D&D General Should NPCs be built using the same rules as PCs?

[Micah Sweet]

None of my numbered reasons are intended to, either, except for number 3, which is the only one you're focused on. That may be fine for you when you're world-building, but it's bad game design to focus only on Watsonian priorities. Verisimilitude and immersion are Watsonian concerns. There are other concerns that need to be considered, because you can stretch fluff over anything, even objectively bad mechanics.

Watsonian concerns come first in my game. Satisfy those, then move on to Doyle. Your argument is at best the opposite, at worst ignore Watson completely.

 

[The Stray]

Watsonian concerns come first in my game. Satisfy those, then move on to Doyle. Your argument is at best the opposite, at worst ignore Watson completely.

I have endless binders full of hand-scrawled notes for games that died on the vine because I was focusing on Watsonian stuff at the expense of other concerns. Call it learning a harsh lesson at the hands of Mistress Experience.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have endless binders full of hand-scrawled notes for games that died on the vine because I was focusing on Watsonian stuff at the expense of other concerns. Call it learning a harsh lesson at the hands of Mistress Experience.

I respect your opinion, but your personal experiences are not going to convince me, any more than I would expect mine to convince you.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Should NPCs be built using the same rules as PCs?​

I did this exactly once as DM with a BBEG Wizard that kept meeting the party throughout the campaign. Too much work. It's a "No" for me and my limited prep time.

 

[The Stray]

I respect your opinion, but your personal experiences are not going to convince me, any more than I would expect mine to convince you.

Sure. But this is where I'm coming from when I come at this as a game-design issue rather than a setting or character design one. It's easier to paper over decisions made for balance or niche-protection reasons with lore than it is to correct a mistake when lore is used to justify giving players access to NPC-only abilities that cause severe issues later.

Likewise, it's better to build NPCs as mechanically distinct from PCs -- some games might do this like D&D does, with radically different systems for monsters vs player, while some might use very simplified versions of PC stat blocks. Even in games where the PCs and NPCs are built similarly, the process is usually different...you don't build NPCs in Savage Worlds Advance by Advance (you can, but you don't have to), you give supervillains in Mutants & Masterminds as many Power Points as they need to have the powers you want that the Power Level you want and you can give them X-Traits and Plot Device powers, and so on.

 

[Cadence]

I'm trying to think back to the classes in early Dragon magazines (Bounty Hunter, Jester, the other alignment Paladins) - were some (most?) of them just NPC classes?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm trying to think back to the classes in early Dragon magazines (Bounty Hunter, Jester, the other alignment Paladins) - were some (most?) of them just NPC classes?

That's certainly what they were called, and they can and were used that way, but PCs used them too. I know I did.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I have built NPCs and monsters with full character classes and levels, with feats and other player option boons. Typically these are characters that were once adventurers themselves or meant to represent what the PCs may become with more training and experience, or unique reoccurring bosses or rivals that the players encounter.

I have built NPCs and monsters with partial character features that help give them a similar identity to a class and subclass type, as I incorporate many of the classes/subclasses into the lore and worldbuilding of my world. For example, a dragon they fought and then saved from a corrupting domination effect had some features taken from the Paladin Class and Vengeance Paladin subclass that she used in their fight to signal to the players that she is was once a holy warrior of a god before her domination. Another example is the Circle of the Forge Druids my players in an other group have encountered, where the party's Druid was able to interact and learn of this Circle's philosophy and even begin training to learn how to activate their unique mechanical wildshape feature.

And I have built NPCs and monsters without bothering to incorporate with any player options. These are typically the most common characters I make.

I enjoy using all these methods.

 

[Lanefan]

No. they aren't. They are the focal point around which the game, in a mechanical sense, revolves. No matter what their background, history, or purpose, the game is, ultimately, about the PCs, not the NPCs. Detailed options that are available to them on a regular basis are superfluous or extraneous when applied to NPCs who are only going to be on-screen for a limited amount of time, and powers and abilities that might be exciting and engaging in a limited quantity (such as the hypothetical encounter with the shaman who can heal and sling fire with equal ease) will prove problematic in the hands of people who are on-screen all the time and have those abilities as a normal part of their problem-solving repertoire.

