Player Character as an enemy

[Samurai]

After facing a paladin "PC" as an enemy, I can tell you the effects are heinous. The biggest thing to note is that with a PC as an enemy, they have the nova factor. They are going to use all of their at wills in a fight, and that can be incredible powerful.

I would stick with the class templates in the dmg, I think those work pretty well.

You mean all of their Dailies, not their at wills, right?

 

[Stalker0]

You mean all of their Dailies, not their at wills, right?

edited.

 

[cmbarona]

I don't know if this is where you're coming from, but you should keep in mind that building an NPC using PC rules will not have the same effect in 4e as in 3e. I've heard horror stories of DMs making the transition who failed to fully research the implications of this. We're definitely out of the territory where this is simply "adding a class level." I understand your desire to make compelling and difficult NPCs, especially as a nemesis, but I would echo the advice found throughout this thread: use the DMG and MM judiciously as guides to applying templates and levelling up your NPCs. Best not to re-invent the wheel.

 

[KidSnide]

I don't know if this is where you're coming from, but you should keep in mind that building an NPC using PC rules will not have the same effect in 4e as in 3e. I've heard horror stories of DMs making the transition who failed to fully research the implications of this. We're definitely out of the territory where this is simply "adding a class level." I understand your desire to make compelling and difficult NPCs, especially as a nemesis, but I would echo the advice found throughout this thread: use the DMG and MM judiciously as guides to applying templates and levelling up your NPCs. Best not to re-invent the wheel.

QFT.

I would say that the biggest question you need to ask is how the NPC is going to be used. The more you expect the NPC to serve as an enemy in a single fight, the more you should stick to the DMG. In most campaigns, a nemesis may be around for a while and may be pursuing his own agenda, but the PCs don't fight him more than once or twice. In that case, you will want to think closely about the nemesis' skills and rituals, but the DMG advice on combat stats is probably sound.

The only thing I'd add is that you probably want your Nemesis NPC to be an elite enemy. When I've done this, I've created the character with the standard rules and then bumped the character to "elite" while either adding a 2nd set of encounters and dailies or giving generous recharge numbers. (Think of recharge as a simplification for "this character has more encounters than this, but we're just going to use the same one multiple times to keep the stat block small".) But, in many ways, this is just following the DMG advice -- you are, in essence, taking a non-elite fighter and adding a "fighter" template to get an elite fighter.

I find that this type of enemy plays very satisfactorily. Elite enemies are hard to take down (so it feels like a real fight), and the variety of attacks makes it seem like you're fighting someone who is playing with a rich deck of options (even though the number of options is manageable for the DM).

 

[Hymness]

I was thinking about creating a solo actually, but maybe a solo of the character lvl would be too strong, since it's only a 3-PCs party.

Thanks for the advices.

Hymn'

 

[Hymness]

Double-post FTW, sorry.

Quoted from the DMG:
Along the same lines, treat NPCs as you would monsters. That is, only give them the things youLll need to run them in an encounter or an adventure. Don't stat out a NPC as a player stats out a player character. That,s just too much work for what you really need. Most NPCs, even opponents, only need as much detail as a monster. In the rare case where you want to build a campaign-long villain, then it might serve for you to fully stat out the NPC in PC fashion, but this should be the exception - the rare exception.

Well, actually, that,s what I want to create... But can any of you tell me the page where it is written if an NPC created as a PC would is wheter a standard, elite or solo? I just can't find this info...

 

[Lacyon]

Double-post FTW, sorry.

Quoted from the DMG:
Along the same lines, treat NPCs as you would monsters. That is, only give them the things youLll need to run them in an encounter or an adventure. Don't stat out a NPC as a player stats out a player character. That,s just too much work for what you really need. Most NPCs, even opponents, only need as much detail as a monster. In the rare case where you want to build a campaign-long villain, then it might serve for you to fully stat out the NPC in PC fashion, but this should be the exception - the rare exception.

Well, actually, that,s what I want to create... But can any of you tell me the page where it is written if an NPC created as a PC would is wheter a standard, elite or solo? I just can't find this info...

In pages 186-187 (I think) it specifies that creating NPCs according to the guidelines (on p. 187, I think) are treated as normal monsters of their level. I took me a long time to find that myself.

(NPCs created as full PCs using the PHB rules are not specified. You'll have to guess).

I'm sorry if that doesn't answer your question.

