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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6234119" data-attributes="member: 4937">I care deeply about world demographics like this and just won't really get into a system that doesn't support it.   I don't spent a lot of time tailoring the world into zones of equal CR/EL that are suitable for PC's of a given level.  Instead, I try to create a world that organically makes sense even without PC's living in it, with the assumption that if ordinary people can survive in such a world then PC's - being extraordinary - should thrive and triumph (provided they aren't overly rash).Within such a demographic framework, I'm able to assign to any NPC approximate stats (ability scores, class, level) without ever having considered them before, and if I have something like an 'Expert Class' I can then derive as needed all their particular abilities.I don't really care mechanically much how we get there as long as the end result makes sense.  If your prefer a bunch of mini 'monster' stat blocks to a unified class, I'm ok with that provided your monster stat blocks make some sense.   First edition tended treat the world that way in its demographics, and it mostly worked fine to have '0th level men-at-arms', 'sages', bandits, berserkers, and merchants as monster entries, and so forth.   However, it also tended to create strange power curves that made maintaining armies economically and militarily questionable, questions about the viability of orcs as a species, and left society helpless versus the predations of many things with multiple hit dice - including the PCs.As for the complaint that NPC classes apply accumulation of BAB, saving throws, and hit points, 3e treated this as a feature rather than a bug.   However, if it really bothered you it's not intrinsic to the nature of classes that they do that.   You can either design into an NPC class that it has little or no meaningful combat progression, or you can make that an add on trait via the Feat system.   For example, in my game I have a handful of Traits that are really designed as much around NPC creation like 'non-combatant'.    It's quite easy to generate even 8th or 10th level NPC's that have no meaningful combat ability (CR 1 or less), and such NPC's of so exalted of level would be rare and extraordinary figures in my game.  The great mass of 2nd level experts out there that make up the ranks of clerks and scribes and fine craftsman are just simply not the fighting type.  On the other hand, the burly men of rougher trades - lumberjacks, stevedores, miners, sailors, teamsters, etc. - might well turn out to be rather fine improvised thugs should it come to a brawl.  A team of lumberjacks or a ship of able bodied sailors could easily give a thumping a low level party - they have to be able to as they live and work in 'the wild' as well and aren't unacquainted with its hazards.  This is the advantage of NPC classes - I don't have to stat out everything as a 'fighter' by default the way 1e did.   The lumberjack doesn't have be comfortable in mail in order to pick up an axe and lay heavy strokes on a foe.</blockquote>

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