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Split from another thread, I'd like to ask why PF2 has taken large steps backwards with how detailed the information it gives on monsters is compared to both D&D 3.x and PF1.
For example, here are how the three systems describe the Aboleth:
The cool, refreshing water suddenly erupts in a storm of reaching, grasping tentacles. The tentacles connect to a primeval fish, 20 feet in length from its bulbous head to its crescent-shaped tail. Three slit-shaped eyes, protected by bony ridges, are set one atop the other in the front of its head, which remains just beneath the surface as it attacks.
The aboleth is a revolting fishlike amphibian found primarily in
subterranean lakes and rivers. It despises all nonaquatic creatures
and attempts to destroy them on sight.An aboleth has a pink belly. Four pulsating blueblack orifices line the bottom of its body and secrete gray slime that smells like rancid grease. It uses its tail for propulsion in the water and drags itself along with its tentacles on land. An aboleth weighs about 6,500 pounds.
Aboleths are cruel and highly intelligent, making them dangerous predators. They know many ancient and terrible secrets, for they inherit their parents’ knowledge at birth and assimilate the memories of all they consume.
Aboleths are smart enough to refrain from immediately attacking land dwellers who draw near. Instead they hang back, hoping their prey will enter the water, which they often make appear cool, clear, and refreshing with their powers of illusion. Aboleths also use their psionic abilities to enslave individuals for use against their own companions.
Aboleths have both male and female reproductive organs. They breed in solitude, laying 1d3 eggs every five years. These eggs grow for another five years before hatching into full-grown aboleths. Although the young are physically mature, they remain with their parent for some ten years, obeying the older creature utterly.
Aboleths speak their own language, as well as Undercommon
and Aquan.
Four long tentacles writhe from this three-eyed fish-like creature’s flanks, and its green body glistens with thick, clear slime.
As befits their hideous primeval appearance, the
hermaphroditic aboleths are among the world’s oldest forms of life. Ancient even when the gods first turned their eyes to the Material Plane, the aboleths have always existed apart from other mortal life, alien and cold and endlessly plotting. They once ruled the world with vast empires, and today view most other forms of life as either food or slaves—and sometimes both. They disdain the gods and see themselves as the true masters of creation.An aboleth is 25 feet long and weighs 6,500 pounds.
In the darkest reaches of the sea, aboleths still dwell in grotesque cities built in nauseating and cyclopean styles. There they are served by countless slaves culled from every nation, air-breathing and aquatic alike, although the air-breathing slaves are doubly bound by magic and the need to constantly replenish their water-breathing ability via the excretions of their aboleth masters. Lone aboleths are often advance scouts for these hidden cities, seeking out new slaves.
Aboleths form the core of alghollthu society, and while they are the “common folk” of their own societies, they see themselves as masters of all others. Unlike their leaders, who mask their actions using magical disguises, aboleths revel in their monstrous forms, appearing as primeval fish with tentacles. Masters of psychic manipulation, they are a species so ancient that they were present in the world when it was young, before the gods had turned their attention to the planet. They see all other life as something they have the right to control, so the idea that potential slaves might have faith in a higher power other than themselves enrages aboleths.
7 paragraphs in D&D 3.5, down to 3 in PF1's Bestiary, down to 1 for the same creature in PF2 pre-remaster. But perhaps I'm being unfair, let's look at the humble Bugbear and see what we can find.
This muscular, savage humanoid stands 7 feet tall. Coarse hair covers most of its body. Its mouth is full of long, sharp fangs, and its nose is much like that of a bear.
The biggest and strongest of the goblinoids, bugbears are more aggressive than their smaller relatives. They live by hunting any creature weaker than themselves.
The bugbear’s nose is the cause of its name, though the creature is not related to bears. Its hide and sharp claws also resemble those of bears. A bugbear’s hands are far more dexterous than a bear’s paws, however, and its claws are too small to make effective weapons.
Bugbears speak Goblin and Common.
Bugbears prefer to ambush opponents whenever possible. When hunting, they normally send scouts ahead of the main group that, if they spy prey, return to report and bring up reinforcements. Bugbear attacks are coordinated, and their tactics are sound if not brilliant.
Bugbears prefer to dwell in temperate, mountainous regions with many caves, living in small tribal units. A single bugbear, usually the biggest and meanest, leads each tribe. A tribe has as many young as it has adults. Children do not join the adults in the hunt, but they will fight to protect themselves or their lairs.
Bugbears have only two genuine goals in life: food and treasure. Prey and intruders are considered a valuable source of both. These extremely greedy creatures prize anything shiny, including arms and armor. They never miss an opportunity to increase their hoards through theft, plunder, and ambush. On rare occasions they parley with other beings if they believe something can be gained, but they are not skilled negotiators, losing their patience quickly if such encounters run overlong.
