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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6261622" data-attributes="member: 4937">I often have no idea what people are talking about in half the threads these days.NPCs are whatever you want them to be.  Are you the DM or are you just the assistant DM and the real DM is a text block in some book somewhere?There is a big difference between guidelines and rules.   How you create an NPC has nothing to do with proposition, fortune, and action resolution.  It's a not a rule.  It's a guideline, often to be broken.  It's there just to help new DMs have a basis for getting started before they learn the system well enough to be able to really shape it as they need to.Exactly when have NPCs not been the potential equal of PCs in every way?  What edition did that stop being true in?  In my current 3.X inspired game, the BBEG is known to be at least a 17th level wizard.  What level are the PCs?  Sixth.   The PC's cannot remotely be said to be the BBEG's equal.  The BBEG has minions more powerful than the PCs.  The PCs are a hated thorn in his side at this point, to be sure, but they aren't remotely his equal.  On the other hand, the PC's are truly special.  At 6th level they are massively more powerful than most of the worlds inhabitants.  Even at 1st level, they were collectively quite a force to be reckoned with.   So in a difference sense, most NPCs aren't the potential equal of the PCs.    As far as equipment goes, by the standards of my game world, the PC's are very well equipped.  They have a few magic weapons between the six of them, and some of them even have magic armor.  But of course, they aren't very well equipped compared to His High Majesty the Hurin, Farmanus Karahal IV, King over Talernga, or The Honorable Lord Edhelhard, or in comparison to the Dwarven High Thane.   There are plenty of individuals far wealthier than the PCs.  Quite a few are much poorer as well.Way off in the recesses of my homebrew world, there are NPC's like Jace Merlkin the Dragon Hunter or The Lord of the Mysterious Isle who are mightier than even the BBEG.  Heck, even the BBEG isn't necessarily the mightiest NPC around locally, as there is a Lesser Slaad Lord and a being called the Prelate of Submission waiting in the wings among many other things.  I guess I'm saying I'm really really confused.  I create NPCs according to what ought to be in my campaign world, according to the vision I originally set down when I conceived it and my continuing revelations as I explore it.   How do you do it?I will say that I've seen radically the opposite situation far more often than the one you complain about.  It's not at all unusual to see gameworlds - published or homebrew - where PCs can never match the potential or power of NPCs.   Consider Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms.   I consider that to be a worse situation.  It's possible in reaction to that sort of thing that the 3.X guidelines were written.</blockquote>

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