D&D 5E NPCyclopedia

[I'm A Banana]

I agree with most of what you say, except that I believe that while it is harder to estimate CRs in 5e than 4e, I still expected the designers to do the work fully and more accurately (and yes that is NOT entirely subjective), rather than leave it for me. inc/anticipating that many many DMs would want PC style NPCs, and they could have inc/a table of CRs for that purpose..

One of the things I noticed during my 3e era was that I was running a lot of combat against monstrous creatures.

Because NPC's were so much work.

5e might fall into a similar bucket, but I'm a bit torn. I'd kind of like a more "lightweight" way to build NPC characters so that an NPC warlock or sorcerer or whatever evokes the feel of the class without necessarily making me build it entirely from scratch. Some "Class Template" or something. I dunno.

A simple table wouldn't really do the job, since within a class, there's so much variation. But a bunch of example NPC's, fully statted with spell selections and whatnot, that would likely come in handy for a lot of DMs.

 

[Hussar]

Iirc there were a couple of those in 3e. Didn't the DMG come with a bunch of pre made stat blocks.

 

[Li Shenron]

A simple table wouldn't really do the job, since within a class, there's so much variation.

I am more optimistic, and say that it would be possible.

Yes there is a lot of variation within each class. Trying to cover a large variety doesn't have to be a target of such table.

The table can just aim at estimating the CR of an NPC designed for battle. As you say, a diviner is not supposed to be as good in battle as an evoker. But that also means, that you'll rarely require the PCs to defeat a diviner in combat, and if the BBEG is a diviner, maybe the last fight against it is not even supposed to be the toughest part. Similarly, give me the CR of a Rogue which is built for fighting, not a Rogue built for trapfinding or a con-artist. So just give me the CR of an evoker or standard Rogue of level X, and it'll be already useful!

Then if I still occasionally want the party to face a trapfinder or a diviner in battle, I'll have to expect it will be easier, or I'll buff it up with a few additional levels.

Still, during the combat fight even the trapfinder and the diviner could just fire off all their daily weapons. The diviner could have 90% of divination spells in her spellbook, but remember that with 5e spellcasting rules, it might be enough for her to have Magic Missile and Fireball prepared, and still be able to be fairly effective at combat, even if all the rest of prepared spells are divinations. So maybe the CR wouldn't even be that much lower than the evoker's.

My point is that the variety really shows up in the long term (i.e. when you have investigations, exploration, problem-solving etc... involving all 3 pillars). In the course of an adventuring day, different PCs will shine in different pillars. But in the short term of a single fight (which is what the NPC will do), the differences are smaller. Barring extreme cases* of course, for example if the NPC only prepares divination spells.

*bottom line: it seems absurd that just because it's impossible to adequately cover the extreme (and rare) cases, the game gives up on covering the common cases. The MM chooses to provide a CR6 and CR12 sample mages, maybe these are considered to be the most common cases. Well that's really too little IMO!

Add to that the idea that bounded accuracy should mean that getting the CR wrong by a couple of points shouldn't change much, and I say the whole 'CR by class level' should be doable.

 

[Li Shenron]

By the way... if you check out the monster creation rules in the DMG, notice how they totally overlook special offensive abilities that aren't doing bare damage.

All the stuff in that chapter of the DMG is about estimating CR by AC, HP, attack bonus and damage per round.

In theory, the CR table for custom monsters include a mention of "Save DC". However if you read the text, there is no mention about what kind of effects you should use. Obviously, the result is not the same if the effect is "impose disadvantage on next attack" rather than "disintegrated"! You wouldn't give a monster a disintegrate ability with DC 13 and expect it's only CR3. The effect matters, but the chapter doesn't mention anything except the DC.

There's a small section about monsters with spellcasting, and it only says "spells that deal more damage" or "increase the monster's AC of HP" need to be accounted. But how? How much? And once again, we're stuck with damage effects and AC/HP numerical increases. What about a monster that can turn invisible or ethereal? What about a monster that can stun or paralyze or grapple?

I understand the difficulty of providing such guidelines. What I don't understand, is why I keep hearing about DMs who are happy about having monster creation guidelines in the DMG, when such guidelines seem good only for creating 'bags of hit points' monsters... but the MM is already full of those, why not just pick any one and just change the name/color/appearance?

 

[S'mon]

BTW I have posted most of my NPCs here - http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=30915

 

[Bleys Icefalcon]

As far as I can tell, the PCs are the only existing adventuring group in the entire world, since, with Monster Manual NPCs, I cannot build a group of their level and classes.

This is me the DM and me the player speaking here.

What a boring, boring world.

One of the best encounters (random or not) is with that rival band on the same quest as you are, after the same artifact, serving a rival god....

Indiana Jones would never have had his Beloch and Naxi allies, Darth Vader certainly wasn't alone. When Robin Hood met his Merry Men, they were someone else's Merry Men. Frodo and Sam encountered Boromir's Brother and his band in the wild and were captured.

If the rules don't give you guidelines into making opposing groups, or other groups of characters, etc. Then rules be damned.

 

[S'mon]

In theory, the CR table for custom monsters include a mention of "Save DC". However if you read the text, there is no mention about what kind of effects you should use. Obviously, the result is not the same if the effect is "impose disadvantage on next attack" rather than "disintegrated"! You wouldn't give a monster a disintegrate ability with DC 13 and expect it's only CR3.

Sounds a lot like the Banshee

They handled this stuff fine 35+ years ago with the ** system of bonus XP for monster special abilities, not sure why they can't now - an obsession with mechanical procedure maybe, which only ever worked in 4e.
Personally when I use a monster with special powers clearly not accounted for in the Monster Manual listed CR, I generally add +2 to the CR, so far that has worked ok.

 

[shoak1]

BTW I have posted most of my NPCs here - http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=30915

thanks bud, that was helpful. If everyone saved them to one place, that would be awesome.

 

[shoak1]

This is me the DM and me the player speaking here.

What a boring, boring world.

One of the best encounters (random or not) is with that rival band on the same quest as you are, after the same artifact, serving a rival god....

Indiana Jones would never have had his Beloch and Naxi allies, Darth Vader certainly wasn't alone. When Robin Hood met his Merry Men, they were someone else's Merry Men. Frodo and Sam encountered Boromir's Brother and his band in the wild and were captured.

If the rules don't give you guidelines into making opposing groups, or other groups of characters, etc. Then rules be damned.

Yes, wonderful ideals you have. Except that rules are the marriage between other peoples ideals (your players) and yours. Without them, its much harder to keep a gaming group together.

And time is our enemy. I know I CAN make whatever NPCs I want, and correctly gauge their strength. I just would like the game system to do some more of the work for me than 5e does. That's all. But maybe they are planning a Big Book of NPCs to be released soon. That would be helpful. Or maybe someone will start a NPC thread that catches on and ends up w/hundreds of NPCs of different levels (inc/higher levels).

 

[Li Shenron]

If the rules don't give you guidelines into making opposing groups, or other groups of characters, etc. Then rules be damned.

I am with you, but let's also keep in mind that the games does give us rules to make NPCs as PCs, it just doesn't tell us what their CR is