Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder Monster Core

[Morrus]

This thread is for the general discussion of Pathfinder Monster Core. Click on Overview for more information.

 

[Andvari]

Top 3 things I'd like to know:

1. Which creatures from the Bestiary, if any, do not appear in Monster Core?
2. Which creatures, if any, not in the Bestiary, have been added to Monster Core?
3. Which creatures have been significantly changed, if any?

Based on the overview, it sounds like it's the same content, just updated to the remaster, and with a few new dragons. Which is fine, but not that exciting to discuss.

 

[Reynard]

Top 3 things I'd like to know:

1. Which creatures from the Bestiary, if any, do not appear in Monster Core?
2. Which creatures, if any, not in the Bestiary, have been added to Monster Core?
3. Which creatures have been significantly changed, if any?

Based on the overview, it sounds like it's the same content, just updated to the remaster, and with a few new dragons. Which is fine, but not that exciting to discuss.

That's probably a fair assessment. After all, the purpose of the Remaster is a mid edition clean up, plus eliminating any remaining strong ties to the OGL SRD. I don't expect any major changes in how monsters work, although I would love to see some inspiration from Flee!Mortals and the Monster Menagerie sneak in re: dynamic monsters with interesting options.

 

[Retreater]

I hate to admit it, but I'm the least interested in this revised book thus far. I have four Bestiaries for PF2 already, so I'm not especially hurting for more creatures to use. So unless there's some important rules updates, I don't see the usefulness for me. And I don't really want major rules updates that will drastically change how the game is played.
The one change I've noticed (through the Foundry integration) is the removal of alignment. I have to admit, I miss alignment as a shorthand to help figure out typical behavior for creatures.
For example, I was running an AP and came across an encounter with Web Lurkers (aka Ettercaps). They're just obscure enough that I don't remember a lot about their society/ecology. The adventure gave no clue how to their motivations/personality. There's no longer alignment or any other information provided on Foundry. But these are intelligent creatures who speak and my group had the means to communicate with them.
So I had to go to my bookshelf, grab my Bestiary 1, and look up the entry to get this information. It would be less work for Paizo to have just left this information for GMs.

 

[Waller]

I hate to admit it, but I'm the least interested in this revised book thus far.

Posting in every product thread to declare that you're not interested is your schtick, after all.

 

[Retreater]

Edit: Rethought comment. Apologies.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I am somewhat interested in having the PDF of this because it is nice to read through these books in the order they appear in rather than using an encounter builder. It gives you a much different feel and understanding of the creatures and how they appear. It can be much more interesting and enlightening through a volume of a bestiary in terms of understanding lore and area.

Plus, I suspect there would be a good amount of new monsters appearing - along with new art ^-^.

 

[Growing Brains]

Golems and dragons are getting redone. There will be changes to undead and outsiders to incorporate the new sanctification system. They are also consolidating monsters/foes from the core handbooks and bestiaries 2-4 into the book. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Incenjucar]

As a newbie to the system I'm quite curious to see what changes they introduce to the lore through this. I've noticed quite a few gaps in the areas of my personal interest (elementals, naturally), and I'd love to see those fleshed out more.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Golems and dragons are getting redone. There will be changes to undead and outsiders to incorporate the new sanctification system. They are also consolidating monsters/foes from the core handbooks and bestiaries 2-4 into the book. I'm looking forward to it.

To add onto 'golems are getting redone':

Golems are being renamed bastions (probably to get away with the association of the Jewish legend of the golem; I am going to call them bastions for the rest of this post) and instead of being immune to magic, they will now have damage reduction to magic and some other ability changes, with a particular weakness to certain types of damage.

People find bastions as is to be highly frustrating and reductive; they have blanket immunizes to all kind of magic except the one they are weak to - which can often be just a single spell or a spell trait. This overrides what the spell actually does and instead does a certain amount of damage and applies a status effect. This makes them really weird to fight, and if you don't use Recall Knowledge and succeed, you can become very confused as to what is happening.

IMO, while I haven't run a proper combat where players have faced a pre-remaster Bastion, I agree with these takes. They feel much more like a puzzle boss and I'm not certain how well set up Pathfinder 2e - or any tabletop RPG, really - is set up for that; since if you don't "solve the puzzle", you can lose hard or end up in a boring combat. This is probably particularly bad if they are used as solo PL+2 or PL+3 encounters.

Bastions will be a lot more usable and interesting from now on.