Existing monster distributions

[Murph.]

Perhaps you're curious, as I was, how the existing critters break down by type.

Short answer: if you're looking for an underpopulated niche in CR 1 - 4, think about dragons and oozes. Or, if you think popularity means it's a good bet, try animals, magical beasts, and outsiders.

Numbers are based on a download of the d20PFSRD's Monster DB -- note that some monsters end up double (or triple) counted if they appear in multiple sources, such as an AP and Tome of Horrors Complete and a Bestiary.

full #s by CR and type:

1.0
aberration 11
animal 36
construct 3
dragon 1
fey 16
humanoid 17
magical beast 22
monstrous humanoid 8
ooze 5
outsider 16
plant 6
undead 14
vermin 16

2.0
aberration 13
animal 41
construct 10
dragon 10
fey 13
humanoid 28
magical beast 33
monstrous humanoid 17
ooze 5
outsider 36
plant 14
undead 20
vermin 21

3.0
aberration 17
animal 34
construct 12
dragon 7
fey 18
humanoid 27
magical beast 35
monstrous humanoid 22
ooze 8
outsider 40
plant 18
undead 19
vermin 22

4.0
aberration 18
animal 22
construct 14
dragon 5
fey 14
humanoid 17
magical beast 34
monstrous humanoid 18
ooze 6
outsider 28
plant 22
undead 22
vermin 17

(I'll note that I can also slice the list by environment, but I'll just keep that to myself for now... :p )

[Ariax]

I don't know how reliable this source is, but when I filtered the Bestiary database on http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ for Urban creatures, the resulting list was astonishingly small.

So I'm glad Paizo designed Round 2 to ameliorate that deficiency.

[Jester David]

Ooo only one CR 1 dragon. A niche!

[Snorter]

It's fair to say, oozes are under-represented as a whole.

There's not much design space available, for a grouping of creatures that all look like snot.

An urban ooze would probably be deliberately created, an alchemical experiment gone wrong, or the by-product of the citizens' waste, lurking around the sewers.

"I'm not hauling this dangerous goo to the incinerator. I'll just flush it down the bog. What's the worst that could happen?"

[Jacob Trier]

Snorter wrote:

It's fair to say, oozes are under-represented as a whole.

There's not much design space available, for a grouping of creatures that all look like snot.

An urban ooze would probably be deliberately created, an alchemical experiment gone wrong, or the by-product of the citizens' waste, lurking around the sewers.

"I'm not hauling this dangerous goo to the incinerator. I'll just flush it down the bog. What's the worst that could happen?"

An urban ooze created by strange alchemical byproducts, you say - that sounds strangely familiar

[frank gori]

Yeah oozes are so last year...

[Thomas LeBlanc]

Jacob Trier wrote:

Snorter wrote:

It's fair to say, oozes are under-represented as a whole.

There's not much design space available, for a grouping of creatures that all look like snot.

An urban ooze would probably be deliberately created, an alchemical experiment gone wrong, or the by-product of the citizens' waste, lurking around the sewers.

"I'm not hauling this dangerous goo to the incinerator. I'll just flush it down the bog. What's the worst that could happen?"

An urban ooze created by strange alchemical byproducts, you say - that sounds strangely familiar

That's not a carniverous blob...

[Cthulhudrew]

Heh, heh.

I just thought of an ooze that hasn't been done before (to my knowledge), albeit possibly a joke ooze.

[Donald Robinson]

I will encourage people, that just because there are niches that could be exploited, don't try to fill them in just for the sake of covering that niche. If you have an amazing idea for a creature type that is already flooding your CR range, go ahead nad make that creature. If it is an amazing idea, no reason to scrap it for another that isn't quite as good, but fills a small niche.

Make the best monster you can under the round rules!

[Snorter]

Cthulhudrew wrote:

Heh, heh.

I just thought of an ooze that hasn't been done before (to my knowledge), albeit possibly a joke ooze.

One with a sleep pheromone attack;

The YouSnoozeYouLoozeOoze.

