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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5032610" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm not saying NPCs are a &quot;complete failure&quot;, but just that I think if you use the monster based route you end up with consistently better results. Remember, monster design is pretty loose in terms of what you can do with powers too. In fact the only real &quot;rules&quot; on monster powers are the recommended damage expressions and the to-hit number. They say nothing about how many powers or how they should mechanically work. Monsters do have generally more hit points than NPCs. Standard monsters have slightly more, roughly 10-15 points depending on monster roll and PC class. A level 1 NPC fighter would have 20 hit points, a level 1 Soldier monster has 29. Elite or solo monsters have MUCH more and that really is the key, the significant monsters have a lot of hit points. PCs can probably knock down a regular monster in a round or two, but an Elite will almost always stick around to the very end. I think tossing AN NPC into an encounter won't bork things at all, it just may not be that interesting compared to making an elite monster with the same class template. I do think they've pretty much abandoned the vanilla NPC rules. Why else wouldn't there be NPC class templates for PHB2 classes? I doubt they forgot about it. I think once they introduced CCs they just decided there were more options than were really needed and there wasn't a clear need for straight NPCs. They're viable but apparently WotC and a lot of players feel like their both redundant and kind of confuse the issue of how to build antagonists.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5032610, member: 82106"] I'm not saying NPCs are a "complete failure", but just that I think if you use the monster based route you end up with consistently better results. Remember, monster design is pretty loose in terms of what you can do with powers too. In fact the only real "rules" on monster powers are the recommended damage expressions and the to-hit number. They say nothing about how many powers or how they should mechanically work. Monsters do have generally more hit points than NPCs. Standard monsters have slightly more, roughly 10-15 points depending on monster roll and PC class. A level 1 NPC fighter would have 20 hit points, a level 1 Soldier monster has 29. Elite or solo monsters have MUCH more and that really is the key, the significant monsters have a lot of hit points. PCs can probably knock down a regular monster in a round or two, but an Elite will almost always stick around to the very end. I think tossing AN NPC into an encounter won't bork things at all, it just may not be that interesting compared to making an elite monster with the same class template. I do think they've pretty much abandoned the vanilla NPC rules. Why else wouldn't there be NPC class templates for PHB2 classes? I doubt they forgot about it. I think once they introduced CCs they just decided there were more options than were really needed and there wasn't a clear need for straight NPCs. They're viable but apparently WotC and a lot of players feel like their both redundant and kind of confuse the issue of how to build antagonists. [/QUOTE]

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