D&D 5E Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?

[The Crimson Binome]

An RPG system is meant to offer rules to provide random event resolution to facilitate shared storytelling.

No, storytelling is definitely not the point of a role-playing game. Telling a story is the opposite of playing a role. The rules of an RPG are supposed to facilitate us pretending to be Harry Dresden, not pretending to be Jim Butcher.

 

[Jediking]

(Personally, I like a middle road design where NPCs are designed like monsters and don't use the PC rules... but are inspired by them. The monsters use a variation of the PC abilities, streamlined for simplicity and tracking.)

I like a bit of consistency and learning about the world, both as a a player and DM. So even if NPCs are designed like monsters, they should still show similarities to classes. Most insects have poison, don't offer dental services to dragons, and humanoids/NPCs can generally be reasoned or bartered with. So a NPC should be similar to a classed up PC, whether or not they have levels, because I want to be able to walk up to a NPC [F]ighter of any humanoid race and know what strategy would would on a warrior-type. Or try to barter with them and offer them glory, girls/guys, and wealth. They'd probably be interested in at least one of the above.

If I offer that to a Bulette, he's probably have me for lunch. But if I leave my horse (sorry Shadowfax) to be eaten, maybe I can run away.

 

[Jester David]

No, storytelling is definitely not the point of a role-playing game. Telling a story is the opposite of playing a role. The rules of an RPG are supposed to facilitate us pretending to be Harry Dresden, not pretending to be Jim Butcher.

It's zero fun being Harry Dresden sitting around his apartment. Without the story, the role has no meaning.
The point of RPGs is to collaboratively craft a story, even if it was just about that time you kicked in a door to a 10'x10' room and killed a couple orcs guarding a chest. The rules are there so the DM isn't just making calls, to add some random chance to the mix.

 

[pemerton]

An RPG system exists to objectively describe things, including all of the characters, for the purposes of impartial resolution.

Well, that's a highly contentious claim. It's not one that I accept. It's certainly not universal, nor even especially widespread, among RPG designers. It wasn't accepted by Gygax, who was one of the inventors of the game-form (he tended to accept the impartiality idea, but not the "objective description" one - see eg his discussions of hp, saving throws, XP and combat resolution in his DMG).

The point of mechanics is to make playing the game an enjoyable experience

I guess that's true, but it doesn't really tell us how they do that.

The rules aid GM adjudication.

That's a very Gygax/Moldvay take!

I incline towards Vincent Baker's take. RPGs are talking games, in which - by talking - participants introduce new content into the shared fiction. Sometimes there is disagreement or uncertainty over what content to introduce into the fiction (the player wants it to be that his/her PC killed the orc; the GM thinks there's at least a chance that it's the other way round). The mechanics resolve these disagreements and uncertainties.

As DM, you are the laws of nature, impartial adjudicator of all things. You have no objectives

I think you intended the "you" in these sentences as impersonal, but if so then the sentence is false. Because I am a GM and I am not (only, perhaps even typically) an impartial adjudicator, and I do have objectives.

Treat the world like a living world. Place NPCs and monsters where they make sense, based on how the world works, rather than what you think would make for fun encounters based on the party or their levels.

<snip>

Any conflict or drama that happens around the PCs ("on-screen") is just a byproduct of your honest presentation of the world, the characters, and their goals.

I don't understand what constraint you think the last sentence imposes.

The drama in which Tolkien's hobbits find themselves enmeshed is a result of the world, including the world of characters and their goals, in which those hobbits find themselves. But from the point of view of crafting the story it's hardly a coincidence that those characters had those goals, or that the events unfolded just as they did.

If I think it would be fun for the PCs to meet the tarrasque (and I do) then I can trivially come up with a reason why they might (I did, over the weekend - it will also involve Maruts observing affairs somewhat like the Celestials in Marvel Comics, only less massive). I am honestly presenting the world - but the content of that world wasn't drawn out of a barrel with my eyes shut!

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

In the reality of a D&D world, a character falling from a great height probably dies, but might survive in spite of the odds.

That is false. It is absolutely in fitting with the reality of all D&D worlds that I have ever heard of that the DM, doing the thing the DM exists to do, say "Your character has fallen to their death." No die rolls. No odds. No measurable difference between gravity on Krynn, Athas, Oerth, Toril, Mystara, or other spinning D&D rock and our Earth - not even that dragons can fly and giants can stand, because the difference there does not have to be "gravity is different" but that "magic exists there and doesn't here, plus shut up about science and just have fun playing a game where the fantastic can actually happen."

