Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Bestiary - Discussion

[James Jacobs]

The annis is in the bonus bestiary and will probably be included in Bestiary II.

Correct; the annis is in the bonus bestiary. Although I don't think it'll show up in Bestiary II, since we've still got PLENTY of Bonus Bestiaries in stock. There's no fear of that product going away anytime soon.

 

[frankthedm]

We might be statting up some of those variants in another bestariy some day if folks are interested in it; we'll certainly be statting them up in adventures now and then. That said... isn't part of the fun about being the GM the "some assembly required" part of the game? It is for me, at least. That's the big reason we put the super-detailed "Here's how we did it" Appendix 1 in the book so GMs can build monsters using the same tools we had.

Well, that post was made partially out of confusion because I have not had much time to wrap my head around advancing monsters in pathfinder . I'm possibly spoiled from having 8 hydra stat blocks and the big 3 vermin getting 7* stat block each. *More even since the fiendish variants got some stat blocks too.

The Pathfinder Advancement rules look more thought out than 3.5E's so they probably will work fine, I was just feeling daunted seeing...

Scarlet spider 1/4 Tiny 1d8
Giant crab spider 1/2 Small 2d8
Giant black widow 3 Large 5d8
Ogre spider 5 Huge 7d8
Giant tarantula 8 Gargantuan 10d8
Goliath spider 11 Colossal 14d8

take the place of 6 whole stat blocks.

Have to admit, not having half a dozen stat blocks on one page does reduce the chance from a player getting killed because the GM read the wrong Damage: entry

The way hydras worked in 3.5 was... unfortunate.

Though they made some lively discussion! IMO the way their abilities were worded was the unfortunate part.

They used a bunch of different rules and that was fun on one level, but it also meant that unless you used hydras all the time, they tended to bring games to a crawl not only because their rules worked so different and thus the GM had to spend time figuring them out, but also because the methods of fighting them were so weird that it felt, well... just "off."

Depending on how the GM read the 3.5 hydra entry, their CR's sure could feel "off".

And they do have pounce and Combat Reflexes, so they can still do things like move and make full attacks or have multiple attacks of opportunity (although they'll need a higher dex if they want to do a LOT of them)... they just follow established rules for doing so now.

Missed the Pounce... Doh!

 

[Jadeite]

The problem with the Pathfinder hydra is, that it's rather easy to behead one now. In 3.5, you took at least 5 attacks of opportunity if you tried to sever one of its heads without the improved sunder feat. Now you only take one. With the change to cantrips, it's also much easier to stop the head from regrowing, at least if the group contains a wizard or sorcerer with acid splash.
I used a MM hydra in my beta game, a 5-headed one against four, rather underequipped 4th level characters. While they were shocked at first concerning it's fast healing 15, they defeated it in a few rounds without any casulties.
Without the extra attacks of opportunity, the hydra seems rather weak, especially the advanced versions.
Also, the hydra doesn't qualify for Combat Reflexes.

Concerning the Bonus Bestiary, if it's no longer planned to include its monsters in Bestiary 2, I might have to get the book instead of the printed out version I use at the moment, although it seems to be rather hard to get here in europe.

 

[pawsplay]

Also, the hydra doesn't qualify for Combat Reflexes.

Because it... doesn't get feats? Help me out here.

 

[Kralin Thornberry]

Because wolves don't have claw attacks.

Edited for an improved mood!

 

[Jadeite]

Because it... doesn't get feats? Help me out here.

No, because I somehow thought that Combat Reflexes needed a dexterity of 13. Turns out I was wrong, though.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The annis is in the bonus bestiary and will probably be included in Bestiary II.

Aha! I had forgotten that the Bonus Bestiary contained critters that were left out of the main book! For some reason I had conflated it with the two previews.

Thank you for restoring my faith.

The Auld Grump, of course my PDF of the bonus is on another computer.... Time to visit Paizo.

 

[James Jacobs]

No, because I somehow thought that Combat Reflexes needed a dexterity of 13. Turns out I was wrong, though.

Wanna hear the stupid reason why this happened?

Originally, the hydra had a Dex of 13. But then, at the semi last minute, there was a decision to make sure that all monsters in the book had 3 odd and 3 even ability scores, so that the idea would be that all monsters have a base of 10, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11 in their statistics line before their racial mods got applied and resulted in the set of stats that each monster ended up having.

When someone went through the book, I'm relatively sure they just dropped a 13 Dex down to 12 for the hydra, thinking "There's no difference really between the two since both 12 and 13 give a +1 bonus," but didn't stop to think that they were making the hydra not qualify for Combat Reflexes.

It's frustrating, especially since monsters are SO complex that when late-in-the-game changes are mandated things can get all messed up in ways folks don't predict.

The way I'd solve this is by giving the hydra back his 13 Dex and reducing another, "SAFER" odd numbered stat down by 1 point. That way it still qualifies for Combat Reflexes.

 

[James Jacobs]

The problem with the Pathfinder hydra is, that it's rather easy to behead one now. In 3.5, you took at least 5 attacks of opportunity if you tried to sever one of its heads without the improved sunder feat. Now you only take one. With the change to cantrips, it's also much easier to stop the head from regrowing, at least if the group contains a wizard or sorcerer with acid splash.

That's actually okay, though, I think, if hydras are now a little or even a fair amount easier to defeat if you use the right tactics. They do an INCREDIBLE amount of damage for their CR, after all, so if they have a glass jaw against a foe who knows how to hit them where it hurts, that's fine.

 

[Gnome]

It looks like the Pathfinder version of Combat Reflexes doesn't have that prerequisite, anyway.