They are sometimes found commanding goblins and hobgoblins, whom they bully mercilessly.
Bugbears survive primarily by hunting, and they eat whatever they can bring down. Any creature is a legitimate source of food, including monsters and even their own smaller kin. When game is scarce, bugbears turn to raiding and ambush to fill their stewpots.
Most bugbears revere a deity named Hruggek, who delights in
ambushes followed by furious combat.
This dark-furred creature raises a spiked morningstar, its tiny, milk-white eyes glittering with the thrill of the coming kill.
The bugbear is the largest of the goblinoid races, a lumbering brute that stands at least a head taller than most humans. They are loners, preferring to live and kill on their own rather than form tribes of their own kind, yet it isn’t uncommon to find small bands of bugbears working together, or dwelling in goblin or hobgoblin tribes where they function as elite guards or executioners. Bugbears do not form large warrens like goblins or nations like hobgoblins; they prefer smaller-scale
mayhem that lets them keep their favorite acts (murder and torture) on a more personal level. Humans are a bugbear’s favored prey, and most count the flesh of humanity as a dietary staple. Grisly trophies of ears or fingers are common
bugbear decorations.Bugbears, when they turn to religion, favor gods of murder and violence, with various demon lords being favorites.
A typical bugbear stands 7 feet in height and weighs 400 pounds.
Goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears, despite having superficial similarities, each represent a different face of evil. Hobgoblins are ordered and methodical in their
evil, forming vast armies, warbands, and despotic nations. Goblins are the primal evil, seeking only cruelty and petty victimization as they can find it, be that among their own kind or against their neighbors. Yet the evil personified by the bugbear may be the most terrifying, for they actively seek to inflict pain and suffering in the most destructive ways possible. When a hobgoblin kills, it’s because of tradition and order. When a goblin kills, it’s for fun. But when a bugbear holds its blade, it kills only when it can be assured that the murder will cause maximum pain and suffering to those its weapon does not touch; to a bugbear,
the true goal of murder is to strike not at the victim, but at those who held the victim dear.
These stealthy and cruel goblinoid creatures delight in spreading fear and tormenting their victims. Bugbears are the monsters lurking in the closet and hiding under the bed. Preying on remote farmsteads, bugbears reveal their presence with thumps in the night or creaks of boards to build lurking dread and arouse suspicion and fear.
Bugbears live in small gangs that often prowl together, working as a group to sow torment. They keep their lairs in hard-to-find places deep in the forest or hills.
Though bugbears don’t have much concern for treasure, they’re prone to keeping gruesome trophies. Some might keep a leather cord strung with ears from their victims, while others collect severed fingers or noses. Bits of valuable jewelry can sometimes remain on these grisly prizes.
Even where Paizo does have some extra space to fill such as with the Bullette, their PF2 offering doesn't surpass the volume of information given in a D&D 3.5 Monster Manual. This is disappointing as they'd finally gotten things right with the PF1 entry for the Bulette.
The ground shakes and rolls and then bursts open to reveal a terrible, armor-plated, bullet-shaped creature with a huge snapping maw and short, powerful legs.
Also known as the landshark, the bulette is a terrifying predator that lives only to eat. It is universally shunned, even by other monsters. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the bulette is a solitary animal, although mated pairs (very rare) might share the same territory. Since its appetite is so voracious, each bulette has a large territory that can range up to 30 square miles. Other predators
rarely share territory with one, for fear of being eaten. A bulette has no lair, preferring to wander above and below ground; it burrows beneath the soil to rest.A bulette totally consumes its victims—clothing, weapons, and all. Its powerful stomach acid quickly destroys armor, weapons, and even magic items. It is not above nibbling on chests or sacks of coins either. When it has eaten everything in its territory, a bulette moves on. The sole criterion for a suitable territory is availability of food, so bulettes occasionally locate themselves near human settlements and terrorize the residents.
A bulette attacks anything it regards as edible, choosing the easiest or closest prey first. The only creatures it refuses to eat are elves (and it dislikes the taste of dwarves). When burrowing underground, a landshark relies on its tremorsense ability to detect prey. When it senses something edible (that is, senses movement), it breaks to the surface, crest first, and begins its attack.
The bulette has a foul temperament—stupid, mean, and fearless. The size, strength, and number of its opponents mean nothing.
The creation of some unknown arcanist in millennia past, the bulette has bred true to become one of the fiercest predators of the hills. Burrowing rapidly through the earth just beneath the surface, sometimes with its armored fin cutting a distinctive wake behind it, the bulette launches itself free of stone and soil to tear into its prey without remorse, giving rise to the common appellation “landshark.”
