High Level NPC Class characters: What's your take on them?

[Kahuna Burger]

I don't use adept either. If you cast spells, you are also not ordinary.

I disagree with this in principle. In a truely magical world, there are going to be "ordinary" people with the talent for magic, who never do much of anyting with it, but can still do a bit. You will find them in most fantasy books - the court magician, the old midwife whose knowlege of herbs blends seamlessly with her extra talents, the dabbler who never went anywhere. The adept represents these to me, better than a lower level wizard or cleric.

 

[QuaziquestGM]

Keep in mind that a high level adapt is likly to be a religous zealot with a powerbase, or an actual experienced adventurer. Remember that this is the class that gets both cure light wounds, and burning hands at level 1; cure serious and scorcing ray at level 4....so they can be relativly self suffiecient and valuble to the adventuring party that just can't keep a cleric or wizard around. They are also less expensive to maintain, and don't generally have churches ordering them off on unprofitible quests.

their main disadvantage is that they don't get level 5 spells until level 15.

 

[Odhanan]

I use NPC classes for characters who can't be defined strictly by adventuring classes (bartenders, wenches, craftsmen etc) or for NPCs who do have some amount of experience but were never adventurers per se.

For instance, a seasoned sergeant of the local Watch could be an 6th level Warrior. This man has experience. Maybe he has been on a battlefield sometime in his life. But he never actually went out there to find glory and fortune "the hard way". A middle-aged king who lived his whole life in a palace could be a high level aristocrat. An elderly woman versed somehow in the knowledge of magic, but who never wandered far off her community to discover the secrets of the universe could be a high level adept.

And so on.