Pathfinder 1E Creating monsters in pathfinder

[Reffy]

I've been inactive for a couple of months. Mostly because I got all the information I needed, everyone was very helpfull in my last topic.
But I'm stuck again with something. The biggest problem I have is creating monsters/npc's with pathfinder.
I will explain how far I got, using the instructions in the bestiary. I will also ask about some other minor problems I had regarding pathfinder.
Hopefully you can help me out.


Monster creation; Bestiary 1 Pathfinder. Page 290.
This shows a step by step guide about how to create a monster.

Let's say I want to create a bear as a boss/solo monster for a group of 3 lv2 players. It has to be challenging enough for that group, that they have to work together, and can rarely make mistakes. Otherwise they will lose or have to retrear.

So that's the idea I will use. Let's head to step 1.


Step 1: Concept
In this step they ask abouth monster's CR, type, physical appearance and manner of fighting.

Ok, I'll fill in everything I know.

Type: Animal, cause it's a bear. (appendix 8: Monsters by type. pg317)
Physical appearance: Large. Let's make it a brown bear.
Manner of fighting: Combat Role. Since it's a bear and it attacks anyone it sees. It fights with it's claws and can also bite/grab. (appendix 13: Monster Roles. pg323.)

Now comes CR, Challenge Rating. I said it has to be challenging for a group of 3 lv2 players. So how is CR determined? CR 3 means it's challenging for 1 lv3 character? The bestiary doesn't explain the formula of CR. Where can I find this information.
For now, I guess CR3 will be good.


Step 2: Target Statistics
I have to use table 1-1, to roughly determine the statistics of the bear, using it's CR.

Ok. It's CR is 3. So it has the following stats at the moment.

HP 30, AC 15, Attack 6-4, Damage 13-9, Primary Ability DC 14, Secondary Ability 10, Good save 6, Bad save 2.

So I can use this as a guideline? Assuming that I have the correct CR?
I don't fill in the stats yet?


Step 3: Hit Dice
Same as step 2, only now I'm determing the Hit Dice.
I have to look at table 1-2, see the HD by monster type, and use that as a base.

Animal, CR3, so the HD will be 4.

So far so good.


Step 4: Size
This is easy. It's large.
According to table 1-3, the minimum CR has to be 2. I determined it was 3, so that's allright.

Base STR 18, Base DEX 8 and Base CON 14.
Again, I have to use this as a base? We don't fill in the stats yet?


Step 5: Abilities
In this step, we actually fill in the stats?

Ok, I will use all the base stats I have, and change it to a bear that should be equal in power of that of a 3 lv2 group. I hope that sentence has good grammar...

HP 40
AC 15
Attack +5
Damage 12
Primary Ability DC. Since it's not using spells or spell-like abilities, I can skip this one? This also applies to the secondary ability DC.
Fort 6, Ref 2, Will 3
STR 18, DEX 9, CON 16, INT 3?, WIS 6, CHA -

The bear is incapable of speech? Do they mean a language? Cause bears can communicate. If that's so, his INT will be 9 or 10.
Charisma will also be 9 or 10. Doesn't matter that much.

I use the base stats I picked in the previous steps. But I don't know how far I can deviate of those stats. Should I compare it to other base stats, and if I deviated too much, I have to change it's CR or deviate a little less.


Step 6: Skills and Feats
For skills, I have to look at table 1-4, but this table is confusing.
It says at Animal, Hit Die d8. But "Hit Die" is not the same as "Hit Dice"?
What do they mean with "Hit Die" in this table?

Also, I notice just now that I have to use this table to determine more than just skills. So skills are not just skills like acrobatics, climb or perception. Skills are also HP, attack bonus and good saves? That's really confusing.

Ok, I assume that Hit Die = HP. So for my bear, I pick 4D8 + 10? I just want my bear to have HP around 40.

Base Attack Bonus (BAB) = HD x 3/4. With HD, do they mean Hit Die or Hit Dice? I assume it's Hit Dice. So 4 times 3/4 = 3. So that's it's medium BAB.
I give it a slight boost, since it's a boss. So I pick 4. I can do that right?

Good saves are REF and FORT. Because it's a giant bear, it's REF won't be that good. So I pick REF and Will as good saves, instead of REF and FORT.
So for now, I pick FORT 6 and Will 5.

