Please no monster class levels

[Lord Mhoram]

I dont fully understand this post, The reason for having different rules for each side of the game is because they are being played by completely different types of players.

.....

The only difference is that they are not created like normal characters are in order to provide a level of challenge for the PCs of the game. Its not that NPCs are playing by a vast set of rules differently, but rather the math of the game says: "Hey This is the math model for creatures to be put against the party. Dont worry about choosing 50 spells, or trying to make a monstrous multiclassing behemoth in order to keep your players happy. just use this math to make a balanced creature and make it cool."

Three things about me and my approach to help out then ( and all that follows if specifically for my views and approach).

1) - Chargen is as important to me (or more so) than play at the table - so the chargen rules matter very much to me.

2) - I'm very much a "rules are the physics of the system" - the rules are the laws of gravity, the physics, the chemistry to describe the underlying structure of the game world. Having different two different types of base chemistry (Chargen) to create characters just makes me twitch. The way I look at it - if all else is exactly the same as described in the world (race, class, what the character can do. etc) - but they are built differently depending on whether they are DM or player used then the whole "rules as physics" breaks down. The rules are there to give me a mechanical foundation to create the world - so change rules depending on role (Player/GM) destroys that foundation. If something uses a different rule system, then by definition (of how I approach play) they are different in the world. And if an NPC 5th level human fighter is built different as a PC 5th level human fighter, then in world, they are different - and at that point the ability to interact meaningfully with the fiction of the world breaks down, and it becomes nothing more than a board game for me.


3) - I play a lot of Hero. The same rules there describe everything - characters, monsters, equipment, magic items, spells etc.

 

[herrozerro]

1) - Chargen is as important to me (or more so) than play at the table - so the chargen rules matter very much to me.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then, personally, chargen really only means something at the time of character generation or leveling up. any place between those two points Chargen isnt a part of the game.

so at least in my games chargen might take up 1-5% of a total game over the course of several years for players while a DM on the other hand might spend 20-70% of his prep time between sessions creating NPCs (My experiance with systems like 3e.)

Now simple chargen if applied to both PCs and NPCs is great for a DM, who will in all honesty be utilizing the system much more then a player ever will. but in my experience is not satisfying for the player.

On the other hand complex chargen while rewarding for a player can drastically change the amount of time a DM has to spend on preparation.

I guess it boilds down to my opinion of if as a DM do i want to spend all of my time trying to create complex NPCs utilizing the exact same rules as the PCs or would I rather create simple constructs for the PCs to face and spend my time elsewhere.

My analogy would be writing a story, do i take the time to flesh out every single other character that the protagonist might encounter from the baker down the street or every single mook that my spy might come across? Should I spend the time to come up with a backstory and family for every bad guy that gets dispatched?

But in the end if you are the person who likes to tinker with every little thing while remaining in the bounds of "chargen" more power too you, i find it to be severely limiting.

 

[Dausuul]

What this does for me, as GM, is free me up from worrying about justifying anything, or from getting stuck in writing up all the details of how it's done. On the fly, I can make a fire elemental dragon that causes explosions of fire when it's damaged, and the reaction of my players is "how do we deal with this?" It's not "that's not fair, I want that ability!" They know they can have it.

I don't worry about justifying that stuff either, and my players don't react with "That's not fair, I want that ability!" because they aren't three-year-olds. Are you a fire elemental dragon? No? Is "fire elemental dragon" a PC race? No? Then why the heck would you think you could get that ability? For abilities of non-playable monsters, this is an incredibly silly complaint.

Now, my players do sometimes encounter NPCs of playable races with cool abilities that they want, without any obvious reason why their PCs couldn't learn them. They still don't react with "That's not fair, I want that ability," however. They react with "Whoa. That's a cool ability. I'm going to look around for anything that might give me a clue to how she did that." At that point, I pause and consider where the NPC might have gotten the ability in question. PCs who put in a little effort to investigate will either find a reason why they can't master the ability in question (it takes sixty years of study, you have to be born under a certain star on a certain year, you have to sell your soul to Orcus at which point a demon takes control of your body, et cetera); or they will find an adventure hook leading to a homebrewed feat, power, or what have you. However, if no PC ever investigates where the NPC got the ability, I don't have to think about it.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Only in 3rd Ed were all NPCs built like PCs.

