Meant to get back to this earlier. I asked a question ("What do you do when there's an NPC you want to use that the system cannot generate?"), @
Ashtagon went to the effort of responding, so I figured I should probably address his response.
This is why I want a 5e system that can handle odd corner cases.
At a metagame level, there is a strong reason why NPC classes progress hit points. It's so His August Personage in Jade, The Emperor of all China (aristocrat 20) doesn't get killed by the nearest house cat (or level 1 PC), and doesn't have to be an amazing high-level PC class to avoid having the campaign casually destroyed by PCs of the Chaotic Lulz alignment.
I would say that systems rarely can deal with odd corner cases. Odd corner cases are one of the reasons we need DMs. There's no way to come up with a truly comprehensive rule system that covers all possibilities.
So we're giving the Emperor of China HP to protect him from cats?
For some reason I now have a children's song running through my head:
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly...
I'm unclear as to why we would give housecats combat stats to begin with. The idea that a common housecat can cause fatal damage to humans in any but the most unusual situations strikes me as somewhat absurd. So if we don't say that cats can cause HP damage, then nobody needs HP as protection against them.
As others have pointed out, one protects the Emperor of China not by having him be exceedingly durable, but by surrounding him with layers of protection. In order to even be in the same room as him you have to have gotten past numerous layers of security, surrendered your weapons, and sworn oaths upon everything you hold holy that you mean no threat. Then, maybe, if the Emperor is feeling generous, you'll be allowed into the same room he's in, to stand a hundred feet away with another dozen visible guards between you. The guards? They've got HP. They're statted. They're the best of the best. If you try to attack the Emperor anyway, the guards fight to the death while the Emperor is escorted somewhere even more secure by a dozen more guards you couldn't even see.
As for PCs of the Chaotic Lulz alignment, my philosophy towards such players is this: There are only two viable ways to approach them.
The first is to embrace it. Accept that whatever story you were telling didn't appeal to them, and toss it to the winds. Find the direction that the story can go that keeps both them and you having fun, regardless of whether it's sane, coherent, or anything at all like what you originally intended.
The second is to simply not play with such people. It's amazing how many problems this can solve.
Trying to armour your campaign against them is a losing battle, and a frustrating one to fight. You cannot threaten someone with consequences that they do not care about. You cannot force someone to embrace a plot they don't find interesting.
fwiw, I'd rebuild NPC classes roughly as follows (following 3e concepts, since more people are familiar with that than 5e):
Warrior: Abolish this class. It's really just fighter-lite.
Commoner: Abolish this class. It's really just expert-lite.
Adept: Abolish this class. It's really just generic-full-caster-lite. "Civilian" priests are now multi-class cleric/experts.
Expert: Create a number of "sub-classes" with pre-defined sets of skills (with DM permission to create more such sub-classes), to discourage min-maxers from abusing the class for char-ops purposes. Knock the attack bonus done to the lowest possible, maybe lower.
Aristocrat: I'd build this one up to make a full PC-viable class. He fills the "non-magical, non-martial" leader role.
Your mention of the Aristocrat raises one of the types of NPCs I was thinking about when I asked the question.
If we're following the logic of NPCs must play by the same rules as PCs for the sake of consistency (which somehow is also verisimilitude), and also must be built and statted according to a structured system, then there is a stock character from fiction that the 3E NPC rules are simply unable to model: the useless rich noble fop.
Through birth, not effort and experience, he has a position of wealth, power, and influence.
If we follow wealth-by-level guidelines, hereally should be high level, but that conflicts with the fact that he's a useless lay-about who has never had to do anything, ever.
What class does he even fit into? The Expert? He's not an expert at anything except lounging around, stuffing his face, and occasionally attending parties to dull the ennui. He doesn't even have to remember his social calendar, he's got a manservant who takes care of such things. The Warrior? Physical exertion's not his forte, and he's never held a weapon in his life. The Adept? He's got no more magical talent than a goldfish. The Commoner? Despite the fact that making a noble a commoner is a bit of a weird fit, it seems like it's the only one even remotely viable.
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After all, the only skill our blacksmith needs is Profession Blacksmith. That's it.
Does he even need that?
As far as I can tell, all I ever need to know about a blacksmith, mechanically, is whether he can do what the players ask of him, and I don't need a number for that. It's a yes/no question.
Then we have the example, some time ago, of an average town guard. Warrior 1 with weapon focus longsword and toughness (of course it presumes human) armed with a longsword and wearing scale mail. Really? To me that's an experienced soldier or mercenary. Someone who's fairly high up on the food chain. Not some standard town guard who is more likely carrying a truncheon and a pike and wearing leather armor. How rich is this town that can afford almost 100 gp worth of equipment for an average town guard? Never mind the advanced training to give him weapon focus.
To me, a town guard is likely a commoner with Feat: Polearm proficiency. That's an average town guard, to me.
