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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6883120" data-attributes="member: 6775031">There was plenty of rules support for NPC fighters and mages, but it was all in the PHB. In the absence of any indication otherwise, there's zero reason to expect that an NPC would be any different from a PC. If a given elf happens to be a fifth-level mage, then we have the rules for what a fifth-level mage is.That's not handwaving, though. Monsters in 3E had a thing in their stat block which described their advancement, saying what sort of hit die and save progressions they used, and how big such a creature could actually get. If this Bulette is bigger and stronger than a typical one, then you just need to figure out how much bigger and tougher it is, and the formulas would tell you how all of its numbers change to reflect that different reality.It's probable that they went too far in their strive for equality. In as much as a giant frog is not the same thing as a dwarf barbarian, they don't also need to get better in the same ways at the same rates. It seems like they were just a little bit too impressed with their own cleverness at creating a unified system for hit dice, and it didn't quite hold up as well as they'd hoped. No, humanoid races advancing by class rather than as monsters was one of the great successes of 3E - it was integral to creating a consistent and unbiased world. Orcs and dwarves really are similar enough, in terms of how they work, that they should be represented in the same ways. An orc is not a giant frog, or a demon, or even a dragon; it's a person, with a particular set of physical and social traits, whose capabilities are primarily derived from skill and knowledge. And likewise, their abilities had to be balanced for a PC because they were just learned abilities - if an orc witch-doctor could raise dead once per hour, then you would need a good reason for why a PC cleric with the death domain (or whatever) couldn't do the same.Granted, there were a lot of special feats or prestige classes for them, and that was annoying. It wasn't necessary, though, and it wasn't even part of the core game. It's just a problem of having too many supplements. Don't blame a good game for falling apart in supplements. The same can be said for Pathfinder.There is nothing about having only one character per person that necessitates gaining a new ability at each level. Fighters were fine in early D&D, even though they had no special abilities. Additional complexity makes it difficult for a DM to run a party full of such characters, but any gain from having complex classes is nebulous.</blockquote>

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