Pathfinder Unchained Monster Generation

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
Axebird
Master
Posts: 201
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:51 am

Pathfinder Unchained Monster Generation

Post by Axebird »

Has anyone done a review of Unchained's "Simple Monster Creation" system? It's available in PRD (everything is split on 10 different pages) or d20PFSRD (everything's on one massive page) flavors.

I'm having a difficult time articulating exactly what seems so wrong about the whole thing to me, but it seems like some of its core issues in short are:
  • 1. There aren't nearly enough monster roles. They at least have the sense to not divide stats up by creature type, but the only possible roles are Combatant (stabs or shoots things in the face), Spellcaster (the bomb), or Expert (overrated for actual combat threat). So your options are "it's basically a simple sorcerer" or "it fights people", and those are at once too broad and too narrow.
    2. Ability scores are totally unlinked from everything else the creature does. They're seriously only used for determining skill check and ability score check bonuses. What the fuck? There's actually no reason for a giant monster to have a good Strength score other than to be good at climbing and swimming. Strength has no impact on its ability to grab or pummel people, and if it wants to break stuff it just has arbitrarily high damage to attack with. Monsters are seriously best off just picking Dexterity to be good at hiding and Wisdom to be good at finding people. Everything other than 3 of their ability scores are just automatically 10s for some reason.
    3. The ability lists are not even close to valued accurately. It costs the same amount of monster resources to have channel resistance as it does to force a save versus being paralyzed on every natural attack. WTF?
    4. There is no level gating on abilities other than spellcasting. Constant greater invisibility, sneak attack, and Far Shot are all equivalent abilities available at CR 1.
Any other thoughts?
User avatar
Count Arioch the 28th
King
Posts: 6172
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I didn't analyze it too closely, it just didn't seem like it did what I would have wanted it to do and I haven't seen anyone present evidence that would warrant a second look. I find a lot of pathfinder stuff is like that.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I didn't analyze it too closely, it just didn't seem like it did what I would have wanted it to do and I haven't seen anyone present evidence that would warrant a second look. I find a lot of pathfinder stuff is like that.
Basically this. I haven't seen much purpose in deep analysis to find the failure points because I don't know that it has any success points. I can't really think of any reason to use the system over "pulling a monster out of my ass" or "taking a monster out of the monster manual and changing a few powers and numbers." And I haven't heard from anyone who feels differently.

-Username17
Axebird
Master
Posts: 201
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:51 am

Post by Axebird »

It seems like an attempt at testing the waters for a monster creation system in a new edition. It has a lot of suspicious similarities with how monsters now apparently work in Starfinder (D&D but in space, basically), which comes out next month. Paizo released a preview PDF a few days ago called First Contact with a handful of rules and monster spreads, and the creatures in it have seemingly irrelevant ability scores expressed as modifiers, numbers made of arbitrarium, and extreme similarity across combat role (there are 3 CR 4 monsters that fight you with physical attacks, and they all have identical HP and AC). That, combined with the bestiary they're planning only being 160 pages long and promising a bunch of other crap like equipment and cultural writeups for alien species and so-on, suggests that their intent for the system is to let them get away with publishing as few monsters as possible and telling people to make everything else up.

As far as success points, yeah I'm not sure. Paizo's design goal seems to be that you can throw a monster together in like 5 minutes without needing to make very many decisions as long as you know what it's basic job in combat is supposed to be. Which... seems optimistic, but plausible given how little math is involved in the process. They at least "succeeded" in defining what the numbers behind being a high CR monster are intended to be like, but I have no way of knowing if any of those are actually useful. They definitely cocked up making numbers meaningfully different between monsters of the same CR that are supposed to have different strengths and weaknesses- the system still outputs ninja cubes unless you sit down and replace some of the arbitrary numbers with your own.
Last edited by Axebird on Mon Jun 19, 2017 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Your monster system really only has to output "enough monsters." And that could be done by having big lists or a lot of customization or something in between. You don't specifically need a monster creation system if your prefab enemy list is long enough, and you don't necessarily require a prefab enemy list if making new enemies is sufficiently fast and painless. There's no singular right way to create the monsters to threaten the PCs with.

But there are plenty of wrong ways. Any system where the enemies don't have sufficient differences one from another has failed before it has started. Any system where it's a big pain in the ass to put the finishing touches on any enemy is DOA. And so on.