Bulettes are notoriously foul-tempered, attacking far larger creatures with no regard for personal safety. Solitary beasts except for the occasional mated pair,
they spend most of their time patrolling the perimeters of territories that can stretch up to 30 square miles, hunting game and punishing interlopers with a fury
that shakes the hillsides.Bulettes are perfect eating machines, consuming bones, armor, and even magical items with their powerful jaws and churning stomach acid. Lacking other food, the
bulette might gnaw on inanimate objects, yet for unknown reasons no bulette voluntarily consumes elf flesh—a peccadillo many point to as evidence that elven wizardry was involved in its creation. Dwarves are also rarely eaten by the beasts, though the bulette still slaughters members of either race on sight. Halflings, on the other hand, are among the beast’s favorite meals, and no halfling with any
sense ventures into bulette country casually.The bulette is a cunning fighter, surprising foes with its impressive agility. One of its favorite tactics is to charge forward and launch itself into the air in order to drop on its prey with all four razor-sharp claws extended. Folklore claims that the flesh behind the beast’s dorsal crest is particularly tender, and that those willing and able to wait until the fin is raised in the excitement of combat or mating can target it for a killing blow—yet most who have faced the landshark agree that the best way to win a fight with a bulette is to avoid it entirely.
Bulettes are fearsome predators that roam just beneath the surface of desolate wilderness areas. When they burrow through the ground, only the fin of their thickly armored backs protrudes above—at least until they are ready to leap out and strike their prey. Their appearance, appetite, and iconic dorsal fin have earned the nickname “landshark.”
A typical bulette claims a territory of approximately 500 square miles. When it finds an area rich in food, such as a farming village, it adds that area to its regular patrol route. Over the course of a few months, it can wipe entire settlements off the map. Bulettes are fiercely competitive creatures that battle relentlessly with other predators in their territory. They actively avoid contact or conflict with other members of their kind unless seeking a mate. Bulette pairs share territory and mate for life—a mated pair of bulettes being the only known exception to the creature’s penchant for solitude. They rear their young for a short period of time. The mated pair instruct the young bulette how to hunt, teaching their spawn which creatures are easiest to kill and which creatures to avoid. The mated pair drive off their young after its first successful hunt.
The first bulettes were magically created guardians, intended to serve as frightening pets for a power-hungry and sadistic wizard. The technique for their creation, as well as their original purpose, has since been lost to history, and multiple conflicting accounts of ancient texts exist with dozens of wizards claiming to have been the first inventor of the notorious beast. Some sages postulate that the original inventor may have been an elf—a theory born out of little more than the curious fact that bulettes, for all their ravenous nature, seem to find elf flesh unpalatable. Unfortunately for elves who stumble into a bulette’s path, bulettes are no less likely to kill them than any other intruder, simply leaving the bodies unconsumed where they fall.
Although bulettes will eat almost any living creature that they can catch within their vicious jaws, most of them have a particular fondness for the flesh of halflings or horses. Lacking other food, a bulette might gnaw upon vegetable matter or even inanimate objects, although they don’t gain actual nourishment from doing so, this need to feed being merely an extension of a deeply compelling instinct
PF2 can do a good job of flavouring a creature, as shown above with the Bulette, but rarely dedicates page space to doing so. This is a shame when Paizo is known for doing a good job of building out Golarion as a living world.
Lest anybody claim I favour WotC over Paizo, I equally detest what 4e and 5e have done with fluff in their versions of these once flavourful tomes.
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One thing to be aware of. The owners of this site have repeatedly asked people to avoid the word "fluff" because they feel it trivializes the hard work of so many people, and to instead use something more neutral like "lore" instead.
As for why Monster entries have less lore than before, it's probably in order to fit more stuff into each book.
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It's fluff or descriptive text to me, always has been.
It's the "Please don't call me Dick, my name is Richard" principle. If you do something after being politely asked not to, then you're being deliberately antagonistic.
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My guess is it's mostly practical. PF1 had 5-6 bestiaries? PF2 would have wanted to publish as many creatures as they could as fast as they could.
More descriptive text means fewer creatures per book
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My guess is it's mostly practical. PF1 had 5-6 bestiaries? PF2 would have wanted to publish as many creatures as they could as fast as they could.
More descriptive text means fewer creatures per book
Even PF1 had less descriptive text than D&D 3.5, though. So is Paizo just always playing catch-up?
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A typical scenario of Less Equals More.
Less page space for each monster = More Monsters per book.
Don't get me wrong I loved the lore, flavor and info pieces that came with 1E monsters, Being able to sort them by habitat and social structures was rather useful. What kind of treasure they typically had in their dens was a neat touch too. But I can understand why this is not included nowadays.
I miss being able to bring up official Roll Tables for regions to the point that I use 1E's "into the darklands" random encounter tables in my own darklands campaign.
I don't see why they couldn't print a Core rulebook-sized tome of monsters and charge 1.5 to 2x more for it. This idea that a TTRPG should be printed in one large core book is silly and was thankfully dropped for the remaster.
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I would say part of the reason is more text is used to describe monster abilities since far more monsters have unique abilities given the new action paradigm.
Mostly this is something I'm not very concerned with. I prefer more text on unique, interesting monster abilities to challenge the PCs.
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I would say part of the reason is more text is used to describe monster abilities since far more monsters have unique abilities given the new action paradigm.
Mostly this is something I'm not very concerned with. I prefer more text on unique, interesting monster abilities to challenge the PCs.
I don't see why there has to be a push and pull between the two. PDFs don't have page count issues, and I'd gladly pay more for a larger book with 30% more monsters and 100% more descriptive text.
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I think part of the answer is that people who want the monster books in general want the current stats to use the monster in the current version. There is a segment of the population that has the old books, so republishing all the detail and taking up more space in the book or taking away more space for an image of it, or has more text covering the image.
This also reduces their options for having short or medium sized articles about select creatures lore in future books, be the Adventures, Adventure Paths, or one of many themed books. This give the buyers of the monster core books a good volume of monsters and a decent base lore to utilize them, while leaving enough room for people to reference old books if they have them for additional lore, and leaves paizo room to be able to publish longer lore articles about various creatures they decide to highlight.
I think there is also a strategic aspect as well. The 'stat block' portions of the game are considered part of the game mechanics, and so parts of the game that others can take and build from for their own. The lore however is left as Product Identity which is more protected. Some books are very heavy into the stat blocks and mechanics, while other heavy in lore. The Monster Core books are I believe intentionally kept pretty heavy into the mechanics. By keeping the lore more brief and summary like leaves room for the more Lore-centric books to explore the lore more completely. I think this might be in part an acknowledgement that some customers buy the books for the rules system, and so by keeping many of the core books more core focused those players will continue to pick up those books.
On the other hand, the customers who love Golarion, or even if they are homebrewing, love the ideas they get from the lore for Golarion will pick up the lore-filled books.
I'm guessing those are some of the factors that result in the monster entries length being what they are in the books these days. I'm sure there could be other factors too, like trying to avoid reusing the same, or even reworded descriptions of creatures from the old SRD.
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I mean, do you really need that much fluff / lore from monsters? Besides a basic description, their habitat, and overall purpose for the more esoteric monsters like angels or demons, I don't really think you need much else. A monster isn't necesarily a character so they don't need that much lore.
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I don't see why there has to be a push and pull between the two. PDFs don't have page count issues, and I'd gladly pay more for a larger book with 30% more monsters and 100% more descriptive text.I would say part of the reason is more text is used to describe monster abilities since far more monsters have unique abilities given the new action paradigm.
Mostly this is something I'm not very concerned with. I prefer more text on unique, interesting monster abilities to challenge the PCs.
At least at the moment, Paizo is a Publishing company. While they produce PDFs, there primary product leading their model is the actual physical books they produce. Those do have page-count constraints, Page counts drive the prices directly for them, and if they produce too many pages they may drive the books out of the price range their customers can support. I think they try not to catch as much of their market as they can afford to.
While they might be able to try to make a 'super-tome' version that had the monsters and lots more lore. The issue would be that book would be competing with its other more affordable version, which might drive up the cheaper version due to less sold. And it would probably drive up the cost of the 'premium' version. Paizo has the 'sketch' versions, and the deluxe versions of the product which are both self-competing, so maybe they could consider it as an option. But I think there would be a significant cost increase in having to go through re-editing and layout for a completely redone book with lots more lore. I think that additional cost might be harder to make up on the new bigger optional book with the likely smaller customer base.
I wonder if they might let Beadle and Grimm make such a monster tome as a deluxe product?
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I mean, do you really need that much fluff / lore from monsters? Besides a basic description, their habitat, and overall purpose for the more esoteric monsters like angels or demons, I don't really think you need much else. A monster isn't necesarily a character so they don't need that much lore.
Every monster should be capable of being elevated solely using the information given in its description. Thus, the more info the better, especially for newer players.
The thing is that most PF1 lore (and a lot of D&D monster lore) carries over to pre-remaster PF2, so if you're missing what they had in older editions, you can just use that.
All that said, the PF2 bestiaries aren't actually a very good gauge of Paizo's current publishing habits since Monster Core is the new norm. Not that I noticed a major change in the proportional page space devoted to lore, but I also never noticed PF2 bestiaries were lacking in it. It would make sense if Monster Core had more lore, since it featured a lot more new creatures whose lore didn't have 50 years of continuity to draw upon.
