My Brainfart

[mrtomsmith]

Yeah, I would say go one of two ways in a situation like that:

1. He's a friggin' peasant. The PCs can wipe the floor with him. Combat is entirely role-played, maybe with a single d20 roll just to see if something odd happens.

2. He's a tough peasant, so grab a similar monster from the MM and restyle his attacks to fit. Any humanoid would probably do. I'm finding it very useful to have a ballpark sense of all creatures around my party's level in case I want to sub something in.

 

[Terwox]

First off, your style sounds pretty grand. I would like to think I do something similar, just without physical notes... and I can't say I write anything close to "berserks for cheeses" on the fly. Ok, maybe sometimes.

Regardless, do you want a minion, or level 1 encounter? I can't see you using many commoners as anything above a level 6 encounter.

So just use the human rabble, bandit, and guard setups from the Human entry in the MM. If you want a 1st level guard, lower the guy by two levels. (-2 to defenses and attack, -1 to damage. Done.)

I'm confused why this is an issue for you -- in absolute seriousness, how many times did you ever look up the rules in 3E for a human commoner? How many times did you have the commoner crafting rules actually affect how long it took to make something? As a narrative style DM, I don't believe you that you didn't hand wave it.

If you want rules for how his love of cheese affects his combat ability... no edition of D&D ever did that for you!!

 

[Henry]

My Notes For Bill the Blacksmith (who loves cheese) for D&D 3.5.
Bill is the Blacksmith of Podunk. He's an Commoner 1 (DMG PG XX; hp 3), all 10's for stats, his max skill bonus is +4, and he has maxxed out Blacksmithery, and Knowledge (fine cheeses). His weapon is his smith's hammer, which takes a -2 to hit because it's not a real weapon.

Bill the Blacksmith: Level 1, Minion (so he's killed with one swipe, the word "minion" means "I don't want to mess with his laughable combat prowess), AC, Reflex, and Will are all 11+level, or 12 (from page 184 of the DMG, because I just eyeballed him as a brute, and because minions seem to have 1 defense point less than non-minions), and his hammer does 3 damage; if a PC grabs that hammer, it's an improvised weapon as noted before than does 1d4. He has a +5 skill in all the skills that matter to a blacksmith, so none, really (maybe diplomacy, but even that's a stretch); for all other skills, he has a +0. He's just as ready as he would be if you statted him as a first level commoner for 3E, PLUS you don't have to roll a single die to make him up, nor figure out what his equivalent skill would be if he actually had skill points, feats, skill synergies, etc.

As for sword smithing times, I have to agree with Mourn: the crafting rules in 3E were off in a big way, and I'm not sure there's a benefit to having them in most cases. I'm sure there are groups that enjoy just crafting items just like there are some people who used to enjoy sitting in town in Everquest and doing NOTHING but crafting items, but it's not something that is going to have a large appeal over handwaving craft times.

I've done this very thing above with almost all my NPCs since around 2003 or so, and it's worked very well.

Bigger example:

Warlord Krang is the So-called Lord of Podunk; he collects taxes that are a little stifling, but not too punishing. He's a horse's rear end, but he is rightful authority in the area, and he does provide protection to Bill and family against the Orcs and whatnot.

Let's say the PCs are level 5 or so, so let's say Krang is Level 8 (tough against orcs and kobolds, but a good troll or giant would stomp him flat). He's a soldier (leader) type, and he has 84 hit points (8 x 8 + 12 CON on the fly +8 more), +2 init bonus, AC 24 (level +16) in his shiny plate mail, Ref, Fort, Will 20 (level +12), and he has +9 in Diplomacy, History, Bluff, and Intimidate (because those sound like good Thug Baron Skills), and a +4 to everything else untrained. Then, we give him 1 warlord at-will, 1 warlord encounter, and 1 warlord daily to spice him up a bit if he gets into combat. I could give him the whole warlord template, or EVEN make him a full-fledged warlord using the rules on page 187, but chances are whether I do or not, he's going to be toast by the PCs anyway if he gets in a fight with them, or with a Troll, so I don't bother. Besides, the most important part of the whole "NPC template" business is the one at-will/encounter/daily thing.

He's done, and It took me 4 minutes to look him up, because I had to check the table of contents to find the page because I'm unfamiliar with the rules. He's ready for anything the PCs will do with him, to him, or for him.

