D&D General Are NPCs like PCs?

[Sacrosanct]

not withstanding 4e, did humans ever have anything? or is it the lack of special abilities?

The ability to reach higher levels. At least in AD&D

 

[Vaalingrade]

not withstanding 4e, did humans ever have anything? or is it the lack of special abilities?

The fact that the game was only grudgingly letting you play the others and punished you whenever it got the chance for the offense of not playing the Right Race.

 

[Maxperson]

That is not really setting consistency though. It is a meta restriction that has no place in a living world.

I don't agree with that. While I don't think you have to build them the same(see my earlier posts), I do think that what one can learn to do, the other can learn to do. The reason for that is in the game world there are no PCs and NPCs. There are just people. PC and NPC are simply tags for the players to differentiate which people in the game world belong to which players. The PCs belong to the Players(capital P player) and the NPCs belong to the player who is DMing. Since there is no in-world differentiation between the two, what one can learn to do or acquire the ability to do, it's possible for the other as well. That's the internal consistency.

 

[Maxperson]

A human who was raised by apes tends to look a bit different than one who grew up as an English Lord

Er, have you SEEN the videos of what goes on in sessions of the House of Lords?

 

[Maxperson]

Lord Soth was human before he became a death knight, and this should be reflected in what he is now. Although they complicated things quite a bit, the 3e templates were good for this, undeath was just a template that was applied to a character, and the original race was not forgotten. 5e has almost done away with templates, but for story reasons I will never consider things like undeath or lycanthropy to be a change of race. You can consider it a change of race in game terms depending on the edition that you are playing and its jargon, but 5e does not have jargon anyway.

I just want to point out that most templates in 3e modified one race into another. This is also what 3e says of templates.

"Templates: Both intelligent and nonintelligent creatures with an unusual heritage (such as draconic or fiendish blood) or an inflicted change in their essential nature (undeath or lycanthropy) may be modified with a template."

A change in their essential nature is effectively a race change. While they may "technically" be the original race, they really are not.

 

[Lyxen]

Everyone in my game has a proficiency at whatever their trade is, on an open-ended d10. A "master merchant" would at minimum be a 9, so if it came to a roll (which it likely wouldn't if freeform role-play could carry the situation) I'd roll a d10 and try to get 9 or less.

OK, I forgot that you are not playing 5e, but it basically answers my question, you can use a very simple PC template (even 0-level) even for non-combat NPCs.

One, I let players run their own henches.

So do I, and having a simpler one keeps the game faster.

Two, henches very often end up graduating to become full PCs in their own right if-when the boss retires or is killed or if the player simply finds the hench more interesting/fun to play than the boss. Three, the only difference betwene a hench and a boss is level; henches are classed and levelled adventuring characters.

Note that I'm not talking about basic hirelings here e.g. the commoners a party might hire to look after their horses while the party's up in the mountains for a week. I'm talking about adventuring henches. I'm not sure offhand whether 5e even supports the concept (I think it does) but you'd have seen it in 3e as the "cohort" that came with the Leadership feat or in 1e where henches were an assumed fact of adventuring life.

Yes, we've had some in every edition, and after AD&D and before 5e, it was a pain because it slowed down combat so much.

As most of this bodyguard's uniqueness is coming from his personality, which can be played out in person at the table, mechanics aren't required.

I can understand that if you are playing AD&D, but honestly since then, without making the game much too complicated in 5e, it's interesting to have abilities that actually allow you to protect someone, something that is easy to do with NPC abilities but are quire lacking for PCs, as it's not their strong suit. It worked better in 4e, but with too many other drawbacks in the system.

That being said, it's not that said abilities would be forbidden to PCs, it's just that it's not in the classes as built, and I'd rather not clutter our games with too much homebrew, especially since it's not requested by the players to have fun.

 

[Lyxen]

"Templates: Both intelligent and nonintelligent creatures with an unusual heritage (such as draconic or fiendish blood) or an inflicted change in their essential nature (undeath or lycanthropy) may be modified with a template."

A change in their essential nature is effectively a race change. While they may "technically" be the original race, they really are not.

Huh, no. 3e had a very clear game jargon, a race is a race, and "essential nature" is not a race. If the race had been changed, it would have said it. Immediate proof from the monster manual:

He is a vampire, an undead, and still human.

 

[Cadence]

Okay I will bite. Lets take uncanny dodge and +1d6 sneak attack (both rogue coded class features).

I am a fighter who just hit 6th level. I say I am going to train with my buddy the rogue (who also just hit 6th level) in how he 'rolls with blows' and how he 'places attacks to do more damage'. now as a warrior by flavor I should already be better at both than this pick pocket... but since he can talk 1/2 damage with a reaction and deal +3d6 damage on 1 blow, how do you handle this 'down time training'?

Now I say this knowing that in 2e we used to just make stuff up and I had wizards with wildshape, and fighters with single use spells... but that was longer ago then some players have been alive.

Was one of the options in UA for 3.5 letting a fighter take sneak attack instead of a feat and vice-versa for the rogue?

 

[Maxperson]

Huh, no. 3e had a very clear game jargon, a race is a race, and "essential nature" is not a race.

Cool. I didn't say it was an actual change to race in that post. I said it was essentially a new race(which means basically yes, while technically no), and I'm right. A substantial change to the essential nature of a creature is a fundamental change to what they are(race).

Humans do not have an innate +6 to natural armor, ability to drain blood with their teeth, call forth rats, bats and wolves, dominate the wills of others, create spawn by draining victims completely of their blood, change forms into bats and wolves, possess damage reduction, heal as quickly as vampires do, assume gaseous form, resist cold and electricity, spider climb, resist turning and possess the stat bonuses that vampires do.

So while that vampire is technically human, he's not "human."

 

[dave2008]

Okay I will bite. Lets take uncanny dodge and +1d6 sneak attack (both rogue coded class features).

I am a fighter who just hit 6th level. I say I am going to train with my buddy the rogue (who also just hit 6th level) in how he 'rolls with blows' and how he 'places attacks to do more damage'. now as a warrior by flavor I should already be better at both than this pick pocket... but since he can talk 1/2 damage with a reaction and deal +3d6 damage on 1 blow, how do you handle this 'down time training'?

Now I say this knowing that in 2e we used to just make stuff up and I had wizards with wildshape, and fighters with single use spells... but that was longer ago then some players have been alive.

OK, to be clear, we are talking about adding uncanny dodge and sneak attack (1d6) to the fighter?

So, in my game (5e) I would say you would need down time (not sure of the time off the top of my head), money (note sure the cost off the top of my head), and 2 feats, your 6th and 8th to get both of those.

If I think about it some more I may tweak that a bit, but that is the general rule-of-thumb I use.