NPC Classes?

[hong]

Several reasons:
a)Craft/Profession type skills can be taken by players, and it's often important to know how well they did.

Wait, people actually take Craft/Profession?

 

[moritheil]

I've been around these boards for a while (9 years, help me) and I'm not even sure what you mean by this. I doubt the OP (who has just posted for the first time) understands either.

If you're suggesting that the removal of NPC classes makes 4E more like a computer game, I'd rephrase that as "the designers of 4E have elected to give you the rules you need, and to not burden you with rules for stuff that just doesn't need rules." It's up the DM how good someone is at masonry, and forcing the DM to stat out 7 levels of Expert or Commoner just to make a simple NPC Mason makes the game a lot less fun for the DM.

Well, the point is that they are using metagame mechanics - mechanics that are aware that this is a game, as opposed to mechanics designed to simulate a world that just happens to be a game.

 

[Campbell]

Well, the point is that they are using metagame mechanics - mechanics that are aware that this is a game, as opposed to mechanics designed to simulate a world that just happens to be a game.

Who the hell do those designers think they are? Designing a game as if it were a game and not a world simulation device ? What's next?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm a fan of NPC classes, in concept and in principle. It's good to have a 'sliding scale' for the skill of people who don't kick the ass of cavern-dwellers for a living, but what it doesn't need to do is be very complicated.

So what SWSE did with the 'nonheroic' class would work OK.

It also wouldn't be awful to see them limited to level 5 (any more than that, and you need to multiclass into a hero class), or increase in skill without increasing in hp/bab/etc. (only heroes get +1/2 level to these things), or something along those lines. It'd be nice to create high-level 'sages' and the like with a mechanical basis without having to have the '20th-level commoner' syndrome that 3e had.

I'm really hoping 4e gives us some very solid nonheroic rules. If it doesn't...it's another big hole for me that makes 4e a little bit swiss cheese.

 

[Lizard]

Wait, people actually take Craft/Profession?

People do.

 

[moritheil]

Who the hell do those designers think they are? Designing a game as if it were a game and not a world simulation device ? What's next?

Heh. It comes down to what you think is necessary for verisimilitude. I'm guessing you didn't catch the earlier discussions wherein people objected to it.

If I make a BBEG, would you prefer that I did it "honestly" by using classes and gear and taking the time to add things up, or if I "cheated" by taking a dragon of that CR and redescribing it as the BBEG with a nasty greatsword instead of a bite attack, would that be OK? Some people would object; some wouldn't care.

 

[Campbell]

Heh. It comes down to what you think is necessary for verisimilitude. I'm guessing you didn't catch the earlier discussions wherein people objected to it.

I caught those discussions fiercely. I'm still trying to recover. I get that some people object to game rules not functioning as world simulation devices, whereas I'm ecstatic about it. Settings should have a measure of believability, but the game rules need not represent the entirety of the the game's setting.

If I make a BBEG, would you prefer that I did it "honestly" by using classes and gear and taking the time to add things up, or if I "cheated" by taking a dragon of that CR and redescribing it as the BBEG with a nasty greatsword instead of a bite attack, would that be OK? Some people would object; some wouldn't care.

Which method gives the best results in the least time? That's the method I would use.

 

[xechnao]

Professionals should have experience based on their campaign importance since they will be gaining expertise based on their experimentation (professionalism is an investment).

For example you can only expect to find a true master blacksmith to a place connected to a mine and to an economy that expects him to produce goods based on his art.

So instead of looking at NPC levels, simulationist DMs should be looking at campaign demographics.

If you want to know their HPs and BAB give them race levels. I expect we will get something on this in some book.

 

[Gort]

I was never much of a fan of NPC classes. If they're going to be in a fight, I found it more satisfying to make the NPC with a PC class. (of course, most of the time these NPCs were rubbish unless you wanted to give them massive amounts of treasure, which would of course immediately be looted by the party)

If they're NOT going to be in a fight, who cares about the stats? I handwave it. Of course, it sounds like 4E will be going this way. There will be lots of premade monsters and suggested stats for NPCs to fill a certain niche, but if you want to make a wheelchair-bound, one-hitpoint Knower of All Things Arcane, you just make up the bits you want.

 

[The Little Raven]

If I make a BBEG, would you prefer that I did it "honestly" by using classes and gear and taking the time to add things up, or if I "cheated" by taking a dragon of that CR and redescribing it as the BBEG with a nasty greatsword instead of a bite attack, would that be OK? Some people would object; some wouldn't care.

That's not cheating. Cheating is rolling a 7 and pretending you rolled a 20.

This is called "using the tools you've been given to run the game you want." Any player that complains you filed off the serial numbers from one monster and used it as another deserves to be slapped in the face and sent to time-out, because they just need to play the game and let the DM do his job the way he sees fit.