D&D 5E (2024) NPCs, and the poverty of the core books

[SkidAce]

I agree for the most part. Where it breaks down for me is the new spellcaster design. Not giving them spell slots is one thing, but the overly versatile Arcane Blasts that they all get, that are both melee and ranged attacks, which they can fire off multiple times in a round … sure it gives them damage parity with PCs but it leaves the players wondering why they can’t do that too.

This bugs me so much.

Cool for monsters or unique things. Not cool for the NPC "wizards" of the world. (sorcerers, etc.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The vast majority of the actual first party books (core and otherwise) functionally don't exist for most players (and DMs) given how few people actually read them, so it's really hard to be sympathetic here.

How does that help?

That just means the PHB, DMG, and MM need to be even better, because now those are functionally the only books that exist at all!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't understand this complaint with regards to the subject at hand. We are specifically talking about a GM facing tool.

That....was literally my point.

What GM hears "Hey, I have this third-party product which makes better monsters" and thinks "Golly, that sounds swell! We'll start using that right away."

The last time I saw a GM accept player-provided 3PP, 4th edition hadn't been released yet. And believe me, I've tried. Repeatedly. It has never, ever worked. I have never gotten anything but refusals, even when GMs have explicitly said that some piece of homebrew or 3PP looks well-made and reasonable for use. This is literal years of seeking out games in at least five different places (Roll20, here, Myth-Weavers, RPG.net, GitP).

I disagree. I've had players hand me player-facing 3pp stuff, and ended up using it. But in any case my compilation document is pretty exhaustive, takes material from dozens of 3pp sources, and covers just about everything I could think that I wanted in 5e, so there's a lot of choice there.

Then you are literally the first 5e GM--and the first GM in nearly 20 years in any system--to do that that I have been aware of.

Honestly, I think you just seem to have had a largely miserable experience in the hobby, and that's awful, but it doesn't mean that it's like that for everyone.

I can only go off of the experience I have. I cannot go off of an experience I haven't. Unless and until I actually experience something different, how can I possibly account for all the theoretical experiences I could have had? How could I even hope to potentially pick out one that even resembled the true state of affairs?

The only evidence I have is what I've experienced.

 

[pukunui]

This bugs me so much.

Cool for monsters or unique things. Not cool for the NPC "wizards" of the world. (sorcerers, etc.)

I mean, I’m OK with it if it’s like Vecna or Tasha or even just unnamed Archmage A, but when even a so-called Apprentice Mage gets a cantrip that PCs can’t get? No thanks.

And not only that but regular mages get multiple attacks with their super versatile cantrip as well as extra damage? No PC cantrip gets that - you either get extra attacks (Eldritch Blast) or you get to do extra damage. Not both. Feels super unfair.

 

[Chaltab]

I'm honestly not sure what the answer is for 5E. Arcane Burst came about for the same reason that monster damage increased so much in the 2025 Monster Manual... because the old versions weren't hitting as hard as their CR would recommend, at least not without customizing their spells and running them super optimally. (And don't get me started on the '14 mage having only 40 HP at CR6).

Arcane Burst is clumsy but it may be necessary idiot-proofing.

 

[Distracted DM]

I'm honestly not sure what the answer is for 5E. Arcane Burst came about for the same reason that monster damage increased so much in the 2025 Monster Manual... because the old versions weren't hitting as hard as their CR would recommend, at least not without customizing their spells and running them super optimally. (And don't get me started on the '14 mage having only 40 HP at CR6).

Arcane Burst is clumsy but it may be necessary idiot-proofing.

It does seem, sometimes, that 5e NPCs can't play by the same rules if they want to compete with 5e PCs. I don't love stuff like Arcane Burst for NPC mages, but I can see why they'd make it a thing- and why I'd use it as a DM.

I always found 5e PCs punching way above their weight with 5e monsters... until I started running A5E monsters, with 5e PCs. I found my expectations were better met there, with monster power vs PC power (how I thought an ogre should be able to challenge a party of PCs for example). But then we fully moved over to A5E with PC classes, origins, etc., and I found the balance weighed too heavily in the way of the PCs again :'D
Now I need an AA5E monster book!

