Gear for NPCs

[shilsen]

The NPC gear value tabe (4-23, DMG pg.127) is fairly clear and easy to use for standard NPCs, but what about those which have variation in CR, class level, character level, etc.?

For example, take the following NPC: Half-dragon Ogre Ftr2

This NPC has a CR of 7, a character level of 6 and has 2 class levels. Do I assign it gear for a 7th, 6th or 2nd lvl character?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mhd]

effective character level, 6 in your case (DMG, pg 172)

 

[EPRock]

This NPC has a CR of 7, a character level of 6 and has 2 class levels. Do I assign it gear for a 7th, 6th or 2nd lvl character?

The NPC would recieve money as an 8th Level NPC, You would use the effective character level which is Character Level + Class Level.

Would have equipment valued at 9,400.

 

[shilsen]

effective character level, 6 in your case (DMG, pg 172)

Thanks, but I don't think that applies in this case. That section refers to PCs, not NPCs. That's whay I didn't mention ECL, which would be character level (racial hit dice + class levels) + level adjustment, or in this case 11.

 

[shilsen]

The NPC would recieve money as an 8th Level NPC, You would use the effective character level which is Character Level + Class Level.

Would have equipment valued at 9,400.

Effective character level is character level + level adjustment. Character level already includes class level, since character level = racial hit dice + class level. Anyway, effective character level with regard to gear calculation only counts for PCs, not NPCs, AFAIK.

 

[James McMurray]

I would give them gear appropriate to their CR. CR is basically ECL for NPCs. An ECL 7 character PC gets the gear of a 7th level PC, so a CR 7 NPC should get the gear of a 7th level NPC.

Not only does it make sense (IMO), it also means that you are staying true to the wealth per character guidelines. To give CR 7 XP but some other CR worth of gear would mean you were above or below the expected wealth guidelines. Granted, no game is going to be exactly at those levels, but doing this a lot, with a large number of NPCs, would tend to skew you farther and farther away as more encounters were had.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

Glad to see they simplified the determination of xp/challenges in 3E!

 

[James McMurray]

Glad to see they simplified the determination of xp/challenges in 3E!

Huh? 3e is a ast improvement over the previous editions. Back then all you had to go by was gut instinct and the creature's XP value. You could be pretty certain that if a critter was worth enough XP to level someone in the party all by itself, it was a pretty overpowering challenge, but other than that you had to use guesswork, intuition, and trial and error.

 

[shilsen]

I would give them gear appropriate to their CR. CR is basically ECL for NPCs. An ECL 7 character PC gets the gear of a 7th level PC, so a CR 7 NPC should get the gear of a 7th level NPC.

Not only does it make sense (IMO), it also means that you are staying true to the wealth per character guidelines. To give CR 7 XP but some other CR worth of gear would mean you were above or below the expected wealth guidelines. Granted, no game is going to be exactly at those levels, but doing this a lot, with a large number of NPCs, would tend to skew you farther and farther away as more encounters were had.

That's basically what I've been doing so far, for mostly the same reasons you mentioned. It's worked well for me so far, but I was curious if there was a specific rule or statement in the books on the subject that I had missed. Thanks.