Pretty much. The only real change is divine damage (alignment, attacks from fiends, flame strike, etc) is more consistent.So, holy effects are more effective against the things good damage was more effective against before, while not being more effective against the things it wasn't, and having easy access to it still comes with a tradeoff of being more vulnerable to creatures with unholy effects as long as a stat block specifies it does (such as, outside the Monster Core, the unholy rune and chilling darkness spell).
Some people are doom posting in other places about the removal of alignment damage but it honestly sounds like things will end up being more or less the same. Lawful and chaotic damage rarely came up and when they did it was annoyingly difficult to guarantee you had it when you needed it. Evil damage was rarely a significant part of a monster's damage profile as many PCs were immune. I don't think monsters have gotten significantly worse without it and I doubt that one family of celestials no longer being vulnerable to unholy effects for flavor reasons is going to make the rare campaign where a PC will want to blast a celestial with unholy energies any more awful.
Yet we still get the main general change where now spirit damage affects everyone (except constructs). So no more neutral PCs ignoring part of the fiends damage nor non-good clerics being penalized with many spells effectiveness restricted because most adventures are vs evil creatures with some neutrals eventually.
I'm very frustrated that kobolds now have nothing to do with dragons. I have liked them very much due to their resemblance to dragons. Is the depiction of kobolds as little dragons a creation of D&D too, and not part of the origianl mythology?Mythological Kobolds were spirits/faeries of the earth, associated with ore and gemstones. The draconic link is a D&D-ism; you might know Warcraft's Kobolds as miners, while any Dungeon Meshi fans have seen them as poison-resistant dogfolk in that work.
Yes, according to wikipedia, Kobolds definition is way fluid and are way more fey and way less related to dragons.
Having that fluid aspect in new MC represents this definition well.
Thanks for compiling those. I'm going to add that info to my Sanctification guide.
Here's a fun tidbit. The diabolic dragon is immune to divine immolation, and its fire breath weapon functions similarly for counting as either fire or spirit damage.
How does the immunity to divine immolatuon work? And is the fire breath the only thing the dragon can convert to spirit damage?
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The thing about Kobolds is that you can absolutely still play a kobold character that is a smol dragon, and as a GM you can have entire groups of them that fan girl a dragon around, so nothing about the kobold loses the old flavor of existing kobold groups, you just probably aren’t likely to see more draconic kobold material in adventures and AP material for a little while until they can get enough other kinds of representation that players can get used to seeing other kinds of kobolds too.
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Another thing to point out, that the descriptions of the Kobolds still call them out as small humanoid lizards and the artwork shown(even that of one not meant to be connected to dragons) still look largely the same when it comes to shape, size and scaliness. The redesign of apperance that came about at the start of PF2E is still the basis for the creatures. It just means that Kobolds can be influenced by other things then dragons and will become small humanoid lizards that might have certain aspects be based on whatever there egg was absorbing latent energy from.
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Might be a bit of a tangent for the monster core thread here, but damn I cannot wait to see how kobold ancestry looks after this new information. They were already a very cool ancestry so I'm a little worried about changing them, but their new shtick has so much potential.
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Might be a bit of a tangent for the monster core thread here, but damn I cannot wait to see how kobold ancestry looks after this new information. They were already a very cool ancestry so I'm a little worried about changing them, but their new shtick has so much potential.
I'm ready to see fey-influenced kobolds, or elemental-influenced kobolds.
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Qlippoth still exist? I thought they are created by D&D. Turns out they are purely Paizo's creation?If I understand the story correctly, the qlippoth are a creation of James Jacobs and actually predate the version of them that appears in D&D--there called 'obyriths'--which James also created. Rather than filing off the serial numbers to make qlippoth, the qlippoth had serial numbers added to them when they were incorporated into D&D.
Spoilering for a wall of text about the qlippoth:
Erik Mona brought qlippoth into the TTRPG world in Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss, an OGL product that we often drew monsters from in the 3.5 era and into Pathfinder 1st edition.
I was inspired by Erik's work on qlippoth to bring in a parallel to the "primeval evil fiend" for WotC's "Hordes of the Abyss." Since that product was an official D&D product, it wasn't appropriate to bring in OGL content from another company, but the idea of primeval evil fiends was compelling to me, so I got permission to create the obyriths as the D&D version of this concept. "Obyrith" is a nonsense word I made up, but the design philosophy of them was that these were basically pre-humanoid cosmic evils—a sort of "What if Lovecraftian monsters were supernatural fiends instead of aliens or other-dimensional entities" experiment.
