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<blockquote data-quote="Shieldhaven" data-source="post: 3930882" data-attributes="member: 23427"><p>Mortellan-</p><p></p><p>The reasons behind a dissimilar design philosophy between PCs and NPCs might make more sense if stated in terms of what the designer, GM, and players actually want to see happen in the game.</p><p></p><p>That is to say, everyone wants to see the PCs win a percentage of the time that their numbers alone would not justify. They want the PCs to feature in every single fight that occurs in the campaign. They don't want the same to be true of the NPCs. In fact, it is entirely acceptable if the NPCs lose <em>every single time</em>, so long as some of those losses are a little closer than others. A single NPC with its particular power set might only appear in one fight in the entire campaign. Fights in player-versus-environment fights aren't <em>fair</em>, no matter what the game. (Only MMOs can generally get away with making them unfair in favor of the NPCs, though.)</p><p></p><p>NPCs also don't experience downtime between fights, in general, since the vast majority of monsters show up on camera once and die horribly in fewer than 60 seconds (10 combat rounds) of doing so. Having a monster heal 10 hit points per round automagically might work for those ten rounds of combat, since players can easily crank out enough damage to put him down. In a player, on the other hand, that means that within 1-2 minutes of the end of every fight, they'd be fully healed and ready to go, since most players would not accept fast healing that shut off once combat was over.</p><p></p><p>Haven</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shieldhaven, post: 3930882, member: 23427"] Mortellan- The reasons behind a dissimilar design philosophy between PCs and NPCs might make more sense if stated in terms of what the designer, GM, and players actually want to see happen in the game. That is to say, everyone wants to see the PCs win a percentage of the time that their numbers alone would not justify. They want the PCs to feature in every single fight that occurs in the campaign. They don't want the same to be true of the NPCs. In fact, it is entirely acceptable if the NPCs lose [i]every single time[/i], so long as some of those losses are a little closer than others. A single NPC with its particular power set might only appear in one fight in the entire campaign. Fights in player-versus-environment fights aren't [i]fair[/i], no matter what the game. (Only MMOs can generally get away with making them unfair in favor of the NPCs, though.) NPCs also don't experience downtime between fights, in general, since the vast majority of monsters show up on camera once and die horribly in fewer than 60 seconds (10 combat rounds) of doing so. Having a monster heal 10 hit points per round automagically might work for those ten rounds of combat, since players can easily crank out enough damage to put him down. In a player, on the other hand, that means that within 1-2 minutes of the end of every fight, they'd be fully healed and ready to go, since most players would not accept fast healing that shut off once combat was over. Haven [/QUOTE]
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