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

[AnotherGuy]

If humanoid NPCs need to be built like PCs, then why DON'T monster NPCs need to also follow these constraints?

Firstly, if they did, then designing encounters within specific difficulty categories would be far easier and more accurate, I would suspect, than it currently is in 5e.

Secondly, why should Hill Giants or Ogres use PC creation rules? They're monsters they're allowed to break the PC design limitations. I do not need to assign levels to them - they just are. If I want my Hill Giant to have ABC ability - I give it to them. I need not answer to the players.

Same way I don't have to explain why I might change a stat or an ability during combat.

To be clear - I'm not opposed to the idea. I played 3.x. I just don't see a good enough justification why it should be uniform.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The players are so on edge and hostile that they are watching everything the DM does, just looking for something to complain about and derail the game.

A lot of us actually play with out friends and people we like.

 

[TwoSix]

Firstly, if they did, then designing encounters within specific difficulty categories would be far easier and more accurate, I would suspect, than it currently is in 5e.

Secondly, why should Hill Giants or Ogres use PC creation rules? They're monsters they're allowed to break the PC design limitations. I do not need to assign levels to them - they just are. If I want my Hill Giant to have ABC ability - I give it to them. I need not answer to the players.

Same way I don't have to explain why I might change a stat or an ability during combat.

To be clear - I'm not opposed to the idea. I played 3.x. I just don't see a good enough justification why it should be uniform.

But then that leads to the opposing question; if non-humanoid NPCs DON'T need to be consistent, why DO humanoid NPCs?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But then that leads to the opposing question; if non-humanoid NPCs DON'T need to be consistent, why DO humanoid NPCs?

Because they represent the similar sort of thing than the PCs are. Simple as that. It is not that dragons are not consistent, it is that dragons are completely different sort of thing than a dwarf. If we were playing a game where you created dragon PCs, then I'd also expect the dragon NPCs to (roughly) follow similar rules.

 

[Lanefan]

And for the millionth time:

No they do not.

That may be your preference, but this is not a requirement. And it's bad game-design to expect it to be so.

It's bad game design to do it any other way, if the intent is that the game be consistent within itself both fictionally and mechanically.

for Gygax's sake, can you please stop asserting your preferences as universal axioms that must be followed from on high!? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?

In other words, please shut up and stay in my corner? Sorry, but I feel disinclined to comply with your request.

 

[Lanefan]

This is a distinction without a difference. NPCs are not PCs, playable race or not. All NPCs are monsters. Or, if you prefer, all monsters are NPCs.

That was Gygax's definition, to be sure; but he wasn't necessarily right about everything.

Also, an NPC only remains so until-unless it gets a player attached. If Joe rolls up a 6th-level Thief to replace the Fighter he just lost, that Thief doesn't (in most typical campaigns!) just appear out of glitterdust or step through a portal. It was always out there in the setting as an NPC up to now, doing whatever it did in order to acquire those six levels and all the abilities etc. that go along with them; it just didn't yet have to drag a player around with it.

In other words and more broadly, the NPC-to-PC transfer happens every time someone rolls up a character. By extension, that (in my view anyway) kinda both implies and forces PCs and NPCs to be the same.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Wizards of the Coast, if you're watching this thread, please don't make me do this again. I hear the guy who made stat blocks for the Third Edition of Deities and Demigods went bonkers.

 

[Fanaelialae]

It's bad game design to do it any other way, if the intent is that the game be consistent within itself both fictionally and mechanically.

You might not like it, but I strenuously disagree that it's bad design. It's not an overstatement to say that I hated 3e monster design, and so did the other DMs I know. There were a lot of things I enjoyed about the design of 3e for a long time, but not that. The only DM I knew that didn't have a problem with it basically just ignored their method and eyeballed everything.

IMO, 5e monster design is quite good (especially by comparison).

 

[Lanefan]

You might not like it, but I strenuously disagree that it's bad design. It's not an overstatement to say that I hated 3e monster design, and so did the other DMs I know. There were a lot of things I enjoyed about the design of 3e for a long time, but not that. The only DM I knew that didn't have a problem with it basically just ignored their method and eyeballed everything.

As long as the eyeball-developed monsters fit within the parameters of what they could have been if worked out the long way, all is good. And for not-3e, monsters (as in, things people can't play as PCs) can do - and be - anything you want.

Just like I've said numerous times already.

IMO, 5e monster design is quite good (especially by comparison).

By this do you mean "monster" as in not-PC-playable creature or "monster" as in anything not itself a PC?

 

[jmartkdr2]

It should not be required but it should always be an option.

For myself: I find it works really poorly in 5e. Most PCs hit really hard compared to their defenses when used as opponents.

I get that it's asymmetrical design, but I would like to be able to drop a 10th-level warlock and not have them kill one pc then get dropped at the top of round 2.