Hello,
Has Paizo ever considered 'enhancing' thier fiction by adding stat blocks at the end of books for particular characters, specific items etc?
Shadowrun novels do this for some books and I think it's a real cool idea.
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its been brought up, but sometimes fiction characters aren't synonomous with what a character of the appropriate level can do.
As for items and stuff... they usually appear in later books (Riffle scrolls and Radovan got stated up in a kobald quarterly, Some of the abilities of some of the web fiction were added to occult adventures, and items from web fictions were added to ultimate equipment to name some off the top of my head)
James Sutter has mentioned that stating characters from fiction is not something he likes to do, as it pigeon-holes the abilities of the characters. Take a look at the results of the Dave Gross stat up my charceters contest to see how many ways the same character can be stated from the same events.
Items that were created for fiction have definitely been statted. Some of the monsters have too. I think that's fun, and personally I'm always delighted when something I made up for a story finds its way into the official game rules. But those have gone in the appropriate rule books, not in the novels, and that strikes me as a wise choice. :)
I'm on record (several times!) as being reticent to post my characters' stats (in part because it's nice to have wiggle room to secretly retcon things behind the scenes if that works better for future stories), but I've posted some of their classes, levels, and occasional build notes here and there.
Items that were created for fiction have definitely been statted. Some of the monsters have too. I think that's fun, and personally I'm always delighted when something I made up for a story finds its way into the official game rules. But those have gone in the appropriate rule books, not in the novels, and that strikes me as a wise choice. :)
I'm on record (several times!) as being reticent to post my characters' stats (in part because it's nice to have wiggle room to secretly retcon things behind the scenes if that works better for future stories), but I've posted some of their classes, levels, and occasional build notes here and there.
Have you ever dropped any notes or hints about Sir Kelland and Bitharn as if they were Pathfinder characters?
No, because they were built in a different system (that was a homebrew campaign we ran for the better part of a decade), but they'd be easy enough to translate to PF stats. Paladin of Sarenrae and archery-focused ranger, respectively. :)
Thanks Laine! Can I ask one more? Is the Thorn closer to a witch or a closer to a druid? :P
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Whichever you'd prefer!
It's harder to translate magic-users across systems than martials. Almost all game rules make some effort to connect their combat mechanics to real-world combat (although, of course, the degree to which a game system attempts to emulate reality can vary widely), but magic is magic. It's got no tether to reality and is often deliberately saddled with rules and restrictions that are unique to that fictive world.
There's no direct analogue to the Thorns in Pathfinder, but if I wanted to build one mechanically, I'd probably use a sorcerer or arcanist base and try to fill in the gaps with bloodline powers. You'd have to stat out a fair number of new/unique spells and bloodline powers, and then you'd have to add a gloss that they were divinely granted powers and not arcane, but I think that would get you the closest, stats-wise.
Then put them in a splinter Z-K cult and you're pretty much there.
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And that's the rub right there... For all the roleplaying aspects, Pathfinder is still pretty much the wargame it and D+D are descended from. Wargames are about precise mechanics, not storytelling.
I would disagree with that, actually. The reason I got into RPG's was the story-telling element, not the wargame aspect. I like strategy games, but I play RPG's to roleplay. For me, it's all about the characters, as you can probably tell by reading my fiction. Different people play for different reasons, and games like PF give what the player wants, whether that's cool character archetypes, a ton of rules to tweak, awesome settings, or the ability to take all of these and spin a really fun story for your players.
I learned storytelling by GMing, and wouldn't be a writer if I hadn't started playing D&D.
I do agree that publishing the stats for characters is problematic. Once you do it, you're locked in to those stats. Fiction characters can grow, just like your RPG characters can, and their next level might not be what you, or they, expect...
I understand that RPG's have a storytelling element. Unlike storytelling games, that element generally comes in spite of the mechanics, not because of it. That element has to be forcibly birthed by the combined actions of players and GMs past the resistance of the mechanics themselves.
I have to say that I disagree with you here. At least my experience have been that the mechanics actually help the story telling by giving it structure and focus. Most of the Rules Lite story telling RPG I have played and or watched being play usually become extremely silly and unfocused and power gamey.
Of course YMMV.
Though I think stats in the novels would be to...distracting. RPG are a different type of storytelling after all and things get lost in the translation...like a novel to a movie. Though a separate book with stats would be kinda of nice as I mentioned before.