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Bestiary 5 - flavour fail
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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6783240" data-attributes="member: 37579"><p>It was devastator whose lack of flavour irked me. </p><p></p><p>I'd rather have had 250 monsters with each one being interesting and inspiring, encouraging me to use them in my game due to their story rather than have 300 monsters with a couple dozen that I just flip past because I don't know how to work them into an adventure as more than a random encounter. </p><p></p><p>I only need so many new statblocks. Because I can easily just run a monster from the monster creation numbers at the back of the book while pulling special abilities from another monster (or two or three). Statblocks are not that important so long as I can describe the monster in an interesting way. When I loose the flavour text I'm losing the part of the game I cannot as easily do myself, where I want other people's creativity, where I'm looking for inspiration. </p><p>I've <em>never</em> used a monster solely because I've wanted its special snowflake power. When I design and adventure I consider the story and then find monsters that match the story of the appropriate CR (+/-2). Occasionally, while looking for a monster, I've found one with a cool story and changed my adventure to accommodate that. When a monster has no flavour, when planning an adventure I often skip right past those without even stopping to look at the statblock to see if the abilities would work. </p><p></p><p>Pathfinder has always had a hard time getting flavour into the Bestiaries. What with 3-6 lines of skills and feats eating up a full paragraph of text. And the older the game gets, the more complicated monster powers tend to get. </p><p>I think the problem with many of these monsters is they were from Adventure Path Bestiaries, which gave them two pages. So they had the monster statblock (and that couldn't change) and the art (also unable to change) and they have to condense the flavour from a page to whatever is left. Which can be unfortunate.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 6783240, member: 37579"] It was devastator whose lack of flavour irked me. I'd rather have had 250 monsters with each one being interesting and inspiring, encouraging me to use them in my game due to their story rather than have 300 monsters with a couple dozen that I just flip past because I don't know how to work them into an adventure as more than a random encounter. I only need so many new statblocks. Because I can easily just run a monster from the monster creation numbers at the back of the book while pulling special abilities from another monster (or two or three). Statblocks are not that important so long as I can describe the monster in an interesting way. When I loose the flavour text I'm losing the part of the game I cannot as easily do myself, where I want other people's creativity, where I'm looking for inspiration. I've [I]never[/I] used a monster solely because I've wanted its special snowflake power. When I design and adventure I consider the story and then find monsters that match the story of the appropriate CR (+/-2). Occasionally, while looking for a monster, I've found one with a cool story and changed my adventure to accommodate that. When a monster has no flavour, when planning an adventure I often skip right past those without even stopping to look at the statblock to see if the abilities would work. Pathfinder has always had a hard time getting flavour into the Bestiaries. What with 3-6 lines of skills and feats eating up a full paragraph of text. And the older the game gets, the more complicated monster powers tend to get. I think the problem with many of these monsters is they were from Adventure Path Bestiaries, which gave them two pages. So they had the monster statblock (and that couldn't change) and the art (also unable to change) and they have to condense the flavour from a page to whatever is left. Which can be unfortunate. [/QUOTE]
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Bestiary 5 - flavour fail
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