Khur said:
You seem to think you need PC classes to make NPCs special, unique, or as powerful as PCs. That's an assumption you've made, and it's wrong. The only thing most NPCs and monsters aren't, compared to PCs, is as complex. If you think you need that largely mechanical complexity to tell your story, the PH is full of options for you.
Let me see if I can be more specific. Based on the little I know about 4e, you might have, say, a Hobgoblin Grunt -- a level 1 soldier. You might also have a Hobgoblin Commander -- a Level 6 elite soldier (Leader). The grunt has 2-3 attacks/abilities which define him. The Commander, likewise, has 2-3...maybe 4...abilities which define him. But, one presumes, at one point, the Commander was a Grunt...so what happened to those skill/powers/talents/etc?
In 3e terms, it would be akin to having a wizard who could cast Power Word Kill...but not Magic Missile.
Maybe the argument is "He still knows his novice powers, and if they ever become important to the plot for some gods-unknown reason, he can use them. But 99% of the time, he won't use level 1 powers in a fight against level 6 PCs, so who cares?"
IMO, the fact that every town had a cleric was not only bogus, it was diminishing to any sense of specialness the PCs might have had. Why does every town need a miracle worker when a guy that knows a few helpful rituals or spells is fine? It was also a strain on the imagination when a base town is full of hero-like guys who just fail to do anything about trouble.
I do see this argument, but it leads to a counter-argument -- where did the PCs come from? If their power level is so beyond the curve, how do you keep them from running roughshod over the setting -- more than they do anyway, being PCs?
IAE, I've been thinking about this. I suppose my issues are twofold:First, I don't like any kind of 'mark of Cain' on PCs. We, at the gaming table, know they're special, but the world doesn't. There shouldn't be any kind of 'PC Detector' implied by the mechanics. Classes, levels, hit points, are things which approximate things which exist in the real world -- training, skill, fortitude. Scholarly wizards might group spells by complexity, or a school of fighting might have various 'novice' and 'advanced' techniques, but outside of OOTS, no one knows their level -- or who's a PC.
Second, and perhaps more relevant, let's assume that for a given 3x NPC, 95% of the time you need, say, 10% of the stats. You don't normally need Grog Bloodrinker's Appraise check, and if the PCs decide to attack the Exchequer instead of parlaying with him, whether he has 15 hit points or 16 doesn't matter when the Barbarian crits him for 45. And, yeah, working up 100% of the data so that the 10% is accurate can be a pain, especially as levels add up. I appreciate the design goal of 4e is 'just use the 10%, screw the rest'. I just want to know if I can get the other 90% when I need it. In 8 years of playing 3x 2-3 times a week, those 5% cases have come up quite a bit. Just yesterday, we were rescuing some hapless shopkeepers (and doing a typically PC job of it, meaning, they'd have been better off if we were somewhere else), when the ogre magi shaking them down for protection money unleashed a cone of frost. Suddenly, it mattered if they were at -9 hit points or -11...because that spelled the difference between "We rescued you...mostly" and "Well, who wants to tell their next of kin?" The typical argument is "The DM decides if they live or die" is not really acceptable, because that leads to railroading. Do they live? Then the DM is telling us he'll protect us from the consequences of our half assed plans. Do they die? Then the DM is turning the game into a voyage on the Guilt Trip Express. Letting a neutral third party -- the dice and the rules -- decide is part of what makes it a *game*, where everyone -- even the DM -- is surprised at the outcome. (I find that to be my favorite part of DMing...the far end of bell curve events which veer the story in totally unexpected directions. The beloved NPC is critted and dies. The villain survives that one extra round and makes good his escape. Or vice-versa. I'd have a lot of trouble having fun DMing a diceless game. But I digress.)
The rest of your post is impossible to discuss because you haven't defined your terms. I can say that plenty of people the world over believe that someone who becomes great is indeed destined for greatness or touched by God/the gods. Lots of people believe it is a metaphysical difference, such as karma or wyrd. A whole lot of people would agree with me when I say better is different, whether by practice, talent, or strange fate. And regardless of one's view of the real world, a fantasy game can and maybe even should include these.
Well, we disagree on the nature of the real world, but that's not a debate for this board. In terms of gaming, I don't mind *can include*, I do mind *must include*. If some kind of "PCs are special" mechanic is needed, I'd rather it be something that is clearly and explicitly a metagame mechanism (such as Hero Points/Action Points/Drama Cards/etc), then something which seems to want to be both a world-simulation mechanic and a narrative mechanic. Now, I try to keep in mind I haven't seen the 4e books. A lot of my issues might well be cleared up by 2-3 paragraphs of explanatory text detailing what the game mechanics actually represent -- just as the 1e DMG made it clear that having 50 hit points DIDN'T mean you could get stabbed in the chest with a sword ten times. They meant, basically, that the sword didn't stab you in the chest. (Until that final blow...)
On a final note, I keep running into the meme here that "PCs and NPCs use the same rules"=="PCs are pathetic wuss losers". This might come as a surprise to players of Hero, GURPS, D6, BESM, WOD, and many, many, other systems which have both a)Powerful PCs, and b)No mechanical 'hard line' between PCs and NPCs. (A 25 point Hero character and a 500 point Hero character are both built using the same rules...one can just juggle skycrapers.)
