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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue Orange" data-source="post: 8806542" data-attributes="member: 7025997">For a long, long time (4 editions of D&D), NPCs were assumed to be built using roughly the same rules as PCs. The first two editions had the concept of the '0-level' normal human, who had some small hit die and their own extra-lousy line on hit tables in older editions, but special NPCs got character levels. 3rd ed decided monsters had six stats and skill ranks just like PCs, so you could look up the Stealth bonus for that otyugh, and there were NPC classes like commoner, noble, and adept (a sort of hedge-cleric-mage) for the 'extras' in the story. 4th ed had stats for human rabble and lackeys (which were 2nd level, interestingly enough). So there's been the assumption that NPCs are 'a different sort of PC' for a long, long time.5e dispensed with that and just gave them statistics as necessary to the game. But it's a big change TBH.I suspect there's a shadow of a fear that admitting that PCs are a different 'type of person' than NPCs would seem somehow racist/fascist--'these people count, these people don't' (though of course the PC/NPC split isn't really, or at least not entirely, based on ancestry, with humans being NPCs and PCs and players often wanting to play 'monsters' to the point orcs are nearly a PC race at this point).  But that's just IMHO.</blockquote>