The NPC gallery from the legacy GMG wasn’t reprinted in GMC. No more generic “bandit” “mad scientist”, “assassin”, “priest”, “necromancer”, “gang leader”
These had a lot of value for telling the sort of stories I like to tell in my games, which are less about killing unequivocally evil “monsters” and more about regular people who may be morally complex and provoke more interaction from the players.
I’m well aware one can simply use legacy content, but that ignores that some of these had mechanics that have been revised in the remaster, and they were an important part of the toolkit provided to GMs in the GMG. Right now, the GM Core feels very lacking in terms of providing support for creating a cast of NPCs in adventures. There’s literally a half a page dedicated to NPCs and it basically just says “make 'em up”. Saying “You can use legacy content” is not a valid point when these new books are supposed to serve as a foundation for the system standing on their own.
Additionally, the official Paizo FoundryVTT bestiary portraits module, which I paid good money for, appears to have removed the portraits for these generic NPCs when the remaster content was added to the system. The realization of that was actually the thing that prompted this post. I was setting up an encounter for my players and was confused as to why the “Antipaladin” art was this instead of this. I am almost certain that before the remaster it used the art from the GMG for those tokens.
Yeah the way prepared casters work can be a bit more complex than in 5e. Casters do have to get comfortable with being just a bit worse at everything, but it’s only because the designers of 5e have allowed for so much power creep that casters have no limits at all. I was talking to a buddy in my group about this but if you think about it, there’s literally nothing a fighter can do better than a wizard in 5e. If a wizard builds for it, they can be better at killing things than a fighter. In PF2e, the delineation between martial and caster is much stronger. There are things a caster can do that a martial can’t, but there are also things a martial can do that a caster can’t. And casters take a bit longer to become that powerful.
You bring up excellent points! I will have to talk to my buddy who is the most outspoken Pathfinder critic about this. One of his favorite builds is a bladesinger wizard so the argument you raise will have a little extra heft when I use it against him lol
Yeah the bladesinger embodies a lot of what I hate the most about 5e. But you could point your friend to the Magus. It’s a fun class but it’s more analogous to the 5e Eldritch Knight than the bladesinger or hexblade. 75% martial and 25% caster.