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I dont understand being attached to the term fluff.
Its a terrible term to describe creative writing usually loosely based on lore implying the writing is superfluous text to playing the game (the assumption that the stat block is the only important text)
Thing is its not so superfluous when it describes a creature in ways that help a GM understand its behavior, where it lives, what it eats, what motivates it, or even give a GM a great line to intro it to their players.
Fluff is just not a good descriptive word for what is written on the page.
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The thing is that most PF1 lore (and a lot of D&D monster lore) carries over to pre-remaster PF2, so if you're missing what they had in older editions, you can just use that.
All that said, the PF2 bestiaries aren't actually a very good gauge of Paizo's current publishing habits since Monster Core is the new norm. Not that I noticed a major change in the proportional page space devoted to lore, but I also never noticed PF2 bestiaries were lacking in it. It would make sense if Monster Core had more lore, since it featured a lot more new creatures whose lore didn't have 50 years of continuity to draw upon.
I used them as the easiest way to compare directly to the 3.5 Monster Manuals, it's also why I went with pre-master content and shared monsters.
The idea that everybody already has the lore is also false. We have more new blood in the game than ever for both D&D and PF2, and both sides are cutting lore and selling fewer releases than they were back when 3.5 was hot. It should be the opposite.
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Also want to point out that it seems the point of this thread is that the info is valuable or at least desirable to have so maybe fluff isnt the beat word to describe something that isnt actually just fluff.
It's been the industry standard forever. Flavour and lore are fluff, and rules are crunch.I dont understand being attached to the term fluff.
Its a terrible term to describe creative writing usually loosely based on lore implying the writing is superfluous text to playing the game (the assumption that the stat block is the only important text)
Thing is its not so superfluous when it describes a creature in ways that help a GM understand its behavior, where it lives, what it eats, what motivates it, or even give a GM a great line to intro it to their players.
Fluff is just not a good descriptive word for what is written on the page.
I dislike flavor as well.
Its a pet peve when i see it. Its so ubiquitous though.
Also want to point out that it seems the point of this thread is that the info is valuable or at least desirable to have so maybe fluff isnt the beat word to describe something that isnt actually just fluff.It's fluff. Your couch cushions and pillows might be filled with it, and they'd be worse for not having it. The same goes for TTRPG rulebooks.
At least fluff is an apt description of whats in couch cushions.
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The thing is that most PF1 lore (and a lot of D&D monster lore) carries over to pre-remaster PF2, so if you're missing what they had in older editions, you can just use that.
All that said, the PF2 bestiaries aren't actually a very good gauge of Paizo's current publishing habits since Monster Core is the new norm. Not that I noticed a major change in the proportional page space devoted to lore, but I also never noticed PF2 bestiaries were lacking in it. It would make sense if Monster Core had more lore, since it featured a lot more new creatures whose lore didn't have 50 years of continuity to draw upon.
I used them as the easiest way to compare directly to the 3.5 Monster Manuals, it's also why I went with pre-master content and shared monsters.
The idea that everybody already has the lore is also false. We have more new blood in the game than ever for both D&D and PF2, and both sides are cutting lore and selling fewer releases than they were back when 3.5 was hot. It should be the opposite.
I didn't say EVERYONE already has the lore. I said YOU did, because this seems to be a YOU problem. I'm not convinced new players are generally suffering from lack of lore.
As to there being fewer releases, I'm not sure what to tell you there, other than if the industry as a whole is moving towards publishing a smaller selection of higher quality books then you as an outsider are probably overlooking something by claiming they are all doing it wrong.
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Another problem attempting to be generated that doesn't exist. Seems to be a lot of that going on lately.
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It's been the industry standard forever. Flavour and lore are fluff, and rules are crunch.I dont understand being attached to the term fluff.
Its a terrible term to describe creative writing usually loosely based on lore implying the writing is superfluous text to playing the game (the assumption that the stat block is the only important text)
Thing is its not so superfluous when it describes a creature in ways that help a GM understand its behavior, where it lives, what it eats, what motivates it, or even give a GM a great line to intro it to their players.
Fluff is just not a good descriptive word for what is written on the page.
Just because it's been like this the whole time doesn't mean it should stay like that forever. I understand being attached to/familiar with the term, but especially in this current climate, the changing of names/identity shouldn't be met with resistance.
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Well, at this point just ignore the troll and report any inflammatory posts.
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I'll also note the aboleth entry in particular might not be long but that's because they form the core of a larger society, the alghollthu, which has a lengthy amount of additional lore.