Because, again, the rules of a game are meant to help play the game - not necessarily to run reality simulations.

 

[Shasarak]

Nope. The game worlds of D&D are all the proof needed; in the reality of those worlds, a person falling from a great height dies - yet the rules limit falling damage to only 20d6, for a maximum of 120 damage, which suggests that quite a lot of characters and creatures in the world (those with 121+ hit points, for example my buddy's 11th level dwarven barbarian) would be able to leap from a great height, collide with the ground at terminal velocity, stand up and walk away.

So therefore saying that a person falling from a great height dies is only correct in that everything dies and not always as a result of falling from a great height.

 

[Shasarak]

It's zero fun being Harry Dresden sitting around his apartment.

You have obviously never read a Harry Dresden book if you think that sitting around in his apartment stops him from being involved in an adventure.

 

[Hussar]

The rules are not, themselves, the laws of physics. Rather, the rules reflect the natural laws of the game world, in the light of certain assumptions. This is the fundamental principle of any role-playing system, which precedes 3E by decades.

No, it really, really isn't.

I suggest you actually take the time to read older games - say the loads of games printed in the late 70's and early 80's before making this assertion. The rules in no way, shape or form actually reflect the natural laws of the game world. Whether you want to talk about purely gamist constructs like HP and XP or the task resolution systems of most RPG's, barring the ones on the really simulationist end the spectrum like Role Master or Gurps, the game rules do NOT reflect the natural laws of the game world.

Even in the early 80's you have games like the 007 RPG which grants limited authorial control to the players in the form of ((I forget the actual term from the game)) action points that players can spend to alter a scene. Going back to the late 70's early 80's, you have Dragonlance with it's "off camera death rule" and strongly linear plot lines. You can look at all sorts of 1e era modules which came up with all sorts of off the cuff rulings that had nothing to do with "natural laws" (although they may have had those trappings) and everything to do with gamism.

Exactly why do weapons lose two plusses when traveling to the outer planes? Could it be that it was a reflection of the 1e D&D ruleset having great difficulty dealing with high level characters and artificially increasing encounter difficulty by stripping away magic items and spells from the PC's? I think you think it might.

The notion that simulation is fundamental to role playing is such a poisonous concept. It has been the root cause of so much friction in the hobby. It is utterly baffling to me that anyone, having spent any amount of time in the hobby, could possibly try to claim this. It's tribalism at its worst. "Oh, you don't really play a real role playing game" is the clarion call of the edition warrior for decades now.

Is that really the hill you want to make your stand on?

 

[Shasarak]

Not sure that I agree with the argument that going to the Abyss or to Hell (for example) needs to be "artificially" increased in difficulty by decreasing the plus of your weapon.

That seems like a stretch.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Not sure that I agree with the argument that going to the Abyss or to Hell (for example) needs to be "artificially" increased in difficulty by decreasing the plus of your weapon.

That seems like a stretch.

You might be interested in Gygax's original logic for the way magic weapons interact with planes.

"Assume further that creatures which can be harmed only by weapons of a special metal (silver, cold iron, etc.) gain this relative invulnerability from having a portion of their existence in either the positive or negative material plane at the same time they exist partially in the prime. Therefore, those creatures which can be struck only with + 1 or greater magical weapons exist wholly and simultaneously in two planes (one of which is, of course, the Prime Material). So creatures which require attack of a + 2 or better magic weapon then exist in three planes simultaneously, and so on. This brings us to the consideration of the existence of magical weapons in other planes and in multiple planes simultaneously. If it is accepted that the reason that certain creatures can only be hit by magical weaponry is because the creature exists in two or more planes simultaneously, then it follows that the weapon must likewise extend into the planes in which the creature exists. At the very least it must be that the weapon extends into no less than two of the planes in which the creature exists, and these planes are those in which the creature has vulnerable aspects. This makes for a very complex relationship of planes to planes/swords and other magical weapons to planes. [ed. I'll say!]
A special sword functioning with bonuses against certain creatures, or a special purpose sword, will have existence on only certain planes with regard to its special bonus, or due to its special purpose, but as most weapons of this type also have a general + 1 or better value, they also extend into all planes — or do they?" - GaryGygax, Dragon Magazine July 1977

One infers that the reason magic weapons decrease in plusses when plane-shifting is because the number of planes in which the sword exists simultaneously is being reduced somehow.