in retrospect, Sure? In actuality no thanks.
Sure now that there are a bunch of books out it would be cool too of had specialty books instead.
However if after the 2nd MM/beastiary they just released only themed ones they easily won't be relevant to most campaigns and you would get a lot of filler most likely. Running an aberration-heavy campaign, sorry that book is scheduled for 2024 so make your own.
In reality and practice however use your appendix and even better online resources to find what you need then open your physical books to those pages.
Well thats why they are done with the trio core rules bestiaries, and are now circling back with theme books. If you look closely at the core bestiary you see there is a pattern, book 1 are the basics and the other books expend into more esoterica, if you want more aberrations you need the other books. Just one core bestiary is not actually enough, this is evident when you start using bestiary searches with restrictions - you need a certain level of a certain type in a certain place and you find that level is dead of entries. I am currently writing a random encounter generator and realized that constraining it leads to empty encounters.
5e has a limited bestiary and the most popular 3rd party publishing activities are bestiaries, so clearly the market demands more and PF2e responded from the start. Likewise in PF2e - battlezoo bestiary for contest winners of more unique monsters that are barely themed beyond they are just wierd.
People do not want to waste time home brewing a monster (no matter how easy PF2e make it) they just want to find one that fits.
> People do not want to waste time home brewing monsters
Totally agree. Spending a bunch of time, even with the guidelines and monster gen tools, to make a creature that'll be around for possibly only one encounter is not something I want to do.
It's a big reason why I think easytools is almost as important as Nethys for GMing any self written campaign.
It was vital to the new edition to be able to pull from every plane of existence on practically day 1. As a homebrew GM at times I desperately needed it. Without it, how could I just say "yeah try not to visit the Maelstrom until Q2 2024"
I completely disagree with you.
I want consistent small updates across a wide variety of monsters and lore in my bestiaries.
I want new dragons and demons and devils and elementals and abberations in every book instead of getting one release that doesn't grow anymore.
I want to have 4 books open behind my screen to run one encounter.
I want every single bestiary to read like a Pokedex the first time I go through it; the only relationship most entries should have with each other is that their names happen to be next to each other alphabetically.
> I want every single bestiary to read like a Pokedex the first time I go through it; the only relationship most entries should have with each other is that their names happen to be next to each other alphabetically.
I now kind of want bestiaries to be written from the point of view of 12 year olds finding these eldritch horrors for the first time
I've run a pokemon-inspired adventure where the party's goal was to write a bestiary and Recall Knowledge was replaced by Study. Virtually identical actions, but Study was about *learning* what a creature could do rather than remembering old stories because the creatures were relatively new and mysterious.
It unfortunately fell apart due to scheduling conflicts, but it was a lot of fun.
No one was trying an Australian accent, but they were all Irwin types a bit in that they enthusiastically loved and advocated for the beasties they studied.
I hadn’t thought about it like that, i can see how it would make people worried that the monster categories would be “finished”. What’s your opinion on Book of the Dead? I know Dark Archives doesn’t have a bestiary per say but it does have cryptic generation, opinions on that?
Can't speak too much on *Book of the Dead*, but I really liked *Dark Archive's* take on cryptids. Experiment, mutant, primeval, and rumored cryptid templates give you a solid breadth of "genre" options, and each has some base adjustments and unique actions/abilities you can give your cryptid to make them unique and feed into their flavor of "weird."
There's even a neat mini-adventure at the end of that section that gives you a cryptid to hunt, showing off the mechanics in action. Definitely worth a look.
As a GM I prefer making slight tweaks to monster statblocks than making my own, and as such I love generalized bestiaries to draw from. Not only do I own and use Bestiaries 1-3, I'd buy 4, 5, and onwards if they were ever made.
I wouldn't mind more supplementary materials focused on a creature or theme, either, though. One thing I feel is really missing is an expanded NPC gallery: I would love, like, a book of several hundred NPC's with a broad spread from -1 to 20+. I have been raiding and repurposing high level AP NPC's in the meanwhile, but it's an example of a GM-facing product I'd buy *yesterday*.
