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I know we don't get Monster-building rules in Bestiary 1, I know we can build NPCs using PC rules, and I know we're getting streamlined NPC rules in PF2. But does anyone know if NPC-building rules - meaning the new, streamlined system - will be in the PF2 CRB?
Also, has there been any mention as to the form it may take? I was always a proponent of building NPCs via PC-building rules but Starfinder's NPC rules made me a convert. Based on Starfinder, I sort of assumed we'd see something similar but the Pathfinder Society teases about NPC faction leaders only cite alignment, race, and gender. For example, Calisro Benarry (N female half-orc) instead of Aibretta Fulson (CN female human mechanic).
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1) building an NPC will seemingly work very much like Starfinder; minor differences are likely but haven't been detailed or even confirmed.
2) I'd need to go searching to double-check for certain, but I'm almost positive monster and NPC creation won't be in any launch-day book. Instead, there's a very-strongly-hinted "GM Resources" book coming out likely just a month or two after the Core that appears to have those rules.
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1) building an NPC will seemingly work very much like Starfinder; minor differences are likely but haven't been detailed or even confirmed.
This is very likely true conceptually, but the math will be radically different, which seems worth noting.
2) I'd need to go searching to double-check for certain, but I'm almost positive monster and NPC creation won't be in any launch-day book. Instead, there's a very-strongly-hinted "GM Resources" book coming out likely just a month or two after the Core that appears to have those rules.
Evidence strongly supports this, yes.
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I'm not holding my breath for a Game Master Guide to drop in 2019, but from the temperature of everything that's been said I'm thinking that this is where those rules will be published along with whatever re-tool they do for Haunts, Firearms, Chases, and Kingdom Building rules as well as HOPEFULLY a Paizo OFFICIAL (Read: Balanced/Tested) set of Gestalt Rules.
I personally don't see the wisdom in delaying the output of these NPC/Monster Creation Rules, or shifting them out of the CRB for that matter... all it's going to do is make GMs, 3PP and Freelance Authors have massive headaches until the official guidelines are released, besides, without this they're going to be missing out on the ability to run published 5E adventures in PF2 without fudging 90% of the stats or special abilities.
Perhaps these rules won't even be SOLD in any way, and will simply be part of the OGL and freely available for use as they're released as a "Web Enhancement" document much like how they made "Traits" available to everyone for PFS regardless of APG ownership?
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I'm not holding my breath for a Game Master Guide to drop in 2019, but from the temperature of everything that's been said I'm thinking that this is where those rules will be published along with whatever re-tool they do for Haunts, Firearms, Chases, and Kingdom Building rules as well as HOPEFULLY a Paizo OFFICIAL (Read: Balanced/Tested) set of Gestalt Rules.
The 2e kingdom rules are currently slated to appear in [Kingmaker] first, yes.
They might appear in a general sense in some other book down the road, but there are no further plans for them right now because we’ve only planned out the next couple of years of releases at this point.
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I'm not holding my breath for a Game Master Guide to drop in 2019,
I'd be shocked if we don't get the monster creation rules, and the book I expect to see them in (which would likely be as much Unchained as GMG) as one of the first two or three books after the first wave, and thus very much in 2019 (albeit perhaps very late in the year).
I agree that moving the creation rules too far down the line would be unwise...which is one of the reasons (along with a lot of veiled hints from Mark Seifter) that I'd expect this book so very soon.
Disappointing but understandable.
Thanks, all. I had missed the hints that a GM-focused book might be coming. Hopefully it's targeted for a Dec release so we can see it in 2019. I expect Starfinder's Character Operations Manual will be the hardback focus for the fall.
I suspect PF2 and Starfinder will have different release tracks that don't really impact each other most of the time but the PF2 Gen Con launch has to be resource-taxing. With COM slated for fall, I have a hard time seeing a PF2 GM book launching in the same timeframe.
I'm not holding my breath for a Game Master Guide to drop in 2019, but from the temperature of everything that's been said I'm thinking that this is where those rules will be published along with whatever re-tool they do for Haunts, Firearms, Chases, and Kingdom Building rules as well as HOPEFULLY a Paizo OFFICIAL (Read: Balanced/Tested) set of Gestalt Rules.
