With The Book of the Dead being our first look at the new approach to monster books, what are your hopes/ideas for future monster books? Below are a few of mine.
Animal Archive/Companion Compendium/Eidolon Index/Familiar Folio: This monster book is all about creatures with the animal trait and exploring rule options relating to Companions, Eidolons, and Familiars. While these rules may not be limited to creatures with the Animal Trait this feel like a good place to explore them.
The Dragon Book: This book would deliver on creatures with the Dragon Trait, but also delves deep into the lore about dragons.
The Faerie Ring: A monster book all about creatures with the Fey Trait as well has things like the Witch Market, Fey Tokens, and the Tane.
Deadly Flora: While probably not the monster book most people are anticipating, there is so much possibility here. In addition to Plant and Fungus Creatures, I want this book to explore plant flora. Let’s see a chapter on magical plants that are not creatures. There is a lot of lore and myths about plants that do magical things. Also let’s see a chapter on harvesting plants for magical use in alchemy, rituals, and spell casting.
Beastly: A monster book all about monsters with the Beast Trait. I would love it if this book included legends, stories, and myths about the origins of many of the beasts.
Dark Tapestry: Instead of focusing on a specific Creature Trait this book focuses on a genera. This book is all about Cthulhu Mythos monsters, outer dimensional monsters, and dreamlands monsters.
Dominion of the Black: Another genera book this one is all about monsters from outer space: Aliens, Robots, AIs, and Space Monsters.
Titanomachy: This book is all about really big monsters. Gargantuan is the smallest size of monster in this book. This includes Kaiju size monsters and possible even bigger. This includes rules for battling things like environments, for example if a forest, swamp, or desert is attacking you, how does that work and how do you fight back.
I like stuff that fills out "factions" (not factions in the sense of "pathfinder society" or "aspis consortium", but factions in the sense of "barghests, bugbears and goblins" or "fire giants, efreetis, and their servants" and so on). I also love that book of the dead is having items/ancestries/character options/etc.
Here are some things I would love:
Goblins: A book with ancestry feats for goblins & hobgoblins, a bugbear ancestry, a kanabo ancestry, information about the goblin hero gods, various extra goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear creatures to fill out all of the roles for them, and expanded stuff on barghests (the bestiary entry for barghests mentions that greater barghests that make it to the Abyss get even weirder mutations and powers, so it would be nice to see stats for an Abyss Barghest). They can also put in goblin snakes and various creatures that the different kinds of goblins use as mounts/war beasts/etc.
Giants: A book with some kind of giant related ancestry, some giant related magic and sub-classes, the various giants that aren't covered by the current 3 bestiaries, and a bunch of varied stat blocks of existing giants to fill different roles. Extra rules for fighting giant things (maybe including rules to be able to climb them, with a giant hunter archetype who specializes in fighting big creatures by tripping them/climbing them/etc. Rules and ideas for encounters in environments that are scaled for creatures bigger than you, and for giant items (like a giant's magic ring that you have to wear as a crown, or a giant's bow that for you works like a ballista, and so on).
Mad Science: A book with rules for making golems, stitched together monsters, constructs and fleshwarps. Lots of the above monsters, and monsters that are the results of experiments gone wrong and science that went too far. Class feats for the alchemist, inventor, investigator, & wizard that lets them be extra reckless and irresponsible with their implementation of knowledge. Lots of inspiration to be drawn from all of Lovecraft's "science went too far!" stories. Rules for running unsafe experiments to come up with weird prototype magic items/spells/alchemical items that get a weird extra effect that the vanilla version doesn't have.
A book of the First World and Fey would be pretty cool, since there's so much interesting lore there and I feel like fey archetypes and other player options are always really appreciated by people I've played with.
Weirdly, I would love a book of Celestials, I know its weird because you don't fight them that often in a normal game, I wouldn't mind letting them share a book with fiends and having it be themed off the conflict between them. I just really like angel lore.
A Mythic book, featuring general archetypes that players can take to progress beyond level 20 (five levels ought to do it), and a substantial offering of stats for threats in the 20-29 range.
Weirdly, I would love a book of Celestials, I know its weird because you don't fight them that often in a normal game, I wouldn't mind letting them share a book with fiends and having it be themed off the conflict between them. I just really like angel lore.