I also invented the loumaras for the same book, a word I created and was inspired by the root words/etymology of the word "illuminate" for a third category of Abyssal fiend that would give D&D the classic "fiend without a body who possesses the living" category of otherworldly terrors.
Both the obyriths and the loumaras are not open content, so we could never use them in Pathfinder, but several of us did really like the idea of primeval chaotic evil fiends, and Pathfinder did NOT have the restriction against using OGL content. In fact, by using OGL content from other companies, the idea was that we could boost signals and share and share alike in the spirit of the OGL's intent... so we brought obyriths into Pathfinder 2nd edition, updating some of those Erik first created for Green Ronin's book to work with Pathifnder's rules and changing some of the lore to fit Golarion. Over time, we created many more brand-new qlippoth, often drawing upon obscure real-world mythological lore for inspiration or just for names.
When we decided to remaster the game to switch over to the ORC license and leave the OGL behind, we wanted to keep qlippoth in our game because they're an important part of the lore and are a concept for fiends that we wanted to retain. Again, since the word itself is a real-world word for a concept of evil, its use is as open to anyone as is the word demon or dragon or angel... but the specific qlippoth created by Erik that we brought into Pathifnder were entirely creations of Erik and only existed in OGL expression. Since we didn't want to "cross the streams" for content that we brought into the remastered game, we did not and will not be updating the following qlippoth: shoggti, nyogoth, chernobue, hydraggon, or the qlippoth lord Shiggareb, as those are all OGL creations for Green Ronin. All the other qlippoth we've got in the game are Paizo-owned creations, so we CAN bring them forward into the remastered game. In Monster Core, we had room for the cythnigot, the gongorinan, the augnagar, and the thulgant. We'll continue to update others we've published before as well as introduce brand new ones as products we're creating make sense to include them.
Barghasts got a cool makeover. They don't seem to be goblin linked anymore and look more like... some kind of sleek fusion of a doberman with the muzzle of a rottweiler. Very cool looking.
I am surprised to see Will-o'-Wisps made it back in with like zero changes. Sorry kineticists!
Barghests look like italian mastiffs (or cane corso, if you prefer), which is pretty cool.
I was mainly surprised by 2 things:
1 - The change name to all the Genies. It just seems weird because all of them were simply names from arabic mythology, so I don't see the point here when you still keep Angels and Demons and such.
2 - Trolls now weak to Electricity and Fire. Not a huge change, but noticeable.
Glad to see harpies lost their song (which they never should've had, that's a siren thing) and big shoutout to the Gongorinan and his dumb little mace. You go, dude!
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Not sure if I understood correctly, but does that mean you didn't like the name "sea devils" and like the new name "sedacthy"? I actually hate the new name very much, and am very surprised that Paizo cannot use the name sahuagin. Is sahuagin created by D&D as well?
The word "sahuagin" is... as far as my research has revealed... a nonsense word invented by Gary Gygax to fill the role of something like Lovecraft's deep ones or the classic Universal monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The notion of them being called sea devils is also from D&D.
We wanted a similar creature in the remastered game, but couldn't use sahuagin/sea devils. Nor could we use skum (although the name "ulat-kini" IS a Paizo invention, the creature itself is a D&D monster). Nor coul dwe use kuo-toa, a D&D monster that, like the illithid and the carrion crawler, was left out of the SRD from the start. It's interesting that these three creatures are all basically the same thing—a low-level green evil fish-person monster, so having all three in the game was already kind of overkill.
So with none of those options available, we more or less had 3 choices. Bring forward the deep ones, which are a public domain monster, create a brand new version inspired by public domain literature or mythology... OR we could come up with our own new name for this sort of creature and create something that's a Paizo original that's inspired by all of the above.
We went for that third option with the sedacthys.
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1 - The change name to all the Genies. It just seems weird because all of them were simply names from arabic mythology, so I don't see the point here when you still keep Angels and Demons and such.
This is a change we made in Rage of Elements after consultation with and working with cultural experts on the mythologies involved, which let us present these concepts more respectfully while also distancing ourselves from the OGL/D&D concepts and lore.