Why would firearms be in the Game Master Guide? Has that been officially announced or hinted at? Everything else that you list is what I would expect to be in a Game Master Guide - but in what way are firearms something specifically for the game master?
Firearms are generally classed as “optional, ask the DM.”
I wouldn’t expect the gunslinger class, any feats that decimate the use of firearms, or even many examples of the weapons in a DM book, but some basic info on how they work and like three guns would be enough for later books to expand on.
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In case folks hadn't seen the specific posts informing some of these claims, here are a few for reference:
(1) From Erik:
There will not be monster creation rules in the Bestiary.
There will be monster creation rules available fairly shortly thereafter.
I can't reveal more than that without spoiling other stuff we haven't announced yet.
Suffice it to say that we know these rules are very important to people and to their campaigns, and will will get them to you swiftly.
Just not in the Bestiary (mostly because we don't want to have to repeat that information every time we do a monster book, and we don't want the first monster book to be substantially more expensive than the others (because we added extra pages) or contain substantially fewer monsters (because we kept the page count the same).
(2) From Mark:
[...] You're going to see me around here very excited, and ultimately, I think the final product is worthy of that excitement. But even so, there will be things we all want to houserule. That's one of the strengths of tabletop RPGs. And one of the particular strengths of PF2 is how much easier it is for even an inexperienced group to apply and adjust houserules to change things and not run into tons of unexpected side effects. That's part of why, despite the crazy hours on the launch books, I'm so excited for the book where we can really get into teaching you guys how to do that part (and excited that we can do that early, not midway through like Unchained). An edition where all of you guys can be designers modifying to fit what your group wants (or shaking it up every campaign to fit a particular vision) is just so awesome to me! (not to mention it should make it more inviting for people to dip their toes into creating awesome third party products)
(3) From Mark:
[...] By designing the game carefully to make it easier to create new content and houserule, I'm hoping we were able to help out people even when they were one of the 10% who wanted a particular change and we went the other way and changed towards the 90%, since that design should make it easier for each of us to get what we want from PF2! Especially if it's just a matter of wanting to be higher or lower power than the baseline, or more or fewer character choices per level, that's extremely easy compared to before, and something we're going to get to you guys pretty soon after the launch products.
(4) From Mark:
To make sure I was clear (which I'm pretty sure but just in case): This is not in the Core; that is to say, the core game still has item bonuses and such. But it's very easy to remove them, and we will be releasing info on how to do that later on but on the sooner end.As the spearhead behind us putting Automatic Bonus Progression into Unchained, the ability to extremely easily institute a variant with no items / only random "fun" items is an important part of PF2's design to me. You do need to use a (fairly simple) variant (which we'll be releasing relatively soon after the main launch but we made it easy enough that I'm sure you guys will figure it out beforehand).I would favorite this twice if I could. NOW I CANT WAIT O_O!!!!
(5) From Mark:
[...] The first World Guide does have all the rules we've mentioned here, but ultimately it's much more lore-heavy than the hypothetical mash-up I described above. The second book is particularly rules-heavy, but it has some rules I think people are going to adore, and that's really all I can say, I can't give you any hints [...]
I'm a little puzzled... in #5 Mark says the first world guide (Age of Lost Omens, right?) won't be very crunch-intensive, but at the same time iirc it was said there will be more than 60 additional backgrounds... maybe that will be the only crunch in the book and there will be a lot more lore page-count-wise, but still, 60 backgrounds...
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I'm a little puzzled... in #5 Mark says the first world guide (Age of Lost Omens, right?) won't be very crunch-intensive, but at the same time iirc it was said there will be more than 60 additional backgrounds... maybe that will be the only crunch in the book and there will be a lot more lore page-count-wise, but still, 60 backgrounds...
The Backgrounds and something like 8 Archetypes are indeed the only mechanical things in the book by all accounts.
You can fit about 10 Backgrounds per page and maybe one page per archetype. That's a total of 14 or so pages of rules text in a 136 page book. So...maybe a little north of 10% of the book. I'd characterize that as pretty low on mechanics, percentage-wise.
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Uh, I thought I replied but my post didn't appear... weird.
Thank you guys, you're right, all thing considered it appears like a rather lore-centric book indeed. I'm very excited for the Golarion-specific backgrounds and archetypes! °\(^▿^)/°
BTW, I'm calling it: one of the archetypes is Hellknight. I know some of you wanted it to be the LN champion but if I were a betting girl I'd put money on it.
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I'd be very happy if hellknight to be non champion, it makes little sense to Region and diety lock an entire alignment subclass.
I'm fine with Hellknights as an archetype rather than a Champion subclass (or vice versa), but they aren't particularly region locked, and are no more deity-locked than any Lawful character.
The Hellknights, as an organization, are found throughout most of the Inner Sea region, and regularly worship a variety of Lawful deities including everyone from Iomedae to Asmodeus.
For the second World Guide I was guessing we would get something centered on Faith or on Races, but maybe we are getting a book covering lots of Archetypes and Organizations.
I could be wrong, but the World Guide books should be very setting centered, even if filled with far more crunch content, something along the Adventurer's Guide, as the line is the successor of the Campaign Setting and Player Companion lines.
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Ah I missread roswyn, thought she said LE champion not LN. That has the problem of being the wrong name IMO.
I'd still prefer it to be a non good-evil alignment locked archetype as Hell knights run range of lawful.
Like I've said in other threads, there's no reason to assume all champion subclasses will be as tightly locked as paladins. As a related example, antipaladins should probably have been "Any evil" from the beginning.
But everyone is probably correct that Hellknights will wind up an arcehtype. I'll even admit now that an archetype would mechanically express the idea better. Besides, we already have a similar archetype in Starfinder, and it works pretty well there; might as well stick with that.
For the second World Guide I was guessing we would get something centered on Faith or on Races, but maybe we are getting a book covering lots of Archetypes and Organizations.
I could be wrong, but the World Guide books should be very setting centered, even if filled with far more crunch content, something along the Adventurer's Guide, as the line is the successor of the Campaign Setting and Player Companion lines.
I assume the Adventure's guide content will be broken up into the region specific world guides, with Pathfinders and Hellknights (I'm guessing) making the cut for the first guide due to their broader focus.
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Ah I missread roswyn, thought she said LE champion not LN. That has the problem of being the wrong name IMO.
I'd still prefer it to be a non good-evil alignment locked archetype as Hell knights run range of lawful.
Like I've said in other threads, there's no reason to assume all champion subclasses will be as tightly locked as paladins. As a related example, antipaladins should probably have been "Any evil" from the beginning.
But everyone is probably correct that Hellknights will wind up an arcehtype. I'll even admit now that an archetype would mechanically express the idea better. Besides, we already have a similar archetype in Starfinder, and it works pretty well there; might as well stick with that.
[...]
Anti-Paladin, Anti-Redeemer, Anti-Liberator.
:3</troll>
I wouldn't be surprised to see something like :
Anti-Paladin(CE), Corrupter(NE), Tyrant(LE).
Developer
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I'm a little puzzled... in #5 Mark says the first world guide (Age of Lost Omens, right?) won't be very crunch-intensive, but at the same time iirc it was said there will be more than 60 additional backgrounds... maybe that will be the only crunch in the book and there will be a lot more lore page-count-wise, but still, 60 backgrounds...
While the Lost Omens World Guide does have lots of new options, most of them have a relatively light development requirement, which is more "crunch-light" in my opinion. Backgrounds, for example, mostly require that we make sure that the background gives out a balanced array of benefits and that the benefits aren't exactly the same as that of another background. Compare that to feats, magic items, or spells which not only require balance considerations but also appropriate and clear language, a proper price, a correct level, considerations as to how they work in combination with existing options, and much more. Sixty backgrounds will take so much less time to develop compared to sixty feats or spells.
