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Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6882220" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>But intelligent NPCs <em>deserve</em> that overhead. In fact, the mechanical overhead of keeping track of abilities should be trivial compared to the roleplaying overhead of keeping track of what is going through each NPCs' head, what their goals are, why they are in conflict with the PCs, what their relationships to the other NPCs are, how they feel the conflict is going and how close they are to bailing, etc. Compared to that, "has this Champion used his Action Surge or Second Wind yet?" is small potatoes.</p><p></p><p>I'm concerned by some of the comments in this thread which seem to imply that NPCs are being slaughtered in such vast numbers that simplifications are needed to keep combat complexity manageable. A system which encourages you to treat intelligent creatures like disposable chumps who exist only to be slaughtered in eighteen seconds or less is... problematic, in my view. I'm fine with unintelligent creatures like zombies, giant ants, and aurumvoraxes being killed in great whacking lots, but if my game featured the mass murder of human beings on the same scale as giant ants... something would be wrong.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6882220, member: 6787650"] But intelligent NPCs [I]deserve[/I] that overhead. In fact, the mechanical overhead of keeping track of abilities should be trivial compared to the roleplaying overhead of keeping track of what is going through each NPCs' head, what their goals are, why they are in conflict with the PCs, what their relationships to the other NPCs are, how they feel the conflict is going and how close they are to bailing, etc. Compared to that, "has this Champion used his Action Surge or Second Wind yet?" is small potatoes. I'm concerned by some of the comments in this thread which seem to imply that NPCs are being slaughtered in such vast numbers that simplifications are needed to keep combat complexity manageable. A system which encourages you to treat intelligent creatures like disposable chumps who exist only to be slaughtered in eighteen seconds or less is... problematic, in my view. I'm fine with unintelligent creatures like zombies, giant ants, and aurumvoraxes being killed in great whacking lots, but if my game featured the mass murder of human beings on the same scale as giant ants... something would be wrong. [/QUOTE]
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Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?
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