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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Professor Phobos" data-source="post: 4156448" data-attributes="member: 18883">Could you be more specific? Also, I don't think you've really answered the question. Do the game rules have to cover the totality of game world interaction, or can they focus on a specific kind of interaction? I'm not talking about specific sub-systems, I'm talking about the rules as a whole. Oh! Well, that's easy enough to resolve then. The difference between PCs, Major NPCs (who might well be written with PC rules) and Minor NPCs is one of degree, not type. Degree of attention required. A quick little stat block for a random city guard isn't supposed to represent a fundamental, intrinsic game world difference between the PC and the guard. It's supposed to represent the different degree of interest we have in that guard. The guard is a mook. We do not care about all the finer details of the guard. The DM shouldn't have to spend a lot of time statting out the guard. Simplified monsters, minions, etc, all that serve this ultimate purpose of determining the degree of mechanical attention paid to different characters. The PCs get the most, because we pay the most attention to them. Major NPCs, presumably, also get extensive attention. Likewise, PCs, being run by players, deserve special consideration. We don't particularly care about random NPC soldliers bleeding out on the battlefield. But given the "Heroic Fantasy" vibe of D&D, we do care about preventing PCs from dying from anything other than a heroic confrontation. Winning a battle and then dying from infection a few days later is something that only happens to NPCs based on DM fiat, not because of some "in world" difference between NPC and PC, but because of wholly metagame differences. The PCs are the main characters of our story, and more importantly, they're run by actual people whose thoughts and opinions matter.You could always just say "The PCs are heroes/have destinies" etc, if you really need some kind of justification for how awesome they are.</blockquote>

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