d20 needs different rules for NPCs

[Janx]

I found that article very interesting, even though I'm not much of a fan of Dungeoncraft.

I'd be happy to see something along the lines of (off the top of my head) :-

"NPC cleric; Fort Save = (level/2)+3, Reflex Save = (Level/3+1), Will Save = (level/2)+6"

or something similar.

I'd be sorry if such shortcuts were viewed as "cheating"!

Saves can be looked up during NPC creation (or via program). But having short lists of things like Feats, Skills, Spells, and Gear might be useful.

For skills, consider, every NPC has 2-4 skills that are always at maximum. If winging it, this means, don't calculate any skills. If during the game you need a skill check the NPC would have specialized in, their skill is LEVEL+3+bonuses.

For spell casters, they all have Concentration and SpellCraft at max. Just write that down on the NPC description (or remember it when you need it). There are few skills that normall apply to combat, so they're not worth writing down either.

Feats are a whole 'nother can of worms. They commonly affect combat (even the meta magic ones). A 20th level Human Fighter could have 18 feats.

I would suggest hiding any char info that isn't combat related on an NPC stat-block. Item Creation Feats, Feats that add bonuses (show the final Fort score, not the math and the feat that gave a bonus). The feats listed should be the ones that enable activities in the game (that the DM needs to know he can perform). This will shorten the list, somewhat.

For spells, only list the combat spells. Assume he cast any buffs/defensive stuff ahead of time (deduct a few spell slots for that). List off one or 2 escape spells (just in case).

For inventory, there's 2 lists, the short list of weapons (AC should already be calculated). The rest goes on the big list (including spellbook contents) for when the NPC is defeated. In fact every NPC has 1 or 2 weapons, a ranged weapon, and a melee weapon. That's it. The rest, they never dig out or get around to using. Attack bonuses, should be shown beside each item (just the final totals).

Now mostly, I've talked about what to show or not show on a NPC stat block. But I think that would help. Less info, makes for easier to use. If an NPC management program allowed you to display 2 versions, short and long form, that would be handy. I'd keep the long form in a binder (or on PC) for when I need a full lookup. I'd keep the short form for pasting into the adventure text I'm writing (for using in the adventure).

Consider this, back in the old days, I wrote small D&D utilities on my Apple IIE. They would print out monsters, with HP figured out (and little circles for the HP to cross out even). The monster stats took 7 lines maybe, with one line per individual monster's HP circles. It was pretty sparce. Nowadays, it takes one third of a page to contain a monster stat block.

Here's an example:
Goblin (3)
AC: 7
THAC0: 20
Damage: 1d6 shortsword
Notes: infravision
HP: 6 ooooo o
HP: 5 ooooo
HP: 4 oooo

Look how far we've come...

 

[Gundark]

It's not even bad design, IMO. Once a BBEG Vampire got disintegrated without a single action - lost init, rolled low on save. Not a big deal IMO. It wasn't a failure for me (the DM). The players had a lot of fun with their awesome defeat of a known very-bad-dude and were very much challenged in other parts of the adventure.

Random nature of the game makes it exciting but rarely also into easy victories or frustrating defeats. The unpredictable nature is part of what makes it fun.

Growing PC power is also one of the main draws of D&D - constantly making everything hard plays down this aspect. Easy victory every now and them reminds the players of their characters accomplishments.

Let the dice fall where they may, brothers.

I can see your perspective and agree to it to a point. Sure if it's a one shot advetnrue and the party gets to the BBEG, I'm don't think anyone is really dissapointed if he/she goes down in a few rounds.

However if the BBEG has been harassing the party since level 5 and they're now level 15. The BBEG has become a major part of the story, he's become the kind of NPC that players love to hate. They've finally got a chance to face him in his own lair....and he's dead in 2 rounds (or 1 round in your example). To me this would be a huge dissapointment as a DM, or a player, or even if I was reading this in a novel, or watching it in a movie.

Im not sure what the solution is for this. I think it's a dissapointment on all fronts

 

[Abraxas]

I can generate with 5 minutes of work, a full NPC wizard of 20th level. The problem is, there's so many stats and bits of info that I don't need (or would like to not need) that using the NPC as a bad guy is difficult.

I'm curious, what are the bits you don't need or would like to not need?

 

[Abraxas]

I can see your perspective and agree to it to a point. Sure if it's a one shot advetnrue and the party gets to the BBEG, I'm don't think anyone is really dissapointed if he/she goes down in a few rounds.

However if the BBEG has been harassing the party since level 5 and they're now level 15. The BBEG has become a major part of the story, he's become the kind of NPC that players love to hate. They've finally got a chance to face him in his own lair....and he's dead in 2 rounds (or 1 round in your example). To me this would be a huge dissapointment as a DM, or a player, or even if I was reading this in a novel, or watching it in a movie.

Im not sure what the solution is for this. I think it's a dissapointment on all fronts

I am really curious - why is it a dissappointment?

As a DM my NPC villains are there to lose to the players eventually - the fact that I harrassed them over 10 levels with one and they finally get the drop on her would never dissappoint me. She served her purpose, she tormented the PCs for 10 levels, aggravating them enough to go after her time and time again, and ultimately lost to them in a manner no diferent than one the PCs face routinely.

