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

[Micah Sweet]

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, 9d6 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.

You don't have to go through that whole process with an NPC, so long as the result is something you could have gotten with a PC that went through that process (whether through creation or in play).

 

[Plaguescarred]

In houserule terriroty DM reign as the sole monarch in its kingdom, so a monster or NPC can be can be made or modified at whim. As DM i can

1. Use Monster as is.
2. Modify Monster statblock as i want and give it any trait, spells, feature desired.
3. Make a PC sheet for a Monster or NPC.
4. Make up anything else homebrew.

Personally i pretty much don't care what the DMG say or doesn't say, for any given enemy, when not using #1, i mostly do #2 unless i want more PC stuff so i go #3 rarely though and almost never make up from scratch #4.

 

[ECMO3]

Why should complexity have to serve a narrative purpose?

Because to me that is just a tack on that is there for no reason and serves no purpose in the game. Just rules for rules sake. I realize others disagree.

 

[ECMO3]

You don't have to go through that whole process with an NPC, so long as the result is something you could have gotten with a PC that went through that process (whether through creation or in play).

If you are not going through the process then it is not really giving the NPC a player class.

If you are just whipping up something then you are doing what I suggested, pulling abilities off the shelf that you want to use and ignoring others. I see no value in checking if a hypothetical PC could have that same combination of abilities.

For the example above - a PC with 5d6 sneak attack, the other Rogue/Assasin abilities mentioned, and Divine Strike .... I could build a 17th level PC (Rogue 9/Cleric 8) that got that, but it would also have 17 hit dice, a +6 Proficiency Bonus and lots of spells I don't need. So why do it? Just make an NPC with 7 hit dice, +3 PB and all those abilities.

 

[bloodtide]

I'm an "Old School Gamer" (at least according to many here ) and I think 3e got this bang-on right for NPCs that are PC-playable species. If an NPC can do it then a PC of the same class and species should at the very least have the potential to do it; ditto for the reverse.

Where 3e got it wrong was trying to expand the same idea to cover a lot of non-PC-playable species.

Wait? If there are non-Pc-playable species, then there is a split between PC and NPC, right? What is a non-PC-playable species?

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.

Agreed!

I lot of this is from the 3E manic character build obsession. It was a huge big deal to build the perfect character. For a gamer to show off their game and rule knowledge and mastery. Not only just to compare character sheets by the numbers, but also show off and hog the spotlight during game play.

And the "Arena Dueling" where each gamer makes their best built character and then fight it out to see who is "better".

And DMs want to get in on this too, sending their "best built" NPC vs the PC to see who is better.

 

[J-H]

This is basically what I ended up coming up with a system to do. Link:
PC-like NPC chart
It's on the DM's Guild, but PWYW and the primary chart is visible in the preview, except the spellcasting columns seem to have been cut because it's displayed Portrait instead of landscape. You go across and assign numbers that end up being within 1 or 2 points of what a PC would have at an equivalent level. The key "class features" to assign are listed at the bottom, pick as appropriate.
I paired it with a list of the most popular spells for each casting class (not visible in the preview) complete with a quick summary (range, targets, Concentration, description).

Players never know that a NPC doesn't have actual ability scores assigned, or that it's not a full statblock. If they see an armored enemy doing +1d8 radiant damage on hit and having a saving throw aura, it's a paladin. If a light-armored enemy is doing a lot of d6s of damage and has evasion and uncanny dodge, it's a rogue.

This chart should have been in the DMG or MM. A useful summary chart of spells should have been in the PHB too, instead of "here's a list with no info and then a bunch of pages in alphabetical order). It's like WOTC forgot how to make index charts sometime between 3.5 and 2014.

 

[SkidAce]

Yeah, I can’t imagine spending an hour whipping up one NPC. Or rather, I could, but that’s absolutely not what I want to be doing.

Me neither.

But I want to use the same "framework", I just only put the things important to the encounter in the statblock.

Here's an AD&D statblock I made for "Sleepysnakes"

Sleepysnake; AC: 8, HP: 10, Bite 1-3, save vs Para Poison (Sleep)*

*created from memory

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Maybe someone else mentioned it but there is at least one 3PP product that provides CR 1 to 20 NPCs of every class.

What product is that?

 

[TiQuinn]

Me neither.

But I want to use the same "framework", I just only put the things important to the encounter in the statblock.

Here's an AD&D statblock I made for "Sleepysnakes"

Sleepysnake; AC: 8, HP: 10, Bite 1-3, save vs Para Poison (Sleep)*

*created from memory

Yeah, that’s pretty much what my stat blocks look like.

I remember when D&D would list every spell a caster had memorized, and I realized why does it matter? If they’re an archmage, and it’s not likely to come up in an encounter, just assume they have the spell.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One thing about the NPCs using same spells, same weapon stats etc than the PCs is that it makes modifying them easier and more intuitive. Swap one martial weapon to another, swap a spell to another of the same level and so forth.