Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 12722" data-attributes="member: 1149">My two cents...I get riked every time i see PRESUMPTIONS like were posted earlier... that the NPCs are all spelled up and are always aware the PCs are coming and so on...In my games, with a wide variety of settings and challenges the PCs are the surprisers about as often as they are the surprisees. Matter of fact, in the various cases its roughly... very roughly... 10% bad guys have major setup advantage (prespelled, favorable terrain and/or good knowledge and timing vs either surprised or unprepared party), 20% bad guys have minor setup advantage (they spot party first but preparations can be overheard... basically a surprise round), 40$ even steven setupm 20% PCs have minor advantage and 10% PCs have major advantage.The difference between a &quot;hey there is trouble&quot; scenario and one where we have&nbsp; only one side prespelled is HUGE, at least 2 maybe more in El. Often for me its the difference between rout and fight.My NPC wizards, clerics and druids OFTEN have spell slots open, for those day to day uses they will need a spell for. They rarely have ALL COMBAT spells unless they knew ahead of time it was such and such coming.&nbsp; As such, BARRING time to prepare (and foreknowledge) they usually have only about half their spells as BATTLE spells. Items can assist this but items are usually less deadly than their spell counterparts due to lowest save Dcs and usually low caster level.Thats one of the things that makes sorcerers and bards so much more dnagerous as an adversary, their 1-2 combat spells are available with every slot they have. never an unprepared moment.Anyway, i use classed NPCs all the time and find them to work great. Plan them reasonably and it should be a challenge.&nbsp; Don't have them all walking around as if five minutes ago they decided for some reason to cast all their combat prep spells and that they knew this morning they needed every spell for combat.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Petrosian, post: 12722, member: 1149"] My two cents... I get riked every time i see PRESUMPTIONS like were posted earlier... that the NPCs are all spelled up and are always aware the PCs are coming and so on... In my games, with a wide variety of settings and challenges the PCs are the surprisers about as often as they are the surprisees. Matter of fact, in the various cases its roughly... very roughly... 10% bad guys have major setup advantage (prespelled, favorable terrain and/or good knowledge and timing vs either surprised or unprepared party), 20% bad guys have minor setup advantage (they spot party first but preparations can be overheard... basically a surprise round), 40$ even steven setupm 20% PCs have minor advantage and 10% PCs have major advantage. The difference between a "hey there is trouble" scenario and one where we have only one side prespelled is HUGE, at least 2 maybe more in El. Often for me its the difference between rout and fight. My NPC wizards, clerics and druids OFTEN have spell slots open, for those day to day uses they will need a spell for. They rarely have ALL COMBAT spells unless they knew ahead of time it was such and such coming. As such, BARRING time to prepare (and foreknowledge) they usually have only about half their spells as BATTLE spells. Items can assist this but items are usually less deadly than their spell counterparts due to lowest save Dcs and usually low caster level. Thats one of the things that makes sorcerers and bards so much more dnagerous as an adversary, their 1-2 combat spells are available with every slot they have. never an unprepared moment. Anyway, i use classed NPCs all the time and find them to work great. Plan them reasonably and it should be a challenge. Don't have them all walking around as if five minutes ago they decided for some reason to cast all their combat prep spells and that they knew this morning they needed every spell for combat. [/QUOTE]

Verification