D&D 5E (2014) Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?

[Satyrn]

I'm concerned by some of the comments in this thread which seem to imply that NPCs are being slaughtered in such vast numbers that simplifications are needed to keep combat complexity manageable. A system which encourages you to treat intelligent creatures like disposable chumps who exist only to be slaughtered in eighteen seconds or less is... problematic, in my view.

For my part, all the NPCs that aren't being slaughtered don't have stats at all. They're a name and a one-sentence description, plus whatever emerges as the players interact with them.

If that interaction leads to sudden, unexpected combat then I'll give them stats that make sense. There's plenty of time to do that in between the players planning their next move, and drinking beer and telling jokes, that creating on the fly works just fine.


(although it ought to be said that the time I gain from them drinking beer is spent by me drinking beer)

 

[Jester David]

In 3e/Pathfinder I had a lot of classed NPCs, and ones with high levels. But that never sat right with me, especially as it sometimes felt the party only ever met people +/-3 levels of them. Especially in organized play.
Much happier with 5e and having NPCs that aren't classed or adventurers. Where the population of the setting isn't running a Red Queen's Race to keep up with the PCs.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

There's no reason why they need to die. You can just beat them up and then move on. We are heroes after all.

But sometimes you do need to fight a couple of dozen orcs, and their motivations aren't that important relative to their choices in combat. Soldiers will fight when their leaders tell them to. Guards will fight to defend against intruders. Those situations need to be playable in the game.

In a situation like that, why would you worry about the mechanical complexity of the orcs? They aren't complex.

When people say that statting up NPCs with PC classes is too much work, I somehow don't think "two dozen orcs" is the scenario they're worrying about. In fact, a few posts ago you were objecting to the "mental overhead" of running four or five NPCs, not two dozen orcs.

Statting the NPCs up as MM monsters like Veterans and Mages doesn't save on much, if any, mental overhead.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When people say that statting up NPCs with PC classes is too much work, I somehow don't think "two dozen orcs" is the scenario they're worrying about. In fact, a few posts ago you were objecting to the "mental overhead" of running four or five NPCs, not two dozen orcs.

It's difficult to run four or five PC-built NPCs, because the PC rules are overly complex in this edition. Running two dozen such characters at once would require more effort than I'm willing to invest, since they would all have limited-use abilities that needed to be tracked.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I picked the second choice, but I'm on the fence between that and the third one.

Basically, in my ideal world, all characters that could have PHB classes, would have PHB classes. However, 5e usually did a pretty good job at coming up with close enough stock NPC stats. I've made some adjustments to them, but I can mostly use them.

I see a typical entry-level warrior or street thief as not being a full-fledged fighter or rogue. The class means you have some more advanced training.

However, I see the more advanced NPC statblocks (veteran, priest, etc) as just simplified versions of actual classes. So most temples in my world are manned by about 5th-level clerics, which just happened to be given a simplified stat-block called "priest" in the NPC section of the Monster Manual (though I do give them a domain and turn undead and yank that Divine Eminence feature). Most well-accomplished ranked military men are about 5th-level fighters, which just happened to be given a simplified stat-block called "veteran", or "knight" in the NPC section of the Monster Manual. Should one of those NPCs become of significant importance in the campaign, I would likely stat them out as a full-fledged cleric or fighter.

I've justified these simplifications by saying that classes have natural plateau points where people tend to fall. For clerics and fighter those tend to be about 5th level. For druids they tend to be 4th, for mages they tend to be 9th. You are just going to run into more NPCs in those classes at those levels than at pretty much any more. Helps me stay sane.

 

[S'mon]

I've never built an NPC with PC class levels, so I voted "Only Player Characters..."

I reserve the right to build an NPC with PC class levels sometime, but never done it yet.

 

[Li Shenron]

Technically I have to answer "rare" because the vast majority of the people in my typical fantasy setting don't belong to a class.

But the NPCs that matter in the story usually have class levels.

