General
We are looking at a hefty 320 page book, with over 300 NPCs, the Pathfinder iconics statted out at various levels, animal companions, and a lot more. It's a nice book, lavishly illustrated, with a ton of useful info. I am more happy with this book than the Equipment Guide, but then again, I like character books, since they give me personalities to fill the world with (in the design and theme of the world's creators).
The NPCs have level-appropriate gear, and this is folded into the stats, which is nice, and makes the NPCs 'pull of the shelf' and useable. Only classes from the core rulebook are included, which is good, since if all you play with is core, you don't have things you can't use. This also opens up a Codex 2 and 3, with expansion book classes, which honestly, I wouldn't mind. From a design standpoint, including only core classes and races is fine with me, since it creates no dependencies on other books, and people not interested in ninjas and gunslingers don't have stuff they can't use. My bookshelf and backpack may complain, but hey, that's why they sell PDFs.
The NPCs are designed with a specific race for each, but it not too hard to swap those out with another race, different gear, or new feats and powers. If you play like we like to, and drop PCs into a 1-20 world, this book will be a very valuable addition to your Pathfinder arsenal of referee tools. In most cases, a nice piece of art is given, along with a sample character write-up of a personality in the world. This is a very nice touch, and I love to see the creativity in these designs and backgrounds. This is almost the next best thing to getting 300 new iconic characters, and plenty of drop-in personalities for your campaign words. Top notch, and thank you Paizo.
Tactics
Another big plus to this book is they give sample tactics for each NPC in combat. Monster tactics started way back in D&D2, when monster complexity started to creep up, and the monster manuals started adding tactics sections in the monster stat blocks. This continued in D&D3, and started to include things like feats, special powers, resistances, and a bunch of other stuff. Monster complexity in both D&D3.5/PF and D&D4 is up there, and referees need to pay attention to these blocks, or the monster (as designed) fizzles out in combat when it should have been special and memorable.
I am mixed about needing tactics blocks in games. In one case, I am happy to have them. In another, I feel it is a symptom of a complex game where someone needs to lay out things that should be readily apparent to those using the monsters. It is almost as if referees need 'monster training' and the tactics block is a way for that to happen. In many games, and most OGL old-school games, they don't need this, and what monsters can do is simple and apparent. Again, Pathfinder is a complex game, and this help is appreciated. Your taste and complexity tolerance may vary, but the goods outweigh the bads here.
Complexity
I can't review an NPC book without making a comment on character complexity. The sheer number of options, gear, builds, and equipment available in Pathfinder, along with the long list of skills and feats, makes higher-level characters quite complex. This comes with the territory, if you play Pathfinder, you are looking for that complexity, so it isn't a bad thing. Since OGL alternatives exist with simpler characters, you can play those. Pathfinder is a cleaned-up 3.5E, so the characters can grow to be quite large in terms of character sheets and power blocks. This leads to large entries in the book, which can slow down reference during play. Myself, I prefer simple characters and powers without the need to reference secondary books, but the NPC Codex does a good job of trying to make the characters easy to play, which is a plus.
Another design thought. The game ends up needing a book like this just to give referees and idea of power level of all the characters in the game. This is an important point - up until now, it was hard to judge power level without a computer program to generate NPCs or NPCs from modules or supplements. This book is invaluable for designing adventures and doing dry runs of combats, since pretty well designed standard templates exist across many character levels. Some community-created standards existed (if you know where to look), but none to this level of completeness and coverage.
Build Optimization
I should note that some of the more experienced character designers are starting to critique some of the builds. It is understandable, but I am of the feeling that not every build needs to be hyper-optimized. If you wanted to, you could tweak them yourself, swap ability scores, or use your favorite mix-max adjustments. For most people, I feel that the scores given are good enough, and reflect average NPCs, not hyper-optimized ones. In fact, I'd prefer average, and make the tweaks myself.
