With three bestiaries and counting, what sort of fun monsters do you think should be included in this game and how should they be used?
Goblin Squad Member
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Hopefully not this cheeky little monkey with the staff.
Goblins. Lots of Goblins!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd love to see some classic D&D monsters like the Gelatinous cube (and other jellies/puddings), stirges, aberrations like carrion crawlers, magical beasts like the owlbear. You know, an old school thing :)
I'd also like to see the thematic, template creatures like beholders, githyanki, sahuagin, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mimics, and not the predictable, easily recognizable chest that you see coming a mile off. I would love for common items that regularly seen in dungeons (tables, chairs and yes maybe occasionally chests, but not 100% of the time chests), and once in a blue moon the items that are often ignored, grabs you.
I'm sick of MMOs and RPGs in general displaying mimics as distinct chests with visible teeth hopping around in plain sight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I haven't played Kingmaker, but I have some friends running a Kingmaker campaign, and from what they tell me, I'd expect kobolds, trolls, wolves (and worgs), and hill giants. Kingmaker takes place in the same place roughly, and you probably shouldn't see monster types that are native to other parts of Golarion (like no gnolls).
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I hope they do with "Beasties" is avoid having the same beasts appear over and over at different power levels. Nothing has ever been so disappointing to me in an MMO as zoning into the Plane of Justice(?) and seeing level 52 rats. LOTRO has a really bad habit of putting boars in every zone at every level. This goes a long way towards destroying the feeling that you're actually advancing and getting more powerful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree Nihimon & Alexander. Indiscriminate placement of monsters is just deadly for any sense of immersion or atmosphere. Encountering an outsider should be a big deal, and feel out of the ordinary. And I would much rather the variety of monsters be geographic rather than level based--level 52 rats indeed!
I wud like to see (and be playabull)
Goblins, the best beast fight is in my camp pane is when the lil goblins came and gath the party a run for its gold but the party wun in the end.
Teafling, when i play a teafling i feal like i hath cool power and thit i hath over cum the evil in me and now i am good.
whardog i now wut you are finking that is on dith rent then a wharwolf
well 3 big changes are 1 WHARDOGS ARE GOOD 2 Smoler so ownly size M
3 if you are not in cun chrowl of the dog in you and it is a pit bull you
will help the cid giting killed or take penelteas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Besides the goblins I'd love to see some cockatrices and mimics in the game!
They're some of my favorite monsters.
Especially the mimics, it's always quite startling when you're trying to loot a treasure chest and it suddenly attacks you!
Or giant chickens! You gotta have giant chickens!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Given the location, we're safe to assume Goblins, Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Orcs, Ogres, Hill Giants, plus the Standard Player Races.
Given the location of the World Would relative to the Crusader's Road, half-Fiends and Tieflings as well. Maybe even mercenary bands of exotic humanoids who got lost or decided that they really weren't being paid enough to go risk their lives against Demons.
Animals are likely to be Rabbits, Goats, Deer, Boar, Cattle, Horses, Dire Beasties and the like. Likely a blend of plains-dwelling, swamp dwelling and forest-dwelling Animals, given the nature of the terrain of this region.
Magical Creatures can be just about anything but desert, tropical or arctic dwellers.
Dragons ... likely Red, Green, Black, Silver, Gold and maybe Brass or Copper.
I second the motion that Outsiders be rare and extremely dangerous. Anything that can slip past the World-Wound is going to be at the very least abnormally cunning, even for a Demon, let alone powerful to slip the Wards.
Also, a broad variety of people come to the Worldwound to fight the Demons. They could bring a variety of minions, pets, mounts and war-beasts with them, allowing the game to 'slip in' some strange critters into the mix.
And given that, if a Hex isn't used regularly, the monsters have the capacity to litterally breed themselves into an army, a handful of Gnolls or Chimera escaping into the wilderness and avoiding the players could come back and bite us, hard when we find a new Hex, and it's been turned into a literal fortress of highly-skilled Gnolls looking to raid our farmlands for food and slaves (is there even a difference in their language?) and thus forming new content for the Players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I want to see all of them; there isn't a reason not to. I think we can safely assume that as the popularity of the game expands, so will the explorable area. This will allow for all manner of locations for monsters to pop up.
To begin with, I'd like to see a wide variety of the lower levelled monsters so we don't get bored killing the same things over and over again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agree rats should be rats, not statistical dragons in rat costume/guise.
If you see some type of monster it should signify something about it's properties for eg that is not frequent, not trivial in any context if for eg a beholder lvl20 monster; and often a "run away" choice? At the other end of the power/deadly range? In between combat that could go wrong if not careful would be welcome too.
Chief Technical Officer
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Beholders are actually copyrighted by Wizards, not part of the SRD. So they're out. Githyanki may be as well, I'm not certain on them.
Both of those are indeed Wizards of the Coast IP, are not in the SRD, and are unavailable to both the Pathfinder RPG and Pathfinder Online.
Note also that because Pathfinder Online does not use the OGL, even the presence in Wizards' SRD is by itself not an indicator of whether we can use something or not.
I don't exactly have a transcription, but I happened to ask about this at the con panel.
