"Oddities" in fantasy settings - the case against "consistency"

[Maxperson]

this is because 1) the players could absolutely break game ballance with some of the NPC abilities

The players certainly break my ballance sometimes. Shtoopid players and their clever ideas that I didn't think of!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Again, I don't think we are disagreeing here. If you look at my posts on this particular issue in this thread, I have only been bringing up D&D to point to where this is a matter of preference. My whole point is whether or not NPCs and PCs and Monsters are designed in the same way or whether more exceptions are allowed, is a matter of what you want to do at the table and what your preferences are. And it has nothing to do with setting consistency. It is more likely to be about considerations like balance, creative freedom, etc.

Yeah, I don't think we disagree much at all on this. My initial comment on this topic was about the idea that NPCs MUST be made with the same rules as PCs. That's certainly not true for all RPGs, and not even true within the D&D editions.

Sure, there are many games that don't generate NPCs the same way as PCs... but also many long-time and relatively popular ones that do so, give or take a few modifications here and there. And there are pros and cons for both approaches. Not following PC rules gives the GM a lot of options at the expense of players understanding what they're facing, while following PC rules constrains the GM while enhancing players' abilities to analyze what they're encountering.

Within the context of D&D, 3e had gone all in on systematizing NPC building (and monster building for that matter). It was the edition also founded on increasing a player's ability to make informed choices about what they were doing (Skip Williams, for example, has been explicit about this in some interviews). They knew what their skills would do, how DCs were determined, how much stronger a huge monster was compared to a medium one, and some of what to expect from an NPC if they started to exhibit certain powers. System mastery was about a lot more than picking good build options for PCs. And if you dug that, 4e throwing about half that out the window behind a veil of DMs building whatever they wanted as long as the math worked out in the end was gonna chafe.

And with 5e, there are elements of it that still make me squint. For example, I know a gladiator (MM stat block) gets 3 attacks and has 15 hit dice to make the math work out as a CR 5 opponent. But I also know that a fighter doesn't get that kind of attack ability until 11th level and has different assumptions on other powers and hit points. AND I'm encouraged to use that stat block (as a DM) for any number of NPCs a PC may encounter while not being called a "gladiator" at all because it offers a similar kind of challenge. In other words, on the player side of the DM's screen, I pretty much got a lot less to make any informed decision on other than "the math".

Whether you prefer one approach over the other may be a matter of taste. But it's a notable difference in approach that's going to generate some debate. Perhaps even more so when that difference in approach manifests itself in edition changes for the same game.

Yes, but as I said above... I was just commenting on the claim of necessity for NPC to PC rules matching. It's simply not true.

That there are pros and cons to doing so or not doing so is true, I agree with that. Though I don't know if I agree about player understanding is a con for not following the same rules. I've played games where the NPCs are much simpler than PCs, and therefore easy to understand. I'm thinking of several PbtA games and both Spire and Heart. In Spire, most NPCs have two stats; they're given more character traits than stats.

 

[Laurefindel]

I was just commenting on the claim of necessity for NPC to PC rules matching. It's simply not true.

Even 5e '14 uses slightly different rules between PC and NPC, and it looks like there will be even more differences in the '24 re-edition.

Personally, I prefer asymmetrical systems or at least, systems where monsters and NPC rules are allowed to diverge a little, to strictly symmetrical systems like 3e. Usually, this offers more robust or complex PC options, both in play and during character creation, without the burden on the GM for doing the same for every monster and NPC.

My preference is when the system distinguishes between NPC that are clearly mooks, those meant as allies/sidekicks/antagonists, and those made as main villains with similar power and options to PC. I'm curious to see if the '24 Monstrous Manual or DMG will have more guidance on that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

1e DMG page 11

"Non-Player Characters: You should, of course, set the ability scores of those NPCs you will use as parts of the milieu, particularly those of high level and power. Scores for high level NPC's must be high - how else could these figures have risen so high? Determine the ability scores of other non-player characters as follows:

General Characters: Roll 3d6 for each ability as usual, but use average scoring by considering any 1 as a 3 and any 6 as a 4.

Special Characters, Including Henchmen: Roll 3d6 as for general characters, but allow the full range (3-18) except in the ability or abilities which are germane to his or her profession, i.e. strength for fighters, etc. For all such abilities either use one of the determination methods used for player characters or add + 1 to each die of the 3 rolled which scores under 6."

So they are built like PCs, but you don't necessarily roll for stats the same way. For important NPCs, you pick the stats. For generic NPCs, you roll, but they tend towards average due to the modifications listed. And for henchman you roll as normal, but weight the prime stat upwards.

1e modules put out by TSR also indicate that NPCs are like PCs. They have all the same stats, magic items, etc.

Which modules? I have pretty much all the classic early 80s modules, and I don't know of a single one which provides anything close to a character sheet for an NPC. Here and there some 'boss' NPCs have abbreviated stats, usually just a note as to class levels they can be considered to operate as, though many critical features are left undefined and it seems to be assumed that features not explicitly mentioned don't exist, or in some cases similar abilities are provided.

