Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8207347" data-attributes="member: 29398">My take is to treat the NPCs just like PCs - if one gets in the line of fire, that's the one who's going down.  And if it really is random who gets attacked (e.g. a mindless zombie surrounded by the party) I'll roll to see who's the target.Ideally, the mortality rate of adventuring NPCs in the party should be about the same as that of PCs, assuming vaguely equal level.  Henches and hirelings tend to die off more often if they get into combat, simply due to being lower level and (often) having less hit points.To avoid this I'll sometimes have a party NPC come up with a wrong or even dangerously wrong idea, just like a PC might.  If the players/PCs blindly follow its suggestion assuming I'm trying to guide them they learn pretty quick that such ain't always the case. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Again, if the PCs are turning to the NPC for hints don't always* give 'em the right hints. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />* - tempered of course by the abilities and-or situation of the NPC in question e.g. if an NPC is the party's only Ranger it only makes sense the party are now and then going to ask it to do some tracking, just like they would a PC Ranger.  Ditto if the PCs are all foreigners and the NPC is local; here it makes sense both that the PCs would ask it for info and that the info it has will be reasonably true.</blockquote>

Verification