Monsters as PCs (PF)

[DSmaster21]

During session I ran for my school game club I had an ogre that snuck up on the players in an attempt to get them moving. (None had ever played before and they spent 15 mins trying to decide whether to enter the dungeon now or go back to town to spend the last few gp they had on bags of flour and the other listed trade items) The encounter ended with them putting the ogre to sleep through the two bards casting lullaby and sleep in unison (Technically should not work but I let it go). After the ogre was out they all ran away and the session ended. When the ogre first arrived I joked that it had managed to sneak up behind them because it had levels of rogue. I want to do this.

I gave it racial adjustments of

+10
-2
+6
-2
+0
-2

And it got Catch Off-Guard and Throw Anything as racial feats.

Any thoughts?

[The Glyphstone]

You know you could just use an Ogre statblock and add rogue class levels, right? NPCS can have class levels without any reverse engineering. I'm not sure what this has to do with Monstrous PCs, unless one of your players asked to play an Ogre.

The Ogre as printed in the Advanced Race Guide is much weaker, and costs 23RP. Your stat block alone is 32RP, and I haven't figured out how much bonus feats cost...so extremely powerful.

[DSmaster21]

You know you could just use an Ogre statblock and add class levels, right? NPCS can have class levels without any reverse engineering. I'm not sure what this has to do with Monstrous PCs, unless one of your players asked to play an Ogre.

The statblock given has a very low dex unless you are referring to another entry other than MM1. I only have the CR, Inner Sea World Guide and MM.

Edit: I don't know what #RP means. I figured that with the increase in size normally yielding
+8 to STR (I think (I don't have my books on hand right now))
-2 to Dex
+4 to Con

I thought that
+2 to STR
-0 to DEX
+2 to CON
-2 to INT
-0 to WIS
-2 to CHA

and feats to emphasize his use of non-professionally crafted weapons was pretty good.

I'll see if I can get a look at the Advanced guide from somewhere though.

Thanks,
DS

[The Glyphstone]

The low Dex has nothing to do with him being a PC, which is what you were talking about. A few Rogue levels will give him enough skill points to overwhelm the Dex penalty.

The Advanced Race Guide gives a build-a-race guide, giving everything (armor, stats, etc.) a cost in Race Point (RP). The cost of your 'playable Ogre' racial stat block would be over 40RP, where a normal LA+0 race like elf or human would cost 8 RP or less.

What exactly do you think 'PC' means? Maybe it's not translating properly or something.

[Dapple Birch]

http://paizo.com/prd/monsters/monsterAdvancement.html#_adding-class-levels

Those are the fairly detailed rules from the bestiary on adding PC class levels to a monster. If all you're planning on doing is making a cool monster for your guys to interact/fight with that'll do the trick.

Word of advice though, at low levels sneak attack can put a PC down fast. Combine the large sized weapon and high strength of an ogre with a few die of sneak attack during a surprise round and don't be shocked if you kill a low level PC outright. Not that you shouldn't make your rogue ogre("roguer") just that you need to put careful thought into what sneak attack opportunities he'll have(flanking, surprise round, winning initiative, etc.) and how prepared you are to tell one of your newbies they bit the dust in a single round.

Happy stealthing!

[DSmaster21]

Basically it was just a cool guy that had become a memetic badass* and I was like: hmm how do I make him truly badass and different from generic ogre. Character Levels. Presumably they will hopefully never fight him



*Basically it impressed everyone that it snuck up on them and then their fight scene. Then they rolled better initiative so they acted before it. One of the only players who has played before pulls out his crossbow and tries to run through its threatened area (the player is known for thinking that he is invincible because I haven't ever killed him because he would be very mad unlike others who would take it in stride) and gets walloped. Would you believe it took him to 0 on the dot? I gave him the option between passing out and trying to avoid anything too strenuous at which point he'll pass out and bleed. He knows we can fix in a minute so he goes down. The next player asks to use charm person. I agree to this and he rolls a defensive concentration check. I roll the will save the ogre is charmed. I let him ask the ogre to do something and he rolls a 20. I ask what the command was and he chooses to ask it to destroy its weapon. I know it is against the nature of the ogre but 20 is good enough for me to not make him go through my home-ruled system of fighting a persons normal encoded behavior though I still rolled to see if it broke away from the spell after the action. I rolled a 3. Then after the ogre snapped his club, one of the players says he will pull out his weapon and the table has a conversation about whether to attack now or not. I say as you wave your Sianghams and discuss attacking the ogre makes a saving throw. It succeeds but it still has several turns because it has now gone. At this point the two bards ask to talk to me. They ask if one can ready a lullaby spell and the other cast sleep and if that it would work because they figured (rightly) it had more than 2HD. I agreed to it. The ogre failed the save (I did not include the effects of lullaby). At this point my other experienced player (Cleric [Pharasma] 1/Wizard [Pain-Causing Necromancer] 0/Mystic Thuerge 0) Pulls out his scythe and does a coup-De-grace. He rolls 23 Damage which means Ogre has to beat a DC 33 FORT Check which with his ST would require a roll of 30 on 1d20. I roll a 20. I announce that it lived and so the players said they were going to go back to town. End Session

[The Glyphstone]

An Ogre with a few Rogue levels is all you need, then. He's got Dex 8, but you are justified using the Elite Stat array if this is mean to be an important NPC, and even with the base stats, a single level of Rogue would give him 6 skill points (7 if you make it his Favored Class), 5 of which can go into Stealth and leave him sitting at a +7 modifier after the Dex penalty.