 

[I'm A Banana]

How long do you need him to take?

I don't know. I need the rules or pre-prep to tell me how long he should take, so that I don't have to decide this when I'm worried about how we're going to make it to the Black Dragon by the end of the night when we're barely halfway there and Fargas is being a bit of a spotlight-hog. I want that decision to be made for me already so I don't have to waste brain-space pondering it. And I don't really want to spend time having to develop the rules on the fly or doing extensive pre-prep for something that, lets' face it, I would have no idea would be coming up.

If the game just tells me how long it takes without putting the ball back in my court, I can worry about more important things, and nudge it if I have to.

The DMG can handle this. Check out the Allies as Extra Characters sidebar (page 115 or 116 I think). It tells you how to incorporate an NPC into your group as an ally, and how he balances. Once you come up with his combat stats, you should be able to determine that pretty quickly.

All I'm seeing is that encounters should take the ally into account. But how much oomph does a 1st level minion add when he's tagging along with a 4th level party? How about a 24th level party? And if I make him a full creature so that he can stand a bit longer, does that add more oomph? And what of the Solo Dragon that they've somehow managed to convince to help them wage war on their eneies with, how many more monsters should I add in the encounter to counteract THAT guy?

It's good advice, but its incomplete, and it doesn't address the scenarios I need it to.

I dunno, was it? Do you want someone to be able to pick up the leather apron and use it as leather armor? Did he maybe serve in the military at some point and gain some training to explain his defensive capabilities?

In the heat of the moment, I don't know if I want someone to be able to pick up the apron and use it as armor. I just know 1st-level commoners don't usually have armor, and if the PC rolls low and misses, they're going to want to know how this Blacksmith from podunk can dodge their superior ninja skills even though they hit an AC of 11, even WITH the low roll.

What I WANT, is for them to get to the black dragon, deal with it, and collect their treasure and XP, and to have fun getting there. If Fargas wants to mess with the townsfolk, I'm game, but I don't want to have to analyze how his failed attempt to sleep with some blacksmith's wife is going to later affect the treasure level of this black dragon. I have bigger fish to fry, so I want to already have these little fish fried up so all I have to do is serve them to keep the customers happy while I'm working on the main course. So I'm looking for a way to quickly automate the process of deciding "do I want?" I don't care. I'm not very demanding. Tell me what would make sense to most people without me having to do any work, and just let me get on with it without raining on my parade or making me stop the game for 15 minutes.

It's kind of an essential component of me running a game.

Now you're just sounding like you want someone else to do all your prep work for you.

Yes, that's exactly it. If I have to do prep work, I'm unhappy. Any good ways to automate the prep work I'd have to do for 4e so that I can have more fun playing it?

Okay, I know how to help you. Pretty much everything you're worried about would be solved if you read the PHB and the DMG front to back. Designing Bill will be a snap (you can pick another 1st-level humanoid and file off the serial numbers, swap an ability around, and presto), you've got all the answers for "what if a player picks up something not meant to be used as a weapon" with Improvised Weapons, you've got stats for human guards in the MM if they murder Bill.

Maybe I'm missing it. I'm not seeing where the PHB and the DMG allow me to differentiate how much Bill knows about cheeses from how much he knows about blacksmithing to how much he knows about high elven glamour? Or where it would make sense for him to have a 1st level kobold skirmisher's mob attack?

Because I don't want to have to make that stuff up just based on how I feel, and I have no way of knowing Bill even exists before right after Fargas starts hitting on his wife.

I need....something that will scale well to different silos. Or a way to scale something else into different silos in a way that can cover my bases adequately enough for me to improv around.

So you're me. Your five players walk into town looking for horses after theirs got eaten up. Fargas surprises you by cruising for chicks. You have nothing prepared. How would you handle it?

I handle it by, ideally, having some way to scale up to the full complexity that I would need (if Bill or his wife or both of them become some sort of recurring characters, or even eventual PC's when Fargas's womanizer dies horribly of Fantasy Herpes just as he had always wanted to) that I didn't need to spend time generating before or during the game so that I don't have to make decisions by fiat.

