Monsters and Heroes

[Barastrondo]

It ruins the mood and feels unfair to say "Oh, they did that with skill and ability and magic and suchlike that you have no hope of ever acquiring, so sad, but hey, it's mysterious and awesome, amirite? Aren't you mystified? Don't you feel awed?"

You don't really have to say that, though. Not that I'm advocating keeping things out of the hands of players -- I think it's interesting when you can word out ways to mechanically represent their training with NPCs who are built differently. But at the same time, there's a vast gulf of difference between "they achieved that with things you have no hope of ever acquiring" and "they achieved that over fifteen years of training in a different style than you learned; how much time are you willing to invest?"

And because player characters are special, maybe they can pick up stuff in one-tenth the time it took someone else. Or they can learn a few tricks that turn out to look not unlike PC powers instead of the NPC abilities. Perhaps they're at 50-75% of the efficacy of the NPCs' powers, but if they're learning it in 10% of the time, that's an astoundingly good trade-off.

I guess that's a particularly modernist, American, idealistic take on the nature of (most) heroes in D&D, and it doesn't have to be that way (sorcerers are explicitly an exception to that rule, forex, and arguably divine characters are more chosen than trained), but the rules and fluff imply and reinforce that idea frequently. And even when they don't, it can be a metagame thing: player X sees ability Y and wants to use it. Why not enable that fun? Make it balanced, and give it to 'em.

You see it a lot in shonen manga/anime works, too. NPC X worked for fifty years to invent and master this one technique, and the PC learns it in three days because he just wants it that bad. It's kind of silly, but at the same time it suits the dramatic laws of protagonism, just like Elizabeth Swan somehow manages to become a remarkable swordswoman over the course of a couple of Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

So if the only difference between a 30th level Fighter and a stableboy is how many goblins you've killed, the difference between a 29th level Fighter PC and a 29th level NPC fighter should be even smaller, and, presumably, their abilities and statistics should be close-to similar (though I doubt anyone will do a detailed accounting of the exact numbers, they WILL notice big deviations from the norm).

That's a very metagame way of looking at it, though. The players are able to tell "oh hey, we're the same level," but if the 29th level NPC fighter is a military man 20 years older than the PC, and the PC is a former pit-fighter who's honed his abilities fighting weird monsters in the Underdark, in-character it's entirely reasonable that the characters might assume they have very different fighting styles due to entire lifetimes spent in different fashion. The presumption that their abilities and statistics should be similar requires knowledge of how experience points, ability scores, classes, levels, hit points and attack bonuses work: all stuff that players know about, but none of which is really visible in-world unless you choose to rationalize a reason why.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Or they can learn a few tricks that turn out to look not unlike PC powers instead of the NPC abilities. Perhaps they're at 50-75% of the efficacy of the NPCs' powers, but if they're learning it in 10% of the time, that's an astoundingly good trade-off.

It's a good rationale for a once-in-a-while thing, but it won't hold up if it's a fairly regular occurance (say, your game focuses on battles with villainous humans).

You see it a lot in shonen manga/anime works, too. NPC X worked for fifty years to invent and master this one technique, and the PC learns it in three days because he just wants it that bad. It's kind of silly, but at the same time it suits the dramatic laws of protagonism, just like Elizabeth Swan somehow manages to become a remarkable swordswoman over the course of a couple of Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

I'm okay with that. The upthrust is that denying players access to the material is not as fun as allowing them to learn some version of it, and that's the place where NPC rules and PC rules should overlap.

That's a very metagame way of looking at it, though. The players are able to tell "oh hey, we're the same level," but if the 29th level NPC fighter is a military man 20 years older than the PC, and the PC is a former pit-fighter who's honed his abilities fighting weird monsters in the Underdark, in-character it's entirely reasonable that the characters might assume they have very different fighting styles due to entire lifetimes spent in different fashion. The presumption that their abilities and statistics should be similar requires knowledge of how experience points, ability scores, classes, levels, hit points and attack bonuses work: all stuff that players know about, but none of which is really visible in-world unless you choose to rationalize a reason why.

The way I've generally played it is that levels do represent some sort of abstract "skill" or "power," or at least destructive potential. That's how you know the kobold you fight at level 1 is different than the red dragon you slay at level 30. One of them has the ability to terrorize a few people, the other can terrorize a countryside.

It's not exactly metagaming, since it's an in-world-thing, but it is a bit of simulation, which I understand is Badwrongfun in 4e.

 

[Barastrondo]

It's a good rationale for a once-in-a-while thing, but it won't hold up if it's a fairly regular occurance (say, your game focuses on battles with villainous humans).

I think that largely depends on the players. If they're used to things like sword schools as presented in martial arts novels, movies, or the like, it may make more sense that a PC can't learn certain tricks super-easily. Or at least so I've discovered. It probably also depends on the trick as well.