Basically, the big priority was "monsters we can base other monsters on". They told us the story of the yeth hound, which they designed a model of based off the wolf/goblin dog model. Of course, the yeth hound needs to be able to fly and such, so it won't be in the game for a while. Keep your eyes open (and your ears shut), though.
Personally, I'd love it if there was just a glitchy, poorly-animated yeth hound glitching and spazzing through the air, sliding up and down to instantly kill the lag-struck players.
But that's just me.
Back on-topic, they mentioned trolls as perhaps being up next, and also made some note of bugbears. Earlier, they'd expressed positivity towards animals as well. They said aberrations would likely be the last on the list, and referenced demons (due to the nearby Worldwound). I'll bet undead like ghouls and zombies will also be high on the list, since almost all of them are humanoid.
Humans and skeletons are easy, as are canines, thanks to the identical animations. Otyughs and beholders Watchers, on the other hand, will take a while. There was some eagerness for giant spiders among Goblinworks (though not from Ryan or myself!), though they aren't exactly easy to animate. Meanwhile, kobolds were snubbed as being too different from goblins to come anytime soon. F**$ this game, I'm going back to Runescape.
Now, here's my suggestion for Goblinworks for the long term. Here's where you Goblinworks employees can listen closely and consider the opinions of this esteemed keystone of the community.
If we do get spiders—heavens forbid, right?—I think they should be done right. It might pay off to build bugbears with a certain repurposable model, as their general build isn't so different from that of one of my very favorite hated monsters, the tricksy, tricksy ettercap.
See, here's the thing spiders and bugbears and ettercaps all have in common: They're sneaky. Spiders are scariest when you don't see them coming. Bugbears are bugeymen. And ettercaps are dirty cowards.
So, eventually stealth mechanics for AI are gonna be released, right? Consider releasing one or two of the three shortly thereafter to show 'em off.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The lore of the River Kingdoms area is rich with monsters...and some are TOUGH!
The waters near Mosswater are infested with merrow and are merciless attackers, so far successfully preventing anyone from reestablishing the ruins as a habitable settlement.
Loric Fells is fairly close and has Mohrgs, scrags, river trolls, and other monstrous creatures.
The forests os the Echo Wood will have goblins, wargs, morghs, scrags, shambling mounds, loads of spiders, all sorts of aquatic creatures.
Within the River Kingdoms are the areas of Lambreth, Protectorate of the Black Marquis and Tymon (a lady named Lisa wrote about Tymon in the Guide to the River Kingdoms...she posts here) so you could expect to see people and monsters from all those areas. Ustalav and Numeria will certainly be sending parties to investigate things in the Echo Wood, and Razmir already has.
I would love to see Illithids in the game but i know they are IP for wizards so it won't happen
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I hope they do with "Beasties" is avoid having the same beasts appear over and over at different power levels. Nothing has ever been so disappointing to me in an MMO as zoning into the Plane of Justice(?) and seeing level 52 rats. LOTRO has a really bad habit of putting boars in every zone at every level. This goes a long way towards destroying the feeling that you're actually advancing and getting more powerful.
WoW has boars of every variety at every level. Lee mentioned applying a skin to an existing frame is "low hanging fruit" which is great when using the fruit for character creation, but seeing a different color boar in every zone is not very imaginative.
There is so much source material there should be little monotonous repetition, but some similarities are expected. Extremely unusual creatures (an alboleth comes to mind) will be hard and expensive to program and may never see the light of day, but most humanoids share a basic structure and as long as their default package of attacks, defenses, an AI are different they should feel like different encounters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The lore of the River Kingdoms area is rich with monsters...and some are TOUGH!
The waters near Mosswater are infested with merrow and are merciless attackers, so far successfully preventing anyone from reestablishing the ruins as a habitable settlement.
Loric Fells is fairly close and has Mohrgs, scrags, river trolls, and other monstrous creatures.
The forests os the Echo Wood will have goblins, wargs, morghs, scrags, shambling mounds, loads of spiders, all sorts of aquatic creatures.
Within the River Kingdoms are the areas of Lambreth, Protectorate of the Black Marquis and Tymon (a lady named Lisa wrote about Tymon in the Guide to the River Kingdoms...she posts here) so you could expect to see people and monsters from all those areas. Ustalav and Numeria will certainly be sending parties to investigate things in the Echo Wood, and Razmir already has.
Wooo! Razmir!
Razmiran is probably one of my favorite parts about the Lake Encarthan region, and I can't wait for an AP around toppling Thronestep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Aside from actual monsters, I'd love to see game animals (rabbits, deer, etc.). They wouldn't initally be hostile but rather tend to flee from PCs and could be hunted for resources (meat, leather, etc.). And they would imho greatly enrich the somewhat empty landscape. You could even have them reproduce in escalation-type cycles, where over-hunting greatly reduces their availability while seldomly visited hexes teem with wildlife.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I hope they do with "Beasties" is avoid having the same beasts appear over and over at different power levels. Nothing has ever been so disappointing to me in an MMO as zoning into the Plane of Justice(?) and seeing level 52 rats. LOTRO has a really bad habit of putting boars in every zone at every level. This goes a long way towards destroying the feeling that you're actually advancing and getting more powerful.
Funniest part of entering the Burning Crusades content in WoW: Oh, these are "hell" boars...
Ugh. I swear you barrowed that joke from someone else.