I looked in the Bestiary Preview and the Bonus Bestiary, and I couldn't spot any LA entry for the intelligent critters. Is the idea of playing monsters being dropped completely?
I was sad in 3.5 because there was no LA for older dragons. So much for an all-dragon campaign? ;P
No concrete system is yet being developed by Paizo and if one is made it is stacked up behind a rather impressive pile of other items that do in all likely hood need to come first. While I would much enjoy a set of 'guidelines' (less hard and fast rules) it isn't critical to me as I have other resources from earlier 3e play to work with.
If anything you (we, monster race players) should put our heads together over in House Rules or Conversion and see if we can knock a community one together. Personally in my experience you could likely drop LA all together and rely on racial HD and/or CR adjustments as your base for ECL.
That said there is no reason not to pull your copy of Savage Species and use it to attach LAs to various Pathfinder creatures using the newer races as your stat balance point instead of the old one given in that book.
Older Dragons did get LAs in the Draconomicon I believe along with Racial Class breakdowns so you could play one from at least 1st to 20th. Reminded me of the old Council of the Wyrms setting.
From what I've seen it seems that it will be more like the guidlines that you desire. If you load the Council of Theives player's guide which should be free. There is a side bar on rules for allowing Tieflings.
Its on page 5, the four ways they suggest for handling it are XP Debt, NPC Class, Teifling Trait, or PC Boons.
When I saw the OP's topic, I honestly read "Monster Advancement." Don't know why, but incidentally, that question has been on my mind, as well.
Why do none of the previewed beasties have Hit Die advancement shown in their stat blocks? Are there no Pathfinder rules for this, or have the ranges of advancement not yet been determined?
Perhaps its no longer needed. With simple templates like Giant (in the Bestiary Preview), it is simple enough to increase the size of any creature a step or several as the only limitation it has is you can make colossal creatures bigger. And simple set of standard advancement rules set in the back in a tidied up manner like there where in the MM you could make the judgement yourself.
Beyond even that you could go the opposite way and use youth template to make smaller and smaller version like a chibi tarrasque which is just simply in so many ways. But I mean if you decide to campaign in Wonderland it would make things interesting.
One major problem with Advanced and Larger monster in 3.5 was that they quickly outstripped their HD based CR in terms of good saves and BAB advancement. Relaying on just the advancement rules to determine size often created extremely difficult creatures to fight, especially for some spell casters.
Took a look at the CoT Player's Guide and the suggestion there there for Tieflings... meh. Good guidelines but nothing that is overly helpful in pinning down other more exotic 'races.'
Although it did get me thinking about how to handle crazy power races without needing to do to much work. Apply Negative Levels that are 'bought off' as per XP debt idea. The PFRPG Negative Levels do a very good job nerfing a character across the board and are very easy to apply/remove. It also requires very little effort then to 'down grade' a powerful monster race to playable levels. And word it so they are not removable by magic.
Take the Lammasu from the bonus Bestiary with 9 HD apply 8 negative levels. It's SPs drops to CL 1 and should losses Cleric Spells. Likewise it's saves and attack bonus get hit hard and bring much closer to a normal 1st level character. Granted there are still some bugs there but that's a quick and dirty start.
When I saw the OP's topic, I honestly read "Monster Advancement." Don't know why, but incidentally, that question has been on my mind, as well.
Why do none of the previewed beasties have Hit Die advancement shown in their stat blocks? Are there no Pathfinder rules for this, or have the ranges of advancement not yet been determined?
I believe there are no ranges for advancement because it is just set up now for the GM to determine how much they want a monster to advance. So the GM can still advance the monster using the rules without the ranges there.
Looking at the Bestiary preview I understand that old "advance by HD" thing is gone, and instead we get templates such as "advanced", "elite", "giant" which are used to boost monsters.
I'm not sure it's gone, have to wait see though. I think the templates sound like an addition to quickly advance a monster. The advance by hit die should still be there as well though for backwards compatibility. I suspect you will have the quick way via templates and the long way via advancing the HD. That just makes sense to me.
... chibi tarrasque ...
I hate you.
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As far as I understand the Paizo policy regarding monster classes is "if it was LA +1 you're fine, it's the same power level as core classes now, if it's LA +2 or more, well, you're on your own."
As for "by HD advancement" - advancing via the 3.5ed method made the BAB and saves go up the wazoo, while the ability/spell DC remaining sucky due to them being tied to attributes. So in the end, the results were rather weird to say at least. Try to advance, say, an Aboleth using the HD boost method and tell me, what you see. I see a mess.
