Paizo To Make Kingmaker Bestiary... For D&D 5E!

Rellott · May 12, 2019

dave2008 said:
Interestingly the Bestiary is not the only 5e conversion they are offering. There is also the "Forest Kingom" add-on, whatever that is.

I would be interested if I could just get the 5e content, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The Forest Kingdom book was written and published by Legendary Games, the group that’s doing the 5e conversion for the bestiary. They are first and foremost a PF publisher, and it unfortunately shows in their 5e work.

jerryrice4949 · May 12, 2019

Rellott said:
The Forest Kingdom book was written and published by Legendary Games, the group that’s doing the 5e conversion for the bestiary. They are first and foremost a PF publisher, and it unfortunately shows in their 5e work.

I backed both the Forest Campaign Compendium and the Pirate one by Legendary Games for 5E and sold them shortly after receiving them. Overall I found them to be just ok. I looked at Kingmaker Bestairy for 5E and thought the cover looked cheesy. It is an easy no for me. Expensive since you have to back the full Kingmaker book plus the 5E bestiary and cheesy looking art.

MNblockhead · May 12, 2019

I guess I'm spoiled by Kobold Press and Frog God Games Kickstarters. I just do not see the value here and the risk seems high given their track record. If it ever makes it to my FLGS shelves, I'll take a look at it, but I'm going to pass on backing the crowdfunding effort.

EDIT

I'm going to retract what I wrote above. For two large hard-cover books, plus the PDFs, it is not a bad deal. Also, by buying the PDFs, I if these become available in Fantasy Grounds or RealmWorks, I could get those version with the PDF cost discounted--though I'm not sure how that works if I buy from crowdfunding, I'm guessing fulfillment will be from the Paizo online store.

But I have some questions I'm hoping those of you familiar with Paizo products can help answer:

Would the pathfinder stat blocks in the campaign setting and adventure books themselves, or would you need the Pathfinder beasteries? In other words, is the 5e Kingmaker Beastery an extra cost for 5e players or is it actually a deal, because Pathfinder players would need to own multiple PF beasteries?

Having the monster and npc stats for 5e is all well in good, but what about skill checks and other mechanics that apply to the non-combat aspects of the game? How easy is it to determine appropriate DC values for picking locks, finding secret doors, etc.?

I'm also concerned about whether they'll put on the work to make sure the npcs and monsters are balanced for 5e, so that the difficulty in 5e is comparable to what it would be in Pathfinder.

mach1.9pants · May 12, 2019

MNblockhead said:
I guess I'm spoiled by Kobold Press and Frog God Games Kickstarters. I just do not see the value here and the risk seems high given their track record. If it ever makes it to my FLGS shelves, I'll take a look at it, but I'm going to pass on backing the crowdfunding effort.

'track record'? This is Paizo's first crowd funding effort, the previous ones were by (admittedly endorsed) 3PP. I can't see this doing anything but going well. But it will be all in retail, so not a huge problem -apart from the coins type stuff. You'll pay more but that's normal.

MNblockhead · May 12, 2019

mach1.9pants said:
'track record'? This is Paizo's first crowd funding effort, the previous ones were by (admittedly endorsed) 3PP. I can't see this doing anything but going well. But it will be all in retail, so not a huge problem -apart from the coins type stuff. You'll pay more but that's normal.

Well, okay, fair enough. But that still leaves use with no track record other than endorsing failed third-party campaigns. Look, I'm not trying to be negative. I want to back Paizo and I'm excited to look into some of the PF adventure paths I've heard so much about.

I'm also not sure how well running this in 5e would go.

I'm probably going to wait until there are reviews of the material and see if this shows up in my FLGS where I can page through it. For Pathfinder players, this seems like something worth backing. I'm just not sure if the same can be said for 5e players.

S'mon · May 12, 2019

mach1.9pants said:
'track record'? This is Paizo's first crowd funding effort, the previous ones were by (admittedly endorsed) 3PP.

I think Goblinworks was rather more than an "endorsed 3PP" - it was set up by Paizo to run the project.

S'mon · May 12, 2019

MNblockhead said:
Having the monster and npc stats for 5e is all well in good, but what about skill checks and other mechanics that apply to the non-combat aspects of the game? How easy is it to determine appropriate DC values for picking locks, finding secret doors, etc.?

I'm running the PF Rise of the Runelords & Shattered Star APs in 5e, so I have a lot* of experience with this.

For skill DCs (and for ACs) you basically halve the value over 10, typically rounding down, eg

PF > 5e
10 > 10
15 > 12
20 > 15
30 > 20
35 > 22
40 > 25
45 > 27
50 > 30

I wouldn't go over DC 30.

For stuff that would allow a Take 20 in PF such as long term research, I may use a straight halving of the DC, so 55 > 27. I don't think I've seen a PF DC over 55 yet.

*PCs have gone from 1st to 20th, we have played most of Runelords books 2-5, all of Shattered Star books 1-4, and are currently about 2/3 through Shattered Star book 5. Will likely play Shattered Star 6; may or may not play Runelords 6 (Karzoug may end up as an ally of the PCs!) and plan to wind up with most of (a highly variant) Return of the Runelords 6 - Rise of New Thassilon for some VERY Epic PCs.

Ash Mantle · May 12, 2019

To add a little bit of credence to Paizo's history of hastiness, they appear to refer to their partner as "Legnedary Games" on their Kickstarter platform.

View attachment 106406

I wouldn't mind a PF2.0 version of the Kingmaker AP - that was an excellent AP despite its niggling issues, and I'd very much be interested in all of the additional inspired material from the Kingmaker game, any fan input and additional content. Though our group is very interested in playing Kingmaker again our group doesn't appear to be too interested in PF2.0.
It's disappointing although understandable that the bestiaries in 5E and PF1.0 can only be purchased as add-ons, but given what's being said of Legendary's conversion work into 5E I think it's best we hold off for now.

But will still be monitoring.

The Hierophant · May 12, 2019

I was really interested in this but there are lots of signs that make me wary of backing. I think I’ll buy it at retail if the reviews are any good.

Remathilis · May 12, 2019

Ok, I get the effort needed to convert the bestiary to 5e would take manpower and time, but why on Earth are they charging for the Pathfinder 1e conversion? The original was written in 1e. Every stat block is already done. Most, of not all, of the new monsters are on d20pfsrd. I could create a "conversion" bestiary in a day just buy ripping the stat blocks out of the original PDFs and pasting them into pagemaker. $35 for copy-pasted stats is ridiculous.