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So I have my PDF of The Asylum Stone, and after some busy days I got the oppertunity to start reading it.
Without revealing anything about the book, I can say that I got to the first "raid" of the module - the first location-based series of encounters , like a dynamic dungeon. Anyway, as I read through it, I am astonished to see that not a single one of the monsters within it are from the first bestiary (There was an NPC from a monstrous race from the first bestiary, but that's about it). This is only part of an increasing tendancy in the APs to use these so called "non core" monsters.
Now, I am not complaining here or anything. Paizo "has a right" to use any of it's published stuff in the APs, and I suppose the new monsters help the APs be more fresh and diverse... but I have to wonder.
Paizo obviously know what they are doing, so I am going to just assume using all those "non core" monsters WAS a smart, justified descion, even though they make the life of some customers harder. I myself am going to get the PDF of bestiary 2 because I grow frustrated of not having detailed descriptions (and awesome pictures!) of the monsters in the adventures I buy. Some people may not even be awere of the SRD, and therefore might think that they don't have all the books they need for the product they bought and feel cheated. Is this disadvantage really negated by the advantages of using "non core" monsters?
What's the opinoins of other people around the massage boards? Are you happy wiyh all the bestiary 2 & 3 monsters hanging around with increasing numbers?
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Frankly, I'm glad they're using the Bestiary 2 and 3 more, as long as the choice of monsters makes sense for the adventure. It's logical too: after a while, you're tired of using the same monsters over and over again, so the two other bestiaries bring a welcome change. Not to mention that it often makes more sense to use a given monster from B2/B3 rather than a replacement from B1: these bestiaries are really good, and some monsters you'll find there don't have an equivalent in what you call "Core" Bestiary (they are core too, by the way).
Besides, the opposite argument also stands: why publish two additional bestiaries if you don't use them in your adventures? I certainly would grow very frustrated to see these monsters only used in homebrew.
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Variety = spice of life.
Lol is this serious? Of course its better to use more variety of monsters, overusing the bestiary 1 because some people don't want to buy the second and third would become extremly boring and repeative after a while...
Considering that The Asylum Stone is set in Kaer Maga, where normal everyday orcs and undead and what-have-you are upstanding citizens and pillars of the community, I think it's absolutely fitting to have more "out there" monsters to fight, in that particular module at any rate.
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Basically, I think it kind of defeats the purpose of having bestiaries 2 and 3 if they don't use them in AP's/similar books. Those bestiaries are core books, after all, even if they are not the "original" bestiary.
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Some people may not even be awere of the SRD, and therefore might think that they don't have all the books they need for the product they bought and feel cheated.
Right on the title page of the AP, it says:
"This product makes use of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3, Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide, and Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Combat. These rules can be found online for free as part of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document at paizo.com/prd." (Emphasis mine.)
Some people may not even be awere of the SRD, and therefore might think that they don't have all the books they need for the product they bought and feel cheated.
Right on the title page of the AP, it says:
"This product makes use of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3, Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide, and Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Combat. These rules can be found online for free as part of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document at paizo.com/prd." (Emphasis mine.)
But how many people do you think read the pre-adventure information? Every other GM I know in person admits to skipping it all (They even skip the word from the writers at the beginning of each book, which I consider to be pretty interesting and worth the read most of the time). And only one knew of the SRD before I told them about it.
I'm a monster junkie, so I always buy any and all Bestiaries.
Doesn't bother me at all.
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But how many people do you think read the pre-adventure information? Every other GM I know in person admits to skipping it all (They even skip the word from the writers at the beginning of each book, which I consider to be pretty interesting and worth the read most of the time). And only one knew of the SRD before I told them about it.
It's in literally every single Pathfinder book published by Paizo. You only have to notice it once. I guess I feel like Paizo has met a standard of disclosure sufficient for most reasonable people.
The number of customers who:
1) puchase and run APs, but
2) don't have and dont' want to get the later Bestiaries,
3) aren't aware of the multiple online sources where all of the information is available for free,
4) never go to the paizo website to find out what to do, and
5) have no friends who can tell them
must be vanishingly small if not nonexistent, and I'm not sure I'd consider the act of including Bestiary 2 and 3 monsters in their products a "failure" to serve this notional audience on the part of Paizo.