I'm okay with that. The upthrust is that denying players access to the material is not as fun as allowing them to learn some version of it, and that's the place where NPC rules and PC rules should overlap.

And it's easy enough to build NPCs that use variants of PC powers, which really makes it hold together. A PC's encounter power works okay as a monster power many times. That's probably what I'd do if I had players who thought more along those lines.

The way I've generally played it is that levels do represent some sort of abstract "skill" or "power," or at least destructive potential. That's how you know the kobold you fight at level 1 is different than the red dragon you slay at level 30. One of them has the ability to terrorize a few people, the other can terrorize a countryside.

Sure. But to the characters' eyes, I generally feel that they quantify things as fairly less abstract: "this guy is one of the three champions of the Goetic Wars" is more the perception than "this guy is about as tough as that one red dragon we know about."

It's not exactly metagaming, since it's an in-world-thing, but it is a bit of simulation, which I understand is Badwrongfun in 4e.

Well, the thing about 4e is that it seems to be more about emulation. One of my favorite powers that an NPC has is an agent from Eberron that has an encounter power that puts the PC at a disadvantage, called "Knowledge Is Power." That power emulates the Dramatic Revelation: it allows an NPC to drop some sudden bit of information on a PC that shocks and surprises, anything from "Fool! The Baron of Redcrest is your true father!" to "You should not defy the Empire -- or did you think we didn't know about your beloved Tamelie?" It models a situation rather than a power, even though it uses power mechanics to resolve the application smoothly. So if a player wanted to learn to do that trick, presumably they'd go and do the research an intelligence agency would on their target, uncover some secret, and then drop it dramatically in combat. The power wouldn't appear on their character sheet, but it would emulate what the agent is doing.

I think there's one school of thought where mechanics are meant to simulate the laws of physics of the universe, and another where they're meant to model specific interactions. For instance, racial powers may represent the former, whereas hit points represent the latter: they don't model a physical fact like the tensile strength and density of a character's body, but they do represent the specific interaction of "what happens when someone tries to kill him?" 4e is really all about the latter: the mechanics more frequently focus on modeling on interactions, not defining physical traits.

 

[pemerton]

It ruins the mood and feels unfair to say "Oh, they did that with skill and ability and magic and suchlike that you have no hope of ever acquiring, so sad, but hey, it's mysterious and awesome, amirite? Aren't you mystified? Don't you feel awed?"

Can't' it be resolved at the metagame level? Some NPCs are emperors of the universe, who have flunkies that solve all their problems. But no PC can be emperor of the universe with an unlimited supply of flunkies. Likewise, some NPCs have the capability to do stuff that no PC - for game balance or flow of play reasons - can be permitted to do.

I think there's one school of thought where mechanics are meant to simulate the laws of physics of the universe, and another where they're meant to model specific interactions. For instance, racial powers may represent the former, whereas hit points represent the latter: they don't model a physical fact like the tensile strength and density of a character's body, but they do represent the specific interaction of "what happens when someone tries to kill him?" 4e is really all about the latter: the mechanics more frequently focus on modeling on interactions, not defining physical traits.

This also.

 

[Aegeri]

It ain't a demand. It's an in-character choice to advance along a particular path. The Wizard sees the Necromancer in action, and decides to pursue the dark arts (but use them for good).

Except that it takes years - many many years - of bargaining with the right creatures and selling a piece of your soul each time. It is not something one can learn overnight and powers already exist with such "flavor" in 4E. The Wizard can take those from the norm, but he can never master what took an NPC necromancer much of their (undead perhaps) life in a short period.

If you're letting PCs hang around for years so this becomes an issue I can see.

The Fighter faces off against a gladiator in the sand-pits, and then has the gladiator teach him some nifty tricks.

There are already gladiator based feats, a theme and a build for fighter.

The Cleric witnesses a strange miracle from a rival of his gods' and starts asking for the same.

Gods are hard to fathom at the best of time so if he does anything that is completely up to the DMs whim. It could even be a core part of the story why one God may interact while another cannot.

The Thief sees a rogue from another guild swiping the treasure out from under her, and says "I want to do that!"

Then the PC just needs to get better at it.

None of these don't have good explanations for why the PCs couldn't do them easily.

It ruins the mood and feels unfair to say "Oh, they did that with skill and ability and magic and suchlike that you have no hope of ever acquiring, so sad, but hey, it's mysterious and awesome, amirite? Aren't you mystified? Don't you feel awed?"

I've honestly never had this problem once in 4E.

3rd edition? Consistently. 4E? Never.

This happens because, presumably, all mortals are made more-or-less equal.

I am never going to accept this premise. If your argument relies on it, every single thing is going to collapse like a house of cards because this statement isn't even true in real life. In a world of fantasy where PCs and other creatures routinely do things that are beyond human in our world, it's going to be even MORE incorrect.

