Pathfinder 1E Is your relationship to monster books (Bestiaries) changing?

[howandwhy99]

When I am running I really like to have a handful of monster books on hand, but only the really useful ones. Ones I'm need for general monster stats no matter what the current scenario is.

I also use a 3-ring binder a la 2e (genius work there) for printed out monsters from rare sources, custom designs, and anything the players might have created.

My preference is the adventures publish their brand new monsters and individual monster stats for old ones, but in our digital age I can accommodate most layouts.

 

[GreyLord]

It depends on what I'm doing. If I'm creating an adventure or campaign, I HAVE to use the bestiaries. I have to have the hardcopy in front of me.

Likewise, if I'm playing in a campaign and want to look up the monster, I prefer to look it up in the bestiaries.

However...with the AP's...there are too many bestiaries to keep flipping through every other section as they switch from one to the next. For that I have to use the PRD, they just switch between the bestiaries to dang often.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Huh. I see that my experiences are kind of different than most peoples here as I have an aversion to carrying multiple hardcover books with me to the game that I run.

Depending on the encounters that I know that I'm going to get to during that session, I'll usually just print out the monster page from the Bestiary for use. Even if I were still running from home I'd want to do that rather than keeping the book open in front of me as I run the encounter as for me that's just a sloppy way to work. It's easier for me to organize and sort a few sheets of paper in front of me than it is to move around a 246 pg hardcover book.

I'd also rather have the print out in front of me in case I need to write on the monster sheet, HP changes, status effects and all that. I don't want to write or markup my books.

I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne, which is a 3.5 adventure but i'm converting things to Pathfinder as I go. For standard monsters that aren't changed / modified I just print out as is from the Bestiary. For NPC's or monsters with Class levels and abilities? I make the changes in Hero Lab and print that out for use.

Anything that I know that is going to get reused during the course of the adventure gets saved in a binder/folder anything else gets tossed into the garbage bin.

When I have to look up something very quickly during a game or even on the way home on the train or wherever I use the PFRPG RD app on my phone or ipad. For me it's definitely quicker and more convenient than grabbing the book, looking up the index, opening to the page. Especially with the indexes in the books being a little less than complete. I'm usually able to find things quicker than my players are when they reference the books. And two of my players are using the same app to find things as well.

When I want to read the Bestiaries? I'm usually at home so I just pull 'em off of the shelf. But usually I'm using them as reference books, because for the most part that's what they are.

When I'm travelling to my games I usually travel light and without Hardcover books. At the MOST I'll go to my session with the PF Core book. But most of the time I'm going with just printed materials, my iPad (which has almost all of the books that I need on it and more), my iphone and on some occasions my laptop. With just my laptop and my ipad are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay lighter and easier to travel with than the mountain of hardcovers I'd have to travel with. I know that there are those of you who have an aversion to technology but it's done nothing but make my life easier in terms of running games.

 

[JeffB]

In general I find the Bestiaries and Monster Manuals other than the core version to be low utility. I just feel alot of D&D monsters are stupid. So in a case where a free version of the book is available, like the PFBs via the PRD, or all the extraneous creatures in the S&W SRD, I use that to pick and choose. It is about the only time where I prefer a computer over a real book. I just hate paying 40 bucks for a book I will only ever use 20% of, at best.

 

[Voadam]

Here's a question for Pathfinder players...

With Pathfinder providing all of the monster stats online (and rarely in adventures for monsters published in a Bestiary), have you found yourself changing how you handle monster stats?

Are you finding that actually buying a copy of the latest Bestiary is less attractive? Do you get them and then leave them mostly on the shelves and mainly work from online? Or do you still consider the physical copy to be of paramount importance?

(Myself, I'm something of a traditionalist: I like having physical copies of the books).

I was just wondering, having looked at the amount of space the Bestiaries are now taking up on my shelves...

Cheers!

Since 2000 I've had and used monster manual monsters online through srds so there is no real recent change. I bought the $10 pdfs for the Pathfinder bestiaries and have not splurged on the $40 hardcopies. I own many, many pdfs of pathfinder monster collections. I use the srds a lot, I'm more likely to browse or sit down and read my hardcopies but I get a lot of use out of my pdfs and a ton out of the srds.

I don't buy and didn't generally buy the latest monster manuals in hardcopy, I generally get them years later for good deals. In 3e I didn't buy the WotC monster manuals until years after publication, but I now own a complete set of MM I-V plus FF and Monsters of Faerun. I've had plenty of fantastic d20 monster books for years that I still use for pathfinder games (Creature Collections, Monster Geographica, Tome of Horrors) and I'm still interested in eventually getting monster books I don't have.

At the pathfinder games I run if I didn't prep a monster it is nice to have someone else's bestiary on hand but it is also nice to be able to ask the host player to print off stats for a gray ooze when I need one.

It is really nice that Pathfinder put more than the bestiary I up, and it is absolutely fantastic that d20 pfsrd puts up so much stuff.

 

[Celebrim]

My relationship to bestiaries changed roughly around the publication of MM 2 for 3.0.

I looked at it and made a count of the number of pages in the MM that I would ever use in my game, and it came out to be about 10% of the book.

I started thinking to myself, why am I spending $40 for what amounts (to me) to a 30 page supplement? And especially, why am I bothering to spend that kind of money when I really don't even need it as a reference, because I could just make stuff up (see link in sig for proof).

So, I haven't bought a lot of monster books since then.

 

[Edgewood]

I love the books. Makes me feel like I'm doing research!

 

[Starfox]

It is really nice that Pathfinder put more than the bestiary I up, and it is absolutely fantastic that d20 pfsrd puts up so much stuff.

Slightly OT, but I agree so very much! One really important restriction Pathfinder has because of the Open Gaming License is that everything they do has to be open game content. And that in turn means it makes it's way to the SRD and places like d20pfsrd.com. Which in turn again makes everybody able to use it and even print it. So the best creatures fron Necromancer games' bestiaries end up in the Pathfinder bestiaries and so on.

This might sometimes be trouble for the publishers (Necromancer games might feel a wee bit irked at the above), but it is fantastic for small press and customers.

In WotC times, all but the core books were proprietary, which lessened their use and appeal to almost nothing.

 

[cdhall2013]

Amen

E-books can't replace the feel I get from holding a monster up and saying "It looks like this." with a physical copy.

I do this for my players. Exactly.

But when I write up an adventure I cut and paste stats etc from online. But the books are replicated, not duplicated, online. So you can't even show the artwork sometimes much less flip to it, hold it up and pass it around.

Which has a great effect.

Especially with younger players. I think part of the "Wow" from them is "Wow. A book. Like in the old days..."

 

[Gilladian]

I still run 3.5, in an E6 version. I have hardcopies and PDFs of many monster books. I also have a giant database that I have entered every monster I think I will ever use in my campaign world into, from all my pdf's. I have the monster name, type, climate, terrain, CR, and brief descriptive notes, plus source and page number. Makes it SUPER easy to do a search for every warm climate water or swamp or marsh creature, and then browse through the descriptions building a wandering monster table.

Then I can pull up the PDF and check to see if it is exactly what I want. I can have five or ten monster books open all at the same time, and reference just what I need during a game. I would never go back to using my print books except occasionally for the imagery, as people have mentioned. And even then, the PDFs of things like Paizo's Adventure Paths have the images in them.

I frequently run a game with just my ipad, but I really do prefer to have a computer handy, too...