Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2200717" data-attributes="member: 2067">I like using things totally statted out because it allows for interesting combos I wouldn't have thought of on my own, and allows me to more quickly adapt to my PC's. If I've got the rules of what Ed can and can't do laid out in front of me, I can more readily think like Ed and do things that Ed would do than thinking like a DM and thinking of things that Ed would like to be able to do, or that would be dramatic or interesting for Ed to be able to do. Ed might not just be that dramatic or interesting of a person.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Thus, it's more about having a firm grounding for role-playing the NPC than it is about running the story smoothly. I'm a flexible storyteller, I let my players lead when they take point. I present them with options and let them go where they will. Having an NPC statted out allows me to quickly adapt to whatever they do -- fight it, talk with it, invite it to tea, make it walk a tightrope, charm it, sneak up on it, put the halfling in a slingshot and fire her at it...whatever. I've got the tools, with a full stat block, to make a multifaceted reaction to the PC's crazy crazy planning.I like to see them play by the rules pretty closely, so I like to do for them the same thing. I will make stuff up and invent stuff to add, but I will rarely fudge, and every tool available for the NPC's is available for the PCs. So maybe the NPC will have a new feat the PC's have never before seen or taken that makes them particularly effective, but that new feat will have prereqs and uses just like any other feat, and any PC who gets the training can take that feat. Fudging that much kinda makes me feel that if I can do it, the PC's should be able to do it, too. If I fudge a spellbook, I shouldn't be able to demand that the wizard keep his meticulous. It also removes, for me, some verisimilitude. The sorcerer wouldn't just have learned everything appropriate for the encounter - they would learn spells as if they were an individual with their own hopes and goals, rather than just a story mechanic for the players to overcome.  This ends up being why I rarely use NPC's -- they're not statted up all nice and pretty like monsters are. I know what a monster's capable of. To figure out what a NPC is capable of requires a good few minutes of work that I just don't want to put in, normally.</blockquote>

Verification