Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 4355447" data-attributes="member: 61155">Just to give an overall summary, here are the various ways to make NPCs:  1) You want to make a levelled NPC of one of the PHB Races (or any other player races), or one of the NPC Races on pages 274-279 of the MM. Solution: Use the NPC creation rules found on pages 186-188 of the DMG. 2) You want to make a pre-existing monster in the MM more powerful by giving it a class.  Solution: Use the Class Templates found on pages 182-183 of the DMG, making the monster Elite. Also refer to the normal rules for applying Templates, as found on page 175 of the DMG. 3) You want to give a pre-existing monster in the MM a class... but don't want to make it Elite in doing so.  Solution: Your best option here is to simply swap out existing powers for powers from a specific class, in order to give it the flavor of that class. For example, say I want to take an Angel of Valor, and make it feel like a Rogue. I could replace it's Lightning Strike ability with the level 7 Rogue Encounter Power Sand in the Eyes, and replace his Fiery Blades power with Sneak Attack +1d6. Unfortunately, this is generally a tricky solution - weighing these powers against each other is going to be a guessing game at best, and could easily be too little or too much.  A different option would be to create my own NPC Race for the Angel of Valor - while they don't have guidelines for doing so, it is pretty easy to look over the various monster races (on pages 274-279 of the MM), and see how they went about it. Copying their method, we might end up with the following:  Ability Scores: +2 Strength, +2 DexteritySize: MediumSpeed: 6 squaresVision: Normal Languages: Common, SupernalSkill Bonuses: +2 IntimidateAngelic Presence: Attacks against you take a -2 penalty while you are undamaged. Angelic Flight: You can use angelic flight as an encounter power. Angelic Flight: Angel of Valor Racial PowerEncounterMove Action PersonalEffect: You fly 8 squares.  Now we have a nice NPC race - and can go and use the solution for situation 1 (above) to create a full-fledged NPC of whatever level we like.  But, again, this method requires a bit of guess-work - giving enemies classes without making them more powerful is, unsurprisingly, not something the system is really designed to do. Finally, if you want to build your Angel of Valor Rogue entirely from scratch, use the Creating Monsters rules on pages 184-185 of the DMG.  4) You want to create an enemy with multiple classes. Solution: This is actually quite easy if you are using an NPC race. Make a levelled NPC as with the solution to situation number 1 (above). Then, applying a class template as with the solution to situation number 2 (above) - you now have an Elite enemy who is perfectly multi-classed! Your Drow Fighter/Rogue makes for a formidable enemy in combat. You can even go a step further and add another class template, resulting in a Solo NPC with powers and features from three different classes! If you want to make a pre-existing monster multiclassed, you can mix and match some of these methods. Add two class templates, which results in it being a Solo enemy with powers and features from two different classes. Alternatively, you can simply swap its existing powers with powers from multiple classes - though, again, balancing can be somewhat tricky, and many creatures don't start with enough powers to really trade them all in without losing everything that made them a unique monster in the first place.</blockquote>

Verification