Your example shows that you're clearly a prepared and skilled DM, especially with the prewritten character qualities for small children in town. What you should do is continue to create detailed characters, and only think about the "new monster design philosophy" when you're assigning numerical values to them. Here's what I would do with this family of 6:

"Prepared," he says.

No, those notes I whipped up while the rest of the party was doing more mundane things. I didn't have them before the session began. Just little phrases that can be used to describe the characters they're likely to meet.

A lot of the time, that's all my NPC design is, because I know when I write it down that they might have a conversation. Before I knew that, I didn't even know I needed NPC's! When I prepared the adventure, I just thought they were going to stop at the town, begrudgingly pay to have their horses replaced, maybe stay the night, and head out to my hobgoblin encounter in the morning. But Fargus got into it, and I had to adapt.

And I'm going to have problems adapting if the rules are only designed to work in one situation, and not in a more unusual situation (which, for me, crops up all the freakin' time).

Regardless, do you want a minion, or level 1 encounter?

I won't know until I need it and when I need it I need it right away. If the whole party gets involved in Fargas's escapade, I'll need a full level 1 encounter with everyone. If Fargas is just eating up time, I might not need anything more than a simple d20 roll and the ability to handle it off-screen. It will vary based on the moment, and I'm going to need the rules to respond to whatever the game needs at that moment.

Kind of my main issue with the intro to the Cast of Characters section telling me what to do with NPCs: it assumes I'll know what roles they're going to play and what ends they're going to serve before I introduce them. I have no idea. I need to know how to react to what they need, not pro-act and tell them what they need (or what I want).

 

[thatdarnedbob]

"Prepared," he says.

No, those notes I whipped up while the rest of the party was doing more mundane things. I didn't have them before the session began. Just little phrases that can be used to describe the characters they're likely to meet.

A lot of the time, that's all my NPC design is, because I know when I write it down that they might have a conversation. Before I knew that, I didn't even know I needed NPC's! When I prepared the adventure, I just thought they were going to stop at the town, begrudgingly pay to have their horses replaced, maybe stay the night, and head out to my hobgoblin encounter in the morning. But Fargus got into it, and I had to adapt.

And I'm going to have problems adapting if the rules are only designed to work in one situation, and not in a more unusual situation (which, for me, crops up all the freakin' time).

Hey, if you already do your NPC creation on the fly, you should have little problem adapting. Just practice creating some 4E stats for NPCs, and you'll do alright.

One thing to keep in mind is that the ruleset for 4E is not as granular regarding skills and knowledge as 3E was. Each knowledge's focus is broad enough to cover a huge variety of things; where 3E evidently invited you to make Cheese a knowledge skill subset, you'll have to accept that an NPC can have extensive knowledge of all sorts of cheeses without anything in the stat block to support it. You've most likely been giving NPCs this implicit knowledge for a long time so far; I doubt any of your NPCs needed ranks in Knowledge: The Goblins Stole my Cattle in order to send PCs on a quest.

Also, if you need quick numbers on how well the PCs need to roll to do something, there's a nice chart in the DMG.

I really think practice and experience can solve all of your current problems.

 

[gonesailing]

Mmm...you're focusing a bit too much on the specifics. I need help running the blacksmith like a game element, rather than as a narrative element. Ditto with the monsters. The actual scenario at the table goes something like this.


It boils down to: I don't know how this black dragon, or this blacksmith, or this treant, or this goblin, or this sword, or this horseshoe, or this spear, or this troll....I don't know how they are going to be used by my PC's, nor do I wish to really declare them only usable in methods XYZ, nor do I wish to try and figure out the thousands of different things my PC's could do when faced with it and then design it for every one of those (that's kind of what 3e did, after all).

I want my game elements to work as game elements (things you can play with) and as world elements (things that don't change properties because of metagame considerations), not as narrative elements (things that serve the purposes of a given plot), because my PC's will use them not as narrative elements, but as game and world elements.

I need something that will help shift the burden of 4e's "Design them for what they'll be used for!" into something that is "They have properties X, Y, Z, regardless of how you use them."

Maybe I need to go to Plan B and re-write the Monster Manual for that? Booooo....