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Does that mean that the deep ones from PF1E's B5 are being folded into the sedacthys as well?Not sure if I understood correctly, but does that mean you didn't like the name "sea devils" and like the new name "sedacthy"? I actually hate the new name very much, and am very surprised that Paizo cannot use the name sahuagin. Is sahuagin created by D&D as well?The word "sahuagin" is... as far as my research has revealed... a nonsense word invented by Gary Gygax to fill the role of something like Lovecraft's deep ones or the classic Universal monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The notion of them being called sea devils is also from D&D.
We wanted a similar creature in the remastered game, but couldn't use sahuagin/sea devils. Nor could we use skum (although the name "ulat-kini" IS a Paizo invention, the creature itself is a D&D monster). Nor coul dwe use kuo-toa, a D&D monster that, like the illithid and the carrion crawler, was left out of the SRD from the start. It's interesting that these three creatures are all basically the same thing—a low-level green evil fish-person monster, so having all three in the game was already kind of overkill.
So with none of those options available, we more or less had 3 choices. Bring forward the deep ones, which are a public domain monster, create a brand new version inspired by public domain literature or mythology... OR we could come up with our own new name for this sort of creature and create something that's a Paizo original that's inspired by all of the above.
We went for that third option with the sedacthys.
No. Those are separate creatures that we might someday update.
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I'm definitely gonna miss the shoggti, nyogoth, and chernobue, but they're all in premaster bestiaries and it doesn't sound like qlippoth changed too much aside from losing their weakness to lawful.
Exactly. And while that means we won't be using them in a remastered product, there's nothing preventing you from using them in your home games or swapping them in for creatures in adventures we publish; the rules still work fine (with the exception that remastered qlippoth don't have that lawful weakness, but just ignoring that in a remastered game is fine too.)
I feel like one of the easiest ecological niches to fill in terms of monster creation is "here's a horrible creature from the outer rifts that is nasty in the specific way I want something to be nasty." Like there's probably more kinds of qlippoth out there than we could ever plausibly fit into books.
It's conceivable that even making categories of this sort of thing is a game mechanical conceit since they're all deeply horrific individuals, i.e. there are as many kinds of qlippoth as there are qlippoths.
It's just that we don't really see the need to give the entire life stories of various bandits, vampires, giants, etc. that might end up as antagonists but we *could* if we really wanted to.
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Are the Sahkil Paizo only? I don't recall them in D&D. But they removed the Sahkil feats from the Remaster Nephilim on Archives of Nethys, so you can't be a Sahkil-blooded Nephilim.
Or can you use the old feats if you can find them?
Are the Sahkil Paizo only? I don't recall them in D&D. But they removed the Sahkil feats from the Remaster Nephilim on Archives of Nethys, so you can't be a Sahkil-blooded Nephilim.
Or can you use the old feats if you can find them?
Were there ever Sahkil Tieflings officially? I remember unofficial options for them and Couatl Aasimar, but nothing actually in PF2.
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Were there ever Sahkil Tieflings officially? I remember unofficial options for them and Couatl Aasimar, but nothing actually in PF2.Are the Sahkil Paizo only? I don't recall them in D&D. But they removed the Sahkil feats from the Remaster Nephilim on Archives of Nethys, so you can't be a Sahkil-blooded Nephilim.
Or can you use the old feats if you can find them?
Indeed. AoN only has Creatures with the Sahkil trait (8 of them) or the Couatl trait (4 of them). No ancestry, heritage, feat ...
And there was no Sahkil lineage for Tieflings (checked on AoN by searching for tiefling).
And same for Couatl Aasimars.
My bad. It was Asura. Faultspawn. That is what I was looking for. They removed the Asura lineage feat from Nephilim.
Are the Sahkil Paizo only? I don't recall them in D&D. But they removed the Sahkil feats from the Remaster Nephilim on Archives of Nethys, so you can't be a Sahkil-blooded Nephilim.
Or can you use the old feats if you can find them?
As the other have said, I don't know of any sahkil lineage, but to Address the other part of it, the PC Nephilim is focused on the fiend and celestial immortal lineages specifically, with a note about monitor-descended lineages existing but not appearing in that perview. If and when sahkil-attuned heritages appear, they may likely join the nephilim fiend lineages, assuming they are not distinct like the duskwalker and hungerseed heritages.
Edit: probably Asura too... actually I wonder if those may be seen in the future... they are kind if important in the history of Hell and I'd miss them at least a little more than some other immortal families.
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My bad. It was Asura. Faultspawn. That is what I was looking for. They removed the Asura lineage feat from Nephilim.