 

[Patlin]

If you have a party of 5 PCs facing five villains, having one of the 5 villains fully statted out as a PC and the other 4 as normal level apropriate foes ought to work out to a winnable but hard fight for the PCs. This is strictly by the "gut feel" test, of course...

 

[HighTemplar]

Well, actually, that,s what I want to create... But can any of you tell me the page where it is written if an NPC created as a PC would is wheter a standard, elite or solo? I just can't find this info...

It's not stated because you're NOT SUPPOSED TO BUILD NPCs LIKE PCs

Once you have understood fully the risks of not following these instructions, you're free to do about anything, but don't come around asking for people's opinion on any related matter, because they will blatantly say that you were foolish to start with.

That being said, Every of my non monster elite NPCs are built with PC rules, and so they have almost complete sheets. This takes ages to build, but I'm a passionate^^. This suits my very personnal game, because it's far from the typical quest based game with dungeons and stuff. It's more of an NPC centered quest than an heroic adventure, but my players love to feel competitive with other same leveled non PCs. Anyways I don't award experience in the recommended manner and so I cannot guide you for any XP related stuff. Just so you know, implanting such NPCs into your game will bring up multiple problems as previously stated:Loot, difficulty, balance and necessary expanded ressources(items, encounter and dailies, consumables)

So you could do this, which requires an iron grip into your game, or just follow the rules in the books.

I dont think anything forbids you to create an NPC with the paladin class(DMG 188) then following the rules for creating elites or solo monsters(DMG 185) add one or two class templates to your "monster".
Following these rules, you could build a lvl 4 paladin
add him a class template of warlock making him an elite lvl 4 with 2 at wills, encounters and dailies.
Then if you really want to make him stronger, you could make him a solo, adding Paladin class template to your paladin/warlock elite making him a lvl 4 solo with tons of hp, 3 at wills, dailies and encounters(2 from paladin class 1 from warlock). This would make him some kind of paladin/warlock with paladin as his primary class(or whatever) and you could even calculate an exp value for him following the rules for a lvl 4 solo.

Now looking at this you figure out that this solo is much stronger than a regular PC, so I'm guessing either i missed out on some rule that states not to apply class templates to non monstrous NPC, or that the NPC design guideline is a little flawed in early levels.

Nothing forbids you to do anything, but just be very very careful when you step out of the boundaries...

EDIT: Also, if this is a nemesis, you might want him to come back, so kind of plan that he will get defeated and find a way for him to escape... Thats if he's not already strong enough to take on your whole PC team, which you might not want.

 

[KidSnide]

Then if you really want to make him stronger, you could make him a solo, adding Paladin class template to your paladin/warlock elite making him a lvl 4 solo with tons of hp, 3 at wills, dailies and encounters(2 from paladin class 1 from warlock). This would make him some kind of paladin/warlock with paladin as his primary class(or whatever) and you could even calculate an exp value for him following the rules for a lvl 4 solo.

Now looking at this you figure out that this solo is much stronger than a regular PC, so I'm guessing either i missed out on some rule that states not to apply class templates to non monstrous NPC, or that the NPC design guideline is a little flawed in early levels.

If you're designing a solo, it's supposed to be a lot stronger than a PC of that level. After all, it should be a fun match for *5* PCs of that level.

I think the big thing to realize is that you can't think of NPCs as having a "level" in the same way that a PC does. NPC and monster levels are about "how appropriate a challenge is this opponent?" and not "how far advanced is this opponent in some strange alternate universe in which the players are playing him?" Sure, maybe you can approximate an elite NPC of level X as being approximately the same power as a PC of level X, but that's not going to be a 1-for-1 comparison. The elite NPC will have better attacks, defenses and hit points, but will have a more limited selection of powers (at least at upper levels).

I suppose I should add as a caveat that I subscribe to the minority opinion (at least I think it's a minority) that NPC level and minion/standard/elite/solo classification is a game mechanical abstraction and not a statement about the world. In other words, I think the same NPC ranger might be represented with elite level 5 stats when confronted with a 5th level party and as non-elite level 9 stats when confronted with a 10th level party. The NPC is equally powerful with both stats (and is the same person), but the elite stats are a way of creating a more satisfactory fight against a creature of that power. I've also had success taking upper paragon level monsters and turning them into solo monsters for heroic tier games.

-KS