Skill ranks. 2 + INT Modifier per HD. Ok...that's (2 + -1) x 4? 1 skill rank per Hit Dice = 4 skill ranks total.
I'll use this for 1 rank in Climb, Swim, Survival and Perception.
That means I have to give him some better ability scores.


New stats.

HP 32 - 42. I don't know how to convert that to d8 + X + CON.
AC 15.
Attack bonus 4.
Damage 12 (or D12 + STR?)
Fort 6.
Ref 2.
Will 5.
STR 18, DEX 9, CON 16, INT 9, WIS 11, CHA 6.
Skill ranks, 1 Climb, 1 Swim, 1 Survival and 1 Perception(spot/listen).

Ok. Everything looks good. Now we go to feats.
According to table 1-6 I can use two feats. Furthermore, can I use this table to level/delevel excisting monsters?

For feats I use Extra Rage and Endurance.
I want to give the bear the barbarian rage ability. Or something similiar.
How does this choiche affect the overal CR/HD etc?


Step 7: Other Statistics
In this step I can determine AC and damage.
Since the bear uses his natural armor. I give him 15 AC + DEX MOD (-1), so his AC will be 14.

For damage, I want him to do about 11 damage on an average. So damage will be D12 + STR MOD (+4) = 10.5 on an average hit. That's good enough.

The bear doesn't have any other resistances or special bonusses.

Speed is 40 ft.

Did I miss anything in this step?


Step 8: Special Abilities and Qualities.
So here I can add the barbarain rage ability. Or in this case, I call it Bears Rage. This rage works the same as the barbarain rage.

I wont add anything other than that. But how do I know if I added too much or too less abilities? I don't want the monster to be weak, in this case.


Step 9: Treasure
Let's keep this simple. The group can poach it's skin, teeth, eyes and they can eat it's meat.


Step 10: Details
The last step. It's a bear, so it lives in caves and/or forest areas. Alignment is neutral. Reach, since it's large, that will be 2?


Ok. I wrote a lot. It actually helped, writing what I did. And seeing this for the second time, I managed to do fine.

The things I still don't understand are CR, how it is determined, as I explained earlier.

Hit Dice and Hit Die.

How many special and/or spell like abilities I can add per CR and/or per Hit Dice.

How to make a NPC. But first I want to know how to create a monster. After that, I will ask about NPC's.


A final question regarding skill challenges. In 4e, you had a table on the DM screen and in the DMGuide, about skill challenges. You could see easy, medium and hard DC's for a player of a certain level.
In pathfinder, you don't have such a table. So I want to use a formula, but I don't know where I can find that.

Let's say a player has climb 8. So when he rolls for a climb check, his lowest would be 9 and his highest would be 28. Assuming he doesn't get any bonusses or penalties.
His average is 18-20. So a medium climb DC would be 19? Easy would be 14 and hard would be 24?


Enough writing for to day. I hope that people can help me with creating monsters in pathfinder. I really like D&D in general, and I love to create my own stories to entertain others.
If you can help me figure this out, I would be really gratefull.


Thanks in advance.

 

[rkarnes]

You have an pretty good understanding of what is required.

CR is the Challenge Rating of a monster, scaled for a party of 4-5 characters. So, a CR 3 monster should be a challenge appropriate for 4 3rd level characters. An appropriate challenge should be enough to take 20% of the party's resources. That's usually a spell and a couple of hit points, at this level 10-12.

If this monster is a boss monster, consider increasing its CR by 1 or 2.

Also, an animal does not usually have an intelligence score above 3. Consider dropping his INT down.

With the barbarian's rage, I would, if I were, opt not to give him "rage" and instead simply increase his STR and CON by 4 points each. That way, you don't have to recalculate the monster's stats and it fairly depicts the fact that bears are strong, yo.

 

[Squire James]

That's not bad for a start. The best thing to do is to make a few "non-boss" monsters and get used to the system a bit. If you find yourself asking "Is it okay to change this?" the answer is nearly always YES.

Then run some encounters with these monsters. Do they pose about the level of challenge you expected? Not all of them will do so, but if the ones that turned out more challenging were about as common as those that turned out less challenging, you're doing good. If one outnumbers the other, you should consider changing your next batch in some way to make them easier or tougher. For instance, if their damage dealing seems about right but they fall too fast, consider increasing their HP.

