D&D 5E DM's: How Do You Justify NPC's Having Magic/Abilities That Don't Exist in the PHB?

[Hussar]

What's good for the goose is always good for the gander. A monster might very well have unusual powers that PCs never will, but if an NPC has a class and levels, then it plays by the same rules as the PCs. The NPC might be able to do something extraordinary via an unusual spell or a rare magical item, but in that case, any PC who obtains that spell or item can thereafter accomplish the same extraordinary thing.

You never allow new classes?

Your group only has a limited number of players, so, presumably, a limited number of classes in that group. Are NPC's limited to those classes? Of course not. They can be classes that the players didn't choose as well as potentially being classes that the players didn't even know about since they didn't exist at the time.

Meh, all my baddies are variants of Binders. They have weird powers because of the Vestige's powering their powers. You can't copy them because you have no idea what Vestige they bound and you aren't a binder. What? Binder's don'T exist in 5e? Well, maybe they do.

I have a really hard time believing that this is actually a player side issue. This is something that people invent to try to brow beat other players with their badwrongfun. "Oh, you MUST have explanations for all this" - we do. It's pure gamism. "Oh, that explanation isn't good enough and WotC is intellectually bankrupt for never giving us a single explanation that I can then use to brow beat my players with!"

Yeah, no thanks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

"PC" playable is a 3e invention. It didn't exist in 1e and didn't exist in 2e officially until pretty later on with things like the Complete Humanoid. And, even then, it was never presented as an expectation. An orc didn't gain character levels - he suddenly became treated as an ogre when he became chief. Now, I don't think that the intent was that an orc physically transformed into an ogre, despite using an ogre's stats upon becoming chief. It was purely a game mechanics method to differentiate a rank and file orc from an orc chieftain.

How did that dragon cast spells though? After all, dragons had a percentage chance of having spells. Did they have actual MU levels? But, then, why didn't they need spell components? Beyond that, in 3e and later (if not earlier) any innate casting didn't need spell components, even if the monster was treated as a Level X caster. Why can't I learn to cast spells like a Ki-Rin and never need any spell components for my spells? It's never explained.

This whole thing about a "strict proviso" is entirely fabricated. It never existed in the game. I don't disagree that people play this way. Fine and dandy. But, pretending that it's required? That's not even remotely true.

Who's pretending? As you say, its how some people play.

 

[Garthanos]

In my campaigns, magic works under a simple premise. If you spend enough time, resources, and plot specificity, you can accomplish pretty much anything.

If an apocalyptic cult wants to summon Orcus, they aren't doing it by researching a 9th level spell for a 17th level wizard to cast. They're doing it by sacrificing an entire town, using a soul gem mined from the 432th layer of Hell, and doing the ritual during a conjunction with the Plane of Night that occurs every 131 years on the winter solstice.

Nods rituals are the most authentic magic we have seen in D&D they are generally long term Strategic Resources (not so much tactical) which is why is why I liked the 4e ritual system it stepped outside of that box and being a great ritualist did not necessarily have anything to do with combat magic not really. This fast casting which is the feature of D&D magic is above and beyond a lot of source material
One of the interesting things about old Elric of Melnibone, in spite of purporting to be his worlds greatest sorcerer he didnt realize for a long time that he could with will, true need and desire (the right motivations etc) for what he expected to be an 8 hour exhausting ritual with nothing more than a short poem. -> He starts the story the best ... and just discovering dailies LOL.

 

[Garthanos]

Who's pretending?

The pretense was the pretense of a requirement to be real D&D or to make sense or some other implication that is being shoveled ... sheesh.

It's a bad wrong fun war cry of "consistency" demanding detail levels of monsters and npcs that for most is not practical ... coming from those demanding they not have to use their imagination from what I see.

 

[see]

The TV series Elementary is clearly a Sherlock Holmes story but is set in contemporary NYC, not Victorian London; and has a woman as Watson who is not an ex-army surgeon. The series was well reviewed and seems to have rated fine, given it ran for 7 series.

Wow, it's almost like I should have written something like "That doesn't mean a new story has to strictly adhere to the audience expectations; playing off or against them is a perfectly valid artistic choice."

Oh, wait, I did.

In the context of D&D, where WotC owns all the relevant copyrights and trademarks, WotC can publish whatever it likes. People will buy it, or not, as they think fit.

