D&D General Are NPCs like PCs?

[Lyxen]

Cool. I didn't say it was an actual change to race in that post. I said it was essentially a new race(which means basically yes, while technically no), and I'm right. A substantial change to the essential nature of a creature is a fundamental change to what they are(race).

Humans do not have an innate +6 to natural armor, ability to drain blood with their teeth, call forth rats, bats and wolves, dominate the wills of others, create spawn by draining victims completely of their blood, change forms into bats and wolves, possess damage reduction, heal as quickly as vampires do, assume gaseous form, resist cold and electricity, spider climb, resist turning and possess the stat bonuses that vampires do.

So while that vampire is technically human, he's not "human."

My point was that "vampire" was not a race. Technically, the race is still "human", the template did not change the race, and the "original race" was kept as a basis for future evolutions.

 

[HammerMan]

Was one of the options in UA for 3.5 letting a fighter take sneak attack instead of a feat and vice-versa for the rogue?

I don't remember, but that doesn't seem too far off 3e...but we are talking 5e

 

[Undrave]

The question is relatively straight forward: do you prefer that NPCs and monsters operate by the same rules as PCs, or that they operate by their own rules

NPCs and Monsters have no use for like 90% of what PCs have and their use is limited to usually one encounter. No. They don't need extraneous crap or pointless limit. They serve totally different purposes as game pieces.

 

[HammerMan]

OK, to be clear, we are talking about adding uncanny dodge and sneak attack (1d6) to the fighter?

So, in my game (5e) I would say you would need down time (not sure of the time off the top of my head), money (note sure the cost off the top of my head), and 2 feats, your 6th and 8th to get both of those.

If I think about it some more I may tweak that a bit, but that is the general rule-of-thumb I use.

now that sounds like a great house rule (one I would even give series thought to allowing if a PC said they wanted to) but again the system isn't really made for it.

 

[dave2008]

now that sounds like a great house rule (one I would even give series thought to allowing if a PC said they wanted to) but again the system isn't really made for it.

I disagree, I feel the system is completely made for it. It is the rulings over rules philosophy of 5e (and one I have always had anyway). It also is mostly right by the rules, or at least guided by them. The idea of feats being a semi-multiclassing option already exist RAW

 

[Lanefan]

But then you are arbitrarily limiting what a NPC can do, IMO.

Sure - just like we arbitrarily limit what PCs can do. Works for me.

 

[Lanefan]

Our players don't do that, first we have many DMs amongst our players, and second they have a tendency to present multiple sides to discuss things. After that, and after the silliness of 3e, the ball is now clearly in the DM's hand to stop arguments quickly so that play can move on.

The ball's still in the players' hands, though to start them.

And once in a while those players have a point.

First, I'm not telling you how to play the character,

Yes you are. You're saying I have to play it within a bounded area of ethos, outlook, and actions regardless what the character might otherwise be or do; and that's telling me how to play.

I'm telling you that there are some areas which foster conflict around the table, which is why they are forbidden.

Out-of-character conflict around the table is bad but in-character conflict within the party is not, and one just has to trust one's players to be wise enough to keep the two separate.

And this alone is a good reason to spin the first few levels out longer than just a session or two each; as it's during these very low levels that the characters in-character can get these conflicts out of their systems and sort out who's welcome in the party and who isn't.

Honestly, it has not happened often, but the ownership has always been left to the DM. What would prevent him to have the character as an NPC in a campaign after a player has left it ? The player can claim all he wants that he has the character sheet, but all the history of the character is set in the campaign history, and that belongs to the table anyway.

The history of the character is part of the campaign, yes; but the future of that character still belongs to its player.

I have a different view here, and once more it's very well put forward in Tasha, in addition to the mutual respect between the DM and the players: "The players will respect one another, listen to one another, support one another, and do their utmost to preserve the cohesion of the adventuring party."

Orwellian groupthink has come to D&D. By this stricture individual thinking is banned. Individual or unilateral in-character action is banned. A character acting on its own agenda is banned. Chaotic PCs might as well be banned.

This type of advice intentionally ignores the fact that an adventuring party is made up of free-thinking individuals. Part of the true joy of D&D is that as your character - as well as your party - you can (try to) do what you want, often without the fetters imposed by real life.

I'm not one for burning books but if all of Tasha's is like this I might change my stance.