 

[S'mon]

But intelligent NPCs deserve that overhead. In fact, the mechanical overhead of keeping track of abilities should be trivial compared to the roleplaying overhead of keeping track of what is going through each NPCs' head, what their goals are, why they are in conflict with the PCs, what their relationships to the other NPCs are, how they feel the conflict is going and how close they are to bailing, etc. Compared to that, "has this Champion used his Action Surge or Second Wind yet?" is small potatoes.

I'm concerned by some of the comments in this thread which seem to imply that NPCs are being slaughtered in such vast numbers that simplifications are needed to keep combat complexity manageable. A system which encourages you to treat intelligent creatures like disposable chumps who exist only to be slaughtered in eighteen seconds or less is... problematic, in my view. I'm fine with unintelligent creatures like zombies, giant ants, and aurumvoraxes being killed in great whacking lots, but if my game featured the mass murder of human beings on the same scale as giant ants... something would be wrong.

No, it's the exact opposite for me - combat is not that important, major NPCs rarely enter combat vs PCs and if they do so it's usually only once... So taking the time to stat them out as 5e PCs would be ridiculously excessive overhead. Whereas getting inside their minds is important because they're thinking all the time.

 

[JonnyP71]

I do use MM stats for 0th level NPCs such as guards, but I don't use their versions of higher-level characters like Priest/Veterans/etc. because I don't see any value in them. If I were to run Curse of Strahd, I would make Mordenkainen an actual high-level wizard with a specialty (Transmutation and Conjuration both seem appropriate), not an anemic MM "Archmage" who's missing half of his features for no good reason that I can see.

Ditto, I'm running the BECMI classic Castle Amber at the moment for my 5E group, and I was left somewhat disappointed by the conversion available online which turned all the Amber family into standard Veterans, Priests, Mages etc.

In my version they all have classes, levels, and various spells - largely based around the spells they had in the original adventure.

It was a lot of work, but has been worth it. The encounter in the Throne Room with Catherine Amber (13th level Necromantic Wizard) magic jarring into a PC was particularly memorable. I gave the player the list of spells and told him to play as Catherine. When he emerged from the initial trance he hit the main Fighter with Finger of Death, Dimension Doored into a side room and summoned an Elemental to fight the party with - it was great!

 

[ExploderWizard]

But at least those rules existed! As compared to 5E, which amounts to "make up whatever you feel like, and the only math involved is figuring out how much experience it's worth".

Honestly, 5E is worse than 4E when it comes to NPCs! I mean, did you notice how the NPC archmage has a lower save DCs than its spell slots and Intelligence would suggest, because spell access is tied to hit dice but proficiency bonus is tied to challenge rating? At least 4E was honest with its shenanigans - it didn't try to pretend that PCs and NPCs were following the same rules at different granularity!

I see the sample NPCs in the MM as building block templates, not ready to go important NPCs. Perhaps for minor characters and mooks they are OK, but any NPC important enough to get a name tag will usually get a bit more put into them. If an NPC is available to travel with the party and aid them then I will have it written up as a PC class. Most other NPCs are a combination of modified generic templates, some with PC abilities mixed in and some with abilities created by me to do what they need to do.

Ditto, I'm running the BECMI classic Castle Amber at the moment for my 5E group, and I was left somewhat disappointed by the conversion available online which turned all the Amber family into standard Veterans, Priests, Mages etc.

In my version they all have classes, levels, and various spells - largely based around the spells they had in the original adventure.

It was a lot of work, but has been worth it. The encounter in the Throne Room with Catherine Amber (13th level Necromantic Wizard) magic jarring into a PC was particularly memorable. I gave the player the list of spells and told him to play as Catherine. When he emerged from the initial trance he hit the main Fighter with Finger of Death, Dimension Doored into a side room and summoned an Elemental to fight the party with - it was great!

I am enjoying this adventure as a player currently. We are in Averoigne , about to do battle with the dreaded beast to win the ring of Eibon.