Ideas
The NPC Codex is just brimming with ideas. Do not discount this! NPC after NPC, the designers chose to include a wide variety of 'slices of life' throughout the book, giving you infernal champions, cave stalkers, and tons of other fun ideas for opponents, cultures, locations, and parts of the Golarion game world. You can crack the book open, find a NPC, and design an adventure just around the ideas presented there. They give a good overview of many different specific character types, and fit these into the world quite skillfully. Without these, the book would have less value, since page after page of bland character stats has been done before, and frankly any computer can do this. Taking the world and meshing it with character designs, along with a little bit of color and background, makes this a greatly useful book.
Comparisons With D&D4
Ben, "I felt a great disturbance, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in anger. I fear something terrible has happened."But seriously, this is a major difference between Pathfinder and D&D4 - how the games treat NPCs. In D&D4, most NPCs are really supposed to be designed as monsters with the standard monster stat-block, 'hero' classes do not exist outside of the PCs and a select few NPCs. In Pathfinder, everyone follows the same rules, and monsters are statted realistically. You can even take a bobcat, make it semi-intelligent, and give it a couple levels of ranger if you want. You just need to do the math (D&D4 wins on simplicity of monster design).
Luke, "What happened, Wizards release another NPC guide for the Realms?"
Like Ben and Luke mention, there seems to be an outright hostility to powerful NPCs in D&D4 and all the official D&D campaign worlds (compared to previous editions). We are talking design here, and this is an important point. D&D4 is designed to encourage that the PCs are the only major heroes in the world, and everything else is a monster class. Later modules and adventures may contradict this, but the flavor of the original books is pretty clear. This even extends into D&D4's world sourcebooks, where it is very hard to find stat blocks for powerful friendly NPCs. A decision was likely made that 'powerful friendly NPCs ruin the experience' so they are discouraged and even written away in the guides. In D&D4, the PCs are the heroes - and the game is designed around that.
Is this a good thing, design wise? Possibly, since there was a supposed sentiment that the 'Realms was unfun to play in' because of powerful NPCs. Eliminating all powerful friendly NPCs from your source material is one way to fix this, and put the emphasis back on the PCs. It seems a bit heavy handed to me though, and not really the way I like to play. I like a world full of powerful good, neutral, and hostile NPCs - with no one possessing plot immunity. Powerful NPCs can fall, be replaced, or disappear like anyone else - a giant soap opera of characters interacting, coming, and going as the referee desires.
Pathfinder is different - the world is supposed to be filled with powerful NPCs, since that is how the world works. How many of them are 'friendly' and how active they are are up to you, having the level 20 paladin "Horace the Honorable" ride in and save the day every time for the PCs is really bad refereeing, and not really a design failure. D&D4's elimination of powerful allies in the game world is a design solution to a supposedly common refereeing mistake. Again, the design of Pathfinder is different, and continues the D&D3.5 treatment of NPCs - everyone is equal, and the referee is responsible for balance and smart use of them. I like D&D4's focus on the heroes, but I don't really like it forced in the game material I buy - this is personal preference that crosses over into the design realm.
Quality
Paizo is like the pro-sports team that pays big money, and consistently gets the great players who make incredible plays. The quality level in this book puts many games to shame, with full color pages, glorious artwork, interesting writing and flavor, and a sharp attention to detail. This high quality level can take an average release, such as the Equipment Guide, and knock it into the win column, just through presentation and detail alone. The NPC Codex is an example of a great release knocked into the stratosphere by quality and attention to detail.
This is another important design consideration - quality matters. Just one bad piece of art can sink your product (ask us), and maintaining a 100% devotion to quality in art, text, and content really pays off. If you have a choice between releasing your game now, or spending that extra time polishing art, text, rules, and layout - spend the extra time. You will be on the shelf next to these guys, and you literally want to bring your best game.
Overall
I like the NPC Codex, and design-wise, it is a solid book that I wish would have came out earlier. The way we play, this is an essential book. Highly recommended if you play Pathfinder, and even worth a look if you don't. You could pull ideas for hundreds of NPCs, enemies, and other characters from this book - and even possibly a new PC or two. This is a solid design, with a number of extra design elements hidden in the mix to make the book a lot more useful and fun. You can buy a PDF too to save you shelf space, and give your iPad or Android tablet a workout, and your shelf a respite. Overall, 5 out of 5 stars.
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