 

[kigmatzomat]

PCs are much more complicated than Monsters and it would be extremely time consuming to build out NPCs with a full blown PC class, including ability scores, feats, features, subclass features, spells etc. It would be on the order of an hour for each NPC.

Hard disagree. I ran 3e with its hojillion splat books from 1st-22nd level and I could whip up casters in less than an hour. A rogue was like 5 minutes work. The tier4 casters could stress that hour, but I could be a bit lax as they are likely only going to cast 6-8 spells in combat.

It was figuring out what they would've cast prior to combat that took a while, but that's part of the overall encounter design rather than NPC design. 400 goblin archers are no threat to an 18th level monk....unless npc goblin clerics makes 400 magic arrows as the monk is making grandiose proclamations about how they should return to their desolate mountains while they can. Then 400 goblins shoot, and 20 hit with nat20s. Add dex bonus and magic weapon bonus and that damage will get even a tier4 PCs attention.

 

[Chaltab]

Hard disagree. I ran 3e with its hojillion splat books from 1st-22nd level and I could whip up casters in less than an hour. A rogue was like 5 minutes work. The tier4 casters could stress that hour, but I could be a bit lax as they are likely only going to cast 6-8 spells in combat.

It was figuring out what they would've cast prior to combat that took a while, but that's part of the overall encounter design rather than NPC design. 400 goblin archers are no threat to an 18th level monk....unless npc goblin clerics makes 400 magic arrows as the monk is making grandiose proclamations about how they should return to their desolate mountains while they can. Then 400 goblins shoot, and 20 hit with nat20s. Add dex bonus and magic weapon bonus and that damage will get even a tier4 PCs attention.

...Okay but do you really want to go back to doing that? Because I would much rather spend my time playing the game and less time prepping it.

 

[kigmatzomat]

...Okay but do you really want to go back to doing that? Because I would much rather spend my time playing the game and less time prepping it.

I run shadowrun right now and HARD YES. I would love a template system for making NPCs instead of every one being utterly bespoke. Classes are frameworks and when you learn to use it as a framework, it makes less work.

Look, when making NPCs I follow 3 paths:
1) cool idea for a NPC who will drive stories. This NPC is a lynch pin to many sessions of gaming. It requires spending lots of time on that NPC, but all that time should have multizsession payoff.
2) NPC to fit a plot point. Head of thieves guild, Priest of an obscure god, whatever. The effort is proportional to the return of the plot. Will this NPC be present for one scene? Call him a level X rogue and use the exemplars in the 3E DMG. I used the same stats but described the npc differently. There's no game difference between an AC18 gargoyle rogue with natural armor or a high dex rogue.
3) NPC to fit an encounter tactical role. I want a lot of damage in single hits. I could go fighter or barbarian (again) but this time mix it up as a rogue or maybe a sniper-sorceror. I have an intent, I need to spend just enough effort on fleshing out the framework to trust the CR.

Then I look at what I made and do a second pass of encounter tuning, using synergies that happened by accident.

 

[Clint_L]

5e already leaned into a distinction between PC stat blocks and NPCs. The 2024 revision has deepened this divide; whereas giving monsters PC levels was before only discouraged, now it is not even contemplated. Essentially, now, every NPC is a monster, and the GM's guide helpfully refers you to the section on customizing monsters if you want to alter one of the NPC stat blocks. That's great, I can say this Veteran has an axe instead of a sword, and maybe I'll even change out one of the Mage's spells or turn its eldritch burst into Cold damage or something.

A notable weakness of the new rules, compared to prior editions, is that I can't simply whip up a Mage or Rogue equivalent for any given CR. Do you want an NPC Ranger? Good luck, there is no such thing at all. There's also not a single stat block that looks like it might be a Warlock. And as of the new DMG, there aren't even any guidelines to painfully reverse engineer new NPC types.

There are a ton of third party NPC books to fill this void, but since there aren't any guidelines in the new rules, I have a lot of doubt about the balance and style of those writeups. What do you think? Do you ever find yourself hunting around for a CR 8 Mage with Warlock spells?

I found myself hunting around so often that I finally did a filtered search just for humanoids on DDB, sorted by CR, and then made a spreadsheet of all of them sorted by explicit or implicit class.