PCs as Monsters?

[bmadden]

Hi

I made up some PCs and now I want to use them as monsters (PCmonsters) in combat against my players. Are PCs Standard or Elite when used as monsters?
If my five players have 3rd level characters, is a combat encounter versus five 3rd level PCmonsters a standard encounter or a hard encounter?

Should the PCmonsters get to use action points? I think the encounter would be unfair if the PCmonsters got to use their Daily Powers since they're controlled by me.

It doesn't sound like a fair fight to me...

Thanks
Ben

 

[scholz]

I was wondering this myself.

 

[On Puget Sound]

It's going to take some experimenting.

A LOT depends on whether the PCS and/or NPCs are just starting their day or have been through a lot already. If it's the third encounter for the PCs, you should also shuffle the NPC's dailies and pull out one or two as "used up".

In 3.5, one NPC character of the party's level was considered to be a "normal" challenge against a party of 4... an equal party of 4 vs 4 would have been an CR L+2 encounter, or "hard". NPCs were also given a lot less magical goodies; there was a separate wealth by level guideline for NPCs. This is important; otherwise every encounter like this doubles the party's wealth (if they win).

It also depends on whether you want the Linear Guild to be an ongoing /recurring foil for the Order of the Stick, or just a one-shot encounter. If the former, remove a couple of their offensive dailies but keep all of their escape/ defensive ones, and plan a way for them to get away when the fight turns. Count it as a win but bring them back later in the campaign.

 

[Palladion]

Given hit point, attack and defense values, character "monsters" are approximately on-par with other standard creatures (DMG 184), it is only their special abilities that might tip the scales. Their powers (especially daily) might push them beyond a standard monster, but nowhere close to elite status. A party of 4 character monsters vs. an equal level party of 5 PCs is my guess at a standard encounter (therefore a character monster being 25% more powerful as a monster than normal).

 

[Spatula]

NPCs are "normal" monsters. DMG pg 187 has guidelines for creating them. Of note is that NPCs don't get the full suite of powers that a PC of the same level would; they only get a handful.

 

[mach1.9pants]

IMO full up (with APs and dailies and magic items) would be swingy elites. minimum 1.5x standard monster, and swingy swingy swingy. A dangerous encounter 5 PCs vs 4 IMO

 

[Saeviomagy]

A party of 5 characters have a 50% chance of beating themselves, assuming they start the encounter with equal levels of resources.

This can be generalised with the assumption that one character will be balanced against another to any party of 5 characters should have a 50% chance of beating any other equal-resourced party of 5 characters.

So - find the point on the encounter difficulty table where the win rate is only supposed to be 50%, and that's the equivalent difficulty. That should tell you what to class the pcmonsters as. My guess would be elites.