NPC Paladins and Lay on Hands

[Paul Strack]

But it sure would be nice to have a useful base-line. This appears to be missing here.

There is a useful baseline: the NPCs rules. Sure, there are some cases where they don't work quite right (like Lay on Hands), but it is easiest enough to tweak them.

I'd much prefer that Wizards devoted their time to keeping PCs balanced than that the spent a lot of energy covering corner-cases with NPCs.

 

[James McMurray]

Yeah, I've found the NPC rules (both creating from scratch and templating) to be incredibly useful baselines.

 

[defendi]

Is there a book of NPCs I don't know about? I was planning one for Final Redoubt Press.

 

[Praesul]

Is there a book of NPCs I don't know about? I was planning one for Final Redoubt Press.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/247602-book-npcs.html

 

[-Avalon-]

When I went to make my first enemy undead paladin guy, I hit the snag of LoH for about 5 seconds until I realized, why would an entity have an ability it just could not use to its fullest extent? It would not. Orcs can heal with their heal attack they get, so why would a paladin not be able to heal a couple of times in a fight? They are more "healer'ish" than orcs, so one more time per fight doesn't sound all that bad... is a paladin after all... but I would prolly find it odd to have an Orcish Paladin of Gruumsh... totally healer-ific there...

I see no probs with a paladin having LoH 2 times per fight...

 

[CapnZapp]

There is a useful baseline: the NPCs rules. Sure, there are some cases where they don't work quite right (like Lay on Hands), but it is easiest enough to tweak them.

I'd much prefer that Wizards devoted their time to keeping PCs balanced than that the spent a lot of energy covering corner-cases with NPCs.

You are handwaving away something Wizards could and should have fixed easily.

The easiest solution isn't me and you and everyone else tweaking something we have paid hard cash for. The easiest solution is Wizards paying attention to detail, and not missing something rather obvious as this.

Mind you, errata would suffice. That isn't "spending a lot of energy" in my book.

 

[CapnZapp]

NPC paladins don't get to use healing surge (if you're using the NPC rules). Feel free to ignore this. (Note that some of the NPC rules are a bit silly. Apparently fighters don't get +1 to hit as NPCs, but rogues get this bonus with daggers. Confusing...)

I wouldn't sweat it; most paladins don't have the Wisdom to use it more than once or twice per day anyway.

NPCs can use Second Wind just as PCs can. We're not talking about monsters with NPC templates here.

NPC healers get two uses out of their respective healing power, just as PCs do.

For paladins, this means an effective minimum of 3 Healing Surges.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm continuously astonished how many WotC apologists there are.

Why should D&D 4E be the only rpg in existance where the publisher gets away with errors and shoddy attention to detail?!

That's a rhetoric question, by the way. Of course it shouldn't. And isn't.

If Wizards had not specified the number of healing surges NPCs get at all, I could understand the sentiment "perhaps they didn't even consider it".

But they didn't. They specified heroic tier NPCs get one (1) healing surge.

And this severely gimps NPC Paladins (to pick one example), who needs two just to use its completely run-of-the-mill standard powers.

This is obviously not right. This should obviously be fixed. Please don't tell me you have a problem with this.

(No, really, please don't)

 

[-Avalon-]

I don't care personally...

I look at an ability like LoH and don't think Healing Surges... I just think it heals a quarter of max life, done, simple, easy and to the point. Enemies are monsters by the way D&D 4th works... so their abilities are not supposed to meet the same rhyme and reason that a PC's character does, SOOOO many cases of stuff in the MM where players go, "WHAT?!? That's not fair!! How come we don't get that??" Because you are not a monster and are meant to live for more than 30-60 minutes of gameplay! Monsters are cooler but meant to die!

So do I have a problem assigning abilities that "seem" like a player's abilities, and approximate their powers, but in reality do a fixed programming code? The undead knight Sir Cowen heals himself with a minor action for 24 pts, done! lol

EDIT: In fact... make it a recharge ability (5/6 or 6, or a recharges when first bloodied) so it only happens so often, after all, it is a mob ability, and is only meant to be used during that one encounter, not over the course of a day.

 

[arscott]

Actually, I think it's fully appropriate for an NPC paladin to be limited to one LoH--Because if that paladin's an enemy, then you're going to be fighting him once, so giving him a full day's worth of LoH is just asking for a grind. On the other hand, if he's an ally, then a paladin with a bunch of healing surges represents a bunch of extra healing that the party doesn't have to spend resources on. Either way, limiting the paladin to just one, two, or three surges (depending on tier) seems perfectly reasonable.