Disposition of Retired PCs

IronWolf · May 6, 2012

Satin Knights said:
Full XP & GP for NPCs: Ermm, I want partial here. They are supposed to be retired. I see the argument for wanting accounting simplicity, but GE's concerns are speaking louder to me than him. For the moment, Uncommitted.

We need to clarify this one. There is the do NPCs get full gold and XP from the cut perspective (i.e. it reduces the gold and xp for party members) and then there is the do the NPCs actually get the gold and XP for purposes of improving the NPC.

I know we've talked in-depth about this before.

So what are we voting on here? Though I think I would vote yes in both cases.

GlassEye · May 6, 2012

Satin Knights said:
For those that are using the Person template in their NPCs on the wiki, I have added a "| npc_usage =" text field.

Great! I really appreciate that, especially since my knowledge of wikitext markup (or whatever it's called) is really poor and it takes me forever to figure out that sort of thing.

For the character sheets themselves, we need to pick a place to document the NPC and background status. The Basic Info block at the top is one good place (my choice), or in the Approvals block at the bottom.

Looking over the vote request, it looks like I should add a similar line for backgrounds.

This all sounds good to me.

Full XP & GP for NPCs: Ermm, I want partial here. They are supposed to be retired. I see the argument for wanting accounting simplicity, but GE's concerns are speaking louder to me than him. For the moment, Uncommitted.

I would actually be happier with partial and would have included that in my vote request but it just didn't occur to me. :erm:

I've changed my vote above to reflect that.

IronWolf said:
We need to clarify this one. There is the do NPCs get full gold and XP from the cut perspective (i.e. it reduces the gold and xp for party members) and then there is the do the NPCs actually get the gold and XP for purposes of improving the NPC.

I know we've talked in-depth about this before.

I don't remember the discussion or where it might be found. Is there another option beyond either:
Full share taken out & received by NPC or:
Full share taken out & partial share received by NPC?

IronWolf · May 6, 2012

Glasseye said:
I don't remember the discussion or where it might be found. Is there another option beyond either:
Full share taken out & received by NPC or:
Full share taken out & partial share received by NPC?

It was in the general thread and centered more on does an NPC reduce the amount of gold and XP available for the party.

Full share taken out & received by NPC
Full share taken out & partial share received by NPC
Full share taken out and none received by NPC
No share taken out from party funds and none received by NPC

Satin Knights said:
Full XP & GP for NPCs: Ermm, I want partial here. They are supposed to be retired. I see the argument for wanting accounting simplicity, but GE's concerns are speaking louder to me than him. For the moment, Uncommitted.

Are we talking all NPCs or just retired PCs that become NPCs?

And I am not sure I agree we even have a problem, is this the worry that is putting this to vote:

GlassEye said:
I am concerned that a closed NPC that still gets xp and gold is just a way to get extra characters but then again they would be limited in what they could be involved with. In addition, it would be next to impossible to judge the intent behind that sort of action.

Is this a problem now? Do we have people abusing the use of their retired NPCs? I think it would be difficult to abuse this too much in reality. I know as a player if I found a GM had a habit of habitually using an NPC as a tag-along with the party I would simply stop playing with that GM. DMPCs (whether they be retired characters from the past or straight up NPCs) can be annoying when used too much.

I am just not sure I see making a decision for partial award of loot and experience is warranted when I don't think we actually have a problem. This seems such a corner case to base an entire ruling on that deviates from a potential norm.

GlassEye · May 6, 2012

IronWolf said:
Are we talking all NPCs or just retired PCs that become NPCs?

And I am not sure I agree we even have a problem, is this the worry that is putting this to vote:

Is this a problem now? Do we have people abusing the use of their retired NPCs?

I was just talking about retired PCs that became an NPC but I think the question is appropriate for any NPC that significantly adds to the party throughout the length of the adventure.

And no, this is not a problem now that I know of; it just happened to come to mind when I was thinking about retired PCs: both when Mowgli mentioned plans for Pari after retirement and when thinking about using Amadeus Falkner as an NPC in some fashion. So I also have the question of what to do with those NPCs that have been abandoned. Are they off-limits?

For regular NPCs (not former characters) I think that the default status should be 'Open for GM use'. If a DM has a long-term use for the character then they can mark it 'Closed'. Galen Parsons is a good example: if jkason had marked him as closed then he wouldn't have become nearly as useful/fun an NPC and we would lose a large part of the continuity that makes living worlds interesting. And Parsons made appearances in two recent adventures running simultaneously by different DMs. The scenes for both were short in game-time and didn't cause any kind of conflict for the NPC.