In other words, World Guide 1's rules development load is far lighter compared to that of World Guide 2 both due to the larger amount of options as well as their innate complexity. So, if dozens of backgrounds and ten archetypes sound like a sizable amount of crunch already, then you're going to be drowning in options with WG2.
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While the Lost Omens World Guide does have lots of new options, most of them have a relatively light development requirement, which is more "crunch-light" in my opinion. Backgrounds, for example, mostly require that we make sure that the background gives out a balanced array of benefits and that the benefits aren't exactly the same as that of another background. Compare that to feats, magic items, or spells which not only require balance considerations but also appropriate and clear language, a proper price, a correct level, considerations as to how they work in combination with existing options, and much more. Sixty backgrounds will take so much less time to develop compared to sixty feats or spells.
In other words, World Guide 1's rules development load is far lighter compared to that of World Guide 2 both due to the larger amount of options as well as their innate complexity. So, if dozens of backgrounds and ten archetypes sound like a sizable amount of crunch already, then you're going to be drowning in options with WG2.
Consider me sold ^___^
Btw thank you Luis for dropping in and giving us the lowdown! It's always nice to get the straight dope from you Paizo folks.
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Blackguard doesn't sound optimal to me - check the range of synonyms on thesaurus.com and tell me it isn't at least a bit underwhelming. Bum, cad, knave, lowlife, miscreant... what the heck, is this just a common thug we're talking about? Paladin... hell, the title says it all - a noble knight held to the highest principles of chivalry, honor and purity. But blackguard?
Now, Black Knight would be a perfect title for evil champions in general, but 1) it's 2 words, and 2) we need 3 different names, one for each flavor of evil. So I would go for something more accurate and 1 word - CE could be an annihilator, LE a tyrant, and NE simply a malefactor.
Though if all else fails, maybe I'd rather they use anti-paladin instead of blackguard. At least the title still evokes a certain power and majesty, instead of some sort of half-assed rogue...
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Sadly, Hellknight shouldn't be in Lost Omens. The first part of the first Adventure Path "Hellknight Hill", someone asked about this over there. They were told that Hellknight Rules won't be in that book, but will be out very soon.
After that someone asked if "Very Soon" will be somewhere within the first few weeks of release, or if they will have to "reskin" something to let their players be a Hellknight and James told them Reskin. So no Hellknight at launch from the looks of it, but soon™
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Sadly, Hellknight shouldn't be in Lost Omens. The first part of the first Adventure Path "Hellknight Hill", someone asked about this over there. They were told that Hellknight Rules won't be in that book, but will be out very soon.
After that someone asked if "Very Soon" will be somewhere within the first few weeks of release, or if they will have to "reskin" something to let their players be a Hellknight and James told them Reskin. So no Hellknight at launch from the looks of it, but soon™
HERE is that post:
You'll need to let them reskin.I know it's a bit later on than this original post, and you can't really reveal too much in specifics, but say we want to run the first book of the AP within a few weeks of the 2e release. Any chance the "very soon" will encompass this? I would really love to let my players play one, and worst comes to worst I'll just let them play a fighter or paladin and reskin things until official rules come out. Any possible insight you could grant? Thanks!WILL THERE BE PLAYER'S GUIDES???Of course.
Hellknight rules won't be in the Age of Ashes player's guide, but we'll have those rules out very soon. Playing a Hellknight in Age of Ashes should be interesting.
As for exactly WHAT is going into the Player's Guide... I can't say yet because I haven't yet written it. I've got more ideas in it than are responsible to include in it, of course. I'll likely aim to keep it pretty simple and short so that...
...A) It doesn't kill an already incredibly busy editorial department here, and...
...B) Doesn't overwhelm players with too many new options, when everyone's gonna still be focusing on the options in the Core rules.
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From what I know of hell knights, they seem a natural fit for a prestige archetype like the Gray Maidens. As such, I'd expect it to be included in an AP where you actually have a chance to join in narrative. So we might see it in Age of Ashes.
Edit: but based on the above comments, it at least doesn't seem to be in book 1.
