Pathfinder 1E Monster Feats & books help please...

Hi all,

I am going to give PF a good go and run some games of it. It's a bit fiddly for my tastes but my players will enjoy it and the adventure support is perfect so that more than balances things out.

Having played it already with many of the supplement books...I'm not a fan of system bloat and will be sticking to the Core Rulebook for players this time.

I've bought that, the Gamemastery Guide and Bestiaries 1,2 and 3 in hardcover. I also have many pdfs that I got as part of the humble bundle.

So..my questions are...

When the published Adventures say they draw from the Advanced Players Guide or other books. Will I really need those at the table? I don't want to be doing SRD internet searches during play if avoidable.

Also, in the Bestiary descriptions...many of the monsters have 'Feats'. This is a bit of a pain as you have to reference the Core book for what they do or learn them over time...but what about the Bestiaries 2 and 3 etc...are those creatures just using feats from the Core or do you also have to then know which supplementary book to go to (the descriptions don't say) to find out their effects from memory...as that seems a really messy design choice if it is so?

Thanks for any help or advice in advance,

Rev

Great questions, RevTurkey.

I think if you take the time to familiarize yourself with the feats and othe abilities of the monsters/enemies beforehand, taking whatever notes you need to, you will be fine. You may occasionally need to reference the Pathfinder Reference Document at paizo.com/prd or at d20pfsrd.org, if you run upon anything that isn't defined in the books that you have. It takes some time, but it is worth it.

Limiting the players to the core rulebook is wise until you are very comfortable with the system. As the GM, you will be exposed to things outside the core rulebook and bestiaries, but the online reference docs for Pathfinder will help you, until such time as you may decide to get those books.

The forum, here and at Paizo.com are invaluable if you need help with anything in the PF RPG.

A quick skim through the Bestiary 2 didn't turn up any feats that weren't from the core books, and even the feats printed in the Bestiary 2 just look like reprints of the ones from Bestiary 1. The only reference I found to anything other than those two books was that the Undine has a racial spell-like ability that's apparently from the Advanced Player's Guide.

You can play the game just fine with the Bestiary 1, though. I wouldn't worry about adding things from Bestiary 2 or Bestiary 3 until you have mastered the core rules.

Personally, I find having the books at the game table superfluous - all my players except one is computerized at the table and we use places like d20pfsrd.com instead of rulebooks.

Oddly, only using core might actually make it harder to rely on online sources, as it is not quite as easy to isolate what is core and what comes from other sources, including marginal sources like specific adventures.

Hi all, thanks very much for your help and advice, much appreciated