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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6262241" data-attributes="member: 1465">That's my preference as well. Simple NPCs who are effectively "inferior by design" to the PCs tend to become "expendable by nature". This is OK in many games, especially if the vast majority of the times the interaction between PCs and NPCs is in terms of just "killing them and take their stuff". If you play like that, and want a game with lots of NPCs, then simple & quick NPCs work better.But my preference is that the fantasy world exists indipendently of the PCs. I don't usually prefer the view that PCs are really the only things that matter, everything revolves around them and even conforms to them, e.g. everything just happens to match the current level of the PCs. Of course in practice this happens all the time, but something in me tells me that it's still important to have more suspension of disbelief. After all, I am a fan of "zero to hero" rather than "natural born heroes". NPCs equal to PCs gives me a stronger feeling than our PCs are in endless competition with thousands of others, and if they survive and reach 20th level, it's because their "users" make them do the right decisions. The bright side of this, is that there is always a chance to do that, because even if the default of the system is to have NPCs designed differently, nobody's ever going to stop me from just designing PCs and use them as NPCs!Generally speaking, it's never been a huge problem for me to design NPCs with PCs rules in 3e, but in order not to go crazy you definitely have to often just make a safe & simple choice (feats, skills, spells, equipment etc.) rather than following the same detailed approach you do when designing one PC you'll be playing for the next year or two.</blockquote>

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