Alghollthu
Source Bestiary pg. 12
In bygone millennia, aquatic monsters known as alghollthus used their occult powers to conquer and rule vast parts of the world. Their empires contained countless mortal slaves treated as little more than cattle. Alghollthus shaped their slaves and other creatures using mental manipulation and physically transformative magic. Aberrant horrors from faceless stalkers to mimics can be traced back to this meddling. The rulers of the alghollthu race, the so-called veiled masters, further shaped entire societies by assuming the forms of those they controlled. From the heights of power to the shadows of poverty, the veiled masters manipulated these societies according to their own dark designs, enslaving, killing, or horrifically transforming those who discovered their plans or acted against them.In time, the alghollthus grew frustrated with their increasingly upstart slave societies and sought to wipe the slate clean—both starting anew and punishing those who had become too willful and rebellious. They used incredible magical power to call forth a cataclysm, hoping to destroy the rebellious societies they’d manipulated. Yet they miscalculated the strength of faith and will to survive of their pawns and slaves, and in time the world and its empires recovered and grew strong once again—this time without alghollthu influence.
Today, the alghollthus have retreated from their mass-scale manipulation of the surface world, and they have mostly remained within the deep aquatic realms where they still rule without question. Yet they have not abandoned their plots entirely, and the reemergence of servitor races like ugothols points to a frightening possibility—that the alghollthus have turned their hateful eyes to the surface once again.
Sidebar - Locations Alghollthu Domains
The ruling castes of the alghollthu species dwell in oceanic depths or underground waterways, while their servitors like ulat-kinis and ugothols can often be found in coastal regions and marshes.
Sidebar - Treasure and Rewards Alghollthu Treasure
Although most alghollthus lack the greed that tempts most mortals, they do gather wealth and magical tools to use in their schemes. A given aboleth or veiled master might also wear magical jewelry and other objects. Faceless stalkers and other humanoid servants of alghollthus use weapons and armor, such as the faceless stalker’s sword or ulat-kini’s trident, as well as other tools. These servitor races can be as acquisitive as other humanoids.
Sidebar - Related Creatures Other Alghollthus
While the veiled masters are the rulers of alghollthu society, they are not the most powerful of their kind. Greater, more mysterious creatures that function as organic thought networks, immense aquatic engines of war, or specialized extractors of forgotten secrets dwell among their sunken cities. Meanwhile, the world above remains infested with creatures that were originally created by the alghollthus but have long since drifted away from their aquatic progenitors to become their own sinister monstrosities.
They wind up looking significantly more fleshed out than older entries when you consider that. Bugbears meanwhile strike me as more likely to have been shortened because Paizo wants to spend less time on edgy content, rather than cutting back on lore in general. They may not have wanted to spend as much space talking about serial killers stalking people, much like they didn't explicitly mention incest in the ogre entry this go around.
Whoops, I missed that this had been spun off into its own thread. Captain Morgan has beaten me to the punch- it's mostly a format change, with categories of creatures getting a big description, and the individual creatures within that category getting some details about what distinguishes them within the category.
The reason that Bulettes get so much more space by your estimation is that they're stand-alone monsters, and don't have a separate description section that you're missing.
Whoops, I missed that this had been spun off into its own thread. Captain Morgan has beaten me to the punch- it's mostly a format change, with categories of creatures getting a big description, and the individual creatures within that category getting some details about what distinguishes them within the category.
The reason that Bulettes get so much more space by your estimation is that they're stand-alone monsters, and don't have a separate description section that you're missing.
Bugbears aren't listed as goblins, and they get very little for their lore entry, so that doesn't fully track.
Bugbears aren't listed as goblins, and they get very little for their lore entry, so that doesn't fully track.Whoops, I missed that this had been spun off into its own thread. Captain Morgan has beaten me to the punch- it's mostly a format change, with categories of creatures getting a big description, and the individual creatures within that category getting some details about what distinguishes them within the category.
The reason that Bulettes get so much more space by your estimation is that they're stand-alone monsters, and don't have a separate description section that you're missing.
Yep. My impression is that Bugbears are just not as prominent in PF2, and weren't given much space as a result. Maybe it's because the three-goblinoid spread treads a little close to D&D, or maybe it's because the other two found their niche successfully and Bugbears didn't. Hobgoblins and Goblins are both doing well for themselves on lore quantity.
I certainly can't claim that none of the creatures have less lore. I know some got more, like kobolds getting more fleshed out (at least in the remaster).
Out of curiosity, I checked Archives of Nethys for a quick scroll through Bestiary 1 creatures with no category. That was 27 creatures. Of those, 22 were multi-paragraph lore entries (not counting any sidebars). The 5 single-paragraph creatures tended to have long statblocks. The filter doesn't include any creatures republished in Monster Core, but that kept it to a manageable length.
I'll also note the aboleth entry in particular might not be long but that's because they form the core of a larger society, the alghollthu, which has a lengthy amount of additional lore.
