Thanks everyone for the flattering reviews. I really appreciate the praise, and the criticism.
"Mainly the frequency of triple damage criting clubs and the completely average stats."
Man, Richard and I are going to be hearing about this one from our friends for ages. "Think you're a hot-shot d20 writer, do you?"
Richard just noticed that he forgot to add strength bonuses to weapon damage. *doh* There's only a few NPCs actually with a strength bonus, but still.
The average stats, well, we stand by that. In our original discussions we decided that as a policy, we would strip down the types to their bare essentials. We figured that it is easier for the DM to just add things, rather than have to subtract first and then add. Combine this with the fact that these are just "the people in your medieval-fantasy neighborhood" and, well, they should be pretty bland. If they were interesting the stat-blocks wouldn't be drudgery to generate and the NPC would probably be more important to the plot.
In any case, we used a 15 point-buy and only assigned scores above 11 or below 10 when we thought that it was absolutely necessary. These folks are just off the rack.
This is the same principle that we applied to the equipment. Without having a reliable standard of wealth for non-adventuring NPCs (if you use the DMG guideline every 3rd level commoner would be able to retire in luxury) we figured that every DM is going to come up with their own standard-equipment based on wealth, flavor and fancy.
So we dropped all of the equipment, knowing that it will be easier for the DM to add equipment and add up the value of equipment, than to remove equipment, then add different equipment. If we assigned chainmail to the town guards (a rich town) and you only wanted leather, it wouldn't be a lot more work, but it would be annoying nonetheless to do the extra.
The weapons were sort of a thorn in our side. If we didn't include any weapon, the stat-block would default to Unarmed Strike in order to be complete. So no matter what we did, DMs would still (too often) have to replace the weapon when then they cut and pasted a stat-block over. Odd circumstances aside, if a level one commoner only has his fists to defend himself against armed and arcane PCs, he's going to run or talk not fight, so the stat becomes even less useful. Our solution was to give every non-combatant a free weapon (club, quarterstaff) wherever it made the remotest sense. That way, at least it would be something that they *might* use, and if the DM changes it there are no wealth implications.
Anyhoo, we recognized that we couldn't please everyone this is how we tried to stay consistant.
Hope that helps people use the book more efficiently.
Cheers.
