D&D 5E NPCs With Class Levels?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, level has game world currency too; The numbers are abstractions of 'real' qualities. Two people that have achieved the same level of worldly experience have similar levels of personal power. So, at least internally, we might be able to say something about a wizard who casts only magic missiles, and another who casts dominate monster. It works within a framework of expectation about the workings and laws of the game world.

I will agree with you though about the artificiality of wealth by level. Personally I hate this.

Eh, but look at the real world. In reality people have a vast diversity of experiences, skills, interests, and talents. Classes are sort of a necessary evil for PCs, but why impose this same level of pigeon-holing on the rest of the world? Sir Malefance is a Knight Protector of the Realm of Kinergh, but he's also got a knack for magic and made a pact with Shadow years ago. He's mostly a guy who can fight with weapons, but he knows some rituals and a couple of powers he can use to further his ends that are decidedly magical. He's just not categorizable as a PC, and even if you COULD work out some set of options that would work for that it would involve compromises and added complexity that are just not needed in an NPC. If a player decides to become his understudy and walk the Dark Road, well, he's not going to end up with EXACTLY the same stats as his master, but what's so weird about that? He's not the same person and he's surely going to have very different experiences.

I've heard all the arguments in favor of NPCs having classes and such, but it always comes across to me as rather contrived and at best a huge amount of added complexity for some very marginal theoretical gains that most players will simply never even notice, let alone benefit from.

 

[zoroaster100]

I completely agree, Abdul. My comments you quoted were tackling the other end of the argument - the idea that if people want toi play orcs then it must be possible tog give orcs class levels. I was simply pointing out that it's important to give PC orcs class levels, and has no bearing what so ever on NPC orcs. PC orcs could be made to feel more like their monstrous cousin using other facets already built into the game - no special or complex rules needed!

I completely agree with this. Player characters need to be handled completely separately and differently from monsters/npc's. I have no problem with rules for player character orc fighters, gnoll wizards, etc. but those need to be designed with player character rules. I also think it's cool to have, for example, a bugbear cleric, or an orc monk, etc., as monsters for the PCs to face or interact with, but those need to be designed as monsters, with some class themed powers added to make them feel like they are that class when the players interact with them. NPCs and monsters don't need player character advancement rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

or appeals to people who think that it adds to the internal consistency, for whatever reason. I don't know most gamers, but I can't imagine a lot of people love to diddle with numbers.

Heh, LOTS of gamers are in it for exactly that sort of reason. They love fiddling around with charts and lists of options and such. Its a whole sub-industry of RPGers. Trust me, my friends and I in younger days spent weeks on end just making up new games and rules for existing games and playing it all out. Things like Star Fleet Battles were good for literally months of constant entertainment. I've LONG since changed tastes and was never the most extreme in that direction, but I had friends who were. Ironically my old buddy from those days absolutely LOVES spending hours making up 3.5 NPCs, but he also goes to ridiculous lengths to keep them alive. He was a great AD&D DM, if flawed, but I just can't stand his 3.5 game, it caters to the man's worst tendencies I swear. lol.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

Eh, but look at the real world. In reality people have a vast diversity of experiences, skills, interests, and talents..

I guess the assumption in game logic, though, is that its the kind of dangerous experiences that adventurers place themselves in that culture this growth in personal power, and given that internal logic, they are the internal assumptions characters can make about the world. I agree that its not necessary, and I don't think it's the only way, and to be honest, I'm quite hoping that 5ed will make this option viable for the rest of us who aren't number diddlers or frustrated accountants

I do suspect that one of the biggest selling points for 3rd edition was that it offered this, and if my assumption is correct, a lot of people don't find it trivial. If the laws of the universe are logically floored, I think that we can suspend disbelief a little easier if they are at least consistent. Perhaps its the same thing at work in trying to develop some sort of ecology for the kobold tribe living next door to the devourers in the ruined fort.

Mind you, I understand your viewpoints. It can be a lot of work to do it, perhaps for limited gain, but then that depends on your players, and what queues they might take. I would probably at times manage npcs and monsters the way you do, especially in a pinch, and sometimes, it won't matter enough to stat up a character, but I do want the option, and its valid.

 

[billd91]

Player characters need to be handled completely separately and differently from monsters/npc's. I have no problem with rules for player character orc fighters, gnoll wizards, etc. but those need to be designed with player character rules. I also think it's cool to have, for example, a bugbear cleric, or an orc monk, etc., as monsters for the PCs to face or interact with, but those need to be designed as monsters, with some class themed powers added to make them feel like they are that class when the players interact with them. NPCs and monsters don't need player character advancement rules.