I doubt it will be in later books either, considering the main themes of dragons, Dahak, Aiudara... I don't really see hellknights fitting in there.
But yeah, they'd be a great (prestige) archetype.
From what I know of hell knights, they seem a natural fit for a prestige archetype like the Gray Maidens. As such, I'd expect it to be included in an AP where you actually have a chance to join in narrative. So we might see it in Age of Ashes.
Edit: but based on the above comments, it at least doesn't seem to be in book 1.
Or aat least when you start seeing them as enemies. It would be really lazy to have Hellknight "Monsters" but not being able to build one.
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Players wanting to play a Hellknight in Age of Ashes will definitely have access to those options before the campaign is done. :)
This fits my theory that the second setting book will be a deities' book with the Champion's non-Good variants. For what better place for a Hellknight prestige package with a prerequisite of Champion (any Lawful) ?
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Players wanting to play a Hellknight in Age of Ashes will definitely have access to those options before the campaign is done. :)This fits my theory that the second setting book will be a deities' book with the Champion's non-Good variants. For what better place for a Hellknight prestige package with a prerequisite of Champion (any Lawful) ?
It does, but I instead would surmise that the hellknight will be an archetype not necessarily tied to champions and easily picked by fighters (those who defeat the obligatory barbed devil, at least).
Anyways I'm really glad that making (and running!) npcs will be easier in this edition and even if we have to wait a couple books to get to that content I'm all for it ^___^
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I definitely think Hellknight is more likely to be a prestige class (is that still what we are calling "archetype you can only take at higher levels"?) than a Champion variant. In particular, a Champion of Abadar being called a Hellknight would just be weird. Plus, I doubt they would change the "must kill a barbed devil" requirement, so I don't see Hellknight being available at level 1.
is that still what we are calling "archetype you can only take at higher levels"?
I've seen archetype and prestige archetype bandied around, but not prestige class - I think you can find this in the What Do We Know thread by Joe M.
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Prestige archetype probably makes the most sense as a name for the mechanic.
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It's a Bearded Devil (Barbazu), not Barbed (Hamatula) :p but I guess nothing stops an Aspirant from commuting suicide vs one.
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From what I know of hell knights, they seem a natural fit for a prestige archetype like the Gray Maidens. As such, I'd expect it to be included in an AP where you actually have a chance to join in narrative. So we might see it in Age of Ashes.
Edit: but based on the above comments, it at least doesn't seem to be in book 1.
Characters are unlikely to be high enough level by the end of the first book to take a prestige anything. Wait until a book where the PCs will be able to meet the requirements of the archetype.
Just a thought.
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That said, in the playtest the Cavalier and Pirate prestige classes could be taken at level 2 - and players are likely to be a little way into level 4 by the end of book 1 (assuming the xp for all 20 levels are evenly distributed accross six books).
Even with 2E's linear XP curve, I suspect the earlier adventures will still give more levels than the later ones.
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Characters are unlikely to be high enough level by the end of the first book to take a prestige anything. Wait until a book where the PCs will be able to meet the requirements of the archetype.Just a thought.
For Hellknights I certainly agree; in PF1 the soonest you could take any Hellknight class was at level 6.
That said, in the playtest the Cavalier and Pirate prestige classes could be taken at level 2 - and players are likely to be a little way into level 4 by the end of book 1 (assuming the xp for all 20 levels are evenly distributed accross six books).
Those weren't really prestige classes/archetypes, though. Just normal archetypes. The prestige options involve not just mechanical prerequisites but, narrative requirements. You must,have joined an organization, done a deed, slayer a notable monster, or published a paper in game before you can take it. Generally this will have to happen during actual play, not just a backstory thing. Chernasardo Forest Warden, for example.
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If the prospective hellknight still has to defeat a bearded devil (thank you ChibiNyan) you probably won't be able to become one at 2nd level.
The only prestige archetype was Grey Maiden, which was a level 6 feat for the Dedication.
The hellknight could be similar. The Grey (Gray?) Maiden also required contact with and acceptance into the organization, i.e. a specific "quest", just like the hellknight should.