In 2nd Ed you had Drizzt, with a customised ability to instantly kill, and in 1st Ed you had dudes like Elric (assassin/cleric/druid/fighter/magic-user) etc.

I prefer 1st Ed and 4th Ed monsters overall.

 

[Keldryn]

I don't worry about justifying that stuff either, and my players don't react with "That's not fair, I want that ability!" because they aren't three-year-olds. Are you a fire elemental dragon? No? Is "fire elemental dragon" a PC race? No? Then why the heck would you think you could get that ability? For abilities of non-playable monsters, this is an incredibly silly complaint.

Now, my players do sometimes encounter NPCs of playable races with cool abilities that they want, without any obvious reason why their PCs couldn't learn them. They still don't react with "That's not fair, I want that ability," however. They react with "Whoa. That's a cool ability. I'm going to look around for anything that might give me a clue to how she did that." At that point, I pause and consider where the NPC might have gotten the ability in question. PCs who put in a little effort to investigate will either find a reason why they can't master the ability in question (it takes sixty years of study, you have to be born under a certain star on a certain year, you have to sell your soul to Orcus at which point a demon takes control of your body, et cetera); or they will find an adventure hook leading to a homebrewed feat, power, or what have you. However, if no PC ever investigates where the NPC got the ability, I don't have to think about it.

Maturity and common sense go a long way.

I admit that I prefer an NPC "wizard" to resemble a PC wizard, rather than something like the Monster Vault's Human Transmuter, and it still rubs me the wrong way how the weapons and armor listed under "equipment" in monster entries often don't factor into the monster's AC or weapon damage.

I much prefer a system where it's easy to just add some class abilities to a monster without messing with its hit dice, skills, feats, etc. The 3 HD kobold leader also casts spells as a 3rd-level sorcerer? Cool. That's all I need to know; I don't need to advance him as a 3rd-level sorcerer with all that entails. I can say that the orc shaman has 2 HD and can cast spells as a 3rd-level cleric. If I want that orc shaman to be a major figure in the campaign, I could instead build him as a classed NPC and advance him over time.

I would like the PC build system to be simple enough that building NPCs under the same rules is not a chore. NPCs in 1e and 2e were like this, other than picking spells for high-level casters. The 1e Monster Manual would say things like a hobgoblin normally has AC 5, HD 1+1, Damage 1d8; a hobgoblin chief fights as a 4 HD monster, has AC 2, 22 hit points, and does 1d10+1 damage. That's essentially advancing the hobgoblin to be a 4th-level fighter but without any fussy bits (I can extrapolate that AC2 means he's wearing plate mail and gets a dex bonus; the 1d10+1 damage means he's wielding a two-handed sword and gets a str bonus).

The last thing I want is a system that expects me to "advance" monsters by giving them class levels and dealing with ability score improvements, feats, skill points, etc. Not that a DM has to follow the monster design system outlined in 3.5e, but it will take many new DMs a long time to come to that realization on their own.

 

[JamesonCourage]

For abilities of non-playable monsters, this is an incredibly silly complaint.

[SNIP]

At that point, I pause and consider where the NPC might have gotten the ability in question. PCs who put in a little effort to investigate will either find a reason why they can't master the ability in question (it takes sixty years of study, you have to be born under a certain star on a certain year, you have to sell your soul to Orcus at which point a demon takes control of your body, et cetera)

Our views do differ on "non-playable monsters" and their abilities, but your approach really isn't that different from mine (except they can get any ability they're willing to invest enough points into). I see absolutely no reason that is inherently better why an NPC should be capable of having a mechanical ability that PCs can't (eventually) have. I can see flavor reasons why a PC can't have that specific ability, sure, but I don't see any inherently better reason to deny them the same mechanical ability, even if reflavored. But, I'm also not one to give NPCs the ability to destroy the world via rituals, or the like. As always, play what you like

 

[Keldryn]

Perhaps the best guideline for advancing/improving monsters in 5e is simply that the DM should be able to do it at the table, without slowing down play.

