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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FinalSonicX" data-source="post: 5889217" data-attributes="member: 63787">My perspective and personal opinion on the whole issue is as follows:NPCs should be identical to Players if they have the same number of class levels, discounting racial abilities or modifiers. For instance, a Troll wizard NPC and a Human wizard PC should have the same wizard abilities. That said, the Troll is going to have their troll powers while the human has their human powers. As a result, they might not always be rated as equivalent "CR", since troll regeneration is a pretty potent ability in a fighter or almost any other class.This doesn't prevent the existence of monsters without class levels that have special abilities outside of what is available traditionally to PCs. NPC monsters might have very special abilities associated with their NPC status (solo/elite/minion/what have you) or their Race/Monster type (Trolls get regen, Wraiths are incorporeal and can drain stats with a touch or something, etc.)If there's a diamond snake or something in a cave, it might have very special abilities associated with it and I think that's completely fair. It might even have class levels which grant it some abilities the PCs might share. Regardless, I don't think a PC should be able to have whatever it is that the monsters can do as a rule. Some things are available to monsters or PCs such as class levels. some things aren't.I've always seen monsters with class levels as a very useful tool as a DM because it helps me really quickly draft monsters of an appropriate CR and with appropriate abilities with a minimum of fuss. I know many won't share that opinion. I love the idea of each creature having many truly special abilities, but as a DM that needs to get things up and running on the fly a lot, being able to default to templates of various kinds is a godsend. So really, I want 5e to include both. I want the MM to be full of monsters with interesting abilities and rules, but I also want rules for designing and creating new monsters both with their own quirks and more straightforward monsters with class levels.</blockquote>

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