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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7261813" data-attributes="member: 996">Or they can be created like PCs...   Possibilities for NPCs in 4e included statting as monsters, as Companion Characters, as charater-class-templated Elite monsters, and, of course, as PCs.  All of those options include stats.  The stats are just arbitrarily assigned by the DM in most of them. Stat's don't have to be rolled, I thought, was the phrasing? 5e's all about evoking the classic game, and during the playtest, Mike Mearls seemed to put a lot of contemplation - and polling - into exactly what that was, including going all the way back to the early days. Maybe.  Could've been DNPC (to go all Hero System).  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Could've been an NPC someone started playing later...   Depends on the system and how it weights abilities...  Not in D&D, presumably, but D&D generally couldn't do either of them at all well, anyway. Same thing, really.  Iolus is a sidekick, D&D generally couldn't do either character that well.   Rather, you refuted a straw man, that point-buy would let you build any array of six stats with a range of 3-18 each.  Which is very different from playing the concept you want, which, presumably, includes a class & race, and includes playing it in a party, with other character-concepts that might have a bearing on what your numbers actually mean.Of the two specific methods given in 5e, the variant point-buy method gives the player more freedom to play the concept he wants when he sits down, it can be used to build a fairly large number of different arrays, letting the player pick and arrange the one that best supports the desired concept.  The default method gives the player exactly one array, if he takes the standard array instead of rolling, he has 6 different stats to arrange as he likes, giving him essentially 5 meaningful choices in distributing them.  If he rolls, again, he gets exactly one array, he just has no control over what that array may be, but, whatever it is, it gives him at most 5 meaningful choices in arranging it - fewer if there are any duplicate numbers. Neither PC method in 5e is remotely realistic, both tending to give far too-capable results for a general population, and the fact they including a player arranging the stats prettymuch renders them nonsensical for the purpose (yes, the DM can do it, but a general population isn't 'designed' like that).  Presumably, some variation on a system would be used for the general population, if, indeed, anything like an individual system were used, at all, which is, really a bit of a stretch - on one's actually going to do that, I don't think, it seems prohibitive, though I suppose you could fairly easily write a program to psuedo-randomly or methodically create an NPC population in detail.So the question is realism seems, to me, to become an almost trivially distinction.  Clearly, random should have the edge in terms of realism, or, at least, realistic-verisimilitude, but, with the default 5e method, the option of taking the array and the ability to arrange stats blows any sort of process-sim/associated-mechanics/v-tude 'realism' out of the water.  It really takes random-in-order, and random generation of other non-character-influenced statistics (like the social class you're born into), before you get a big jump in realism delivered.  There is something, though, to rolling 4d6k3 & arrange, when the traditional assumption is you're coming out of a 3d6 in order population.  V-tude, perhaps, or internal consistency.  It feels like a model of a self- and circumstance-/merit- selected 'elite' - adventurers.   Sure, but there's a clear relationship between 4d6k3/arrange and 3d6-in-order.  It may not mean anything, but it doesn't need to in order to provide 'feel.'</blockquote>

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