Do the PCs follow the same rules as everyone else?

[JoeGKushner]

Depends on the campaign. Most times the PCs are built on the same rules I use for NPCs as I get rid of the generic classes and use other variants like the Noble from Green Ronin to fill out the specialist roles, or the Expert as it's a good all purpose NPC class. The commoner and warrior? Got rid of the latter but really, why would I ever have to stat out the common farmer?

 

[The_Gneech]

It's interesting actually. If you were to roll scores using a 3d6 for every single NPC encountered, a relatively small percentage of them would have all 10's and 11's, something along the lines of around 2.5% of the population. One person in 216 would have a score of 18 and another one in 216 would have a score of 3. The bell curve isn't quite as narrow most RPG players seem to think it is.

Well yeah, but who wants to put that much thought into an on-the-fly NPC? If I want a Str 18 Int 3 village idiot, I'll come up with him as such rather than rolling dice for the whole village.

-The Gneech