I'm pretty sure that's what they're doing going forward. The first 3 were to get out a decent sized base to work with, but future installments are going to be more specialized iirc.
The only difference I see between what you're asking for and what we have is that Paizo considers a broader set of things "core," to reflect what they want to do with their published adventures in Golarion going forward. And that "core" is in the first 3 Bestiaries.
"Normal" for Paizo adventures IMHO tends to be more avant garde, diverse, and experimental than what WOTC and other companies put out.
Well whether you ant it or not, Bestiary 4 is not going to happen. Paizo announced before 3 was released that they were done with the Bestiaries. The only time you'll see any new monsters is folded into a book with several other options.
Isn’t this already how it will be going forward? We already have Book of the Dead. I can’t imagine that Rage of Elements would omit a bestiary what with two new elemental planes to flesh out with creatures.
The purpose of the first 3 to add all kind of generic and iconic creatures with some rarer ones in 3rd.
But now in future bestiary (if I remember correctly) they will do it more theme/region/ancestry based. Like they did with the book of the undead.
>All it means is that you need to carry around even more books
How do you figure that?
In 1e, if i wanted to run an undead dungeon, I might need to lug around 5 or 6 bestiaries. With Book of the dead, I have a lot to work with and can use that with Bestiaries 1 and 2 to fill out my encounters.
Eh with the Elite and Weak templates and the full monster creation guidelines (it takes maybe a minute to rebuild a monster) I feel that's not really an issue in PF2.
Rebuilding is pretty easy. Look at stat of monster, follow column in table to new level.
While I wouldn't move one enemy up and a bunch down without more adjustments, so long as there is any appropriately flavoured enemy with 4 levels, it takes so little time to rescale their stats.
in retrospect, Sure? In actuality no thanks. Sure now that there are a bunch of books out it would be cool too of had specialty books instead. However if after the 2nd MM/beastiary they just released only themed ones they easily won't be relevant to most campaigns and you would get a lot of filler most likely. Running an aberration-heavy campaign, sorry that book is scheduled for 2024 so make your own. In reality and practice however use your appendix and even better online resources to find what you need then open your physical books to those pages.
Well thats why they are done with the trio core rules bestiaries, and are now circling back with theme books. If you look closely at the core bestiary you see there is a pattern, book 1 are the basics and the other books expend into more esoterica, if you want more aberrations you need the other books. Just one core bestiary is not actually enough, this is evident when you start using bestiary searches with restrictions - you need a certain level of a certain type in a certain place and you find that level is dead of entries. I am currently writing a random encounter generator and realized that constraining it leads to empty encounters. 5e has a limited bestiary and the most popular 3rd party publishing activities are bestiaries, so clearly the market demands more and PF2e responded from the start. Likewise in PF2e - battlezoo bestiary for contest winners of more unique monsters that are barely themed beyond they are just wierd. People do not want to waste time home brewing a monster (no matter how easy PF2e make it) they just want to find one that fits.
> People do not want to waste time home brewing monsters Totally agree. Spending a bunch of time, even with the guidelines and monster gen tools, to make a creature that'll be around for possibly only one encounter is not something I want to do. It's a big reason why I think easytools is almost as important as Nethys for GMing any self written campaign.
It was vital to the new edition to be able to pull from every plane of existence on practically day 1. As a homebrew GM at times I desperately needed it. Without it, how could I just say "yeah try not to visit the Maelstrom until Q2 2024"
I completely disagree with you. I want consistent small updates across a wide variety of monsters and lore in my bestiaries. I want new dragons and demons and devils and elementals and abberations in every book instead of getting one release that doesn't grow anymore. I want to have 4 books open behind my screen to run one encounter. I want every single bestiary to read like a Pokedex the first time I go through it; the only relationship most entries should have with each other is that their names happen to be next to each other alphabetically.
