D&D General Should NPCs be built using the same rules as PCs?

[Dyson Logos]

Strong No from me.

NPC wizards should be strange and inscrutable.

5e started off in the right direction with this - powers that are awesome based on short rests or x/day don't work well for NPCs because they only typically interact with combat once, so they are best to "alpha strike", so the balance is very different.

NPCs should SEEM to be a lot like PCs, but definitely shouldn't be working on the same rules set (see the sidekicks for another good example).

 

[Lanefan]

That's one of the top reasons why I don't like it! I don't like as a player when I'm like "Ok, he cast spirit guardians at 4th level, but his melee attack was only +6 for 1d6+3, so he's gotta be a 7th or 8th level cleric. He worships Lathandar, he's wearing a breastplate, not chain or plate, so he must be a light cleric, watch out for fireball and the warding flare."

With NPCs that work like PCs, unless they've got some special magical items, you generally know exactly what they're capable of by round 1 or 2.

And most of the time that makes a lot of sense in the fiction, where after a bit of observation and a few rounds of combat the PCs often would pretty much know what they're up against; maybe not in terms of hard numbers but certainly in terms of "Yeah, that's a light cleric to Lathandar; don the asbestos, boys, we've seen what they can do!"

Never mind the players would never know the exact attack or damage bonuses!

 

[Mort]

I don't think they should necessarily be required to use all the same rules, but if an NPC has highly divergent powers and abilities, I do believe it undermines a player's ability to assess and understand their opponents. And that makes it harder to make smart decisions. For example, if an opponent rages like a barbarian (using the barbarian rules), I can predict he's going to be unusually tough due to damage resistance, have advantages on strength checks, and maybe a fewer higher level abilities fitting the barbarian mode of things. I might be able to pick a strategy that makes the fight better for me and my party based on that. But if he exhibits some powers with no context of how it works with anything else? I got nothin'. Given how combat in 5e works, he might live long enough for me to figure part of his capabilities out, but he probably won't. That's not as satisfying.
So when I build NPCs for encounters, I try to at least use suites of abilities that don't diverge too much from player understandings even if I'm not necessarily strictly obeying the PC-facing rules.

There is a heck of a lot of space between "built like PCs..." and built willy nylly!

4e NPCs were built very little like PCs but had a fairly predictable structure that players (for better or worse) could easily get to know.

5e Gives the option of design by cribbing off the monster manual or use PC methods. Frankly I much prefer not like PCs as making NPCs just like PCs takes longer, is more tedious (for me) and is more limiting.

 

[Tony Vargas]

How original are you thinking? Plenty of NPCs in TSR D&D are listed with classes and levels in adventures. Keep on the Borderlands is a good example.

1e, because that was, like, my ed. It had NPCs with complete write-ups, NPC (and PCs, for use in modules) with starkly abbreviated write-ups, player character races in the MM, and some pretty whack write-ups in Deities & Demigods, various settings/modules, abd The Dragon Giants i/t Earth column.
0e, what I've seen & heard, was even less consistent about those sorts of things.

It was really 3e that got really particular about building NPCs and monsters something like PCs, albeit, with monsters having various things PCs simply couldn't (but what if I want to Improved Grab a pixie?) and NPC classes PCs shouldn't take....

 

[Umbran]

Simple enough question. What are your thoughts?

I think that when a GM feels making up an NPC with the PC rules, they can do that, and when they don't, they shouldn't.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And most of the time that makes a lot of sense in the fiction, where after a bit of observation and a few rounds of combat the PCs often would pretty much know what they're up against; maybe not in terms of hard numbers but certainly in terms of "Yeah, that's a light cleric to Lathandar; don the asbestos, boys, we've seen what they can do!"

Never mind the players would never know the exact attack or damage bonuses!

There's the dreaded "player knowledge" - one amusing example from a story hour, here, I think, many years ago, a PC is in a combat, and a hidden enemy has cast Wall of Ice three times, he concludes, confidently, that it must be a Sorcerer...
...turns out to be a Bone Devil, which, in defiance of any/all rules governing PCs, duplicates the 4th level spell at will.

Then there's character knowledge, which, in later eds, is covered by checks.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Cleric is an idiosyncratic class that probably shouldn't be representative of most clergy, for sure, but that's just a call to design more divine spellcasting classes, and/or more things like paladins that represent different endowments of divinity. I actually use sorcerers as "clerics" more often than not, with clerics largely ending up restricted to whatever deities make sense for their weird spell list.

My point was more along the lines that the vast majority of pickpockets aren't rogues. If every 5 year old pickpocket got sneak attack and the rogue's compliment of weapon proficiencies, that would be a silly world indeed (IMO).

 

[Aldarc]

Nope.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There is a heck of a lot of space between "built like PCs..." and built willy nylly!

4e NPCs were built very little like PCs but had a fairly predictable structure that players (for better or worse) could easily get to know.

5e Gives the option of design by cribbing off the monster manual or use PC methods. Frankly I much prefer not like PCs as making NPCs just like PCs takes longer, is more tedious (for me) and is more limiting.

4e uses different statblocks for literally the same creature. That was enough by itself once I learned to turn me completely off their monster design.

 

[Lanefan]

No. While there's nothing wrong with designing an NPC as a PC, I don't think it makes sense in many cases.

If every guard in the campaign is at least a 1st level fighter, then that means they're all proficient in plate mail. Why would Bob, the constable of a tiny, poor fisher town, be proficient in plate mail? He's probably never even seen a suit of plate armor in his life.

Maybe Bob isn't a 1st-level Fighter. As the constable of a tiny fishing village he could easily just be a commoner; or a commoner who's had a bit of training in grappling and with a billyclub but that's it.

This points to - and is an example of - another gap in the rules I've been poking at recently: commoners who have a few quasi-class-like abilities but nowhere near enough to be fully a member of that class.

Take for example the hunters in a hunter-gatherer society: they'll all have some tracking and outdoors skills but none of them are actual Rangers. How can that be mechanically reflected in a manner consistent with the game's class-based structure?

Ditto Bob the Constable here. He's not a Fighter per se, yet through long practice knows a bit about the few elements of combat reqired for his job; probably well enough that he can at least do those as if a 1st Fighter. The game doesn't allow for guys like him in the rules, and IMO it should somehow.

IMCs most priests are not clerics. They might be devout (or not) but they can't summon up even the most trivial of miracles. Clerics who can channel their deity's divine power are the exception, not the rule.

I'm the other way around: if you're a priest, that by default means you are a Cleric; as one of the key things that defines a priest from an acolyte or lay person is the divinely-granted ability to cast spells.

That said, just because you're a Cleric doesn't mean you have to adventure, and many don't. Stay-at-home temple Clerics can still gain xp, though extremely slowly by adventuring standards, through doing good works, tending to their followers, making appropriate sacrifices, and so forth.