Skills for monsters confusing me!

[King-Panda]

(I get the feeling this issue has been addressed before, but without the ability to search the forums I'm attempting a possible re-post. My apologies if this has been answered already.)

I sat down to make some creatures today for a campaign my friend is working on. Admittedly, I haven't tried making a new creature in a d20 system since 3.5 was in its prime, but I ran into a serious roadblock. What the heck is up with skills?

Let's take a random monster, the Pegasus. It's skills are listed as follows:

Fly +5, Perception +11, Sense Motive +7 - Racial Modifiers: +4 Perception

The Pegasus is a Magical Beast (2+Int skills per HD) with 10 Int and 4 HD. The class skills for Magical Beasts include Fly and Perception, but not Sense Motive. If we try and break it down, we get the following results:

Let's say the Pegasus put just a single skill point into Fly. It would gain another +3 bonus from it being a class skill, and a further +2 bonus from its Dex modifier. The skill bonus would total +6.

Using maximum skill points (4), the default modifier for a Pegasus' Perception would be +12 (4 Ranks, +3 Class skill, +1 Wis, +4 Racial).

We have three skill points left. Sinking those into Sense Motive, total skill check comes to +4 (3 Ranks, +1 Wis). What gives?

+5/+11/+7 vs +6/+12/+4. These errors can be found in almost any given stat block throughout the bestiary. Small Earth Elementals with 8 Dex and 2 HD have +7 Stealth. A Purple Worm putting max ranks into it's swim skill should have a +31 modifier (16 Ranks, +3 Class, +12 Str), but it's +20. Am I missing something here, or did the monster designers just ad hoc their skills? I've looked throughout the back chapters of the bestiary, and perused the SRD looking for what would be causing these discrepancies, but can't find anything of note. Any help on this issue would be appreciated.

 

[Noir le Lotus]

For the pegasus Fly skill, don't forget that the creature size and manoeuvrability give bonus or malus to that skill.

The fly skill says that a large creature has a -2 malus to fly checks, average manoeuvrability gives no modifier.

For the Purple Worm, with intelligence 1, the creature can only max 1 skill.

So you have : Perception +18 (16 ranks + 3 class skill -1 Wis modifier)
Swim +20 (0 rank +12 Strength modifier + 8 for having a swim speed)

Usually, the skills on creatures are right, but there can always be some small mistakes, you can report them on the Paizo forum, the PRD is corrected quite often.

 

[King-Panda]

Thanks for the quick response. The breakdown for the Purple Worm makes sense now, but I'm still confused about the Pegasus. Throwing a -2 into the mix doesn't resolve their skill check balance. I'd hate to get into a big about breaking down all these different skill bonuses post after post, so if someone could answer the following question, that'd be awesome.

Do all these wacky skills bonuses actually make sense with the rules for monster creation outlined in the Beastiary (and I'm just not getting it), or is there some amount of fudging going on here?

 

[Noir le Lotus]

There should be no fudging in monster creation, but sometimes a racial modifier is counted but not indicated in the statistics.

By example, the Leonal has Acrobatics skill at +24, with 14 ranks, acrobatics as a class skill, and +3 Dex modifier. It's only since a few weeks that it has been stated on his stat block that the creature has a +4 racial bonus in acrobatics.

That's why never hesitate to post on the Paizo forum if you think you found a mistake in a creature stat block.

 

[Alzrius]

Do all these wacky skills bonuses actually make sense with the rules for monster creation outlined in the Beastiary (and I'm just not getting it), or is there some amount of fudging going on here?

They do make sense, but sometimes errors creep into the process. The pegasus is a good example of this.

As you noted, the pegasus is a 4 Hit Die magical beast, which with a 10 Intelligence gives it 8 skill points. Of its Fly, Perception, and Sense Motive skills, only the first two are class skills. Given that, we can create the following break-down of how its skill expenditures should look:

Fly 2 ranks (+2 Dex, +3 class, -2 size, +0 maneuverability)
Perception 3 ranks (+1 Wis, +3 class, +4 racial)
Sense Motive 3 ranks (+1 Wis)

Given that, the only error seems to be that the pegasus' Sense Motive modifier is 3 points lower than what's listed, which honestly seems like someone thought that was a class skill for it.

This is a small error in what's otherwise a fairly well-constructed set of skills. The reason this is hard to deconstruct is that skill totals don't say how many actual ranks were purchased, and many easily-forgotten modifiers are added in as well.

When deconstructing skill listings, usually find all of the modifiers possible and list them out as above until I've got them all, and then take whatever bonus is left to be the actual number of ranks spent. That will pretty accurately let you reconstruct how monster skill points are spent.

 

[King-Panda]

Thanks for the answers everyone. I just wanted to double check that there wasn't something big I was missing.