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Basically, I think it kind of defeats the purpose of having bestiaries 2 and 3 if they don't use them in AP's/similar books. Those bestiaries are core books, after all, even if they are not the "original" bestiary.
then again, having multiple monster books kinda defeats the purpose of the first monster book, that should technicly provide the GM all that he needs to run an adventure.
I am not saying the newer bestiarys shouldn't be put to use... but I am saying that their dominant presecne in the latest two Shatterd Star AP modules had been kinda bad, they should be more "sprinkles of awesome" than the actual main body of monsters. I think.
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then again, having multiple monster books kinda defeats the purpose of the first monster book, that should technicly provide the GM all that he needs to run an adventure.
I'm not aware that this was ever stated as the purpose of the first Bestiary.
"Everything you need to play the game" is not equivalent to "Everything you need to run every adventure that we publish."
The thing is, bestiaries can only be so big. With Bestiary 1 they had to place in all the classic and popular monsters, but even then things had to be left out. There are plenty of types of campaigns that would be hard-pressed to rely only on Bestiary 1.
For instance, anything:
That isn't pure European-esq fantasy
Fey related plots (Bestiary 1 has some fey, but the variety was limited)
Anything dealing with outsiders not of the Devil/Demon variety
One thing I like about the Bestiaries is that they seem to be try to focus on filling "holes" in monster coverage. Bestiary 2 was very much about filling out the major outsider alignments and balancing other groups such as Fey that needed more love. Bestiary 3 was very much about fleshing out the minor fiend groups as well as providing a tons of monsters suitable for a Asian fantasy campaign (to support Jade Regent). I think that approach overall creates a much stronger product and a lot of the time helps prevent cheesy monsters designed soley to take up page space.
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I'm 100% for Paizo using all of their published material rather than doing what WoTC did, ignoring the majority of their published books.
Yeah, I know there's holdouts who want adventures to use only "core" material (as if there will ever be agreement on what "core" means), but frankly I think they're misguided about what the purpose of Paizo is.
Sure, Paizo would love for every single person to be happy with every single adventure, but even more, they would love for every single person to purchase everything they publish :)
Having modules and adventure paths use material from all the books directly supports their business and encourages people to buy all the books, not just the select few they 'need'.
And frankly, if you're running multiple modules and adventure paths, you're spending way more on those than you'd be spending picking up B2 and B3 ... so I don't really see what the big deal is.
Anyways, I just wanted to chime in and say that I think they're Doing It Right.
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I love the variety, but I wish they'd just put the monster stats in the light weight AP volumes.
I have to do a lot of walking to get to my games club, and my back is starting to hurt from lugging a f@%@ing library around on it.
One netbook/tablet/smartphone and you're golden, no more aches.
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But how many people do you think read the pre-adventure information? Every other GM I know in person admits to skipping it all (They even skip the word from the writers at the beginning of each book, which I consider to be pretty interesting and worth the read most of the time). And only one knew of the SRD before I told them about it.
If a person can't be bothered to read the information we provide for them, I don't know what more we can do about it, other than adding extra work for the staff to provide even easier references... that people are likely to ignore.
I understand that most people are inclined to skip a videogame's manual and just jump into gameplay... but there's a reason we put that explanatory information in the front of the book, before the rest of the game content.
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They're online for free.
I'd rather have new monsters that I can look up online than be using the same book's monsters for a decade, definitely.
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I'm 100% for Paizo using all of their published material rather than doing what WoTC did, ignoring the majority of their published books.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS 1000% THIS
I am in favor of using all of the available bestiaries as long as the monster placed makes sense. Between the 10$ pdf and the prd (and d20pfsrd) there is no reason to not do it, sure having the actual physical books is nice but not nessecery.
What my issue with using monsters from all bestiaries is that we still don't have the pawns from any bestiary other than the 1st.