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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5892492" data-attributes="member: 42582">In a points-buy system this makes sense - ie the NPC just has more points.In a level-based system, though, it causes problems. Does the NPC in question therefore have level-appropriate hit points? AC? saving throws? magic items? (I'm aware that not all of these things scale with level in all editions of D&D - but in all editions of D&D at least some of them scale with level.)That's what breaks the game. From the point of view of encounter design, you can't build the NPC you need, because (for example) the saves will be too good and the wizard PC will therefore be pointlessly nerfed. From the point of view of PC design, if I build the NPC I want - ie with the saves, hp etc that will make my encounter work - then a PC built on the same numbers will not work - it would be analogous to a points-buy PC who has (let's say) spent all the points on offence and not defence. Whereas part of the point of a level-based game like D&D is to prevent those sorts of tradeoffs in PC building.Who does "you" refer to in this sentence. It doesn't refer to me - as in, you are not describing how I run my game.I start with the world, I then look at the build tools I have - including the guideolins for challenging encounters - and I build the encounter that will reflect the scenario/situation I want to set up. At low levels, I used the MM entries for my hobgoblins. Now, I am building my own "hobgoblin phalanx" monsters, which are Huge mid-paragon swarms. I also recently build and used some "hobgoblin wyvern riders", which were mechanically single minion monsters. (Question: what would I have done had a PC done something to push a rider of his wyvenr? Answer: I don't know, but I was fairly confident that it wouldn't come up, because I was fairly confident that no forced movement would occur without also dealing damage that would eliminate the minions' 1 hp. And as it turned out, I was right about that.)A combat involving 1 15th level PC vs 20 3rd level hobgoblins would be tedious and boring to resolve. The combat involving the Questing Knight holding of a hobgoblin phalanx for a round or two, and then - after they surrouned him - besting them with fire and sword, was a dramatic one that was a lot of fun to resolve.From an in-universe perspective, there's no such thing as level, hit points, or (in my view, at least) character class.This is about action resolution. It has nothing to do with character build, as far as I can see.4e has multiple ways of handling this. There are the companion rules in DMG2, but I've never used them. There are the hireling rules in Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium. I've used a version of these.In my own game, the dwarven warrior-priest recruited some dwarven NPC allies. As NPCs they had not stat blocks when I introduced them into the game, just some ingame fiction. They became servants of the PC when he showed he could knock them all flat with a single sweep of his polearm (this was a culmination to a skill challenge, and didn't require the NPCs to have stats.)When they got in a fight with some hobgoblins and their pet behemoth, I gave the NPCs a level 10 appropriate AC and minion-level hit points. Several died. One in particular survived, and is not the PC's herald. After lobbying from the PC, I gave the herald a special ability - if he takes damage, he gets a saving throw (4e standard ie 10+ on d20) to avoid being killed.How does he advance? Arbitrarly, in this context, given that he is closer to set dressing than a fellow protagonist. If he were another defacto PC, then he could get a standard share of the XP and be advance appropriately (and he would also have to be statted up as a companion rather than a minion).I personally don't understand why one would want to use 3E to run this sort of thing. If there are going to be so many classes that every profession is viably represented, what is the point of the classes? Why not go to a mixed class/point-buy game like RM or HARP? Or to a flat-out simulationist game like Runequest (which, it should be noted, still doesn't use the same rules for building NPCs and monsters as PCs)?But to keep it to 3E - you seem to be saying that to make the system work I have to put a simulationist spin on game mechanical features introduced primarily for balance reasons, and/0r I have to add classes or houserule the existing classes. Why would I do that, when I have a perfectly good reading of the D&D class and level mechanics - they are a metagame structure for building PCs - that doesn't cause any headaches, and doesn't make it any harder to estimate the challenge of an encounter.</blockquote>

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