If the whole party goes in a direction, it's fine, but if one player decides to do a crazy thing that is disturbing the other players, it's a no-go for me. And that is honestly the situation that I've encountered the most often, one player deciding to torpedo everything that the party has been creating, usually because of personal boredom, or because he dislikes what the others are doing, to mark his territory or whatever.

If it's done in character it should be sorted out in character; and the players all have to remember that not every character is going to think like theirs do.

A common example is a party dithering on its tactics planning, which can get boring as hell after the first few minutes for characters (and players) not directly involved - i.e. the non-tacticians of the group. In these cases the sooner someone does something crazy the better, whether its my PC or someone else's.

I have the same idea about economics, but that is actually a subset of what I wrote above, this is a friends collaborative game, it's about playing together, not going on one's own all the time, or even worse torpedoing what the rest of the players are doing. It does not preclude discussion or dissension, but I'm not here to run X games in parallel for X players.

If the party splits in X directions it's my job as DM to run that many parallel games however I can until-unless they get back together.

Because they should trust the consistency of the world rather than the consistency of the rules. The rules can only be a very rough modelling of the world, again clearly stated in the 5e SAC: "no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable."

So just because a rogue managed to hide behind a barrel in a dark warehouse once when the guard was inattentive does not mean that he will always be able to hide behind every barrel in the world in all circumstances. Maybe the next barrel is going to be a bit smaller, maybe there will be more light, maybe the guard will be more attentive.

Sure; but the same underlying mechanics are being used, right? The barrel example is a simple case of passing one Hide check and failing the next - no problem there as it reflects the reality of the Rogue not being perfect every time.

What I'm talking about are precedent-setting rulings where the DM doesn't adhere to the precedent. An example: say my PC has got hold of an Adamantine Axe whose main property is that is cannot lose its edge no matter what. So, we get to a stone door our Rogue can't open and as my action I declare "I'll try using my axe to chop through it." The DM, who never considered idea this when dreaming up the Axe, thinks about it a moment then says "Well, if you don't mind spending half an hour at it and don't care how much noise you make then yes, you chop through the door" (i.e. makes a ruling and grants auto-success).

Simple fleeting moment in play, right. But wait. With that ruling the DM has just set and locked in a precedent: Adamantine Axes can cut through stone, albeit slowly. Which means I-as-player can now expect - or certainly should be able to expect - this to be a consistent thing going forward and thus can base decisions around this information; and if the next time I meet a similar stone door I'm told I can't cut though it I'm going to both in and out of character be asking why.

Edit: typos

 

[Lanefan]

Lord Soth was human before he became a death knight,

The emphasis there is "was".

I've always taken the "Human" header in those type of undead stat blocks to be nothing more than a guide to narration: it was a Human, meaning it's about Human-sized/shaped/proportioned/etc. and so that's what it should be described as; as opposed to if it said "Dwarf" which would lead to slightly different narration.

The Ringwraiths were Human once, but nobody calls them Human now.

5e has almost done away with templates, but for story reasons I will never consider things like undeath or lycanthropy to be a change of race. You can consider it a change of race in game terms depending on the edition that you are playing and its jargon, but 5e does not have jargon anyway.

Undeath and lycanthropy are completely different things.

Lycanthropy is a disease or curse (depending how you frame it) within a living being; bluntly put, you're a Human with a problem.

Undeath is an unnatural state of a dead being. You're not Human any more, though you might look like one; you're a [insert undead type here].

 

[Lanefan]

NPCs and Monsters have no use for like 90% of what PCs have and their use is limited to usually one encounter. No. They don't need extraneous crap or pointless limit. They serve totally different purposes as game pieces.

Except they're not just game pieces, they're inhabitants of the setting just like the PCs are.

Only looking at them - or the PCs, for that matter - as game pieces is what blows up setting consistency.

 

[dave2008]

Except they're not just game pieces, they're inhabitants of the setting just like the PCs are.

Only looking at them - or the PCs, for that matter - as game pieces is what blows up setting consistency.

But it is also what can make the game great fun! Setting consistency, or even a setting at all, is not needed to have a great deal of fun in D&D. Now, don't take this to mean I am advocating no setting, but I know from experience the game works great without one. If you admit the game is a game, it can really free up your creativity and fun. At least for sum, I don't think that would work for you.