Sorry, I was feeling super-sarcastic last night.
I really think you are overthinking it, though.
My advice would be to write up the villagers, NPCs, etc that you think your players might want to fight as tough-ish monsters for them. It is pretty easy to remove a level or minionize them if you need to. This should give you all the combat information you need, unless some of their quirks give ideas for special powers.
Leave everything else to your notes, because they are roleplay elements. Give them ranks in Knowledge(Whatever you want) to give you a gauge of how much they know about (whatever you want). This way you can judge how much Bill knows about cheese from Bob the Chef (Say Bill has 5 and Bob 4). Just don't expect that information to have any other impact on the larger world, because it is internal to the NPC and may or may not ever come in to play and has no meaning to the Mechanics in 4e.
For all the other fiddly stuff you mention (item creation times, etc, etc) use whatever system you want. I think you can even use 3rd edition, because that information has no meaning to mechanics of 4e. So eyeball it, look it up on the internet or however it works for you.
Fourth edition has rules for Combat Encounters and Non-Combat Encounters (Skill Checks, Challenges, etc.) Stuff that happens outside of that is for you to decide. That's why the Game NEEDS a DM!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Knowledge on Cheese is History (Int)
Knowledge on Blacksmithig is Arcana (Int) (and also History)

(Why the latter? Because I want black smiths to be able to create magical weapons. Being trained in Arcana helps using such rituals.

Improptu Crafting Rules:
[sblock]
Work similar to a skill challenge, but don't grant XP, just the item you wanted.
Failure means the skill challenge resets. Each check represents 4 hours of work.
Start with Raw Materials worth 1/5 the items value.
Level depends on price. (Level 1: 1 gp or less; Level 2: 10 gp or less; Level 3: 20 gp or less; Level 4: 35 gp or less, Level 5: 50 gp or less; Level 6: 75 gp or less, Level 7: 100 gp or less; Level 8: anything above 100 gp)
Complexity depends on type of product to be created:
Tool or Clothes: Complexity 1
Simple Weapon: Complexity 2
Military Weapon: Complexity 3
Superior Weapon: Complexity 4
Leather Armor: Complexity 1
Hide Armor: Complexity 2
Scale Armor: Complexity 3
Chain Armor: Complexity 4
Plate Armor: Complexity 5
Skills:
Primary: Athletics, Acrobatics, Endurance, Arcana, History.
Secondary Skills: Perception, Streetwise, Religion
[/sblock]

 

[EricNoah]

Maybe what you need is a "generic monster manual" - by which I mean a bunch of stats for different level monster types (generic types like "big humanoid brute," "beastial monster", "oozy monster", "dragonish monster," "insectile monster", "animal," "corporeal undead," "incorporeal undead", etc.), and then several lists of powers -- broken in to categories. Defensive, offensive melee, offensive ranged, mobility, utility, etc. Maybe break those into levels as well. And then when the time comes, you grab a set of stats, a couple of powers of the appropriate level, and smoosh them together.

I've been thinking such a product would be pretty sweet for either 3.x or 4E.

 

[xechnao]

Maybe what you need is a "generic monster manual" - by which I mean a bunch of stats for different level monster types (generic types like "big humanoid brute," "beastial monster", "oozy monster", "dragonish monster," "insectile monster", "animal," "corporeal undead," "incorporeal undead", etc.), and then several lists of powers -- broken in to categories. Defensive, offensive melee, offensive ranged, mobility, utility, etc. Maybe break those into levels as well. And then when the time comes, you grab a set of stats, a couple of powers of the appropriate level, and smoosh them together.

I've been thinking such a product would be pretty sweet for either 3.x or 4E.

Isn't Feng Shui made like this?

 

[jdrakeh]

All those descriptions have no rules meaning for me, I normally use rules only for combat and other special things that are defined.

I'm in the same boat.

For me, all of the stuff that KM is describing is system-independent. In most RPGs the kinds of things that KM describes are features of simple NPC/PC interaction, not quanitifable mechanics. D&D 3x could be an exception where some of these things are concerned.

To me, it sounds like the issue is that KM is flailing to make 4e work like 3x, rather than accepting the fact that 4e is its own game and that in 4e (like most other RPGs), things like monster personality aren't defined by a suite of very specific mechanical options.

I think there are two practical solutions to this problem: 1) Play D&D 3x. KM already knows how it works and is comfortable with it. 2) Play D&D 4e as written. KM will simply need to practice creating monsters indpendent of prescriptive rules until he gets the hang of it.