So I'm all in for having "advanced" (+1 CR), "elite" (+1 CR), "elder (+1 CR), "chibi" (-1 CR) Aboleth that actually does what it's supposed to do.
Is "chibi" even a word??
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Is "chibi" even a word??
It is in Japan.
Also, this shows up on page 3 of a Google Image search for "chibi tarrasque".
Also, slightly more on topic: I am a fan of "giant" or "advanced" templates over the old advancement by HD, because it's easier for me, the GM.
If there is no way built into the system for PCs to use(at the GM's discretion) the same templates as monsters, i am immediately very upset. A larger gap between the mechanics of a PC and a monster is a bad thing to me. It seems like a symptom of a weak game.
It really annoys me that in 4th Ed. if you fight a "monster" of your same race, especially as a monster race, they are very likely to have abilities that you could never possibly gain.
This seems to me an issue to take up with your GM. Say your dwarf PC runs into a Giant-templated dwarf (whatever the hell that would be). First, you have your PC find out how the NPC gained the template (birth defect? Ritual? God-blessing?). Then, you ask your GM, "can I do that?"
The only way this doesn't work is if the mechanical rules for NPCs and PCs are radically different, which may be the case in 4e (is it? I don't play it, so idk), but is certainly not the case in 3.5 or PRPG.
Is "chibi" even a word??
Yes, in Japanese. It means something along the lines of miniature, and the uber-cute "superdeformed" giant-headed versions of anime drawings are often called "chibi" so I imagine one would imagine a "chibi tarrasque" as a little tarrasque with a giant head and huge huge eyes with big long eyelashes.
If that hurt your brain, I apologize.
As for the original post, it looks like LA+1 monsters are gone, b/c core races have been brought up to snuff with them for the most part.
I don't know what they are going to do with templates like half-dragon, which were a little more beefy.
And yes, as another poster noted, I think the "advanced" templates and the like were meant as a quick way of advancing monsters for GMs to use, not as a means of creating PCs or adding class levels.
Well, I was a frequent user of monster advancement rules on 3.5E, and I can say that they simply didn't work. "Physical"-type monsters easily got overpowered (compared to their CRs) when you applied these rules, and "magical"-type monster easily got underpowered. A rule that forces the DM to make ad-hoc adjustments 80% of the time is simply not a useful rule, no matter how complex or elegant it is. The new rules from the PF Bestiary seems, at first glance, to be both simple and functional.
Hi, 4th edition, glad to meet you. I was unaware you didn't already exist and suck.
If there is no way built into the system for PCs to use(at the GM's discretion) the same templates as monsters, i am immediately very upset. A larger gap between the mechanics of a PC and a monster is a bad thing to me. It seems like a symptom of a weak game.
It really annoys me that in 4th Ed. if you fight a "monster" of your same race, especially as a monster race, they are very likely to have abilities that you could never possibly gain.
Err, I don't see your point. Many 3.5E templates weren't open to PCs either. Also, PCs couldn't advance by Hit Dice or gain size increases on 3.5E, so there were always things that monsters could do that PCs couldn't. The PF Bestiary monster advancement rules only allow DMs to make the things they already did - but more easily and efficiently. I doubt players will note any difference.
Hi, 4th edition, glad to meet you. I was unaware you didn't already exist and suck.
If there is no way built into the system for PCs to use(at the GM's discretion) the same templates as monsters, i am immediately very upset. A larger gap between the mechanics of a PC and a monster is a bad thing to me. It seems like a symptom of a weak game.
It really annoys me that in 4th Ed. if you fight a "monster" of your same race, especially as a monster race, they are very likely to have abilities that you could never possibly gain.
Wow, there's no need to go there Neodymium. Pathfinder does not treat Monsters the same way 4e D&D does. Even though there is no current rule that says X Monster is worth Y PC levels, that doesn't mean Monsters and PCs are incompatible. It will actually be easier to back build PC Monsters for Pathfinder then 4e because they all use the same basic system. Its just a question of finding the right balance.
Technically under 3.5 if the Monster or Template did not have a listed LA it was technically not Player Playable.
Anry, you are tempting me to post up that stat block for the Miniature Tarrasque created from the Green Ronin Advanced Bestiary. A nearly un-killable annoyance for a 10th level party.
I suspect that if you want to add extra hit dice, you can still do that. I also guess that they might have a flat +1 CR to them.
If there is no way built into the system for PCs to use(at the GM's discretion) the same templates as monsters, i am immediately very upset.
