Being "a bit complicated" was one of the major barriers to attracting new players in 3e. It will always be a balancing act but from my experience with people I actually play with, the majority are quite casual about the game. Maybe 1/4 really dig into the complicated options - not enough to justify the potential loss of more casual (or extremely casual) players who just want to show up at a game and have fun.
D&D 5E (2024) NPCs, and the poverty of the core books
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Being "a bit complicated" was one of the major barriers to attracting new players in 3e. It will always be a balancing act but from my experience with people I actually play with, the majority are quite casual about the game. Maybe 1/4 really dig into the complicated options - not enough to justify the potential loss of more casual (or extremely casual) players who just want to show up at a game and have fun.
While I'm not sure I ever spent an entire hour, it did take significant time to not only build a new NPC but to actually go through the dozens of spells to figure out the handful they were likely to use.
kigmatzomat
Legend
How much time do you spend designing the "boss" encounter of your game arcs? Especially for a boss encounter where you want the boss to escape and show up later? I often spend more than an hour on that, regardless of game system.
NPC design and encounter design are the same thing when the NPC is the encounter.
Spending an hour on one tier 4 NPC caster is justified when that tier 4 npc caster is the encounter. I spent far more than an hour on the BBEGs who showed up multiple times because there was payoff for the effort. I have no idea how much time I spent on the "Once Elven", who was the BBEG at levels 4, 9-13 and 20. (Though tbh, at level 4 I didn't spend much time at all b/c he started out as a CR6 npc and those shouldn't need much time)
The tier4 NPC wizard who was an ally for 12-character levels but couldn't leave his heavily warded secret lair because a demigod was hunting him? Most of the effort was spent on plotting. I spent maybe 10 minutes on game mechanics for his first appearance and I'd flesh details to fit the story better. I hand-waived most of his spell power away as spent restoring wards daily and necessities of life. Only as PCs got him spell components and geegaws of nondetection could he spare much more than a scry or teleport spell.
The tier3 NPC acolyte of the skin that was a kind of "social trap" encounter in a city? I spent maybe 15 minutes because again, most casters are only going to get to cast 6-8 spells if it turns into a fight. Even after a PC sort of befriended them, I'm not sure I ever invested much time in their stats. They were more of a rationale for bringing the Once Elven back to the story at 9th level.
Reynard
aka Ian Eller
I'm team "NOC casters should use custom spells/abilities." I am not the least bit interested in combi g through books to find just the right loadout. Instead, I'll give them 3 or 5 distinct magical powers. They aren't going to last longer than that anyway.
If the fight ends and a player wants their castercto learn the weird snake-ball-poison-paralysis spell I gave the bad guy,they can make it a research project.
If the fight ends and a player wants their castercto learn the weird snake-ball-poison-paralysis spell I gave the bad guy,they can make it a research project.
kigmatzomat
Legend
Ah, this is a design approach issue. I do that opposite; I figure out the handful of spells I want them to use before I make the rest of the NPC.
If I make a caster specifically for an encounter, I'm choosing spells for the encounter and the NPC is there as a "how/why". Again, class as framework to save time. I choose a role for the Caster. To use 4e-isms, are they a striker-type blaster? Are they a Controller via illusions or mind-control to make PCs fight each other? Maybe they are a Defender via summons? Or the Controller who buffs their side?
Most fights only last a handful of rounds so you pick maybe 6 spells that fit the role/tactic specified and are within the design CRs spell level, starting at the highest level and working down. There won't really be that many and with a theme you can pick them pretty quickly. Often this tells you what class the NPC should be, especially within plot limits.
Then add a few "save myself" spells, one or two spells of a totally different role (illusionist with fireball, evoker with Programmed Illusion) as a wild card, and then finish off with semi-random utility spells you can pick just by name without worrying too much about the mechanics.
I am an expert on the 2014 and 2024 rules, but I for one would like less complexity in 6E. A lot of the complexity seems to serve no narrative purpose IMO and just feels tacked on (example: weapon mastery).
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Why should complexity have to serve a narrative purpose?
I didn't play a lot of 3E, I am talking about 5E. Players regularly take 30-45 minutes to generate new characters and they know what they want before they go into it (meaning they have already actually done some of this work).
Choosing background, choosing origin feat, rolling abilities (or doing point buy), choosing skills, species abilities, languages, comparing that to what you get in your background, choosing weapon masteries, then adding a subclass and new abilities and feats level-by-level and potentially adding new classes. All that takes time and that is before you do any spells, and it is not even considering the backstory of the NPC.
It would be extremely difficult to build say a 5E 10th level Rogue and get all of that determined and written down in 5 minutes from scratch and I would like to see someone actually do that. If you are doing this in 5E I commend you, but most people can't do that. Now if you want to build a character that has a 20 Dexterity, 20 Charisma, 5d6 sneak attack, Cunning Strike, Assasinate, Evasion, Reliable Talent and Expertise in 4 skills .... I agree you could probably tackle that in about 5 minutes if you write fast, but that is not the same as a 10th level Rogue built according to the PHB rules.
Then if I want to take that hypothetical 10th level character and add Divine Strike to that PC it is another 8 more levels worth of class mechanics to trudge through ... or about 15 seconds if I don't use classes and just give him this.
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I never assume the boss will escape. But if I want to make it likely, that will take about 5 minutes. Time spent on an individual boss? Usually less than half an hour, frequently much less. I may spend more time on a climactic battle, it depends on how many moving parts I want. But it's also hard for me to say because a lot of my planning is more "shower thoughts" where I'm considering options while doing other things. But that's something I do for all of my campaigns and not just for boss fights.
When it comes to what spell to cast, I was thinking mostly about a caster that was done for a module or from my days running Living Greyhawk games. If I was creating a new NPC for a fight, it took significantly less time. If I needed a caster to have a specific spell outside of combat and thought it was likely they would have it then they did. A lot of it is dependent on how familiar I am with the options available of course, once I had figured out a caster or two I had a much better idea of what the options were.
I still modify existing NPC casters in 5e on a regular basis and give them spells that I think either fit the individual or would make sense if they were prepared for combat and what will make the encounter more interesting. But that only takes a few minutes most of the time.
I don’t tend to design NPCs as single encounters, and I try not to set them up in ways where I’m predetermining the ending, I.E. the villain must escape the first encounter in order to something else later. I find monsters that already fit the CR and adjust the spells as needed, usually figuring out what 4 to 5 spells are most likely to be used. For high level spellcasters, I almost always assume some sort of minion or summoned creature is going to provide a physical threat/buffer for the spell caster. Then I turn to the actual physical area and environment, which I probably spend more time on because it’s part of the overall dungeon. I like making sure there are interactive components in the fight area, so I’ll probably spend as much time on that as I do the actual NPC.
But the actual NPC themselves? I’ll start with an arch mage, lich, war priest, Drow matron or some other NPC as a baseline.
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