When creating single foes that fight a whole party, keep in mind the party is taking multiple actions to your boss's one. Give him lots of HP, but don't make his damage so high that he can send the wizard to negative Con in one round (zero maybe, but not negative Con)! Unless crit happens, of course, then all bets are off!

 

[Systole]

I've generally found that you can get away with quite a lot by taking stuff from the bestiary and slapping the advanced template on it. In this case, a CR4 encounter is going to be pretty tough on a group of 2s. Black bear is normally CR3. Advanced template is +1. Voila! Boss fight. No muss, no fuss.

Alternatively, a level of fighter or barbarian works pretty well, too.

P.S. If any of my PbP players are reading this, I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT SLAP AN ADVANCED TEMPLATE AND A LEVEL OF BARBARIAN ON THE SINSPAWN YOU ARE CURRENTLY FACING TO TAKE THEM FROM CR2 TO CR4. SHUT UP.

 

[Reffy]

Thank you very much, this really helped me a lot.

I will try using existing monster, and changing it's CR by 1 or 2.
It will be trail and error at first, but the more you practice the better you get at it.

Pathfinder for life.

 

[gamerprinter]

For more options consider using Rite Publishing's 101 Not So Simple Monster Templates (PFRPG) - lots of cool ways to add excitement to your existing list of monsters.

 

[Scott DeWar]

I have the pathfinder SRD PDF. Chapter 12 has the encounter design information. They take you step by step on how to design an encounter. the bear as a base example, here is a nicle's worth of free advice:

dire bear base cr 7 [advanced +1 cr] [earth infused +1 cr] = cr 9

the elemental infused template is from green ronin publising and details are here

if this was an average encounter the party would need to be average of level 9

if challenging, the the encounter would be level 8 and hard would be 7.

lets say you have 6 pcs consisting of 2 each of level 7, 8, and 9. you total the party levels [7+7+8+8+9+9 = 48] divided by the number of pcs [6] = average party level [apl] 8. Since the party has 6 [or more] you add 1 to the APL, so APL = 9.

now on page 400 of the srd you see chart 12-3. in our games we like to mix and match, so you see that a hard encounter for apl 9 = +2 or cr 11. if you use the xp for cr 11 of 12,800 xp you can add 6,400 xp worth of additional creatures, such as - grizzlies at cr 4 [1200 xp]. you could add 5 of those grizzlies and make the party sweat, or add the advanced template and get 4 of those instead.

you could drop the earth elemental infusion for the dire bear to have it at cr 8 [4800 xp] and the rest be those advanced grizzlies for a total of 5 of them. A swarm of hungry bears and momma ain'e heppy! party is lookin mighty fine for supper!!!

by the way, da bears are on page 31 of the pathfinder monster srd. you can say the dire bear is one big a$$ grizzly for flavor and drop the 'dire'.

does that help?

 

[Nellisir]

Disclaimer: I haven't played Pathfinder, and I haven't played 3.5 for about 4 years, so I'm mostly working off memory and a quick skim of the Pathfinder barbarian entry in the SRD. I do have the books. I'm not trying to min/max this, just make smart choices.

Hit Die, or Hit Die Type, would be "d8" for an Animal.
Hit Dice is the quantity, or number, of Hit Dice. 4d8 in this case.

An average roll on a d8 is 4.5, so 4d8 gives an average hit point total of 18 (4.5 x 4 = 18). Your boss-bear, with a 16 Con, has 3 bonus hit points per die, so 3 x 4 = 12; 12 +18 = 30 hp. A little under what you were shooting for. I would drop the Endurance feat (I don't know what it does, but if it doesn't work in 3 rounds, you won't really use it anyways) and increase the bear's Con by two points, to 18. This bumps his hit points to 34 and his Fortitude save by +1. Because he's a melee sort, I'd also increase his AC by two points. Barbarian rage will give him 8 more hit points (his Con goes up by four points, so it'll be 22 and a +6 bonus), bringing his fighting total to 42. Rage also drops his AC by 2, so in combat his AC will actually be 15.

A language is a language, not simply communicating broad concepts. Bears can't speak or write English or Common. "Animal" intelligence is usually 3.

Extra Rage is probably a useless feat as well. He won't survive long enough to use it, or you can handwave it. Give him Weapon Focus (natural weapons); that justifies your +1 to his BAB.

If you want to be really cruel, you could give him two rage powers. I like No Escape (or Swift Foot) and Powerful Blow. They work well thematically.