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

[Sepulchrave II]

Believe me, I know chapter and verse of 1e characters. Yes, if you ignore a lot of stuff you can create fairly brief sheet for a fighter, but it will omit a lot of important stuff unless they are really low level, plus what is gained for such an NPC? All you actually care about is level, hit points, AC, etc. Nobody cares about it's CON or whatever.

I'm not defending the utility of listing the CON - or any other ability - of the human rogue in the cell, Obmi, or all of the Drow. Merely pointing out the fact that Gygax did, in fact, list all of these. Dex and Con bonuses appear factored into AC and HP. Str bonuses are noted. Magical plusses are factored in.

It may well depend on which G3 you have?

I'm looking at 1978.

I didn't go through them in detail, but the casters seem heavily standardized and omit a lot,

The Drow? Why are they heavily standardized? - I'm talking about those above the baseline, with additional Cleric and MU levels. What do they omit?

so we can't really say they're legal or not.

Well, they appear legal - if by legal, you mean they comport with the rules used for PCs. What makes you think they're not?

Yes they have some bits of info not found in MM stat blocks, but rules don't actually exist in 1979 era 1e for Drow anyway, and even later the rules were inconsistent and in most sources differ from monster Drow in various ways.

The entry for the Drow at the back of G3 is pretty exhaustive.

 

[Alzrius]

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.

Some people have written entire sourcebooks about that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The GM can assign stats to NPCs as long as those stats fall within the possible results of having rolled them. I could just decide, for example, that Joe the (Human) Blacksmith has St 15, In 8, Wi 12, Dx 13, Co 11, Ch 10 without breaking anything, as those stats fall well within the roll-able range for a Human.

It falls apart when (to use a simplistic example) PCs of a species have their stats hard-capped at 18 but the GM assigns a 23 to some NPC's stat, e.g. if Joe here is given Con 23 instead of Con 11. That's outside the roll-able range, and thus inconsistent; even more so when one considers there's neither spell nor device in the game that can jack one's Con up by anywhere near that much.

But why? I don't have a problem with the GM making an NPC who has a score outside the rollable range if there is an insetting reason for it. I get some GMs may be bad at making this kind of judgment. But I see the PC stat ranges as being there for balance reasons primarily

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

yeah, like I said I was struggling to find the right language. It was less about fair play and more about giving players an even opponent to test against (i.e. sometimes I want a campaign or game where the NPCs follow the same rules as the PCs, because then it is an equal playing field of competition). An NPC being extremely lethal as a threat was more what I was thinking (fair play was not a very accurate way for me to describe what I meant)

 

[pemerton]

In AD&D, Elves have 1+1 HD. But PC Elves have a penalty to Constitution.

Nuff said.

 

[Campbell]

When it comes to NPCs there is a phenomenal difference between a game having a consistent interface and the process by which we get to the stat block. As a longtime GM of games like Vampire, Legend of the Five Rings, various 2d20 games, et al most of the games I have run outside of 3e advocate for creating the finished product / NPC instead of going through a PC like character generation process.

In the D&D space Pathfinder Second Edition fits the bill. An ogre warrior (which is a level 3 creature) will interface with the game in pretty much the same ways a 3rd level fighter will but the process of getting there is much more driven by end results. You get a creature with ability scores, saves, skills, special abilities, etc. that operates under all the same models. You just don't create it (or other NPCs [although you can if you want]) by picking a bunch of things off menus.

Now it also helps that say elves, fighters, etc. aren't built around a platonic set of features in PF2. There are many different ways to be an elf or be a fighter such that whether you built an NPC one way or the other it would not be all that discernable to most players.

 

[Irlo]

Were I a player I'd be asking for an in-game explanation, you can bet on that. And that explanation better be good.

I’m not sure how to read this. Would you as a player ask the DM for an in-game explanation, or would your character try in-game to discover the explanation? Would you accept that your character might not have the means to figure it out?

 

[Deset Gled]

Would you as a player ask the DM for an in-game explanation, or would your character try in-game to discover the explanation?

(I couldn't decide which gif to use, so, y'know...)

 

[Lanefan]

But why? I don't have a problem with the GM making an NPC who has a score outside the rollable range if there is an insetting reason for it. I get some GMs may be bad at making this kind of judgment. But I see the PC stat ranges as being there for balance reasons primarily

Where I see the PC stat ranges as being the same as the NPC stat ranges, where each is the defining range for the population of that species.

 

[Lanefan]

I’m not sure how to read this. Would you as a player ask the DM for an in-game explanation, or would your character try in-game to discover the explanation?

Both, probably.

Would you accept that your character might not have the means to figure it out?

I will find the means.