...Alghollthu
Source Bestiary pg. 12
In bygone millennia, aquatic monsters known as alghollthus used their occult powers to conquer and rule vast parts of the world. Their empires contained countless mortal slaves treated as little more than cattle. Alghollthus shaped their slaves and other creatures using mental manipulation and physically transformative magic. Aberrant horrors from faceless stalkers to mimics can be traced back to this meddling. The rulers of the alghollthu race, the so-called veiled masters, further shaped entire societies by assuming the forms of those they controlled. From the heights of power to the shadows of poverty, the veiled masters manipulated these societies according to their own dark designs, enslaving, killing, or horrifically transforming those who discovered their plans or acted against them.In time, the alghollthus grew frustrated with their increasingly upstart slave societies and sought to wipe the slate clean—both starting anew and punishing those who had become too willful and rebellious. They used incredible magical power to call forth a cataclysm, hoping to destroy the rebellious societies they’d manipulated. Yet they miscalculated the strength of faith and will to survive of their pawns and slaves, and in time the world and its empires recovered and grew strong once again—this time without alghollthu influence.
Today, the alghollthus have retreated from their mass-scale manipulation of the surface world, and they have mostly remained within the deep aquatic realms where they still rule without question. Yet they have not abandoned their plots entirely, and the reemergence of servitor races like ugothols points to a frightening possibility—that the alghollthus have turned their hateful eyes to the surface once again.
Sidebar - Locations Alghollthu Domains
I could include the Skum from 3.5 as part of the Aboleth lore, because 3.5 didn't group them together the way PF2 has. I may have also just picked poorly with the Bugbear if the team are truly unwilling to give them any further spotlight.
I'll look more closely and see if the lore evens out if I go deeper.
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Quid and I are speculating on the bugbear thing, so I can't say if that's TRULY the reason... But our explanations are consistent with general trends in the game. And I think the big takeaway should be that you shouldn't just look at a single entries to decide if this is a trend, much less a problem.* You've got to consider the rest of the content in the book itself, plus other books which mention the creature, plus the game as a whole.
*Even if there WAS less lore, that's not inherently bad if you get other content to balance it out. What matters is if GMs have enough lore to inspire cool encounters and stories. Length for the sake of length isn't good even outside of printed publishing where space is limited; good writing says more with less.
I've personally found PF2 monster lore quite beefy. I used the first bestiary to create a series of under dark encounters to round out an AP, and thanks to their lore I had enough content to make some of them interesting non-combat encounters too. The only thing I've found lacking is new monsters created or reprinted for APs, which is truly just a page count thing. And many of those creatures are later published in bestiaries with beefier lore sections than their original printing.
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Well, at this point just ignore the troll and report any inflammatory posts.
I'll leave the reporting to others. I can't stand to even read this thread any more.
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Part of it is that the monster books aren't the only place Paizo puts that information. For your first example there's also lore in: Aquatic Adventures, Blood of the Sea, and Ruins of Azlant: The Lost Outpost, among other places. Just because they decide not to cram it all into the mmonster book doesn't mean its not there.
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Bringing this over from the other thread.
However, the reason we don't get PDF first publishing is a Paizo issue.
WotC has it's issues, like not letting their team produce the volume of work said team would like to make and handcuffing them on fixing core issues with the game, but they're a market leader for a reason.
The primary answer, as Paizo has said on multiple occasions, is that the physical books are needed to maintain good relationships with FLGS, and a significant portion of their business and name recognition comes from there.
The other thing is that, as anyone can tell you, the reason that WotC is a market leader is not on the quality of the product, but because they own a product named Dungeons and Dragons. Even at its absolute nadir, 4e still outsold Paizo by something like 3x.
Creative Director
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Here's 4 reasons why monster entries in the Bestiaries have more rules text than they do flavor text.
PAGE SIZE: We try to keep monsters fitting on a single page (or in the case of families of monsters, to keep those whole things fitting on full pages), so that the next monster in the alphabet (or monster family) starts at the top of a page. For the alghollthus, they have 2 pages, and that's it—it's easier to adjust and manipulate the flavor text than it is rules entries, so often that's why the flavor text is shorter.
ART SHAPE: Sometimes monsters have art that's wider than expected. The ugothol on page 12 is pretty non-intrusive to the text, fitting quite well into the white space below the sidebar above, but the vidileth has those tentacles that reach in to violate the text flow. That means you get fewer words on a page. From a readability and reference stance, it's always better to have a section start at the top of a page, so in this case we adjusted the flavor text as needed for the vidileth so that it ended at the bottom of page 12, so the stat block can start at the top of page 13. Makes it easier to navigate. We can't ALWAYS make these pretty copy-fit stunts work, but we try our best.
