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I'm reading, struggling through actually, this section in the GMG. I haven't found the "Roadmap" part you're talking about. Where's that?
Base road maps ("brute", "skirmisher") are on page 59 and class road maps ("wizard", "champion") are on page 73. Trait abilities on page 70 round out the bunch.
I think selecting from those three things first, makes the rest of the design process much easier because then you know which of the columns ("high", "moderate" etc.) from each category are the natural ones for your NPC.
Granularity as in there are many more finer details in PF1 NPC creation Not that people couldn't wing it or eyeball approximations, but the system asks for piece by piece construction of every portion. All the end stats have underlying calculations which are tabulated with each new creature.
In PF1, you add up all these factors and hope to get a high enough attack bonus for the NPC to be a reasonable threat for its CR. If not, you make tweaks in buffs, equipment, class, base stats, etc. to get that attack bonus high enough.
In PF2, you decide how good you want the creature's attack to be for their level and use the charts to get Extreme, High, Moderate, or Low. Done. Goal achieved.
Now repeat that for damage, for every skill, all three saves, and so on.
And then hope that it all gels together at the end!
PF1: Ah crap, I need him to have Iron Will, but that uses up a feat he needs to do his shtick.
PF2: Good Will Save. Check. Shtick appropriate for level. Check. Done.
One might reverse engineer to give the creature items and stats to justify the numbers (and many sample NPCs are built this way), but it's unnecessary and still involves giving NPCs bonus proficiencies higher than a similar PC (so as to avoid expensive magic). (Many of the early PF2 NPCs were built so and this led to tremendously high stats for humans! Paizo has since apologized and promised to watch out for that.)
And mind you, it's really nice to have creatures that survive longer in play at the table than the time it took to build them.
Your GM, in rolling scores, put an extra burden upon themselves. Not that all the published NPCs used the standard set, but your GM would be the only one I know of (out of scores) who rolled instead of just picking what suited the NPC. In fact, maybe you should ask them, and maybe they have some tips.
(For a GM run PC/NPC, I'd say they should use the standard set or whatever method the players did.)
All the PF2 NPC tables are shortcuts for similar tables on the PC side (which involve calculations from scratch). So no, it's not a lot more work, it's even less work than a PC. Arguably far less (and many GMs have stated as much).
No Background, fewer Ancestry mechanics (usually just a default one or two abilities for flavor, i.e. Goblin Scuttle), no ABCD stat choices, and less worry about equipment. Skills are whatever ones you want to give them at what ability level you want them to have that suits their role rather than bought & calculated. And then there are all the class options, where an NPC only needs a couple tricks to be relevant (and those tricks could be fun and original). Plus shopping's easier since your NPCs don't technically need anything to be competitive for your level since they already have the stats in place. (Plus PC wealth is necessary for a PC-style NPC to function at its level. This makes treasure balancing difficult! You end up having to giving them the numbers as if they had the wealth, but taking away the actual item behind that needed statistic.)
Building NPCs using charts is more an art than a science, requiring some sense of balance from the GM. But as noted above, some PF1 builders manipulated the build-science to get some really skewed CRs! And I'm quite guilty of having done that, so I find the change in tone refreshing, somewhat liberating actually (partly because I had to tweak CRs to challenge my powergamers!) Now, the tighter math in PC builds lets us use a more standardized system on the enemy side.
Anyway, pulling the key numbers off a chart to make an NPC on the fly works wonders compared to PF1. GMs had to wing it sans charts in previous editions which relied on GM experience and guesstimates.
"Maybe what I should be asking is how do you know whether different stats, or encounters for that matter, should be Extreme, High, or whatever?"
Like I mentioned, NPC/Monster creation is more art than science (largely since Paizo has done the science/math portion for us). Not only do you want to account for story, but also level difference and their abilities' synergy.
The GMG has many bits of advice on this (and it sounds like the link given above leads to a program with in-built suggestions). Role plays a large part, and of course, balance. So if you wanted "notoriously accurate marksmen", you might go Extreme attack (them being famous for hitting and such), but then only do moderate damage.
Balance attack with damage.
AC & saves w/ hit points. (Look at oozes for examples so extreme they're outside the charts because...oozes.)
Also resistances/weaknesses w/ hit points. Compare a zombie build to a skeleton build to get an idea.
Actually, you might want to have the charts alongside you when you do this so you can see what choices were made. Mirroring a monster can work too, so if there's some big, brutish level 7 human warrior you want for your story you might take a Hill Giant and simply make them Medium (w/o changing any numbers, as those are level based not size based). Swap out the rock abilities w/ some other ranged attack and you're done.
It would be cool if monster statblocks included which "column" they picked for each stat.
Too much wasted space for the books, but something like the online resources could do it (with just a lot of data entry work) and it could help people figure out the patterns
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What link?
Like I mentioned, NPC/Monster creation is more art than science (largely since Paizo has done the science/math portion for us). Not only do you want to account for story, but also level difference and their abilities' synergy.
The GMG has many bits of advice on this (and it sounds like the link given above leads to a program with in-built suggestions). Role plays a large part, and of course, balance. So if you wanted "notoriously accurate marksmen", you might go Extreme attack (them being famous for hitting and such), but then only do moderate damage.
For example, I'm going to make an NPC I used yeeears ago in a 3.0 Ravenloft campaign, an intelligent skeleton sniper. I put in a name ("Grinning Jack"), and a desired level (let's say 5, this dude's a sub-boss that the PCs will have to take down after a few levels).