This allows the DM to advance a monster or two in an encounter that he just rolled on a table, or to adjust the difficulty of a planned encounter. The game is always going to run a bit more smoothly with an encounter designed and written up in advance, but it shouldn't take the DM more than about 30 extra seconds to adjust a handful of monsters during play.

For example, make a typical humanoid monster into a champion or leader: attacks at +2, add 8 hp, improve AC by 3, +2 to damage rolls. Done.

If the game is using 4e-style powers or what have you, add an ability from a fixed list of PC abilities (like Tide of Iron, or the fighter's Combat Challenge). This avoids the "hey, why can't I do that" issue and demonstrates the good side of developing a degree system mastery: you don't have to think about it anymore. I don't want to read a monster writeup with an ability called "Mystical Bolt" that is functionally the same as Magic Missile. Keep the description of the ability in the stat-block (I love not having to look it up in the Player's Handbook), and don't re-use names (i.e. "Evil Eye" on 4e Cyclops).

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then, personally, chargen really only means something at the time of character generation or leveling up. any place between those two points Chargen isnt a part of the game.

I agree with that. I wasn't trying to convert anyone, just explaining why someone would like that particular approach.

My analogy would be writing a story, do i take the time to flesh out every single other character that the protagonist might encounter from the baker down the street or every single mook that my spy might come across? Should I spend the time to come up with a backstory and family for every bad guy that gets dispatched?

I see your point. In my games maybe 23-30% of the time is in combat. The rest is politics, exploring, interacting etc. So having NPCs that are fully built as PCs with full skills and such are important. They aren't going to be killed generally - and might trouble the players for 5 or 10 levels (or more). Not saying you don't do that - but I find fully fleshed out NPCs (even for combat) helps me along with that immersion. And the end of the day me and my group do not want to feel like we played a game, but lived a different life.

But in the end if you are the person who likes to tinker with every little thing while remaining in the bounds of "chargen" more power too you, i find it to be severely limiting.

Yeah, that is pretty much me. My current 3.x game uses PF primarily, with chunks of Monte's Arcana Unearthed (Classes and races), some 3.5 later stuff, and a smattering of 3rd party stuff too.

My Fantasy Hero game I've typed up 150 pages of sample spells, magic items, skill and race packages, and create 5 separate magic systems. That is a hobby for me. I enjoy creating that kind of stuff. I think I'm just a frustrated game designer. So if I think that an NPC or monster needs something, instead of just giving it to them, I make a houserule for it, and if a PC ever played that race/class/monster combination, then they would have access to it as well.

 

[herrozerro]

I see your point. In my games maybe 23-30% of the time is in combat. The rest is politics, exploring, interacting etc. So having NPCs that are fully built as PCs with full skills and such are important. They aren't going to be killed generally - and might trouble the players for 5 or 10 levels (or more). Not saying you don't do that - but I find fully fleshed out NPCs (even for combat) helps me along with that immersion. And the end of the day me and my group do not want to feel like we played a game, but lived a different life.

I'd say, that another point is the definition of NPC. using how you seem to be using it, I might say companion character or Henchman. I would definitely generate that character with PC gen rules. Flesh it out and everything.

I think i was using NPC in the broadest term, all non player characters. While i'd definately put effort into NPCs that will be around for a while, and i have no qualms about using PC generation. I feel that there should be a quick and easy construct to use in a pinch.

4e's math really made the game quite easy for me in this respect. random combat encounters or on the fly encounters are suddenly something very easy to do.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

4e's math really made the game quite easy for me in this respect. random combat encounters or on the fly encounters are suddenly something very easy to do.

I love monster books - in 3rd I had about 20 +

In those situations, I just grab an unmodified monster.