Does anyone know if Paizo plans to produce a manual with all the characters from their Pathfinder tales stated up? Characters like Kyril, Trilaina, Gunner and Denna, Chaplain, Keren Rhinn, Zae, Jendara, Torius Vin, and Mistress Philomela?
I believe the short answer was "no" but fans were encouraged to develop their own idea of stats for the book characters.
It is fun to see people guess at my characters' classes and stats, but I agree with James Sutter that published stats are too static. Even just between the short story and their (first) forthcoming novel, Zae and Keren develop significantly. Also, I think it would be unfortunate for readers to get lost in fact-checking the math and forget to enjoy the story.
+1 to that!
I don't think I'll ever want to publicize stats for my characters for a few reasons:
(1) It IS too static. Some of them level up, some of them change classes, some of them fall into apostasy and lose class abilities, some (okay, one) of them make amends and regain class abilities, etc.
(2) Quite often I don't even know what their stats are. I usually don't bother working out anything beyond class and level (and spell lists for the casters), especially if that particular character isn't going to be doing a lot of on-screen fighting in the story.
(3) Published stats may not fit with the balance of a particular campaign. For example, Isiem at the time of Nightblade is more or less supposed to be a mid-level wizard. He's sufficiently skilled that you might have heard of him within a local area and might want to recruit him for certain tasks, but not powerful enough to be widely famous or considered a major player in his region.
But what counts as "mid-level" in any given home campaign? What's the appropriate level of statistical power to fill that role? It depends on your game. What counts as "mid-level, locally known, nowhere near Phenomenal Cosmic Power" to me might not be anything close to what it is for your game. The statted version of the character might be a total nobody or a "hey, why isn't this guy ruling the world?" gamebreaker in your campaign.
Leaving that up to the individual GM is the better way to go, IMO.
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While I share James' and Liane's and Gabrielle's feelings on this matter, what I would love to see is a book of Pathfinder Tales character stats--several versions for each character, perhaps--created by the readers who are also gamers.
With the caveat, of course, that these are versions of the characters, and you can pick and choose from them for your own game.
I once stated up Varian and Radovan post King of Chaos.
Varian was something like
LG male old half-elf fighter 5/sorcerer 8/arcane savant 3/monk (weapon adept) 2
and Radovan
CG male tiefling rogue 12/brawler 6.
He's officially old for a half-elf, but a certain event near the end of Master of Devils puts an asterisk beside his age category.
yeah he's in his 90's i believe which is old for a half-elf. I figured 18 18 cl was just about right for both of them since they did survive the worldwound. Varian is a pure sorcerer with the arcane (sage) bloodline. Brawler fit radovan pretty well since post-master of devils he doesn't have access to any ki abilities.
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I actually would like to see such a book...but without the stats. Just some art and write up about history, personality, items of note, tactics, etc. Pure fluff.
One for the villains as well.
Stating characters from the novels I think was a mistake that the FR novels did...but I enjoyed the books because it also had the above.
Now THAT is something I'd love to see.
Although, as usual, my motives are mainly selfish: it would make my life a lot easier when figuring out which characters to name-drop in what contexts, or which authors to hassle if I wanted to ask about having one of their characters appear in a cameo role or collaborative project. :)
(Of course, there's no reason that information couldn't just be on a wiki page, other than that I'm too lazy to put it there myself.)
Yeah but I am a book lover. My Dad had a ton of books growing up in the house (still does). Having books on the shelves and being able to open it up and read just seems nice to me.
Though I doubt such a book would be worth it...without the statblocks. Make me sad a little that people need the numbers.
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Stat blocks wouldn't bother me at all if they were suggestions, perhaps multiple suggestions, on how to interpret a character. Wouldn't it be cool if such character entries came with one background but two, three, or even four rules interpretations, perhaps created by readers of the books rather than an official developer?
But I acknowledge that there are those who want one official answer rather than several choices. I'm just more with John and Liane.
Variant stat blocks would be nice. It give the numbers people something....and since it is fan created it is not officially from the author so people won't be calling out authors on it.
Though your characters, Mr Gross, would give me nightmares to try to stat out. It seems every book they are changing classes...I am wondering which of them will be picking one of Occult Adventures classes ;). Don't get me wrong it works well in the novels...but game wise...not so much.
I think it would be fun to do character histories, and I have no problem with stats, as I have them already, but it does open up the barn door for argument. I suppose you could ask the question if you would like to have other characters of fiction put out that way. John Carter of Mars? Tarzan? Holmes and Watson? The only problem I could foresee is that readers will read the characters before they read the fiction, and frankly, it's kind of a spoiler if you know what makes someone tick before it's revealed in the story.
They did it in 2E: Forgotten Realms: FR7 Hall of Heroes, Villains Lorebook, and for Ravenloft Champions of the Mists. And i liked it. Though of course those stats could often be imporved a lot and not necesarrily only from an optimization standpoint.
Paul Kemp had an article in Dragon mag showing stats for Erevis Cale, though I like the improved stats by Tom Costa posted in this thread way better, and Paul Kemp who chimed in in the thread did like them too.
But then the protagonists of the novels were written into the history of the campaign setting. Paizo rarely mentions them in the settting products if at all, keeping the fiction separate from the RPG history canon.
Maybe you should all run a Stat up my characters contest like Dave Gross did . Maybe compile the best 3 entries into a netbook or special edition of Wayfinder ?
Actually I pretty sure I have seen some of them stated up back in the day for various games. (I do remember Conan stats and Fafhad and the Grey Mouser stats back in 1st ed D&D days)
But I get what you said about the potential of spoiling for those who come late...but again I can also see it leading to some people to want to read the novels also.
They retrain a LOT. :)
Some do, some don't. ;)
Mine are generally straight powergamer builds, other than Isiem, who made a couple of terrible career decisions in his life. They tend to advance in pretty linear fashion over time.
I think I only have a couple who even did cross-class level dips (hint: they're the rogue types). I'm not super inventive, build-wise.