I think that's just not in there because it's from Impossible Lands. The remaster books are mostly just converting stuff from the CRB and APG, with maybe a bit of padding from LO:AG (the exception of course being ancestries which are straight up from other books like the leshy or kholo. Sticking to just those books would leave you with nothing lol). It's the same as all the other options from Lost Omens books which weren't converted over (Winter Touched humans aren't in the book either and still exist for example)
If I could request a spoiler, because my son asked today: did terror birds graduate to the Monster Core?
I've been pretty annoyed my brilliant rune doesn't trigger fiend weakness even though it only deals spirit damage to fiends. Today I thought I found a work around in dragon form. (Plus, an excuse to use finally use this flavorful but mathematically lackluster spell.) But then I saw the empyereal dragon form doesn't get the holy trait on strikes or breath weapon. Real sad. :(
How does the immunity to divine immolatuon work? And is the fire breath the only thing the dragon can convert to spirit damage?Thanks for compiling those. I'm going to add that info to my Sanctification guide.
Here's a fun tidbit. The diabolic dragon is immune to divine immolation, and its fire breath weapon functions similarly for counting as either fire or spirit damage.
It literally says it is divine immolation and similar effects. IIRC the jaw attack can deal spirit damage instead of fire too.
I really hope they tone down the weaknesses. Far too brutal and easy to trigger at the higher levels.
If I could request a spoiler, because my son asked today: did terror birds graduate to the Monster Core?
Sadly, no
we did not and will not be updating the following qlippoth: shoggti, nyogoth, chernobue, hydraggon, or the qlippoth lord Shiggareb, as those are all OGL creations for Green Ronin.
Shame about those. Especially the Chernobue. They've always felt like the poster child for the Qlippoth. The archetypal Qlippoth, or at least they've almost felt that way to me.
Obviously continuing to use them for now is totally fine, but it saddens me to think that we'll more or less be loosing them going forward, and I wonder if any new Qlippoth will be created to slot into that representative slot.
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Oh right, do Ulat-Kini not exist in post remaster anymore? I thought they did exist in the dwarf ap that featured the post remaster darklands lore article
Sky King's Tomb introduced some remastered monster names, but was still OGL.
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I wonder if the term "Ulat-Kini" will be decoupled from the Alghollthus and instead become the ancestral name of the Deep Ones. Considering the Deep Ones lack an ancestral name, and that the Ulat-Kini and Deeps Ones are already extremely close in theme and presentation I could see that as a possibility.
Not sure if I understood correctly. So qlippoth is purely the creation of Paizo, but shoggti, nyogoth, chernobue, and Shiggarreb cannot be used in Pathfinder Remaster? I didn't know they were created by Green Ronin because they appeared in First Edition Bestiary 2 and Book of the Damned. But if they were created for Pathfinder in the first place instead of D&D, perhaps they are still usable in Pathfinder Remaster?
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Not sure if I understood correctly. So qlippoth is purely the creation of Paizo, but shoggti, nyogoth, chernobue, and Shiggarreb cannot be used in Pathfinder Remaster? I didn't know they were created by Green Ronin because they appeared in First Edition Bestiary 2 and Book of the Damned. But if they were created for Pathfinder in the first place instead of D&D, perhaps they are still usable in Pathfinder Remaster?
Qlippoth is a real world term in the public domain and is therefore save to use by any publishing company.
The first appearance of shoggti, nyogoth, and chernobue was in a book produced by a gaming company called Green Ronin. Green Ronin published using the OGL License. Because Green Ronin used the OGL License, this allowed Paizo to use those 3 qlippoth in there books that were also published with the OGL License.
With Paizo moving to the ORC License, they are prohibited from using material from other companies that published using the OGL License. Which means Paizo is prohibited from using shoggti, nyogoth, and chernobue.
There is additional nuance, but hopefully this helps with understanding.
How does the immunity to divine immolatuon work? And is the fire breath the only thing the dragon can convert to spirit damage?It literally says it is divine immolation and similar effects. IIRC the jaw attack can deal spirit damage instead of fire too.
I think that this is slightly ambiguous. Here is the applicable text:
A diabolic dragon is immune to the diabolic fire of other diabolic dragons, the fire from divine immolation, and similar effects.
Divine immolation states that if a creature would take more damage from spirit instead of fire, it is spirit damage.
So this could be read two ways, 1) they don't take fire damage from divine immolation but they can take spirit damage, or 2) they are immune to divine immolation.
