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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5889268" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I disagree, here. Prodigies exist. That can easily account for "he's younger, but better." It's often within the fantasy genre, as well. And, many monsters can be justified as having more "points" racially. That is, "why do they have that much?" can easily be answered with "it's racial for them, they're born with the potential, and you're fighting an adult." Just give it to them racially mechanically.Obviously. I really don't know who suggested otherwise. You can't design something any other way.I missed the connection to this. What does this have to do with the answer to "why can't I have the wealth that a noble has at first level?" You can account for that type of thing with mechanics. The point of my reply was just that: you can design things in such a way where a player has the option to get whatever he wants (if level appropriate) if the NPCs can, as well. If the NPCs can be nobles at first level, you can make it so the PCs can be, too. It doesn't mean it has to be free (for either). It might cost them in other areas. That's the nature of the game, no matter what class you're playing.Well, that's why those quick guideline charts are so handy. I reference mine all the time. For something like a city guard, I look at my guidelines, see that the attack bonus for "professionally skilled" at Hit Die 5 is a total of +8, and use that. I have a guideline for what hit die represents ("hit die 1 is just starting out; hit die 4 is the average settled adult; hit die 8 is a very experienced or very well-trained adult"), and I can plug those numbers in as necessary.However, those numbers are based on the mechanics for both PCs and NPCs. That is, if I made an NPC and invested a good portion of his points towards attacking, he'll end up with around a +8 bonus to attack. This can move up or down 1 pretty easily, but it's going to be pretty accurate. I don't need to build NPCs from scratch each time, I just need to have an idea of how good they are in a specific area.There is absolutely no reason to not have strong guidelines in a game where both PCs and NPCs are created the same way. Those guidelines will get you 80-90% of where you need to be, and take basically zero time to plug in. On the "minions", I can plug in the guidelines, and I'm set. No fiddly feats, or what-have-you (maybe throw an ability in I know they can afford to spice things up, like a bodyguard feat or something). On the big guys, I can flesh them out a little more, if I'd like (using the regular in-depth character creation system, or the 95% accurate and significantly faster Quick Character Creation system), fiddly feats and all.So, you're right, I don't need to write down everything the extras are good at. But, to me, that's not a good enough reason not to make the mechanics apply to both sides. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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