.
Oooo....you changed your preference! Is medusae used in biology? (If an established practice might 'suade you.)It was medusae back in my marine biology days. Used to describe a group or family of Cnidarians (anemones and jellyfish). It may have changed since though, there's been a few naming convention changes in the past few years.
Biologist!!!! *glomps*
Not to mention Taxonomy, having been turned on its head.
I'd like to see something resembling Pierson's Puppeteers
just for the sake of the coolness of the attack
and the chance to re-incarnate as one.
All in one motion, the puppeteer had spun on his forelegs and lashed out with his single hind leg. His heads were turned backwards and spread wide, Louis remembered, to triangulate on his target. Nessus had accurately kicked a man's heart out through his splintered spine.
Ewoks, I want there to be Ewoks.
I would like dragons, any chance there will be any in this book?
Dragons do rock...Greens are my fave.
Ive always had this issue with lich and vampires. How is it that the lich is considered the ultimate undead and usually in control of a few vampires.. Yet its the vampires who run around with near flawless looks and undying bodies while the lich is doomed to continue decaying and eventually become immobile pile of (very powerful) bones?
I know they come from separate fantasy traditions, but I think its about time to make them more consistent when compared to each other. maybe trade the vampires feral good looks with the lich's decaying flawed body. Vampires require blood to sustain themselves but the lich does not. Therefore it makes sense for the vampires to have the comparatively imperfect bodies.
Ive always had this issue with lich and vampires. How is it that the lich is considered the ultimate undead and usually in control of a few vampires.. Yet its the vampires who run around with near flawless looks and undying bodies while the lich is doomed to continue decaying and eventually become immobile pile of (very powerful) bones?
I know they come from separate fantasy traditions, but I think its about time to make them more consistent when compared to each other. maybe trade the vampires feral good looks with the lich's decaying flawed body. Vampires require blood to sustain themselves but the lich does not. Therefore it makes sense for the vampires to have the comparatively imperfect bodies.
No way Vampires and Liches should remain unique. However, They should be on equal footing. There should be no way any self respect Vamp would serve a bag bones lich and Vice Versa. I think that is all in how you play them, but you can't mix the two. Vamps should Be revved up to match the Lich.
I can live with that. It still strikes me as odd that this powerful magician who chooses immortality would choose the lich's lesser preserved state over the vampires near indestructibility.
Edit: And since all lich are casters.. Why aren't they casting gentle repose?
I can live with that. It still strikes me as odd that this powerful magician who chooses immortality would choose the lich's lesser preserved state over the vampires near indestructibility.
I think Lich's are typically considered superior you have to be more powerful to become a lich than a vampire (12th level vs. 5th level). So every lich *could* control vampires, but not every vampire could command liches.
As for the looks - to me, Vampires *feed* and maintain their bodies, while Lich's don't care, don't feed, and rot.
Edit: And since all lich are casters.. Why aren't they casting gentle repose?
Now *that* is a good question.
More undead and more powerful undead, where is my death knight?
I think all the monsters in the first book should be ones that primarily exist on the prime material plane.
For those who want to go plane hopping, those monsters should be in another book (like githyanki and efreet)
Animals (dogs, dinosaurs etc) should be in their own book.
Classic monsters should be in the core monster book.
Keep mind flayers (even though the go astral they do most of their hunting on prime material)
no freaky or zany monsters, just classic ones (no need for mountain giants, thats a waste when they are just bigger hairy hill giants)
PLEASE simplify dragons, dragons by color and alignment are stupid.
I always house rule just because the dragon is red doesnt mean its evil.
ALL dragons should go off the same size and age rules, color is random, as is intelligence. Some are animalistic, some are smart, speak and cast spells (obviously by the time a dragon reaches great wyrm isnt smart enough to be casting spells and talking)
But a young dragon could be dumb enough (say int 3) to just roar an bite and be savage, where as the same age dragon could have an intelligence of 10 and speak a language.
Shape changing, spellcasting, "super dragon spell like abilites" etc should be reserved for the old and powerful, thus allowing dragons to "evlove" from monster to a "NPC Race"
This would give us dragons 5th level parties could fight all the way through dragons that could kill off a party of 5 20th level characters.
Without keeping a 5th level party to fighting only young white dragons.
So yeah I don't know if anyone else has mentioned cause I haven't got the gumption to read 14 pages+ of threads, but Has anyone thought Of cryptids as a great source for creatures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids
I understand many are the source, but some of them could be really cool with tweaking...?
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Sorry if this has been discussed already, but I'm late to this conversation and 14 PAGES of thread is a bit much at the moment.
I'd like to see multiple versions of the same monster stat-ed for different CDRs. This is something that the 4E MM does and it makes DMing significantly easier when writing an adventure.
I'm currently running a Pathfinder Beta game and every time I sit down to write the next adventure, I wish I had a bestiary like the 4E book. Currently I have to take a monster from 3.5, correct for Pathfinder, and then add levels and gear, recalculating attack and defense values. An ala carte bestiary would be MIGHTY helpful and a strong selling point for running Pathfinder games.
Thoughts?
Can we cut the Ravid? That thing is very difficult to put into an adventure because of the Animate Objects power, mostly due to having to stat up the objects it can animate separately.
I'd like to see the Peryton, Catoblepas and Leucrotta show back up in the MM, or one of the Pathfinder bestiaries down the road. While strange creatures of folklore, these were just among some of my favorite beasties to slip into a campaign at some point. Maybe the Peryton can be used instead of the arrowhawk, if need be.
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On monster changes, I'd like to see the ghoul go to a template; that was talked about way back in 3.0, but seems nothing ever came of it. Mummy as a template would be nice as well (Especially for running C1 - Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan).
I'd also like to see vampires have some of their weaknesses culled. "Can't cross running water" and "Can't enter a building uninvited" probably ought to be nixed, just regarded as superstitions associated with them*. Same probably for not reflecting in mirrors. And for pete's sake, I don't want to see a chain-wielding vampire picture (*cringes*).
Also, someone mentioned spicing up elementals, and I'd really like to see that. Maybe a table/list of special features you can add to an elemental to give it some unique features. Perhaps, say things like earth elementals that can "jump" through the ground, or utilize fist of stone as a spell-like ability or stuff like that. If need be, I'm sure we could get folks to contribute to a list of stuff for each elemental here that could be culled to add to the elementals.
* If I were a vampire who couldn't enter a building uninvited, I'd just burn the thing down and get the people inside when they come running out...seriously, what kind of lame weakness is an invitation for a Chaotic Evil creature?
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More undead and more powerful undead, where is my death knight?
I think all the monsters in the first book should be ones that primarily exist on the prime material plane.
For those who want to go plane hopping, those monsters should be in another book (like githyanki and efreet)
Animals (dogs, dinosaurs etc) should be in their own book.
Classic monsters should be in the core monster book.
Keep mind flayers (even though the go astral they do most of their hunting on prime material)no freaky or zany monsters, just classic ones (no need for mountain giants, thats a waste when they are just bigger hairy hill giants)
PLEASE simplify dragons, dragons by color and alignment are stupid.
I always house rule just because the dragon is red doesnt mean its evil.
ALL dragons should go off the same size and age rules, color is random, as is intelligence. Some are animalistic, some are smart, speak and cast spells (obviously by the time a dragon reaches great wyrm isnt smart enough to be casting spells and talking)
But a young dragon could be dumb enough (say int 3) to just roar an bite and be savage, where as the same age dragon could have an intelligence of 10 and speak a language.
Shape changing, spellcasting, "super dragon spell like abilites" etc should be reserved for the old and powerful, thus allowing dragons to "evlove" from monster to a "NPC Race"
This would give us dragons 5th level parties could fight all the way through dragons that could kill off a party of 5 20th level characters.
Without keeping a 5th level party to fighting only young white dragons.
A few of these ideas while interesting won't be happening - death knights, mind flayers, and githyanki are all Product Identity for Wizards and thus are NOT available for Pathfinder to use, planehopping races (such as Celestials and Fiends, but the Slaad being Wizard's PI are not available for use) are staying in, the dragons are probably going to follow the rules and stats set out on D20 SRD and thus be unchanged from present (although I would support a randomization of the alignments but keep all the other stats as they are), and animals are in because they are often needed for familiars, companions and summoning spells and other purposes.
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Creative Director
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I can't see there being a problem having death knights, so long as they are different from the WotC ones. Its a pretty generic name, after all.
It's a generic name... but it's not a generic monster, really. Especially with how important they've become to Dragonlance. If we were to make a "new" death knight it'd either confuse things by making too many of the same-named things or it'd look like we were treading on WotC's IP anyway. The idea of a powerful undead knight is a good one though, and some day we might do up a creature like a graveknight or something like that. It'd have a different name than "Death Knight" and different flavor and different stats than the WotC one.
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I can't see there being a problem having death knights, so long as they are different from the WotC ones. Its a pretty generic name, after all.It's a generic name... but it's not a generic monster, really. Especially with how important they've become to Dragonlance. If we were to make a "new" death knight it'd either confuse things by making too many of the same-named things or it'd look like we were treading on WotC's IP anyway. The idea of a powerful undead knight is a good one though, and some day we might do up a creature like a graveknight or something like that. It'd have a different name than "Death Knight" and different flavor and different stats than the WotC one.
Ya know, Lord Soth is sort of THE Death Knight people think of when they think Death Knight and Dragonlance.
So I was just thinking of an undead knight, and realized it doesn't HAVE to be a generic undead with millions of them crawling around.
Perhaps, 13 Death Lords, Princes from thirteen ancient tribes that were cursed to undeath and served the Whispering Tyrant. When he was destroyed they became freewilled.
By the way, I decided the Whispering Tyrant had more than one phylactery and isn't destroyed, just rebuilding his evil powers until he can kill Iomedae.
And someone said it before... please bring back the Peryton... and Rot Grubs :) Oh those were nasty no matter what level you were.
Can we cut the Ravid?
*sniff* I like the Ravid. And I might also be the only person who like's the Rast.
Their are other statisitical differences that make that a bad option. The similarities are in how such an NPC is used, not its mechanics.
Size, maybe. But I find 1st level hobgoblin warriors out of the MM make a good substitute for 1st level human warriors. Maybe nab them an extra feat and they're good to go or to advance. I'm relatively sure I've done it just to save on time... and maybe get slightly better stats for the poor guys.
*sniff* I like the Ravid. And I might also be the only person who like's the Rast.
I don't think the Ravids are open content. I'm pretty sure they're copyrighted to Ubisoft.
I don't think the Ravids are open content. I'm pretty sure they're copyrighted to Ubisoft.
*sniff* I like the Ravid. And I might also be the only person who like's the Rast.
Actually the Ravids (and Rasts, for that matter) ARE Open Content: see Ravid or Rast, and I would like to see both of these monsters updated for at least one of the Bestiaries if there isn't sufficient spaces for them in the first.