The game has always presumed that about 95% of the population is normal humans (either that or 1st level commoners) with no stat bonuses whatsoever.
To me, a Warrior-1 is a trained novice soldier, or a typical inhabitant of a harsh land where conflict is common (per 3e DMG) - typical nomads, tribesmen etc. Whereas a full time town guard is normally a professional veteran soldier, so probably 2nd or 3rd level Warrior in scale, chain or better. A Commoner-1 is a typical peasant labourer. I'd probably stat an English Yeoman as a Warrior-1, since they were required to train with bills, poll axes, or longbows.
Edit: In a poor town, a part-time watchman might just have a leather jerkin and a club, but to get the job he'd still be tougher than the average man, so certainly Warrior-1 at minimum.
Edit 2: I suppose when I think of City Guard & Watch in a dangerous fantasy environment, I think of the men of the Royal Ulster Constabulary I knew back in Northern Ireland in the '80s, more than the men of London's Metropolitan Police today. The former would be statted as Warriors, the latter mostly as Experts, with some multi-class Warrior/Expert. Only part-time unpaid Special Constables might be Commoners.
If trained professional guards, and blacksmiths with their own forges, are level 1 anythings, we get to the meat of what I was originally asking.
If the trained guard is a level 1 Warrior, what was he before he finished his training?
If the blacksmith who owns his own forge (and is hence a master craftsman, in the basic sense of the term) is a level 1 character of any class, what level is a journeyman? The journeyman is by definition less experienced, so making him the same level would be strange. He's got to be the same class, as he'll hopefully someday become a master himself if he continues at his efforts. We can't just give him lower ability scores to model the difference, because he's just less practiced, not less physically able.
So let's say we bump those folks up a notch. The trained guard is now level 2, the trainee is level 1. The master smith is level 2, and the journeyman is level 1.
The journeyman earns his day's wages, working alongside the master at his forge. He's nicely modelled as our level 1 something-or-other. But what about the master's apprentice? Doesn't he need to be statted as well?
He's part-way through his apprenticeship, but he's nowhere near as skilled as the journeyman is yet. Placing him on the same level produces nonsensical results. If he must be modelled, we once again must bump the others up a notch. If the apprentice is level 1, the journeyman must be level 2, the master level 3.
But the blacksmith in the next town over just took on his first apprentice. The boy has just arrived at his master's home, and has never even been to the forge. He will be a blacksmith one day, so he must be the same class. After all, all of the others mentioned so far started the same way he did and there are no mechanics in place for someone to just
switch classes instead of levelling up, so if we decide to stat him instead as a commoner 1 to avoid giving him the class of his profession before he even begins learning it, then we have to bump all of the others up
another level to represent their beginnings and eventual multi-class into whatever class models their profession. So beginner apprentice is level 1, apprentice level 2, journeyman level 3, master level 4.
But wait, there's more...
One of the apprentices has a younger brother. When the journeyman finishes his masterpiece and levels up, he might take on this kid as his apprentice. But then again, he might not. What class does he fit into? What level is he?
The journeyman has an infant daughter. What class and level is she?
In a world where for consistency is verisimilitude, and all NPCs must be modelled, is a child's future profession determined at birth? It must be, because we need to know what class that little baby girl is. Adventurers truly
are exceptional: you're either born to be one, or you're not. It's destiny.
We must also hope that the system provides us tools to adjust character stats based upon youth, or the infant daughter will be as strong as she will be in adulthood already, as she can't modify her stats until level 4 at the earliest.
Either we must accept some absurdities (classed infants), or we can concede that maybe, just maybe, not every NPC needs stats and a class. Once that concession has been accepted, one can start worrying about where the line between those who need stats and those who don't should be drawn.
One might put forward the argument that alright, we only stat
adult NPCs. This leaves us in the rather odd position of statting up all adults, regardless of whether they have plot relevance or not, and yet ignoring all children despite the fact that it's entirely possible for them to have more plot relevance than 99% of the adults in your campaign world.
That Emperor of China might be 9 years old.
That blacksmith's apprentice might be the bastard child of the dead king.
That journeyman's daughter isn't the only infant in the world: maybe the PCs have children.
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Classes and levels were a system designed for a game about adventurers. They're there to protect niches, and to limit the amount of power the PCs can bring to bear. They work (for the most part) reasonably well when used for those purposes.
Extending the system to try and model the
entire world with it either requires a far more complex system than has ever been used before (and which is likely to prove rather unwieldy), or accepting some absurdities and embracing them.
Farmers become better farmers by killing goblins, not by farming.
Your role in life is determined at birth.
No amount of healthy diet and vigorous exercise, no weight training, can improve your strength, unless it happens to coincide with gaining a level that includes a stat bump.
No amount of lazing about and stuffing your face, nor long term starvation that falls short of actually killing you, will ever result in a loss of muscle mass.
Experts don't actually need to study to become experts: they're born that way, and become better experts through the elimination of giant rats and kobolds, rather than reading or practice.