There is a rule for that. It goes by the name of "The most important rule of the game". That's the one where it says that it's your game, and you can do whatever you want.
That includes playing a giant human if your GM lets you.
A larger gap between the mechanics of a PC and a monster is a bad thing to me. It seems like a symptom of a weak game.
In a way, that has been the case in 3e, too. I have played in many campaigns where I fought half-fiends and the like, but were not allowed to play one.
Or dragons. I fought many dragons, but played only a few dragon characters.
Nothing in the game says it is forbidden to add those templates to humanoids, or player characters.
The game does assume, as it has always done, that the player characters are regular guys, i.e. members of the standard races. The game is designed around that assumption. There is some advice on what to do when you don't do things that way, of course, and I guess there will be a big book of playing monstrosities, but it is, as always, entirely up to the GM.
It really annoys me that in 4th Ed. if you fight a "monster" of your same race, especially as a monster race, they are very likely to have abilities that you could never possibly gain.
In PF, enemies aren't automatically monsters. If you play a human and fight a human, he's a humanoid NPC. He might be a monster (rape you to death, eath your flesh, wear your skin - and if you're very, very, lucky, he'll do it in that order.), but most of the time, with most GMs (I guess) he will have nothing much you couldn't use.
Maybe spells like protection from good or unholy word, because the game assumes that player characters aren't evil, and stuff like blackguards for the same reason, but not every human you fight will be giant or fiendish. Unless you fight a cult of giant fiend-men.
Creative Director
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Why do none of the previewed beasties have Hit Die advancement shown in their stat blocks? Are there no Pathfinder rules for this, or have the ranges of advancement not yet been determined?
The rules for advancing monsters are in the Bestiary; they're actually pretty extensive, and supported by even more extensive rules and guidelines for building brand new monsters. We took out the "advancement" line since we felt it was too limiting. Without it, GMs can advance monsters to whatever HD they wish and whatever size they wish.
The MM bulette, for example, has an advancement line of (10–16 HD (Huge); 17–27 HD (Gargantuan). This implies that you can't have a 28 HD bulette, or a 15 HD Gargantuan bulette, and so on. We didn't want those limitations in the Pathfinder game, and so we simply dropped the advancement line from the stat blocks.
EDIT: Rules for determining a monster's CR are a lot more detailed, and involve comparing it to average values for hp, damage, AC, saves, and save DCs for monsters of that CR score. So when you do decide to advance a bulette to 28 HD, there'll be plenty of guidelines for pinning down its CR. It won't be a simple math problem to build, since monster CRs are a LOT more complicated than that. Assigning a CR score to a monster is as much an art as it is math.
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Creative Director
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Does the bestiary include any rules for racial substitution levels? That's something I'd like to see.
-Skeld
Nope.
The sole purpose for the Bestiary is to provide monsters for use as monsters, be they friend or foe. Something like racial substitution levels, or other player focused elements, would belong in a different book entirely.
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Creative Director
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Nope. ... Something like racial substitution levels, or other player focused elements, would belong in a different book entirely.Fair enough. Have you guys talked about including this kind of information elsewhere? Perhaps a "Savage Species" type of book down the road?
-Skeld
A "Savage Species" type book would probably be a good idea... but it's got to fight for space with things like a Psionics book and an Epic Level book and other books we're aching to do. So it's not going to be something that shows up soon.
*cackles a little madly* I'm so glad the idea of a chibi tarrasque has spoiled so many minds in this thread. lol
<.< >.> smurf
A "Savage Species" type book would probably be a good idea... but it's got to fight for space with things like a Psionics book and an Epic Level book and other books we're aching to do. So it's not going to be something that shows up soon.Nope. ... Something like racial substitution levels, or other player focused elements, would belong in a different book entirely.Fair enough. Have you guys talked about including this kind of information elsewhere? Perhaps a "Savage Species" type of book down the road?
-Skeld
See...this is what I wanted to hear. The Bestiary is exactly that, a bestiary...not a book of alternate races. And your not saying that a book of alternate monster races is a bad idea...just one thats got competition for the writing/printing slot.
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I've got players in my group that want to play non-human creatures.
I went with the suggestion in the Players' Guide for the Council of Thieves, and applied a 500 xp penalty at 1st level.
Then I had a player request a duergar character. In 3.5 it was a +1 ECL, but I thought it was a little more powerful than a tiefling, so I applied a 500 xp penalty at 1st level, and a further 500 xp penalty at 2nd level.
We're only one session into Pathfinder, but the xp penalties seem to be going well so far.