Artur Hawkwing · May 7, 2012

I know that the discussion came up once regarding a Player having to drop out for a bit and the discussion over whether to convert the character to NPC and keep her going with the party or to write her out. The adventure was Distant Relations, if I remember right, and the char was eventually subbed out with Audra Frost, so I can't say for sure if a final definitive answer was ever reached.

Not much help, but maybe it'll help someone find it in the General Thread.

Maidhc O Casain · May 7, 2012

The only reason I've reserving Pari right now is that I've got a rather loosely formed idea for a series of adventures all set in a particular Landadel Barony and I'm considering having him set himself up as a guardian of the forest there - he'd then be the one bringing adventurers in.

If I decide to go a different way with the adventures I'll almost certainly make Pari open for use by others.

jkason · May 7, 2012

As Artur said, I think the discussion IronWolf is remembering was from when I moved Anna to NPC status, and we discussed if she still cut into the other PC's share of encounter XP until I could get her to a narrative point where I could write her out. I'm not sure there was any official vote, but the general consensus as I recall it (I'll try to dig back later to find it) was that if the character helps, the xp and gp should be impacted.

Open/Closed NPC: YES
Open/Closed Backgrounds: YES

I think the question of whether an NPC actually earns xp / gp is kind of a non-issue to me, unless you want to take the extra step of statting out / tracking leveling for all NPCs, which seems like kind of a nightmare.

Since Galen Parsons is becoming our base example (which makes me giggle every time it happens. Hooray improv character making good!), consider: I never came close to statting up a full NPC for him, so he didn't have any official classes, feats, or even skills beyond Elvish as a language.

Qik used Parsons in a combat scenario during "Fury Steps In," which meant at some point he sat down and came up with what he thought were reasonable stats for him given the adventure / CR he'd be involved in, but certainly he didn't apply any real XP or GP to him. He couldn't have, because none existed. And from my way of thinking, he certainly shouldn't have to account for 'where' Parsons gained his levels. As an NPC, we assume stuff happens to him outside adventures that covers this.

The only difference between Parsons and, say, Pari, is that Pari at one point had to track his advancement. We know where he stopped, so I think there's probably a tendency to want to keep comparing to that, but I think that's probably a mistake. The pre-existing character's sheet is certainly a good place to start, but beyond that, I think GM's using open retired-to-NPC characters (or their own closed ones) should be as free to stat up as Qik was, and for the same reasons. Since we have no real "un-retire" mechanic, I guess I don't see the potential for abuse there. Is using your retired character as a regular NPC substantially different from using the same from-scratch NPCs regularly (goodness knows I've gone back to the Gabbiano tree often enough)?

Given all of the above, from my perspective the only question is whether an NPC who participates in encounters reduces the available rewards and by how much. If they gain a unique magical item, it seems a good idea to note it, but otherwise tracking those rewards to a given NPC just seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping that doesn't serve a good purpose.

Qik · May 8, 2012

I did stat up Parsons, but frankly, I'd hate for my decisions to become universal. They were really tailor-made to what I needed to aid Fury in combat, in terms of level/feats/etc, and I don't really see a reason to fix them to be universal. Perhaps that breaks immersion for some, but it certainly doesn't bother me, and I think it would make life a lot easier, as jk says.

For Fury Steps In, Fury fought with 4 NPCs, and I gave him 1/4 of the appropriate XP & GP for the encounter, which makes sense to me, since the NPCs were all-in. I wasn't however planning on keeping track of the numbers for the NPCs; the division was simply to give the PC in question his appropriate cut.

I assume the only reason we're discussing this is because we have a few instances where former PCs have become NPCs. I think this is fine, and, in fact, a great utilization of the opportunities afforded by a living world, but I think part of becoming an NPC means stopping tracking the character's advancement. So, they get a hypothetical cut of XP & GP for the sake of factoring in their participation in a fight, but those numbers don't actually get applied to furthering those characters. Does that make sense?

YES to open/closed NPCs and open/closed backgrounds; that makes it official.

I'm still recovering from a fairly serious power-nap, so hopefully all that is acceptably lucid.

Systole · May 8, 2012

I think that NPCs should be adjustable to the adventure in question, but it does help to have a basic class/archetype to them. I intended Cicci Boraga to be a Free Hand Fighter, for example.