If it's problematic in the hands of the always-on-screen PCs then it's problematic in the hands of anyone in the setting.

It helps, I believe, to think of the NPCs as always being on screen in their own stories that just don't happen to be getting told at the moment, and work from there.

This is a Story take on what is, ultimately, a Gameplay problem. You can use flavor to justify any kind mechanics. You can't do the reverse and have it reliably work, and the 3.x era was a prime example of why. This has nothing to do with the PC's fictional positioning, and everything to do with with the PCs-as-game-pieces. This is a game design-level issue, and it's present in pretty much any RPG you care to name, not just D&D. You either need to stick so much detail on an NPC that they become cumbersome to use in the moments they're on-screen, or you use a different system for building them, which has the flexibility to add what you like but that very strength means they have access to abilities that PCs don't get.

Or you use a simpler system for building them that still always gives results that fall within the parameters already defined by the game's rules for PCs.

And this has no bearing whatsoever on the objective facts of your character's place in the game. The most free-willed pawn in Chess still only gets to move one square forward at a time and only capture pieces diagonally, as much as it might want to sulk about that, and it can't be anything different unless and until it reaches the end of the board and gets promoted.

Granted, RPGs allow their game pieces a lot more freedom than that, but at the end of the day, they are still pieces, not people.

Yeah, we differ greatly here. I'd rather think of the characters as people first, and game pieces second (if at all). Therefore...

(This, incidentally, is why I also reject "it's what my character would do" as a defense for wangrod behavior at the game table. The "character" is nothing more than the player's agent in the game world. The player is choosing the character's reactions, not the other way around, and any claims to the contrary are just attempts to deflect responsibility for being a wangrod. The player is the one with agency, not the character, and they've chosen to exercise they agency to harm the game experiance of everyone else for their own selfish reasons, and that's generally unacceptable.)

... "it's what the character would do" is not only always a valid defense here, it's how I expect characters to be played: true to themselves and doing what they would do in whatever situations they're in; and (given that it's all in good fun among friends) table considerations largely be damned. Clear separation of character feelings from player feelings is, however, essential; start taking things personally IRL and you'll not last long here.

And yes, sometimes people play wangrod characters. This doesn't necessarily mean they're wangrod players. Flip side: I've had (mercifully few) people play perfectly decent inoffensive helpful characters and yet still be wangrods as people at the table.

 

[Lanefan]

I have a few thoughts on why this might be case.

Niche protection issues would be my guess. Magic + swordsmanship? I've regularly heard it said that in every Star Wars Game you need to either have the PCs all be Jedi, or none of them be Jedi, and "overshadowing the others" is a commonly stated reason why.

Same problem, only we have Sneaky + Fighty instead of Fighty + Magic.

That makes sense.

Which runs right into the hacker problem you see in a lot of Cyberpunk games -- either you have an entire subsystem that your stay-at-home dude needs to engage with, layering a whole minigame on top of whatever you're already doing, meaning large swaths of time when the other characters are just sitting on their thumbs, OR you get all-power cheese groups that you can no longer effectively challenge, ruining the gaming experience. The only way a stay-at-home support character works is if they are an NPC which can be conveniently removed from action via plot contrivance when necessary.

Exactly. I never said (or never meant to say) that a stay-at-home class was intended to be PC-playable. I mean, if someone really wanted to play one as a PC I'd allow it, but I'd give clear warning they'd be setting themselves up for a miserable time after which if a miserable time ensued I'd have no sympathy.

My point was that the game gives no mechanics for DMs to construct stay-at-home classes or characters (e.g. the 16th-level NPC temple Cleric who just cast Resurrection on your companion) and yet the game (in all editions) always seems to assume - or in some cases outright say - they exist and didn't necessarily gain all those levels through adventuring.

This, I'll give you. The NPC classes of 3.x sucked monkey balls and were too stripped down, and every other edition has had its own problems.

3e had the right idea but, as with many things it did, went completely overboard with it. That said, the point of those NPC classes was that they were very stripped down, mostly to make them so sub-optimal that nobody would want to play one.

(a far easier fix is to simply have it that stay-at-home classes don't and can't gain xp from either combat or risk-taking but instead have to (very slowly) gain them some other way)