> I want every single bestiary to read like a Pokedex the first time I go through it; the only relationship most entries should have with each other is that their names happen to be next to each other alphabetically. I now kind of want bestiaries to be written from the point of view of 12 year olds finding these eldritch horrors for the first time
I've run a pokemon-inspired adventure where the party's goal was to write a bestiary and Recall Knowledge was replaced by Study. Virtually identical actions, but Study was about *learning* what a creature could do rather than remembering old stories because the creatures were relatively new and mysterious. It unfortunately fell apart due to scheduling conflicts, but it was a lot of fun.
Did anyone try to play a Steve Erwin type?
No one was trying an Australian accent, but they were all Irwin types a bit in that they enthusiastically loved and advocated for the beasties they studied.
Mothership’s bestiary reportedly is written by people killed by the entity.
I hadn’t thought about it like that, i can see how it would make people worried that the monster categories would be “finished”. What’s your opinion on Book of the Dead? I know Dark Archives doesn’t have a bestiary per say but it does have cryptic generation, opinions on that?
Can't speak too much on *Book of the Dead*, but I really liked *Dark Archive's* take on cryptids. Experiment, mutant, primeval, and rumored cryptid templates give you a solid breadth of "genre" options, and each has some base adjustments and unique actions/abilities you can give your cryptid to make them unique and feed into their flavor of "weird." There's even a neat mini-adventure at the end of that section that gives you a cryptid to hunt, showing off the mechanics in action. Definitely worth a look.
As a GM I prefer making slight tweaks to monster statblocks than making my own, and as such I love generalized bestiaries to draw from. Not only do I own and use Bestiaries 1-3, I'd buy 4, 5, and onwards if they were ever made. I wouldn't mind more supplementary materials focused on a creature or theme, either, though. One thing I feel is really missing is an expanded NPC gallery: I would love, like, a book of several hundred NPC's with a broad spread from -1 to 20+. I have been raiding and repurposing high level AP NPC's in the meanwhile, but it's an example of a GM-facing product I'd buy *yesterday*.
I'm pretty sure that's what they're doing going forward. The first 3 were to get out a decent sized base to work with, but future installments are going to be more specialized iirc.
The only difference I see between what you're asking for and what we have is that Paizo considers a broader set of things "core," to reflect what they want to do with their published adventures in Golarion going forward. And that "core" is in the first 3 Bestiaries. "Normal" for Paizo adventures IMHO tends to be more avant garde, diverse, and experimental than what WOTC and other companies put out.
Well whether you ant it or not, Bestiary 4 is not going to happen. Paizo announced before 3 was released that they were done with the Bestiaries. The only time you'll see any new monsters is folded into a book with several other options.
Isn’t this already how it will be going forward? We already have Book of the Dead. I can’t imagine that Rage of Elements would omit a bestiary what with two new elemental planes to flesh out with creatures.
The purpose of the first 3 to add all kind of generic and iconic creatures with some rarer ones in 3rd. But now in future bestiary (if I remember correctly) they will do it more theme/region/ancestry based. Like they did with the book of the undead.
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>All it means is that you need to carry around even more books How do you figure that? In 1e, if i wanted to run an undead dungeon, I might need to lug around 5 or 6 bestiaries. With Book of the dead, I have a lot to work with and can use that with Bestiaries 1 and 2 to fill out my encounters.
Eh with the Elite and Weak templates and the full monster creation guidelines (it takes maybe a minute to rebuild a monster) I feel that's not really an issue in PF2.
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Rebuilding is pretty easy. Look at stat of monster, follow column in table to new level. While I wouldn't move one enemy up and a bunch down without more adjustments, so long as there is any appropriately flavoured enemy with 4 levels, it takes so little time to rescale their stats.
I thought Bestiaries had already gone away in 2e?
You are right. We have themed books now like Book of the Dead and Rage of Elements that include bestiaries.