One of the things that I had been most looking forward to was the monster creation system. Indeed, the changes to monster rules in general, and while I like what we have presented, I was hoping for a good rules framework by which to design my own monsters. Is this still going to be a thing? I would very much like to know! Thank you.
Yes, it has already been confirmed that these rules will be detailed in the final book. You'll probably have to wait until there though since the Playtest rules aren't going to get any more updated.
Jason has said in the stream that they had a little cool thing for those who are still playing with the playtest rules and I guess it COULD be that, but that's just pure speculation from my part.
That sounds promising! I've been out of the loop a bit, but this gives me a reason to get right back into gaming with the playtest rules.
By the way, do we know when the official product launches?
Yes, Gencon, so... August 2019, I'm not sure if there's a specific day yet. Probably between 1 and 4 since those are the days of the convention.
I would love to put my hands on that. So far I’ve had to mostly reskin and alter for my War for the Crown conversion, and even when I converted Reign of Winter to 5e for a group of newbies I had to reverse engineer monster creation myself. Having the actual tools out to play with? GM dream.
I too really want monster creation rules, and I think we will get them. Jason said they'd like to get them to us "soon" on a Twitch as I recall.
I'm a little worried we won't. The monster building rules had some errors in how their skills were calculated; they were never quite right for the playtest test against PCs. Now with the PC math changing, making those adjustments has no real long term benefit. So they could either put out rules that are actually wrong, or take time away from making the next version of the game to rebuild the rules for the 12 of us who actually want it for 8 months. :(
There's also a potential for backlash with either of those options. Lots of lots of folks have formed erroneous impressions and run with them, posting about various stuff like the stupid coin flip meme that won't die. They look at stuff like monster stats without considering encounter building rules and practices, or all the hubbub there's been about table 10-2 and treadmills and such. Paizo might opt to instead not throw any more fuel on the dumpster fire that is the commentary around the playtest.
Which would be unfortunate for the 12 of us who want to continue using the playtest rules.
I wouldn't mind the "bad math" version, but yes, I can see how it might be misread (and if something can be misread, some people will). I guess we'll have to wait.
I blame the coinflippers.
I wouldn't mind the "bad math" version, but yes, I can see how it might be misread (and if something can be misread, some people will). I guess we'll have to wait.
I blame the coinflippers.
Yeah, I mean I want it to. Badly. Even if there are math problems, we are savvy enough to adjust for our games. But there aren't very many of us and a there are a looooot of folks who will run with bad information. It's a tough spot for Paizo.