So, yes, the rules ALLOW FOR the GM to create NPCs this way, or even outright 'monsters' there are few, if any, examples found in actual material. In fact the very same DMG contains an entire subsystem intended for creating specific monstrous figures in the form of shamans and witch doctors. These are even shown to be applicable to humans! Presumably they can also be applied to other demi-humans. While I don't recall an explicit example of applying them to non-humanoid form creatures it's clear from the presentation that this is simply an example of how to build anything you like without regard to strict PC rules.

In other places similar logic is clearly in play, as there are many examples, even notes in the PHB, describing characters as having combinations of attributes impossible for any PC to have.

Arguments that the author of 1e thought that the rules for making a PC were somehow a description of all the possibilities of characters in the world is not supportable at all! NPC/monster abilities are entirely unconstrained by any of those rules!

 

[Wolfpack48]

Which modules? I have pretty much all the classic early 80s modules, and I don't know of a single one which provides anything close to a character sheet for an NPC. Here and there some 'boss' NPCs have abbreviated stats, usually just a note as to class levels they can be considered to operate as, though many critical features are left undefined and it seems to be assumed that features not explicitly mentioned don't exist, or in some cases similar abilities are provided.

So, yes, the rules ALLOW FOR the GM to create NPCs this way, or even outright 'monsters' there are few, if any, examples found in actual material. In fact the very same DMG contains an entire subsystem intended for creating specific monstrous figures in the form of shamans and witch doctors. These are even shown to be applicable to humans! Presumably they can also be applied to other demi-humans. While I don't recall an explicit example of applying them to non-humanoid form creatures it's clear from the presentation that this is simply an example of how to build anything you like without regard to strict PC rules.

In other places similar logic is clearly in play, as there are many examples, even notes in the PHB, describing characters as having combinations of attributes impossible for any PC to have.

Arguments that the author of 1e thought that the rules for making a PC were somehow a description of all the possibilities of characters in the world is not supportable at all! NPC/monster abilities are entirely unconstrained by any of those rules!

Face it dude. You don’t want “rules” at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is more about the role of the rules. Some people (me included) feel that one purpose of rules is to tell us things about the fictional world. Some others don't feel this is necessary. Though I would be not at all surprised if the former stance was rather strongly correlated with the desire to have a coherent and well defined world to begin with.

Well, nobody can play meaningfully where there's no consistent 'effectivity'. In all games if something is described the players can make inferences, or at least act like their characters can, and know that they're correct.

We all share another related consistency, which is consistent fiction/history. Everyone can agree on what happened and the state of the world at present (granted this sort of agreement can be subjective etc.).

However, much like my comments to @Maxperson I don't think those are established by rules or GM fiat etc. They're largely established by conversation and usually to a large degree genre conventions and such.

 

[Lanefan]

What about NPCs that are of playable races, but not playable classes, or no class at all?

As in, commoners of those species? Then they're commoners.

And if you're thinking of NPC-only classes (e.g. 3e's "Commoner" class), there's an argument to be made that those sort of stay-at-home NPC classes should be PC-playable if a player really wants to, with a great big warning that they'll be hella suboptimal in comparison to typical adventuring classes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The only reason I brought up D&D was to say even in that system, I prefer to not have PCs and NPCs follow all the same rules. More broadly, what I prefer in that respect really depends on how much I think fair play and fair challenge is a priority (not even fair but parity of play I suppose: how much are PCs and NPCs equal footing)

I don't even think fair play is really necessarily mandating identical rules. In fact I think the opposite is true. 4e is a perfect example, but the same applies to most games. An NPC built to PC specs will just alpha strike the PCs out of existence on round one of a fight. They have little reason to hold back! Even if PCs can respond in kind they're now left without resources to continue. Granted games can design PCs to avoid the issue but that necessarily puts hard constraints on the entire game for little reason. Fair play thus actually demands that the resource model used by PCs is very different from that of NPCs.

I believe this is a significant part of the reason every edition of D&D has a great divergence between the rules for each.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm struck by the use of consistency here and wonder about how that might relate to the observation in the OP on setting (in)consistency.

Not quite sure what you're asking. Can you clarify please?

 

[Lanefan]

Actually there isn't anything in the rules for 1e, which I am exceedingly familiar with, which suggests that NPCs should be or generally are built using PC rules. I think it is safe to say it is POSSIBLE, but there are a LOT of entries in the Monster Manual, etc. which are humans or demi-humans, and many of them don't even really seem to correspond exactly to any specific class.

Yes; and even in 1e, decades ago, it made me raise my eyebrows some.

Even so, those MM entries that correspond to the PC-playable species (Elves, Gnomes, etc.) pretty much use PC rules for classes, etc. There's entries that correspond to what amount to partial classes (e.g. a militiaman doesn't have all the training of a 1st-level Fighter but has some, as an informal "0th level" before this became a formal thing in UA), but it's still possible to see the underlying structure and very easy to line it up with the listed classes.