I don't find divorcing player character design rules from NPC/monster design rules very satisfying. I would very much prefer being able to handle the NPC just like a PC as far as ability development, particularly from the player perspective. If the NPC is built with standard character class rules, I can put the NPC into a context relevant to the PCs as well as myself. If I can identify his abilities, I may be able to come up with a rational understanding of what he can do (and is unlikely to be able to do) that may guide my interaction. But if the abilities don't come with an identifiable framework or, worse, are arbitrary, I can't really learn much predictive about the creature I'm encountering. For example, if the fighter in heavy armor comes swinging into the fight, I'm generally not going to expect him to unleash a cone of cold as a spell at me all of a sudden once he's in close and we've exchanged a few blows. Or if he does, I might have been expected or able to see evidence of some trade-off that got him to that level of spell-casting proficiency. At the very least, from that point on, I'm going to expect he might do more of the same and use tactics accordingly. But if he doesn't (perhaps because that cone of cold was all he had), I'm going to be a little irritated. It feels to me that the opponent's spell was just a random "gotcha" to sucker me into taking more damage rather than interact (in this case fight) with a coherent NPC.

 

[AnotherPerson]

Bill D, what you're describing is bad monster design and that's a totally different question than whether or not monsters and PC use the same rules.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

[MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] - yeah i get ya on the unsatisfying part. It's not even the metagame for me. If I encounter a fighter who pulls out a cone of cold, it just helps the suspension of disbelief if i can trust its not an arbitrary addition, but part of a logical world where, if my character wanted to, could do exaclty the same.

 

[Li Shenron]

What does this have to do with NPC Monsters having class levels? What stops you in 4e from doing this either? All that is needed is at most a race write-up.

That's what i said.

 

[billd91]

Bill D, what you're describing is bad monster design and that's a totally different question than whether or not monsters and PC use the same rules.

I'm not sure it is a totally different question. Advancing by a class's structure helps keep bad, hodge-podge, gotcha NPC design under control by bundling related capabilities (and limitations) together.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess the assumption in game logic, though, is that its the kind of dangerous experiences that adventurers place themselves in that culture this growth in personal power, and given that internal logic, they are the internal assumptions characters can make about the world. I agree that its not necessary, and I don't think it's the only way, and to be honest, I'm quite hoping that 5ed will make this option viable for the rest of us who aren't number diddlers or frustrated accountants

I do suspect that one of the biggest selling points for 3rd edition was that it offered this, and if my assumption is correct, a lot of people don't find it trivial. If the laws of the universe are logically floored, I think that we can suspend disbelief a little easier if they are at least consistent. Perhaps its the same thing at work in trying to develop some sort of ecology for the kobold tribe living next door to the devourers in the ruined fort.

Mind you, I understand your viewpoints. It can be a lot of work to do it, perhaps for limited gain, but then that depends on your players, and what queues they might take. I would probably at times manage npcs and monsters the way you do, especially in a pinch, and sometimes, it won't matter enough to stat up a character, but I do want the option, and its valid.

I can't say, but IMHO the notion that my players can tell the difference between my made-up "sort of an assassin" monster and your kobold assassin 3/rogue 2/trapsmith 2 with 7 different feats in the middle of a game seems dubious to me. If a player were to ever say something like "why can't I use Shifty, I'm an Assassin too!" my answer is going to be "you're not a kobold, find a master kobold assassin and convince him to train you, then lets talk" (and if the PC actually pulls that off, great, it ain't like its all that hard to give PCs unusual powers and such).

IMHO the entirety of the gain is theorycraft. There's not one player in 100 that can tell you what class(es) and level(s) your class/leveled NPCs are. I'll fully accept that to some DMs it is satisfying to muck around in the rules coming up with some obscure way to bend, spindle, and mutilate character generation to produce his unique NPC, but I have yet to see a game where the DM engaged in an exposition of his NPCs character sheets at the table.

Beyond that, FOR ME, my world seems quite a bit more self-consistent and believable when I don't have to assume that every town has a temple with a 5th level cleric in it who can cure disease, etc. Those rules are great and fine when applied to a rare PC or two, but they rapidly make no sense as a tool to build a consistent world around. I always found that whole conceit to be one of the most verisimilitude-killing aspects of AD&D. 3e just multiplied it by fobbing the whole problem onto monsters as well. At least in AD&D monsters had their own sort of semi-class-like stuff (shaman, witch doctor, priest, etc), and in some cases spell-casting tradition (granted there are a few that 'cast like an Nth level whatever') but in general the notion that even humanoids had class levels was basically non-existent. As close as you got were Drow, which are more in the demi-human camp and make legitimate PCs.

So, I found 4e's lack of imposition of classes on both human/demi-human and monster societies to be quite nice. I am now expected to simply construct the town priest as whatever I need. In some worlds that might be a guy with lots of PC-style magic, but it doesn't need to be and there's no expectation that it is. He can be a pretty formidable ally/threat too without necessarily causing issues like the old "wait, if there's a 9th level cleric in the temple then he can just raise the king..." etc.