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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9602653" data-attributes="member: 29398">My mistake, then.  I haven't looked at UA in ages (except for some magic item write-ups) and forgot Drow were in there.And as far as it goes, all of that is fine.BUT - if-when that NPC with the unusual ability encounters any PC then IMO there has to be an in-fiction explanation* for where that unusual ability came from.  In other words, when a player asks "How can [my otherwise very similar PC] get that ability?" or even "How did that NPC become able to do that?" there has to be an answer available that's more coherent than "Just because".Now that answer could be anything - blessed by a deity as a mission reward, trained by special trainers in the Althasian Mountains, lucky result of a wild-magic effect, it's a self-developed ability that the NPC can now train others in (i.e. you're introducing a new feat to the game on the fly), and so on - but the answer has to be there...just the same as when the reverse happens and an NPC asks a PC how it can do what it does.  Most if not all of the time a character knows how it came by its abilities.Absent those sort of unique events, I posit the DM is bound by the same limits are are players when designing playable-species NPCs.  No, the DM doesn't have to go through every step of roll-up and can instead just assign stats etc. to suit what she has in mind, but she does have to make sure that the NPC she ends up with falls within the bounds of what a player could roll up. (non-roll systems such as point-buy or array completely wreck this as they don't allow players access to the full bell curve of what an individual's stats might be)* - as in, the explanation has to exist in case the players dig in to asking about it; nothing says the players have to be told what it is right up-front.</blockquote>

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