In the top left of the screen there's a button called "base roadmaps". I click it an select "sniper". This is a roadmap from page 59 of the GMG. A lot of hints appear saying stuff like "high dexterity" and "Ranged strikes have high attack and high damage, or moderate attack and extreme damage. Melee strikes are weaker." In the top left of the screen I then click "apply hints". Ability scores, AC, HP and saves are filled in for me, with the recommended values for a level 5 sniper.
Then I set the type to Undead. A box pops up telling me about how undead are usually built (this is the box from page 70 on the GMG, but this tool is helpful). "Almost all undead are evil". Okay, I set alignment to lawful evil, this dude is all about contract work. He's not mindless or incorporeal so I ignore that. HP should have "negative healing" so I fill that in the notes there. It also lists some immunities, which I fill in the box for immunities.
Then I decide that since this dude is more NPC than random monster that I'll give him the Rogue trait. Another box pops up with recommendations for building rogues; these are the ones from page 73 with class roadmaps. Some of this overlaps with the sniper roadmap but some of it is new.
It says high stealth and thievery, plus more skills than usual. So on the skills section I click Stealth and set it to High, and then click on the number to "apply hint". I give him a couple more skills at Moderate that I think fit a rogue. The advice for strikes for the rogue is a bit different than that for the sniper, so I have to make a decision there. It looks like high attack and moderate damage without sneak attack, and extreme damage with sneak attack is what's called for. So I'm gonna play around a bit with those buttons. Finally, I should give him some rogue abilities. Being a sniper, surprise attack seems appropriate.
At this point I'm basically done with the numbers and selecting from the tables in the GMG, and I'm in the realm of "now add special sauce abilities" which is more about looking at similar creatures of similar level in the Bestiary. In this case, I'd be looking at ways to let him do sneak attack at range even after the first round, when the players know where he is. Maybe he needs some ability to efficiently move around and hide, so he can keep sniping?
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Also, it can not be emphasized enough that PF1 CR was wildly unreliable. And NPC class levels were not equal to their CR or a PC of their level because they didn't get equivalent gear.
It is telling that the only person who thinks building NPCs was easier in PF1 never actually did it.
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Yeah, that monster builder is too legit to quit.
Also, it can not be emphasized enough that PF1 CR was wildly unreliable. And NPC class levels were not equal to their CR or a PC of their level because they didn't get equivalent gear.
It is telling that the only person who thinks building NPCs was easier in PF1 never actually did it.
I'm of two minds of it. The 2e top down method is faster, but requires more thought in what abilities you showcase and their action cost and all that. On one hand you can be really creative and make some interesting abilities. On the other hand, making abilities is the thing I like the least about this system.
But the 1e system was deterministic. 'I'm making a succubus anti-paladin 8' All the decisions are largely made for you at that point and its just how fast you are filling in numbers and special abilities.
System mastery in either method plays a part in how one enjoys it, of course.
I prefer the 1e method largely. The 2e version just leaves me feeling like I put together a spreadsheet and slapped a picture on it. (Not that you don't sometimes need a bunch spreadsheets with pictures slapped on them. It has its uses.)
I'm not sure I follow how ability selection was easier in PF1 when you got feats at the rate of a PC and had millions of options to pick from. I suppose technically PF2 allows you more creativity in ability selection in that you can make one up entirely, but you could do that in PF1 as well.
Also, a succubus antipaladin basically writes itself this edition. Take an anti paladin stat block, add succubus abilities and weaknesses, and then adjust the numbers to whatever level you want. Like, I think I could do that in a few minutes and the longest part would just be copying and pasting the succubus bits into the Antipaladin.
Now, if building it up from the ground up helps you realize the character, that's actually a valid reason to prefer it. I'm digging the ability to decide a role in the story and then easily build to that role, rather than making a build and then deciding how to squeeze it into the story, as often happened for me in PF1.
This one
To be fair that tool beyond this link is quite excellent.
The relative of making accesories like this is admittedly one of the Pros of Top-Down Design...In fact, I do have some soft spot for TDD, despite favoring Bottom-Up Design as a personal philosophic principle. The 4E monsters' near-uniform battle statistics of (Level plus) +5 Hit / 14 AC / +3 Save Hit / 12 Average Save was artistic for those who were to run them, at the very least...
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Okay, I'm with you until you started talking about Sneak Attack buttons. Where are they?
You'd list that under special abilities, like:
Sneak Attack Grinning Jack deals an extra 2d6 precision damage to flat-footed creatures.
At this point you're basically in the special abilities section. The roadmap tells you how it ought to be done:
moderate attack and low to moderate damage before sneak attack plus high or extreme damage with sneak attack
So then you can look at the hinted values for strikes to see that for our hypothetical L5 creature low damage would be about 2d4+6 (11), while high damage would be about 2d8+7 (16) and extreme would be 2d12+7 (20).
So the value of our sneak attack should pull the average damage from around 11 to somewhere between 16 and 20. Coincidentally, a level 5 rogue PC would have 2d6 sneak attack which averages to 7 damage. If we gave our monster 2d6 sneak attack he'd have an average of 18 damage on sneaky hits, which is nicely where we want it.
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Yes, writing the special abilities is the trickiest part of generating a monster. As you see, the tool does a lot of the numerical work for you, but the finishing touches are mostly human work.
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NPCs and monsters simply don't follow the same rules as PCs, and it's one of the smart things done in PF2.
Trying to make NPCs in PF1 that had the right combination of stats using PC rules to build characters was just a horrible chore that left gaping holes in monster's abilities.
Instead saying "Enemies of this level should have this array of stats with adjustments for the role of caster/brute/skill/etc" is the best way to go by a mile.
Who's said verisimilitude has been sacrificed?
I've literally heard some devs say this. Which I like.