Yes, sure. Just like, since the copyrights on (most of) the Holmes canon has expired, anybody can publish whatever Sherlock Holmes stories they like.

But the only thing that gives the trademarks any value at all is expectations derived from previously-published material. If neither game had any publication history, the difference between "Tunnels & Trolls" and "Dungeons & Dragons" as game names would be essentially nil. What makes the latter so much more valuable than the former is the expectations of people when they see the name, formed by nearly fifty years of publication history.

WotC, of course, learned the difference between "We can legally publish whatever we want as Dungeons & Dragons" and "We can successfully publish whatever we want as Dungeons & Dragons" in 2008-2011.

The idea that WotC would consider itself "bound" by an approach to classes-in-fiction taken in a 1987 campaign book is not one I can take seriously.

And if anyone actually said that, I'd be right along side you not taking it seriously.

There is a huge and not-remotely-subtle difference between:

A) If a product is released under the same brand as an older product, audience members will bring expectations from the older product to the new one. As audience expectations are the only thing that gives a brand any value, intelligent brand managers will never dismiss these audience expectations as irrelevant, even if the product that shaped them is quite old.

B) You can't ever change anything.

Arguments against the latter do not, in any way, impact the former.

 

[James Gasik]

Isn't that ability basically the same as attacking an extra time but you don't bother with the extra attack roll and they can't target more than one dude at a time?

That's like saying Sneak Attack is the same thing as attacking one more time if you have advantage. The thing to keep in mind is that this is a bonus damage die that is multiplied if you make more than one attack per turn. The Gladiator has multiattack, and could be the target of haste by an allied spellcaster. On each attack they make, they get this bonus, which ranges from +1d4 to +1d12 depending on what weapon they wield.

 

[Jack Daniel]

You never allow new classes?

Not really, no. Deciding what classes exist in the setting is a pretty fundamental part of creating a campaign.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The pretense was the pretense of a requirement to be real D&D or to make sense or some other implication that is being shoveled ... sheesh.

It's a bad wrong fun war cry of "consistency" demanding detail levels of monsters and npcs that for most is not practical ... coming from those demanding they not have to use their imagination from what I see.

Its a requirement for me. Other people can do their own thing.

 

[billd91]

How did that dragon cast spells though? After all, dragons had a percentage chance of having spells. Did they have actual MU levels? But, then, why didn't they need spell components? Beyond that, in 3e and later (if not earlier) any innate casting didn't need spell components, even if the monster was treated as a Level X caster. Why can't I learn to cast spells like a Ki-Rin and never need any spell components for my spells? It's never explained.

They're also not NPCs in the sense that they are races that are playable as PCs. So that's not really a particularly useful direction to take this discussion. They're not a human necromancer with magical powers that aren't attainable by a PC.

This whole thing about a "strict proviso" is entirely fabricated. It never existed in the game. I don't disagree that people play this way. Fine and dandy. But, pretending that it's required? That's not even remotely true.

I don't need an NPC's powers to be attainable by PCs in general. But I can certainly see the argument that anything a normal human (or elf, dwarf, halfling, etc) achieves as an NPC as far as amassing weird powers should be something a PC could do if they followed the same path. But, with the way things are in 5e, they aren't and are that way for purely game mechanistic reasons to provide a particular level of challenge and that frustrates some members of the D&D community. I get it. I don't need it. But I'm also not going to put it down. It's just a different preference. There's no real point in arguing against it other than to recognize that this is the way 5e is because they're emphasizing the game aspect of the role playing game with it. And in doing so, it does narrow some of the role playing paths that a PC could take because they can't say "I want to do be able to do what HE does" and achieve it.
Everything comes with tradeoffs.

 

[Lanefan]

So, I just wanted to throw out a response to the "it's a game, why does everything need to be explained" approach we're seeing a lot here. I find that explaining everything renders the setting more gameable, not less.

Consistent rules give players something to leverage against the setting. They can make plans, draw inferences and use system elements to achieve their ends.

Exactly. Just like we in the real world can use consistent rules of physics etc. to achieve our own ends.

Magic has to have some sort of underlying consistency in how it works - it's part of the setting's physics, after all, in some way or other - and eventually the PCs might just figure out some of those underlying rules. The "weave" is one example, though IMO not a great one. What this means in practice is that you-as-DM probably want to have this stuff nailed down ahead of time, even if the PCs never get to it, as it underpins magic right from the start.