level adjustment for weak / elite templates?


Rules Discussion


The Bestiary has two templates for quickly adjusting the power of a monster.. Weak, which reduces most things by 2 and lowers HP, and Elite which increases most things by 2 and increases HP.

Fine, easy enough.

But... maybe I'm missing something, but there doesn't seem to be a clear instruction on how to adjust the level of the monster that you applied the template to..? Is that written somewhere and I just keep missing it? Or what?


Well since every creature, character etc gets +1 on everything relevant per level the 'weak' and 'elite' templates are roughly the eqivalent of two levels

Also it is indirect written as 'These adjustments have a greater effect on the power
level of low-level creatures; applying elite adjustments to
a level –1 creature gives you one closer to 1st level, and
applying weak adjustments to a 1st-level creature gives
you one whose level is closer to –1.'


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"In many cases, you can make relatively minor adjustments, called elite and weak adjustments, to their statistics to make them function 1 level higher or lower than presented."


Barnabas Eckleworth III wrote:
"In many cases, you can make relatively minor adjustments, called elite and weak adjustments, to their statistics to make them function 1 level higher or lower than presented."

Was gonna say, it is in the area that the templates are mentioned.

And to further expand on this it says that level -1 creatures that get an elite template are closer to level 1 creatures, that level 1 creatures who get the weak template are closer to level -1 creatures and that creatures who get either template usually benefit from it more as physical foes more than as spellcasters.

There is also a bit of an unwritten thing to consider here as well, that a level 0 creature would be very weak with a weak template and stronger than most level 1 creatures with an elite template (but not quite level 2 either).


Weak/Elite alter about 1 level.
Do not apply twice. More adjustments are needed in that case.


If applying it to a low level creature, I would double check the adjustment versus the charts in the Gamemastery.


Barnabas Eckleworth III wrote:
If applying it to a low level creature, I would double check the adjustment versus the charts in the Gamemastery.

"These adjustments have a greater effect on the power level of low-level creatures; applying elite adjustments to a level –1 creature gives you one closer to 1st level, and applying weak adjustments to a 1st-level creature gives you one whose level is closer to –1."

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

So, I have been in and out of 2.0, mainly because my family game is on hold while my oldest son is at school, and because my Saturday night group has shifted to 5e. Somewhere in the process, I must have missed the entry on how to "level up" monsters... For example, I am sending my family party into the Bright Lands of Greyhawk. I want to use Gnolls as the main adversary, but the team is level 9 or 10. In PF1, I would add levels of a class that I needed and that would settle things. In PF2, the mechanism seems to be different, but I've been unable to find any reference to it. I get that you can make creatures "Elite" or "Weak", but what if I want to make a Gnoll cleric of Tharizdun, or a challenging Gnoll wizard - how does that work?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Cellowyn wrote:
So, I have been in and out of 2.0, mainly because my family game is on hold while my oldest son is at school, and because my Saturday night group has shifted to 5e. Somewhere in the process, I must have missed the entry on how to "level up" monsters... For example, I am sending my family party into the Bright Lands of Greyhawk. I want to use Gnolls as the main adversary, but the team is level 9 or 10. In PF1, I would add levels of a class that I needed and that would settle things. In PF2, the mechanism seems to be different, but I've been unable to find any reference to it. I get that you can make creatures "Elite" or "Weak", but what if I want to make a Gnoll cleric of Tharizdun, or a challenging Gnoll wizard - how does that work?

Paizo put out a set of monster building rules as a preview of the GMG coming out at the end of the month. There are charts in that which tell you where your monster stats should be. Just adjust your stats upwards based on that and pick a few evocative actions they can use.

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