The great thing about these books not being purely about monsters is that a book for celestials will still have stuff useful for good aligned campaigns because of all the character options and other associated rules. I could see that book also having things to increase the usefulness for celestials as monsters (such as rules for entreating divine or angelic intervention - this gives you a way to integrate celestials into the game as allies that swoop in and do cool stuff).
Edit: Knowing the direction Paizo has gone in the past (The 1e Mythic system being a parallel leveling system) and where they are with 2e, I doubt the 2e version of mythic/epic will be anything like what people expect. It will likely be something new and unexpected and really elegant (like the 3 action economy or archetypes being used to multiclass). I don't think it will be just "There are 5/10 more levels now!"
Weirdly, I would love a book of Celestials, I know its weird because you don't fight them that often in a normal game, I wouldn't mind letting them share a book with fiends and having it be themed off the conflict between them. I just really like angel lore.The great thing about these books not being purely about monsters is that a book for celestials will still have stuff useful for good aligned campaigns because of all the character options and other associated rules. I could see that book also having things to increase the usefulness for celestials as monsters (such as rules for entreating divine or angelic intervention - this gives you a way to integrate celestials into the game as allies that swoop in and do cool stuff).
Edit: Knowing the direction Paizo has gone in the past (The 1e Mythic system being a parallel leveling system) and where they are with 2e, I doubt the 2e version of mythic/epic will be anything like what people expect. It will likely be something new and unexpected and really elegant (like the 3 action economy or archetypes being used to multiclass). I don't think it will be just "There are 5/10 more levels now!"
It has been alluded to in the past that the game was built to scale properly after level 20 explicitly to streamline the prospect of doing something like mythic that way without making it it's own crazy subsystem.
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I would quite like an aberration book.
I could see a book about the far frontiers, dealing with qlippoth, the dominion, and other creatures that are so far removed from the normal.
Something focused on Aberrations of various sorts would be very, very interesting, especially if it delved into the more unpredictable, unknowable aspects of their nature. It could also feature aberration-hunting stuff for PCs, along for ways to interact and perhaps even be influenced by Aberrations throughout the course of an adventure.
For a Fiend-centric book, aside from Devils, Daemons and Demons, I'd really like to see stuff that doesn't necessarily fit into those three and thus isn't bound by the expectations that come with belonging to one of those categories, just to see the designers can come up with. Also, this book could be a very interesting way to insert an optional "corruption" mechanic or something along those lines, where interacting with Fiends and performing evil actions tied to them could gradually have an effect on the PCs' alignment, along stuff like contracts that could grant power at a terrible cost and such.
A book all about the Fey is something I've wanted for a long, long time, for some reason there really hasn't been a major release focusing on them despite being quite popular. All manners of weird, whimsical and unsettling creatures could pour out of a book like this. On the player's side of things, it would be nice to see an emphasis on the concept of promises, which is something that the Fey have quite an attachment to, perhaps an "expansion" of sorts on the Thaumathurge's feat.
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It has been alluded to in the past that the game was built to scale properly after level 20 explicitly to streamline the prospect of doing something like mythic that way without making it it's own crazy subsystem.Weirdly, I would love a book of Celestials, I know its weird because you don't fight them that often in a normal game, I wouldn't mind letting them share a book with fiends and having it be themed off the conflict between them. I just really like angel lore.The great thing about these books not being purely about monsters is that a book for celestials will still have stuff useful for good aligned campaigns because of all the character options and other associated rules. I could see that book also having things to increase the usefulness for celestials as monsters (such as rules for entreating divine or angelic intervention - this gives you a way to integrate celestials into the game as allies that swoop in and do cool stuff).
Edit: Knowing the direction Paizo has gone in the past (The 1e Mythic system being a parallel leveling system) and where they are with 2e, I doubt the 2e version of mythic/epic will be anything like what people expect. It will likely be something new and unexpected and really elegant (like the 3 action economy or archetypes being used to multiclass). I don't think it will be just "There are 5/10 more levels now!"
Going past 20 is Epic territory.
Mythic allowed you to play extraordinary characters from level 1.
Dragons, fiends and fey!
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Back as a 5e player I wasn't all that interested in the feywild but the first world in pathfinder really intrigues me. The gods made a rough draft of creation and said "nah, this is kinda silly we need to try again." Just a wild and irresponsible canvas of inexperienced and overpowered creation. I place where laws of physics aren't all that consistent and everything is mad like wonderland bc nobody gets it right on the first try but that first creation usually has the most passion. Long story short I'd really dig a first world book/bestiary.