Arguments for 1) if Paizo wanted them to be immune they would say so, also the spell is sanctified, so it could trigger the diabolic dragon's holy weakness. For 2) being immune to diabolic fire implies that they are immune to affects that would deal spirt instead of fire if it would be beneficial to the caster.
Did we lose the doppelganger and the rust monster?
Did we lose the doppelganger and the rust monster?
I think so.
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Oh, here's a bit of an obscure ask. Is there some version of the roiling incant in Monster Core? I'd bet almost certainly not, it didn't show up until B3 and is a pretty out of the way kind of monster, but I really like the idea behind them and would like to see how they'd be translated to a school-less magic world.
Not that I saw. I would put them in the wait and see bucket with the Dweomer cats until they figure out remastered Runelord schools. The easiest way to make them work would be immunity to some other spell traits, like all six elements, for example.
I feel like there is a great mix of old familiar and brand new.
I love the dragons. And also new variants on old favorites, like trolls.
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Did we lose the doppelganger and the rust monster?
Doppelganger was confirmed with its removal from the Remastered Beginner Box. Rust Monster is 100% invented by Gygax for D&D based off a toy set he purchased as stop gap minis.
Same pack that spawned the Umber Hulk, Owlbear, and Bulette.
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Oh, here's a bit of an obscure ask. Is there some version of the roiling incant in Monster Core? I'd bet almost certainly not, it didn't show up until B3 and is a pretty out of the way kind of monster, but I really like the idea behind them and would like to see how they'd be translated to a school-less magic world.Not that I saw. I would put them in the wait and see bucket with the Dweomer cats until they figure out remastered Runelord schools. The easiest way to make them work would be immunity to some other spell traits, like all six elements, for example.
That is almost exactly what I thought too after seeing them with the link. And given the example provided, I would start with the damaging cantrip and work based on its trait and Tradition.
But, and it's important to stress this, anything that's in a PF2 Bestiary isn't going away, they just will not be used going forward in adventure content from Paizo
And just as the Green Dragon became the Horned Dragon, Paizo can bring monsters back if they find a good reason, twist, or change to incorporate it back in. Like since there's an empty niche for an ice dragon with the White Dragon gone, maybe a future book will take that idea and make an Ice Shaper Dragon that uses their ice breath to make armor mid-combat, or breaths ice onto their tail to make it like a sword.
For the Rust Monster, iirc there's a metal elemental creature in Rage of Elements of a similar level that rusts and eats weapons. So while gone, there's options for an equipment destroying beast.
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Oh, here's a bit of an obscure ask. Is there some version of the roiling incant in Monster Core? I'd bet almost certainly not, it didn't show up until B3 and is a pretty out of the way kind of monster, but I really like the idea behind them and would like to see how they'd be translated to a school-less magic world.Not that I saw. I would put them in the wait and see bucket with the Dweomer cats until they figure out remastered Runelord schools. The easiest way to make them work would be immunity to some other spell traits, like all six elements, for example.Thanks for checking. And that is what I'm figuring would happen too, assuming they make the jump. Tying them to a single spell trait rather than a spell school would make each incant more unique, which would be cool, even if it would also narrow the range of effects they can employ.
Honestly a bit surprised the doppelganger isn't in the book; androgynous, nearly featureless shapeshifters who like schemin' are all over the shop in fantasy and sci fi literature.
I think it depends. You can get a pretty decent approximation of most OGL schools with the right combination of traits.
Enchantment - mental
Illusuon - illusion
necromancy - void, spirit, vitality
Evocation - fire, sonic, air, force
Transmutation - earth, wood, metal, morph, polymorph
Divination - prediction, scrying, detection
Abjuration is really the only one lacking key traits, but it was also the least likely to be used offensively.
As to doppelgangers, pretty sure faceless stalkers are still in there. I was never quite clear why we had both TBH, and there are plenty of other shape shifting creatures too. Totenmaske springs to mind.
As to doppelgangers, pretty sure faceless stalkers are still in there. I was never quite clear why we had both TBH, and there are plenty of other shape shifting creatures too. Totenmaske springs to mind.
I legitimately forgot Doppelgangers and Faceless Stalkers were separate monsters. Both around the same level, too. One is level 3, one is level 4.
Edit: I do prefer the Pathfinder art of the Doppelgangers though, so I'm just going to keep using that art and model.