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

[Lanefan]

I say, "You can't. Sorry."

The role of NPCs and PCs is fundamentally different to the game experience. NPCs are either allies and force multipliers for the PCs, or they are opposition, or they are representative of the teeming mass of demihumanity which makes up the common clay of the setting.

So are the PCs, which is the very root of my whole point here.

If the PCs are not representative of that teeming mass then they're either alien to the world or are truly special snowflakes. The former can be cool if only done once, while the latter just ain't the way I roll.

A PC is a player avatar, and is meant to function as a part of a unit, because team-based play in which each character have a specific niche in which they excel is the engine that has kept this hobby running since the 70's. RPGs are not about individual characters, and if you-as-a-player meet a mystic who can both heal and fireball and ask why you cannot do the same, I will gladly drop out of Watsonian dialectic and give you the straight Doyalist explanation -- you are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are part of a team-based tactical squad engaged in overcoming challenges, and your tools are thus limited to those within the role you have chosen to play.

While I get this in principle, a few points:

First, that bolded claim is likely to go over like a lead balloon with some here.

Second, while I might in theory be a part of a "team-based tactical squad" (shudder), both as player and character I'm also a free-willed individual who may or may not always feel like following orders or sticking to plans.

Third, my question "Why can't I play one of those Shamans?" wasn't meant to imply just tacking those powers on to my existing character but more a) why isn't that class in the char-gen guide and b) why can't I drop my current PC and take one of those instead (i.e. switch one set of limited tools for another)?

 

[Lanefan]

The setting of my games remains consistent even if PCs and NPCs are built using different rules. IMHO, consistency in the setting is formed through applying the rules of the game in a consistent manner rather than demanding that NPCs be built by the same char-gen rules and mechanics as PCs.

The two bolded pieces agree with each other. Characters are characters regardless of whether they have a player attached, and the rules of the game (should!) apply equally to all.

Consistency of the fiction matters more than the consistency of the mechanics.

Fictional consistency is vitally important too, and IMO they're linked closely enough that if the fiction is to be consistent then so must the mechanics.

I also think that the idea that NPCs must follow the same char-gen rules as PCs is unnecessarily limiting on NPCs or even the setting. I don't think that the character options provided to players represent the grand totality of human or mortal existence so it is perfectly fine if NPCs, even those from the same ancestry, have abilities outside of their available character options.

In principle I agree, but it's easy to run into questions of unfairness. If a situation ever arises where the question "Why can't my PC do that [really cool thing that some NPC just did]?" can only be answered with "Just because", there's a problem. And the flip side is also true: it's unfair to the NPCs if the PCs can do things that NPCs never can.

 

[Lanefan]

No. Emphatically no.

PCs need to have the resources to complete a full day of adventure, with all sorts of tricks and tools to make use of. NPCs only need to exist for however long they appear (usually only one scene/battle/situation at a time, and often only one such scene/battle/situation ever).

It's a wonderful idea, making everything work by exactly the same rules. The siren song of beautiful symmetry, verisimilitude, simplicity. All of those hide the actual in-game effect, which makes designing and running non-player characters (mooks/minions, soldiers, bosses, monsters, allies, etc.) dramatically more difficult. Any time or headspace savings you might get from building NPCs like PCs will be completely overwhelmed by the balance and complexity issues that arise from building monsters exactly the same as PCs.

3rd edition proved that this approach was unworkable. It is a seductively beautiful but fatal design choice. Build your monster-design-rules to make fun, interesting, easy-to-run, engaging monsters.

NPCs and monsters are different things, as noted several times upthread.

And yet again - I think you're the 5th or 6th person so far in the thread to raise this strawman - designing and building NPCs to match PC rules doesn't take any longer than it does now. All you have to do is quickly check to make sure that what you come up with off the cuff could be produced by going through all the long-hand work, and you're good.

It's the same as asking, "Should extras get the same presence in a movie as the main characters?" Doing so would be the ruin of almost every existing good movie out there.

Henches, hirelings, adventuring NPCs that stick around with a party, rescuees, and major opponents - these are all far more than 'extras'.

 

[Lanefan]

The latter. it is unwieldy, unbalanced, and STILL won't actually make everyone happy because some archetype or idea won't be represented.

You'll never catch every archetype but there's room to catch at least some of the more common ones that have been hard to replicate through all of D&D. A few capstone or end-game archetypes that D&D has never done (or explained) all that well:

A Jedi knight.
James Bond. (no combination of Fighter-Thief-Assassin has worked yet)
Any powerful stay-at-home support.
Any powerful mystic or psionicist a la the Deryni.

At the other end, the game also doesn't (and never properly has) mechanically cover what I've come to call "part-classes", where, say, commoners have some (but not all) abilities of a class simply baked into their culture. An example: many of the hunters in a hunter-gatherer society would realistically have some Ranger-like tracking and outdoors skills but won't have the hardiness or favoured enemy or animal companion etc. that a full-patch Ranger would. I've been booting around some ideas as to how this could work but so far it's just a football.

 

[Lanefan]

To a certain extent, I think that this is what 3e tried to be.

In a hamfisted and over-done sort of way, yes. 3e had some very good ideas buried deep under all that crunch.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't know why everyone's abilities in a fantasy world should be knowable.

Ahead of time, I agree.

After the fact, however, there IMO needs to be an in-fiction explanation (that may or may not ever come to light but it has to exist) as to a) how the ability worked and b) the steps required in order to repeat it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In a hamfisted and over-done sort of way, yes. 3e had some very good ideas buried deep under all that crunch.

I approved of the spirit of 3e, but had growing problems with the letter as it progressed.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

At the other end, the game also doesn't (and never properly has) mechanically cover what I've come to call "part-classes", where, say, commoners have some (but not all) abilities of a class simply baked into their culture. An example: many of the hunters in a hunter-gatherer society would realistically have some Ranger-like tracking and outdoors skills but won't have the hardiness or favoured enemy or animal companion etc. that a full-patch Ranger would. I've been booting around some ideas as to how this could work but so far it's just a football.

In 5e backgrounds help with this. For example those hunter-gatherers could be commoners with an outlander background.

 

[cbwjm]

I don't know about should, but I have built some NPCs using the rules for PCs. Most of the time though I'll use the standard monster building rules and then add components of a class, so that a low-level "fighter" might be a guard that also has action surge and second wind, or a cleric of the storm lord might gain channel divinity to max out their thunder and lightning damage. It's much easier to grab an NPC stat block and just add a couple of class powers to it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't know about should, but I have built some NPCs using the rules for PCs. Most of the time though I'll use the standard monster building rules and then add components of a class, so that a low-level "fighter" might be a guard that also has action surge and second wind, or a cleric of the storm lord might gain channel divinity to max out their thunder and lightning damage. It's much easier to grab an NPC stat block and just add a couple of class powers to it.

Yeah, I often do it that way too. Close enough.