Surprisingly Low-level

[fireinthedust]

Looking through the bestiary, I'm finding most of the monsters are below level 10. Would I be right in thinking the setting is geared towards lower level games? That or the "art" of advancing everything?

Looking through the SRD, I'm thinking high level play is mostly class-level monsters; which means they're probably more powerful than standard monsters.

Any play experience to back this up or knock it down?

 

[billd91]

When it comes to the first published monster book, you're not going to go wrong focusing on the lower end of the monster pool. It gives the majority of campaigns the most choices for monstrous opponents.

Once you get to higher levels, given all of the customization options characters have, it's often better to allow the DM to customize the monsters for their higher level PC parties through class levels and other forms of advancement than to try to come up too many one size fits all options.

But for those DMs really looking for higher powered adversaries out of the box, that's a good use of subsequent monster books like a Bestiary 2 or 3.

 

[fireinthedust]

I was thinking that.


I think I like the idea of having most basic creatures as low-level, though. Like the Efreet, for example. That's brilliant, if only because they're not out of reach for parties of many levels.

I don't know that I'd want a race of uber-high level monsters out there. The odd Terrasque works, and extra-planar creatures for sure. Still, that most critters aim for 5th or 8th level, with some 12th level and some 18-23rd level, it does make sense. How many games last long enough for high level play? And those that do likely have more specialized monsters.

I wonder if this was an issue for Paizo back when so many monsters were just so high level that when they tried adding class levels at Epic level games, they found details like spell-level and saving throws for spellcasters mucked up.


The problem is how many of the monsters can I pick up in an emergency, who will challenge my players? Like, random mobs of highly trained Drow, for example; or Ogre mercenaries; or Efreet Eldritch Knights, etc.
Would I need to go to the APs, or are there collections of upper level advanced versions of monsters out there?

ALSO: what is the ideal level to start with Pathfinder? Is there a sweet spot? If my group wants slightly higher-level play than 1st, is 5th high enough without needing to start advancing monsters?

 

[James Jacobs]

The primary purpose of the Bestiary was to replace 3.5's Monster Manual. And since the 3.5 Monster Manual skewed heavily toward CRs of 10 and lower, that's just a natural result... although there is more variety in high CR options in the Pathfinder Bestiary than there were in the 3.5 Monster Manual (we have some high CR aberrations and oozes and the like, for example).

Bestiary 2 will (like the Monster Manual 2 for 3rd edition) have more high CR choices. It'll also, like all of our hardcovers, be 100% open content.

 

[fireinthedust]

The primary purpose of the Bestiary was to replace 3.5's Monster Manual. And since the 3.5 Monster Manual skewed heavily toward CRs of 10 and lower, that's just a natural result... although there is more variety in high CR options in the Pathfinder Bestiary than there were in the 3.5 Monster Manual (we have some high CR aberrations and oozes and the like, for example).

Bestiary 2 will (like the Monster Manual 2 for 3rd edition) have more high CR choices. It'll also, like all of our hardcovers, be 100% open content.

I was thinking about that. I think an interesting option was presented in one of the later MMs, in the form of more higher-level examples of current monsters. Not just the ones presented in Ecology articles, of one-off special monsters, but rather a pile of examples of a particular race for use by GMs.
Like the Goblins in RotRL, how in the Bestiary they're 1st level warriors; but if I wanted to make some Goblin Bards or Barbarians, or even an elite group of Goblin Rogues or Fighters, it might be more realistic for an adventuring party encountering a cadre of the little blighters.

I just don't know whether just having more upper-CR critters is a good idea. Like in Savage Tide's later episodes, how there was this assassin based on a demon but with two assassin levels. I mean, just two. The rest were the usual monster HD. While that's good for a foundation, I think there's a lot of things that monsters don't make up for vs. PCs unless they've got more... well, stuff going for them.

Granted, yes there should be big beasties like the Shoggoth: so glad that's a Core PF monsters, actually; and more giant scorpions and spiders and dragons and such. That makes sense, and should be that way.
But I like the idea of a base-race being, like, CR8 and then level up the more powerful options. At least for the intelligent creatures. My defense for this is that if I wanted to have Cyclopes Archmages, they by definition have to be Epic Level before I can pit them against my players *if* the base race is CR20. Since they're CR5, I can pile on some levels and have them ready to challenge the PCs in a reasonable manner.

I guess I'm thinking about the power creep that happened in 3.x, like in FR.
Then again, there is the problem of having GMs leveling up *every* monsters once the players are around 8th level.

 

[fireinthedust]

One more question: while many monsters seem to have the same CR, others have a lower one. The Black Dragon in the Bestiary is CR16 at Ancient, but in the MM3.5 its CR is higher.

Does this mean the dragon is less powerful now, or that CR was re-adjusted based on the reality of what a 16th level group could handle?


And why wasn't there a page for designing dragons, like in the 3.5 MM, at each age category? (granted, they're the same dragon unless you swap things around; but a side-bar on the stat blocks could say this, that you should pick your own feats for customizing them, or something)
The chart on page 91 does seem to solve this, though. And the base Wyrmling entry for each type of dragon (cool cool).

Is there somewhere I can go to better understand the changes between MMs?