WORLD LORE: While in 2nd edition Pathifnder we've abandoned the 1st edition philosophy of trying to keep the rule books world-netural, the rulebooks ARE still meant to be applicable for any game world a GM is using for their Pathfinder game, be it one set in Golarion or some other setting. Flavor text for a monster needs world context to support it, especially in a case where the creature isn't a real-world animal that we can assume that a reader is familiar with. So, the more flavor text we provide, the more we lean into its role and impact in our setting, and that can make things a little more awkward for GMs who don't use Golarion for their games. So by not doing too much flavor text in the Bestiaries, and instead leaning into that in other publications that are more deeply-reliant on the setting when appropriate, we try to make these monsters a bit easier or less intimidating for a GM to use in any setting.
STAT COMPLEXITY: The more complicated a monster is, the longer its stats are gonna be. We've truncated stat-block size significantly from 1st edition (which already truncated it significantly from 3.5 OGL stats), but complex monsters, like the vidileth, are still gonna eat up a lot of space. It's a catch-22. The more complicated a monster gets, the more flavor text it wants in order to contextualize it, but the bigger its stats grow and thus the less room we have for flavor text. We often allocate two pages for monsters we know are going to be particularly complicated, but every time we do that, we reduce the overall number of monsters in the Bestiary by 1 (if not more), so it's all a question of balance.
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Part of it is that the monster books aren't the only place Paizo puts that information. For your first example there's also lore in: Aquatic Adventures, Blood of the Sea, and Ruins of Azlant: The Lost Outpost, among other places. Just because they decide not to cram it all into the mmonster book doesn't mean its not there.
Not to mention things like the Tian Xia world book that one of the major powers described was an aquatic nation of various aquatic ancestries in pretty good detail.
A lot of the traditional "monsters" that are humanoids are now treated more like ancestries like humans and the lore background happens more in world/region info for them.
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I imagine the fact that Paizo has major variety within the same ancestries also makes it hard to cram the details in without exploding the pages. Mwangi alone has so many pages on elves I had to take a break and flip through the deities while reading through.
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The fact that the same creature in a different region would need its own lore page generally tells you that most of Pathfinders creatures have more depth to them then older editions.
I think there's plenty of info on each page to get a GMs mind working on different ways each creature could work.
I have to imagine a good part of it is also that when you're doing a new edition, you don't want to repeat yourself overmuch from things that you already established with the previous edition. Certainly, not everybody who plays Pathfinder 2nd edition is going to be familiar with all the 1st edition books, but if someone wants to know something more about some thing on Golarion one likely place they're going to look is something like "The Pathfinder Wiki" a place one can learn a lot about Alghollthu, for example. So if you're writing a 2e entry on some kind of Alghollthu, you don't necessarily want to go into great detail about what has already been established about them since a good part of your audience is going to be more interested in the new information that's only in this book. So you can sketch the established information to give the reader a baseline knowing that there's a whole community of Pathfinder fans who can point you in the right direction if you have a question like "where can I learn more about Jorogumo?"
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I could include the Skum from 3.5 as part of the Aboleth lore, because 3.5 didn't group them together the way PF2 has. I may have also just picked poorly with the Bugbear if the team are truly unwilling to give them any further spotlight.
[tangent] Since PF1 statted up Lovecraft's Deep Ones, I've had *zero* interest in using Skum. Why have the cheap knock-off creepy fish-peeps? The only use for Skum is to put one in a sketchy bar so you can use the 'hive of skum and villainy' line. [/tangent]
I had this issue with 5E not too long ago, but regarding creatures with much less context available outside their monster entries. Paizo generally expands on their material in ways closer to 2E D&D (my highest compliment), but you do have to know where to find it. I'm hopeful that we'll get some Fiendish Codex kinds of books like the upcoming Dragon book for those creatures that are less region-specific.
Here's 4 reasons why monster entries in the Bestiaries have more rules text than they do flavor text...
Thank you for adding that background to the conversation. It's always excellent to hear directly from your team on the reasoning behind publications.
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I don't see why there has to be a push and pull between the two. PDFs don't have page count issues, and I'd gladly pay more for a larger book with 30% more monsters and 100% more descriptive text.
PDFs might not need to worry about the cost of paper, but they still cost something to make. More content means more art, writing, editing, layout, and so on.
That's not even getting into the sales analysis of what sells in large quantities vs what doesn't, which is not something I know.
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I think it would be a bad thing if the PDF version of a book and the actual version of the book had different content in it at launch. Like obviously they can update a PDF you bought to reflect the latest errata but they can't change your physical book, but I don't think you want to incentivize people strongly for one format over another (besides the inherent qualities and limitations for that format.)
Like if they wanted to do a web supplement for some bit of background information on something, that would be a better way to do it.