[Nickolas Floyd]

Cthulhudrew wrote:

I just thought of an ooze that hasn't been done before (to my knowledge), albeit possibly a joke ooze.

Yeah, I think a "privy ooze" is not a good idea. And would your adventure be "The Night of the Living Nightsoil?" I'll leave that one on the shelf.

[Adam Daigle]

Donald Robinson wrote:

I will encourage people, that just because there are niches that could be exploited, don't try to fill them in just for the sake of covering that niche. If you have an amazing idea for a creature type that is already flooding your CR range, go ahead nad make that creature. If it is an amazing idea, no reason to scrap it for another that isn't quite as good, but fills a small niche.

Make the best monster you can under the round rules!

I think this is very sound advice.

[Frumple]

While Murph's list is interesting, I don't think it is very useful for R2. After all, the list includes all environments and the top 32 need to make an urban environment creature.

Now if the distribution was just urban creatures...

[Oceanshieldwolf]

I disagree. You can put a creature from any of those Types into an urban environment.

[Mikko Kallio]

Oceanshieldwolf wrote:

I disagree. You can put a creature from any of those Types into an urban environment.

Very true. People should not limit their creativity by thinking that one creature type is better than another for whatever reason.

[Andrew Marlowe]

Mikko Kallio wrote:

Very true. People should not limit their creativity by thinking that one creature type is better than another for whatever reason.

Unless that reason is "Oh I WANNA...WANNA...WANNA make one of these!"

:D

Seriously though. The list is as useful as you need it to be.

I was pretty sure of my creature type before I looked at the list and while my mind didn't change I did get some other ideas. Which is good because I can feel I'll need to work on practicing more monster design.

[james knowles]

Let's see, my 1st 3 concepts: invalidated by the terrain restriction.
my next - pick a number - concepts: invalidated by the low CR restriction.

I don't play at low levels, and to me urban monsters have been done to death (they're called evil npcs), I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this low-level urban cr...restrictions.

I realize that that's kind of the point of the restrictions, but knowing the reasons behind them and actually agreeing with those reasons are sometimes two different things. Hopefully I can force myself to "get with the program" in the next day or two, just in case I do make it this year.

[Murph.]

Andrew Marlowe wrote:

Mikko Kallio wrote:

Very true. People should not limit their creativity by thinking that one creature type is better than another for whatever reason.

Unless that reason is "Oh I WANNA...WANNA...WANNA make one of these!"

:D

Seriously though. The list is as useful as you need it to be.

And that's the spirit in which I was offering it up. Interestingness, not imperative.

[nikou]

I found the list helpful, as I'd had a perfect monster created from months ago... and it decidedly does NOT work in an urban environment. It was the right CR (well, kind of), and very cool and creepy, but very much not urban-izable. (CE small aberration that eats people... don't think it would work in an urban environment, or rather, the urban environment wouldn't last very long, lol)

So I had to start completely from scratch, and had some ideas running around. The list gave me stuff to look into, which led to me actually formulating an idea. Basically: it got me looking at creature types I wouldn't have before.

So, long winded way of saying: thanks for the inspiration. I'll share my monster after the 32 are announced, just on the very minute chance I might actually make it...

[Effie Schwartz-Craighill]

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing some oozes this year :)

[Brian L Clark]

... with peanut butter.

[FireHawk]

I'm just going to utter this out loud, but I think this thread at the time it was posted was a disservice to the contest as it appears to have altered creativity of the writers and influenced the direction of the entries.

[Sean K Reynolds]

I disagree.

[PathlessBeth]

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

I disagree.

I agree with Sean's disagreement. I don't know what his reasoning is, but here is mine:

All information in this thread was already publicly available to everyone, including professional game designers. If knowledge of what has been done before (which is freely available) hurts your creativity (which I don't think it should, but that's beside the point), ignore it. If you can't ignore it, and if it hurts your creativity, you won't do very well as a designer, because the information that supposedly hurts your creativity is out there, and isn't going away.

So no, I do not think this thread was at all harmful to this round.