There are 36 named characters here -- 30 NPCs plus the six Paizo staff PCs.* There are also 50 or so generic low-level mooks -- average Puddles thug, average Hellknight, and so forth.
34 of the 36 are between 3rd and 9th level. One NPC is 10th level and Shenshen, James Jacob's PC, is 12th level.
And... that's it. Everyone else is between 3rd and 9th level.
I have to say, this is a little annoying. Three reasons.
1) It's not that hard to whip up a 4th level character on my own. A 14th level character: that's harder. Working out the feat chains for a fighter, the spells for a wizard, and the magic items for anyone -- it gets pretty time consuming. I don't require a book full of high level NPCs, but I would have liked at least a few.
2) If I'm running a campaign with 15th level PCs -- which, you know, people do; there are Adventure Paths for them and everything -- then most of these NPCs are pretty useless. Yes, the mammoth boy could still be a touching side scenario, the Hermean might still try to recruit a PC, yadda yadda. But for the most part, these NPCs just won't be meaningful to high level PCs, either as antagonists or allies.
Look, I have no problem with Pathfinder stopping at 20th level. Personally I think the game stops being fun a few levels before that (YMMV), and I generally start encouraging PCs to retire somewhere between 12th and 16th level.
That said, people DO play higher level campaigns, and the levels between 11 and 20 make up *half the game*. The implicit message of this product is that -- except for the remarkable Shenshen -- this whole half of the game does not exist. Yes, that's probably not what was intended, but it's how it comes across.
3) It's not what the book says it is. It says it's a book full of NPCs for your campaign. It doesn't say it's a book full of low-to-mid- level NPCs for your low-to-mid-level campaign.
The PCs in my current campaign are ~4th level, so I'm no more than mildly annoyed by this. However, if I were running a campaign with 12th level PCs -- a thing I've done in the past, and may do again -- I'd be legitimately ticked. It's like buying a box of "assorted chocolates" and finding it's a mix of peanut squares and macaroons. This is tolerable if you like peanut squares, but still not exactly truth in advertising.
-- I'm trying to puzzle out why Paizo would do this. My tentative guess is that it's because Golarion defaults to a relatively low-level setting, where NPCs over 10th level are rare. I truly don't have a problem with this; as noted, I personally prefer low to mid level play, and my campaigns aren't topheavy with lots of archmages and epic level NPCs.
That said, I do occasionally need a high level NPC -- and, as noted above, when I need one I really need it. And not marking the box clearly is just irritating. We, the buyers, should not be required to make the leap "oh, Golarion is mostly low to mid level, so this Golarion-compatible product will be *entirely* low to mid level NPCs".
-- For the record, there were things I liked about this product. But the level thing was a serious buzzkill.
Doug M.
*There are also 50 or so generic low-level mooks -- average Puddles thug, average Hellknight, and so forth. Got no problem with those, they're mooks, they're supposed to be low-level.
Creative Director