As a player, I am never dissappointed when we crush the BBEG without letting them get a chance to retaliate. Espscially those that have been bugging us for multiple levels. Our PCs are forever risking death and the few times we manage to take out the threat before anything bad can happen to us are a relief. They are also talked about and remembered fondly - an example from my playing history - we had been harrassed by some half fiend white dragon and evil priestess in the silver marches for the entire campaign. We had ammassed a fortune in our adventures and spent the whole thing preparing to take them both out - the fight took exactly 3 rounds. The dragon and priestess were running after the first. It died the second, she died the 3rd. The fun was all the plotting and planning we went through up until that point - and we still talk, and laugh, about how quick the actual battle was.

 

[Numion]

However if the BBEG has been harassing the party since level 5 and they're now level 15. The BBEG has become a major part of the story, he's become the kind of NPC that players love to hate. They've finally got a chance to face him in his own lair....and he's dead in 2 rounds (or 1 round in your example). To me this would be a huge dissapointment as a DM, or a player, or even if I was reading this in a novel, or watching it in a movie.

I guess it's different strokes. I would be very happy as a player to stomp the DMs PITA in round 1. As a DM I would try to make it a hard fight, but if the dice disagree, so be it.

Now as a handy poll here

 

[AuraSeer]

How many times has a boss fight gone bad because you rolled poorly on initiative, or the group just gets in some crazy rolls and your rolling badly. That saving throw that you should have made ended up failing and now your NPC that you've been carefully building as this total bad@$$ goes down without fanfare.

By "gone bad," you mean you were disappointed because the fight didn't follow the script you had laid out in your head. This is why there are dice involved. If you want to pick and choose exactly how combat goes, you shouldn't be running D&D, you should be writing a book.

Note that it is only ever the DM who complains about the quality of a boss fight. IME, players are always quite proud of themselves when they take out the BBEG quickly, whether it was due to good tactics or pure luck. This has happened to me many times, both as a DM and a player, and I've never seen players complain at an anticlimactic fight.

It happens that the most recent time was just over a week ago. In RttToEE, we just fought Hedrack for the second time and utterly crushed him in round one. The first time we fought, he killed two PCs and escaped. This time we were more prepared and very lucky, and killed him very thoroughly before he even got to take an action.

This particular enemy had been taunting and harrassing us for more than a year of real time, yet none of us is upset that the combat was "bad" or "without fanfare." We would have been upset if the DM had used special rules to prevent us from winning. A critical hit on disintegrate doesn't happen every day, and when it does I want to reap the benefits; if the DM had declared that the spell failed because it was a disappointing way for the enemy to die, I'd have been absolutely livid.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I think for bosses and sub-bosses, I want to go through the detailed work.

But there's a level between bosses and mooks, and I could see the utility for a templated version of class levels for such things. I can also see the utility for a DM who prefers to "wing it" a bit more than I do.

Sounds like we need a d20 sourcebook "Masterminds & Mooks" with rules for the core classes from 1st to 20th level in a variety of uses.

"Destroyer": fighter with greatsword/great axe capable of inflicting tremendous amounts of damage: 1, 5, 10, 15, 20th

"Diviner" mage specialized in knowing things and useful to party members low on divination magic: 1, 5, 10, 15, 20

Gives the GM tools for the most commonly used NPCs (guards, assassins, etc...) while providing some high end tools as well.

 

[painandgreed]

Yes he could, and did. As he was aware of the intruders he had mirror image and displacement + bunch of other spells up. The whole order of business was: Player A "I delay after player B" Player B "Dispel Magic" *rolls*rolls*rolls* no more mirror images, Player A "My turn, ZZZZAP!!!" A couple of rolls later one dusty vampire.

OK. Everything seems fine, but I think I got us off the track of the thread with my questions. I think what is being discussed here is that so much time was put into a BBEG, only to have it killed in the first round of combat. Therefore, there should be special rules for creating BBEGs, so that it only takes half that time to create so they draw less resouces. In the above case, it's not much of an issue because it was a pre-made character from a published adventure. Here some people are for creating the quick gen rule set for such BBEG so they don't end up spending so much time on something that might not even matter.

One of the reasons that that solution doesn't really go well with me, is because, I would think that stating out an important NPC just to have them be used in a single fight like a disposable resouce would be waste even if the fight lasted longer. Rather than make it easier to create such NPCs, I choose to instead use the NPCs more. When designing a game, I rarely have a BBEG sitting in a dungeon and only seen when the PCs encounter them. If I do, it's usually with pre-made adventures and I don't have to worry about it. My games are ideally run as such: I make up all the NPCs (I like world building also). I then run the NPCs as if they were my own characters. They have plots, plans, and actions. I keep track of what they are doing just as I do the PCs. I have an idea of what they want to do and how the game would normally progress without PC interference, but expect to have to modify their actions due to them. Such has even resulted in NPC vrs NPC combats that I have played out or called in friends to play out as a one shot between games to determine the result. NPCs usually start out pretty simple (name, class, level) and then get fleshed out in the course of the game as needed. Thus, the main NPCs get fleshed out pretty quickly and in detail. Typically, by time the PCs confront a BBEG type, I have consulted that NPC many times in the course of the game to determine the results of their various actions.

For example, in the last campaign I started, the PCs were in the middle of three opposing but balanced factions. Each faction tried to sway the PCs to their side with whatever philosophies and resources they had. I had no idea which one the party would side with, if they sided with any at all. Once they did side with one, the balance was thrown off and the region thrown into conflict and whoever the PCs sided with would have the upper hand. The game played out very close to how I thought it would play out, but I still did not force it, and was willing to let it go wherever the PCs wanted to take it. By time the final battle happened with the losing faction, that NPC was well used. In fact, the PCs had probably talked to him every other game and had even fought along side him once.