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Legend
Thanks! Many NPCs don't need stats (as others noted), but it's really hard to predict when a particular NPC's stats/mechanics will become important for any given gaming group. Having some creative stats at least gives a DM something to base his or her own homebrew on.
Cheers!
Absolutely. I am trying to encompass many archetypes into one stat block without making it balloon into something unwieldy.
Generally, I agree that "An NPC who has knowledge the PCs need/want" doesn't necessarily need any stats or special rules. However, I'd argue there's a difference between that NPC and the D&D "Sage." As far as I can tell, Sages have been semi-mythical figures in D&D and its source material...think the Seven Sages of Greeve, the Vedic Rishis, the Rabbis of the Talmud, Jiang Ziya, Mentor in the Odyssey, etc. It's those kind of characters I believe Gygax had in mind when he originally penned that part of the DMG giving them spells and making them expensive to consult.
As far as how useful stat blocks are to a DM... personally, I often refer to stat blocks in non-combat situations, but YMMV. I'm working on an adventure that may involve teaming up with, or seeking varying sorts of aid, from a sage; so in that case, having a clearer picture of what the sage is capable of certainly is useful to me.
Indeed, neither do I. My thinking is that if a "sage" (lower case 's') does not having Spellcasting or special abilities (such as Read Magic), then that's the sort of NPC that can be left up to the DM to ad lib numbers for if it ever comes up.
As far as "knowledge" skills go...that's a very limited design space, because it's designed to be used on the player side. A DM can make up whatever number they want for a NPC's Arcana skill, for example, because all that matters is what the NPC can tell the PCs about, say, the portal to the Abyss they're searching for. If the DM already decides the NPC has that information, the Arcana skill is irrelevant; the NPC either has it or they don't.
What's more interesting are special abilities the NPC can draw upon which might help the PCs, such as an "occultist" identifying that a wight is susceptible to silver or a "scribe" crafting spell scrolls. I think of these a bit like those Unearthed Arcana feats which were skill proficiency plus.
Yeah, I could certainly see an occultist knowing contact other plane in lieu of legend lore.
Sorry, that was short-hand for a more involved homebrew system. I'll probably just cut the cartographer from the list of specialties.
Yep, that works too.
Yes, it's supposed to be automatic. I was going for brevity rather than exhaustive rules writing. Perhaps your suggestion to separate the specialties as their own sidebar will help resolve that.
There's a risk when creating specific rules for things which may already be assumed via skill checks, and that risk is whittling away at the general capabilities of most characters. Generally, I'm very cautious of such situations when creating player-side rules. But this being for a NPC felt different.
Good idea
I did consider that, but avoided it because Background features generally are player-side rules. Essentially, if I gave that background trait to a Sage NPC, I'd be creating two DM ruling points: First, ruling whether the NPC knows something. Second, if they don't, ruling who else the NPC is aware of with that knowledge. In other words, including such a trait would be wasted space amounting to: "DM, make up what you want that feels sage-y."
Going that route seems to feed back into the objection: Why is a Sage stat block useful/needed to a DM?
IMO the utility of a stat block comes from the interesting things the creature can do, and the new options it opens for the game which a DM might not think about on his or her own. For example, the Read Scrolls trait opens up a new dimension of the game by introducing a NPC who can "read text without triggering any protective magic" – right away, that could make for an interesting adventure hook or plot twist.
