Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6234284" data-attributes="member: 58197">So you have a set of rules that tells you how to build an NPC. And then you have another set of rules that tells you how to override the first set of rules when they yield inappropriate results. This by you is simple?Fair? What do you mean by &quot;fair?&quot; The NPC is not a party member and does not have to be balanced against the PCs. The NPC's stats are whatever you feel it's appropriate for them to be. You can go through a lot of rigmarole to justify those stats, but then you invent stuff like &quot;noncombatant&quot; and &quot;Fairy God Mother's Gift&quot; when the numbers don't come out the way you want them, so why bother?The thing is that as DMs, we generally know what we want by way of output. We know what we want the NPC's capabilities to be. But using 3E's approach requires a lot of poking at multiple inputs to get the output to come out right, and in the end we may still end up applying random made-up modifiers when we can't get the values where we want them. It would be much simpler just to say &quot;I want an NPC who is X good at combat and Y good at weaving.&quot; And the system gives you a set of combat values suitable for X, and a set of skill modifiers suitable for Y. Then you can fill in the ability scores and other details with whatever seems appropriate.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 6234284, member: 58197"] So you have a set of rules that tells you how to build an NPC. And then you have another set of rules that tells you how to override the first set of rules when they yield inappropriate results. This by you is simple? Fair? What do you mean by "fair?" The NPC is not a party member and does not have to be balanced against the PCs. The NPC's stats are whatever you feel it's appropriate for them to be. You can go through a lot of rigmarole to justify those stats, but then you invent stuff like "noncombatant" and "Fairy God Mother's Gift" when the numbers don't come out the way you want them, so why bother? The thing is that as DMs, we generally know what we want by way of output. We know what we want the NPC's capabilities to be. But using 3E's approach requires a lot of poking at multiple inputs to get the output to come out right, and in the end we may still end up applying random made-up modifiers when we can't get the values where we want them. It would be much simpler just to say "I want an NPC who is X good at combat and Y good at weaving." And the system gives you a set of combat values suitable for X, and a set of skill modifiers suitable for Y. Then you can fill in the ability scores and other details with whatever seems appropriate. [/QUOTE]

Verification