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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
NPC Codex
It's happened to every Game Master. You spend hours setting up the perfect encounter, your players are out for blood, the swords are drawn—and then you realize that you've forgotten to build statistics for the enemy characters. Or perhaps your players go left when you expect them to go right, leaving you without any encounters prepared.
Such problems are a thing of the past with the NPC Codex. Inside this tome, you'll find hundreds of ready-made stat blocks for nonplayer characters of every level, from a lowly forest poacher to the most majestic knight or ancient spellcaster. Whether you're planning out future adventures or throwing together encounters right at the table, this book does the work so you can focus on playing the game.
Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and open playtests featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.
The 320-page Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex includes:
- Statistics for more than 300 characters, including at least one for every level of every class in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.
- Tactical suggestions for every character, ensuring that you get the most out of each individual's gear and abilities in a fight.
- Tons of flavorful names and backgrounds to give characters personality, plus ideas for using them in both combat and roleplaying situations.
- Statistics for characters with lower-powered NPC classes to help populate your world with ordinary people, as well as characters with specialized prestige classes.
- Animal companion statistics for druids and rangers, from level 1 through level 20.
- Multiple versions of each Pathfinder iconic character, perfect for pregenerated player characters.
- Encounter groups for conveniently crafting battles on the fly.
... and much, much more!
Cover art by Wayne Reynolds
Such problems are a thing of the past with the NPC Codex. Inside this tome, you'll find hundreds of ready-made stat blocks for nonplayer characters of every level, from a lowly forest poacher to the most majestic knight or ancient spellcaster. Whether you're planning out future adventures or throwing together encounters right at the table, this book does the work so you can focus on playing the game.
Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and open playtests featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.
The 320-page Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex includes:
- Statistics for more than 300 characters, including at least one for every level of every class in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.
- Tactical suggestions for every character, ensuring that you get the most out of each individual's gear and abilities in a fight.
- Tons of flavorful names and backgrounds to give characters personality, plus ideas for using them in both combat and roleplaying situations.
- Statistics for characters with lower-powered NPC classes to help populate your world with ordinary people, as well as characters with specialized prestige classes.
- Animal companion statistics for druids and rangers, from level 1 through level 20.
- Multiple versions of each Pathfinder iconic character, perfect for pregenerated player characters.
- Encounter groups for conveniently crafting battles on the fly.
... and much, much more!
Cover art by Wayne Reynolds
318 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2012
4 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
Jason Bulmahn
125 books40 followersLead Designer of Paizo Inc and Minotaur Games, creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 25, 2020
Almost all NPCs here are neutral or evil, and for a game that so emphasizes character builds, theirs are horribly messed-up. There's still some inspiration here, the occasional character and hook to bring up if you find yourself ill-prepared for some new crazy scheme your players throw at you, but it could have done better and more.
December 30, 2017
“This book will save you hours and hours of number crunching!”In a nutshell, this book is a game master’s life saver. Amongst all of the Pathfinder books and guides I have on my bookshelf, this has to be one of the most useful ones of all of them. I always keep it by my side when I’m running a game, and it’s saved me lots and lots of hours of game preparation.
And at its core, it’s devastatingly simple.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: NPC Codex contains character sheet upon character sheet of NPCs (more than 300+) to use in your games. The sheets come with fully designed characters, including names, backgrounds, personality traits, and personal battle strategies. Whether you use them or not, that’s up to you – but the presentation and thought behind it all can save you a lot of time.
The book is divided into four chapters: the first chapter covers NPCs for the core classes, the second chapter deals with prestige classes, the third details sheets for the NPC classes, and the fourth presents Pathfinder’s iconic characters at different levels.
The appendix is plenty useful, too, containing animal companion statblocks, and suggestions for encounters using NPCs from other chapters.
Overall, a terribly useful resource, and the only thing missing from it is branching out beyond the core and prestige classes and diving into base classes and hybrid classes. But perhaps an NPC Codex 2 is on the horizon somewhere…
January 5, 2013
In the 4th year of the Pathfinder RPG, they decided to buck expectations and, instead of putting out yet ANOTHER monster book, put out a "bestiary" of NPCS! Inspired choice! Awesome book!
March 19, 2021
A book full of NPC stats to populate you RPG games with.
August 27, 2015
A terrific resource for the Pathfinder RPG. The first and largest section of the book covers a range of example NPCs for each level of each core class, from straightforward archetypes to unusual twists and subversions. There are a lot of fun ideas here, such as the Angel Slayer (a Ranger who hunts celestials!). The second section does the same for prestige classes, with four example builds for each. The third covers NPC classes, with more utilitarian builds such as "diplomat". The fourth features the iconic Pathfinder characters.
When space permits, they also provide personalities and background for each example NPC. However, due to the complexity of many Pathfinder builds, this results in many potentially interesting builds getting minimal profiles, or even none at all. (This even affects some of the iconics.) Unfortunately, this does reduce the value of the book for non-Pathfinder players. Still, it was a fun read, and highly recommended for fans of the game. (B+)
When space permits, they also provide personalities and background for each example NPC. However, due to the complexity of many Pathfinder builds, this results in many potentially interesting builds getting minimal profiles, or even none at all. (This even affects some of the iconics.) Unfortunately, this does reduce the value of the book for non-Pathfinder players. Still, it was a fun read, and highly recommended for fans of the game. (B+)
October 11, 2023
Basic Premise: A collection of random characters to populate fantasy worlds.
Sometimes you just need a random person to exist in your world, and they need stats, but there's no time to create a whole character sheet for the one random person the PCs ran into in a shop, but now there's combat and the PCs have decided the funny voice the GM used means this character is now being adopted by the party, and this character is suddenly in the middle of a random bar fight and will they survive? Oof. This book is helpful.
Sometimes you just need a random person to exist in your world, and they need stats, but there's no time to create a whole character sheet for the one random person the PCs ran into in a shop, but now there's combat and the PCs have decided the funny voice the GM used means this character is now being adopted by the party, and this character is suddenly in the middle of a random bar fight and will they survive? Oof. This book is helpful.
April 10, 2016
Absolutely fantastic shortcut (and even source of inspiration) for the GM. Supremely useful. Only knock is that it suffers from its limitation to core classes--something that'd be marvelously rectified with a followup book.
November 25, 2012
This book will quickly become a GM's best friend. Fantastic resource for when you need a quickly statted up NPC.
April 27, 2013
Um dos melhores amigos que um GM pode ter. Pense em um 'bestiário' com personagens no lugar dos monstros.
May 4, 2013
I would have loved this book more if it had branched out beyond the core book, though that may have been too much. Still the NPC Codex is impossibly useful and i hope to see a follow up or two soon
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews