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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9501442" data-attributes="member: 29398">This tells me more about how you view and-or play your meatshield NPCs than you probably realize. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />For me, any NPC in the party, even if it's someone's hench, is still capable of independent thought and of acting on said thought.In the party I've been running for the last 3 years the PCs have, up until quite recently, all been mid- or back-liners of some sort, with the front-line duties mostly being handled by a long-serving NPC Fighter.  That Fighter was every bit as much a "character" as any of the PCs, making decisions (and not always the right ones!), giving input, and then going out and not-always-perfectly doing her job just like anyone else in the party.Just last session, after 11 adventures over about 130 sessions, that Fighter left the party and (for now, anyway) retired.(I should probably note that I always get the players to do the dice-rolling for in-party NPCs, particularly in combat, which leaves me free to concentrate on their opponents)If the meatshield is someone's mind-controlled robot then sure, that's exactly how it'd work.But 99+% of the time this isn't the case.  Instead, the meatshield is a free-thinking person and IMO should be played with the same amount of care and thought as would an NPC caster in the party.</blockquote>

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