The Pathfinder monster creation rules are confronted with the question "What does this actually do that we'd want it to do?" and all I hear back is crickets chirping or weird deflections. It's like trying to get senate Republicans to explain what Trumpcare is actually supposed to solve. You get nothing. It's just fiddliness for the sake of it.

-Username17
Axebird
Master
Posts: 201
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:51 am

Post by Axebird »

"What useful purpose does it fulfill" isn't really a question I can answer. I'm pretty sure it just doesn't, looking at it further. I think at best it can serve as a warning for what not to do with a monster generator.

Like, right out of the gate when you pick a creature type, none of the adjustments are remotely on par with each other. If you pick Humanoid, your creature gets +2 to one save. If you pick Dragon, they increase their poor saves by +2, gain +2 attack, and get darkvision, low-light vision, and immunity to paralysis and sleep. Those differences aren't earth shattering but it's hard to pretend they aren't there and don't contribute to the Dragon just being outright better, if all other factors are the same.
GâtFromKI
Knight-Baron
Posts: 513
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2011 10:14 am

Post by GâtFromKI »

Axebird wrote:Like, right out of the gate when you pick a creature type, none of the adjustments are remotely on par with each other. If you pick Humanoid, your creature gets +2 to one save. If you pick Dragon, they increase their poor saves by +2, gain +2 attack, and get darkvision, low-light vision, and immunity to paralysis and sleep. Those differences aren't earth shattering but it's hard to pretend they aren't there and don't contribute to the Dragon just being outright better, if all other factors are the same.
Wait; what?

OK, thanks to you I took a look at this system, because I couldn't think it was so bad. But you're right.

1/ pick a role, like combatant, expert or spellcaster. Pick a CR. You're done !

2/ huh no. Now pick a subrole like tactician (who is not an expert but a combatant for some reason) or rider (because "it's a thing that is put on top of another thing" is a valid description of a combat role). Assign skills and abilities and other numbers from an array. You're done ! \o/

3/ wait a minute ! now you have to chose a type, and derive a bunch of bullshit bonuses like +save and darkvision.

4/ and you can do the same with class ! It will remove some of the bullshit bonuses from type, but not all.

5/ there's subtype as well ! more bullshit bonuses !

6/ Did you know about templates ?

...

At that point, you could as well create the monster by choosing its type, its HD, its class levels, derive BBA and save, pull some ability scores from your ass, assign skill points. An online monster calculator would have been more useful than this.

I can see the usefulness of some quick monster creation rules. Something simple, without three layers of bullshit bonuses. Rule of thumb: if your system allows to pile up enough bullshit bonuses so the final bonus isn't bullshit anymore, then your system isn't simple for any reasonable definition of "simple".

Screw that shit.

Paizo wrote:Compare your final monster to your initial concept. Its statistics should be close to those on Table: Monster Statistics by CR in the Bestiary.
OK.

So why should I use this rule instead of "take numbers from the table. Add 1 somewhere and remove 1 elsewhere, depending on your mood. You're done ! \o/"

If the goal is to reproduce the table, just take the values from the table, it's faster and gives more precise results.
Paizo wrote:This system lets you quickly design a monster
No.
Last edited by GâtFromKI on Thu Jun 22, 2017 3:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Count Arioch the 28th
King
Posts: 6172
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I have gotten some in-game use from the simple class templates though, It's a decent way to give monsters spellcasting if you don't want to also give it a metric assload of HD as well.

I can't tell you if it works from a CR point of view because I use event-based experience rather than monster-based experience and I mostly just eyeball the numbers to make sure my players can interact with them how I want. So I can't speak to whether +3 cr for spellcasting at 10th or higher level is balanced or not (I'm assuming not).
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

Does it have nice artwork to go with the release?
Axebird
Master
Posts: 201
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:51 am

Post by Axebird »

It's surprisingly dry for ostensibly being a chapter about imagining wacky monsters and giving them stats. Most of the pages just have long tables or sidebars on them, with occasional art of a single monster, like this weird-ass harpy.
Image
Or this plant thing with a wand.
Image
Mostly they're unrelated to what's actually being discussed in the text. This picture of a marilith is hanging out next to the spell packages for Sonic, Stealth, Strength, and Sun.
Image
I couldn't tell you how much of this art is just re-used and how much was commissioned specifically for this book. I'd guess a lot of it is re-used, since most of the pieces have nothing to do with what's on the same page. The art itself is mostly pretty good, as usual.
Last edited by Axebird on Mon Jun 26, 2017 11:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Post Reply