PrC Entries - Sample NPCs, yes or no?

[Arashi Ravenblade]

i'd prefer they keep sub-par NPC's out of the book. now if they wanted to take major NPC's from a campaign settings and optamize them then maybe they can stay.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I'd actually put them in a "sample NPC" appendix at the back of a given book. But do they belong in the books? Hell yeah. I never say no to a good usable NPC.

Sorry, statting up NPCs sucks the fun out of game prep for me.

I agree absolutely. And I also agree with Psion about not repeating abilities that were just explained a page earlier - that is padding of the worst kind. The NPCs may miss the mark sometimes (mainly by only have a single level of the PrC in question - BOO!) but they are handy to have.

Strangely enough when i first got my Complete books (Arcane and Adventurer were the first two i ever got) I didn't even notice the NPCs. My eyes kind of glazed over when confronted by stat blocks (have since 1E - stats are boring). It wasn't until a friend said he wanted to try to build a character like the one in Complete Arcane (Alienist) that I noticed this goldmine. I was in 'player' mode at the time so that may hve explained it (and had regulated the Complete books to the 'player stack' of my RPG collection).

 

[Felix]

If not having PrC NPCs means that I pay $5 less for a book, or they have to come up with 15 pages of material that doesn't repeat the same darn abilities they just explained, then I'm for axing the NPCs.

I've got Word files full of possible PCs/NPCs on my hard drive, each tailored the way I want them, and I like doing it myself so I can work out the NPCs personality and motivations. PrC NPCs? No thanks. Put them on the web if folks want, but they're "out of the book" for me.

 

[wayne62682]

I say get rid of them. Most of them are sub-optimal jokes anyways that will get pwnd by any half-decent player, and more often than not they have wrong abilities stated in them anyways due to shoddy editing/proofreading so.. yeah, I don't want these wastes of space in the book. Any DM with half a brain can look at the PrC and stat up their own NPCs.

 

[Starglim]

If the author's idea for an example NPC is good enough to be a web enhancement then that's where it should go.

If it's not something customers would even take the time to download for free, then it certainly shouldn't take up space in the book.

It's not essential to the class either way.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I voted "Don't care," as long as they are available for those who find them useful. I have a problem with the basic assumption of the poll, however, that by getting rid of these entries, they will either get replaced by something better, or even replaced at all. They're marginally handy, and can potentially solve questions as to how the PrC's abilities work with certain other class features. I'd say they're still ten times more useful than say.... the descriptions of good and evil in BoED and BoVD, for example.

I say get rid of them. Most of them are sub-optimal jokes anyways that will get pwnd by any half-decent player

I thought the purpose of NPC's was to help build the environment, not run wild on the PCs like Hulk Hogan. I personally prefer making the hardest encounters the ones against the "joke" humanoid NPC's. My friend leveled up Mialee, Tordek, and the rest of the subpar gang from the PHB and made them bada**, it was such a great idea! To each their own...

 

[Bacris]

I have a problem with the basic assumption of the poll, however, that by getting rid of these entries, they will either get replaced by something better, or even replaced at all.

Actually, that's not my assumption

As a D20 product author, I was looking to see if people actually found value in these and, by that vein, if people want them in the main entry, somewhere else, or not at all. For myself, at least, I know what I'm going to write and pagecount is secondary (especially since sample NPCs really only mean a few pages of pagecount added / removed) - it's a matter of knowing what the reader wants out of such pagecount.

 

[Henrix]

I really like them. It gives me a fast way to eaily use the materieal in the book.

But, as has been said, their stat block would be better if they did not repeat information given just a page earlier (unless it's very short).

 

[Shade]

i'd prefer they keep sub-par NPC's out of the book. now if they wanted to take major NPC's from a campaign settings and optamize them then maybe they can stay.

I voted "hell no!" but I like this idea.

 

[Eytan Bernstein]

The Web Enhancement is a really good idea. Perhaps it might take some of the pressure off designers and editors when it comes to stat blocks because they'd have more time to do them and perhaps a bit less worry. I do think the samples are necessary. When I was writing NPCyclopedia Psionics for Silven, there were virtually no sample psionic NPCs in WotC books. There are now, but it was really difficult to figure out how the NPC would be written up without.