Any given human has the ability to go out and do something that any other human has the ability to go out and do

Absolutely 100% wrong. On every single level. For one:

1) Some of those things took an immense amount of time to learn, either due to requiring rare materials or certain study.

2) In D&D, some of those things that NPCs sacrificed or plain did things PCs wouldn't be willing to do (either practically or because it's just too horrible).

But okay, let's make a bet on avatars. You go out and in 5 minutes learn to swim and then win a gold medal at the next olympic games. Prove me wrong and make your point.

Oh wait, you need years of training, natural ability and incredible physical fitness to do that? You mean you can't just go out and in 5 minutes be a completely competitive olympic swimmer? Despite everyone on our very "mortal" plane being human? Not to mention that even when you do, there are people who are exceptionally good at it who will just be better. Regardless of training for a long time, you're never going to catch up to what they could do. This is also a vice-versa scenario: If you are the best sometimes others cannot catch up to you. Regardless of how long they train or similar.

If what you were saying is true, we'd have a race with eight people and all of them end the race with a photo finish. How often can you say this ever happens in sport? How often do the All-Blacks (NZ Rugby Team) lose to Scotland? There are clear peaks in ability and it is clear despite everyone being human, that some people are just more able than others. I refuse to believe your argument that in a fantasy world where we have a clear marker of exceptional ability: Being a player character in the first place shows that not everyone is equally able to learn anything anyone else can do.

If you read your PHB again, you'll see that Player Characters are exceptional. There are few like them. In the same manner, some NPCs can have abilities that PCs cannot have because they too are exceptions. 4E is literally an exception based system when it comes to powers. Sometimes NPCs are going to do things you cannot do: But there are lots of things PCs can do that NPCs are never going to be able to do either.

The major difference between a dirt farmer and a 30th level Wizard isn't fate or birth order or blood or genetics or radiation exposure or wealth or gender or hair color, but choices and training.

What's the difference between a peasant and a sorcerer - by fluff? I'll tell you one core thing: One person was born a certain way.

I guess that's a particularly modernist, American, idealistic take on the nature of (most) heroes in D&D

It's not even true in real life and it's definitely not true in fantasy. Many heroes are born with a specific destiny, or more physically/mentally gifted than others or just born with magical power like a sorcerer is.

So if the only difference between a 30th level Fighter and a stableboy is how many goblins you've killed, the difference between a 29th level Fighter PC and a 29th level NPC fighter should be even smaller, and, presumably, their abilities and statistics should be close-to similar (though I doubt anyone will do a detailed accounting of the exact numbers, they WILL notice big deviations from the norm).

A level 29 fighter is absolutely nowhere in the same ballpark of power as a 29th level PC. A 29th level PC fighter would demolish the level 29 fighter. It wouldn't be a contest, it would be a one sided demolition. If the 29th level fighter was a solo, he'd be closer to the PC in power than an ordinary level 29 fighter - but still wouldn't be (equivalently power wise) as powerful as the PC.

PCs are absolutely exceptional, but NPCs can do many things they can't for numerous excellent reasons (too many to actually list). One core difference in our possible approaches is that my NPCs have frequently learned to do things because:

1) They were just born that way (Magical marks or similar, maybe even made that way by someone else). Often like a sorcerer or for whatever other reason.

2) They've had years of study in what they do - learning their specific art is not something you can pick up within an adventure. An NPC who has spent 20 years of their life on something - to be thwarted by the PCs of course - is not likely to have relevant powers to a PC. A PC does not have the luxury of sitting down for 20 years and learning how to do what the NPC did.

3) Something else entirely beyond the NPCs ordinary capabilities lets them do that (such as a magical object given to them by a daemonic patron, which also horrifically sacrifices said NPC brutally when they are defeated to ensure the secret does not get out).

And many many many other reasons. Basically the PC is trying to ask me "Why can't I be an olympic swimmer in five minutes". The answer is pretty obvious why that is the case.

At the same time given nobody has ever asked me this and everyone is quite happy with the concept that NPCs are not PCs in this edition, it has never come up. The only things I've had to explain were enemies ritual magic, which I pointed out took them roughly 120,000 years to finally put into place*. I then noted to the PCs they just ruined a ritual they had one shot at after 120,000 years and they were immensely satisfied with that (that's a pretty significant accomplishment). The only other issue I had was with healing NPCs: They aren't heroes. They can't take anywhere near the abuse of heroes. Having to explain why X guy is going to die despite your magical attentions can be quite hard. Ironically this is the opposite to any of your points, this is more "Why doesn't this guy function like we do?".

The answer to that is simple: You're heroes and ordinary people just aren't like you.

*Immortals are really patient - they live forever after all.