Captain Morgan's Monster Creation / Conversion Tips


Conversions


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So we don't know when we are going to get the official monster creation rules, other than hopefully before the GMG drops in January. But you've got so many monsters to create, especially if you're running one of the more recent PF1 Adventure Paths. Luckily, we are starting to amass the tools to make your life easier.

Most of the actual theory is pretty well covered by Paizo's official conversion guide. Pick the closest existing monster you can find, slap a couple of appropriate abilities/actions/activities on it, adjust its level/CR to the CR of the desired encounter, and unleash it on your players.

But there are some tricks you can use to make this easier on yourself. First off, I recommend making a Microsoft Word document (or other similar program) for any given set of encounters. I have been doing one per book of an AP.

Now, you need to find a stat block to use as a starting point and copy/paste it into your word file. I recommend using pf2d20pfsrd. You can sort that list by level, name, family, whatever floats your boat. While Archive of Nethys is great, its monster pages are badly formatted for copy/paste purposes, largely due to font and background color. The d20pfsrd statblocks have much simpler formatting that copy into Word quite cleanly. What they don't have are action icons, but if you like those you can copy/paste them from Archive of Nethys or some other source.

You'll probably want to reduce the spacing between lines/paragraphs to save space. You'll also notice that if you copy the entire statblock, including the name and level of the creature, there's a dropdown arrow that copies with it. This is a great feature-- you can collapse all of your statblocks into a single line to make them easier to sort through and then open whichever one(s) you are currently using. When you are ready to make a new statblock, keep the previous entry expanded and paste a new one directly underneath it. The drop down arrows will keep them separated from each other automatically.

Once you've got your basic statblock, you can pick out the actions and abilities. That's just up to you, but there are lots of useful points of reference in the bestiary for what seems interesting and balanced.

Finally, you'll need to make sure the math lines up. This is the tricky bit, given our lack of monster creation rules. But if you want a quick fix, tqomins has compiled the median data on every monster in the bestiary by level. That includes AC, HP, DCs, and attack values. It also includes the lowest save, highest save, and middle save, which you can place as appropriate to your critter. It doesn't have some miscellaneous stuff like Weakness, Resistance, or Regeneration values, but you can find the closest level monster with those abilities easily enough and go from there.

Hope this is helpful, and happy monster making!

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