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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thommy H-H" data-source="post: 9744908" data-attributes="member: 6797019">This may be a play/setting style thing, but aren't all NPCs technically 'unique'? There isn't a factory churning out wizards or fighters that all have the same basic abilities. I don't think that's what character classes represent. I mean, maybe they do in your settings, but it isn't the default. Characters don't know they have classes and levels: these are just mechanics that represent their growth as adventurers.Likewise, the Warrior Veteran (Medium, LN) that is in charge of the town guard doesn't know she uses the same stat block as the mercenary the party fought three sessions ago, and there's no particular reason for the players to know that either. One Mage is a cult leader, another is a fusty old academic. One represents a Wizard, another an Artificer.The stat blocks are generic to encourage you to represent the NPCs the party encounters as unique individuals: they don't imply anything about the nature of people in the world they inhabit. Lower and middle class people in ordinary professions don't inherently have 4 Hit Points and a weird insistence on using clubs to defend themselves in the worlds of D&D; that's just a mechanical abstraction to help you out if a messenger needs escorting through bandit-infested woods or something. Every NPC my players meet has their own reasons for having the abilities they do, which a standard action like "Arcane Burst" facilitates. Maybe it's a version of Magic Missile, maybe it's Eldritch Blast, maybe it's a Bard twanging a lute or an Artificer shooting a magitech pistol. The players don't know or care, in my experience.</blockquote>

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