I'm broadly in agreement with "if a person in the setting can get an ability, then a pc built to the right standards can get it" with the only big caveat being "monstrous races are not playable" as a big exception. No, you can't grow eyestalks that shoot disintegration rays unless we're playing an all-aberrations game.
But more importantly, for me: npc abilities that are the same as pc abilities should work like pc abilities. An npc thief's Sneak Attack should use the same rules as a pc's Sneak Attack. An enemy wizard's fireball works like a pc's fireball. Including using spell slots, which will run out eventually.
My big exception to npcs being built the same as pc's is progression and balance - said npc wizard doesn't need to have all the features of a 5th-level wizard to cast fireball - they just need spell slots and the ability to cast fireball.
No, this is emphatically and empirically not the case. Because NPCs are not PCs. You yourself recognize that a distinction exists between PC and monster, but you constantly refuse to acknowledge how arbitrary your distinctions between "monster" and "PC-playable race" are -- You and @Micah Sweet both.
He was, however, correct about this. There is not daylight between "NPC" and "monster" -- as far as the game is concerned, they're the same entity. PC design and PC creation rules are there to provide tools for players to interact with the game world. NPCs and Monsters are there to challenge the PCs in various ways. The two functions are as different as night and day, and treating one set of tools as equivalent to the other is just a recipe for headaches, wasted effort, and unnecessary limitation in pursuit of fidelity to arbitrary standards of fictional purity.
Also, an NPC only remains so until-unless it gets a player attached. If Joe rolls up a 6th-level Thief to replace the Fighter he just lost, that Thief doesn't (in most typical campaigns!) just appear out of glitterdust or step through a portal. It was always out there in the setting as an NPC up to now, doing whatever it did in order to acquire those six levels and all the abilities etc. that go along with them; it just didn't yet have to drag a player around with it.
In other words and more broadly, the NPC-to-PC transfer happens every time someone rolls up a character. By extension, that (in my view anyway) kinda both implies and forces PCs and NPCs to be the same.
No. Every fictional character ever is just that -- fiction. They do not exist. An NPC does not turn into a PC when a Player chooses them as an avatar, a PC appears ex nihilo from the void, created whole cloth out of airy nothing and retroactively granted a past and a present. Fiction isn't real. This is a game and these are game pieces. Only people who've had a psychotic break from reality, like Tom Hanks in Mazes & Monsters, really believe otherwise. Pardieu didn't exist as some platonic ideal to be inhabited by Robbie Wheeling.
The only stance that makes sense is to separate the character from the mechanics. They are not wedded together. This becomes crystal clear when you take a character and translate it across different game systems. You will quickly find yourself having to make choices about what is important -- fidelity to the character's history and general capabilities, or fidelity to the mechanics of the system you've chosen. Something will have to give. Either slavish devotion to mechanical purity, or the history and backstory of the character you say had to live the levels you've assigned to them.
I mean, you don't even have to go outside D&D to see this in action -- just take the same character and translate it into every edition of the game. It's the same character, right? He had all those experiences and upbringing, right? So it should be relatively simple to create a character that is identical, in form and function, in every single edition of the game...right? Right?
The very notion is absurd. 6 Levels mean very different things in each edition. Heck, you said "Thief" and not "Rogue," which most modern players wouldn't even recognize as it's own class. Doing this brings you into contact with The Ship of Theseus question -- what defines a thing? How much of a thing can be replaced and still be considered that thing? Or is the idea of the thing more important than the materials that make up the thing? (materials, in this context, being mechanics)
If the idea of the NPC is important, then it doesn't actually matter what the mechanics are. It's all abstraction at the end of the day.
As long as the eyeball-developed monsters fit within the parameters of what they could have been if worked out the long way, all is good. And for not-3e, monsters (as in, things people can't play as PCs) can do - and be - anything you want.
Just like I've said numerous times already.
By this do you mean "monster" as in not-PC-playable creature or "monster" as in anything not itself a PC?
1. BY THE MIGHTY POWER OF THE DM SAID SO!.
2. BY THe mighty DM stamping NPC on your PC sheet. Get with me Wednesday as your former PC is now the villain of the week.
3. Since NPC is a hang up for some reason. There PCs and MONSTERS. NPC is now banished from the D&D dictionary.
No, this is emphatically and empirically not the case. Because NPCs are not PCs. You yourself recognize that a distinction exists between PC and monster, but you constantly refuse to acknowledge how arbitrary your distinctions between "monster" and "PC-playable race" are -- You and @Micah Sweet both.
He was, however, correct about this. There is not daylight between "NPC" and "monster" -- as far as the game is concerned, they're the same entity. PC design and PC creation rules are there to provide tools for players to interact with the game world. NPCs and Monsters are there to challenge the PCs in various ways. The two functions are as different as night and day, and treating one set of tools as equivalent to the other is just a recipe for headaches, wasted effort, and unnecessary limitation in pursuit of fidelity to arbitrary standards of fictional purity.
No. Every fictional character ever is just that -- fiction. They do not exist. An NPC does not turn into a PC when a Player chooses them as an avatar, a PC appears ex nihilo from the void, created whole cloth out of airy nothing and retroactively granted a past and a present. Fiction isn't real. This is a game and these are game pieces. Only people who've had a psychotic break from reality, like Tom Hanks in Mazes & Monsters, really believe otherwise. Pardieu didn't exist as some platonic ideal to be inhabited by Robbie Wheeling.
The only stance that makes sense is to separate the character from the mechanics. They are not wedded together. This becomes crystal clear when you take a character and translate it across different game systems. You will quickly find yourself having to make choices about what is important -- fidelity to the character's history and general capabilities, or fidelity to the mechanics of the system you've chosen. Something will have to give. Either slavish devotion to mechanical purity, or the history and backstory of the character you say had to live the levels you've assigned to them.
I mean, you don't even have to go outside D&D to see this in action -- just take the same character and translate it into every edition of the game. It's the same character, right? He had all those experiences and upbringing, right? So it should be relatively simple to create a character that is identical, in form and function, in every single edition of the game...right? Right?
The very notion is absurd. 6 Levels mean very different things in each edition. Heck, you said "Thief" and not "Rogue," which most modern players wouldn't even recognize as it's own class. Doing this brings you into contact with The Ship of Theseus question -- what defines a thing? How much of a thing can be replaced and still be considered that thing? Or is the idea of the thing more important than the materials that make up the thing? (materials, in this context, being mechanics)
If the idea of the NPC is important, then it doesn't actually matter what the mechanics are. It's all abstraction at the end of the day.
No, this is emphatically and empirically not the case. Because NPCs are not PCs. You yourself recognize that a distinction exists between PC and monster, but you constantly refuse to acknowledge how arbitrary your distinctions between "monster" and "PC-playable race" are -- You and @Micah Sweet both.
The only reason I think about whether a species is PC-playable or not is because those are the species that most require symmetry. An Elf is an Elf, doesn't matter who (if anyone) is playing it.
He was, however, correct about this. There is not daylight between "NPC" and "monster" -- as far as the game is concerned, they're the same entity. PC design and PC creation rules are there to provide tools for players to interact with the game world.
NPCs and Monsters are there to challenge the PCs in various ways. The two functions are as different as night and day, and treating one set of tools as equivalent to the other is just a recipe for headaches, wasted effort, and unnecessary limitation in pursuit of fidelity to arbitrary standards of fictional purity.
No. Every fictional character ever is just that -- fiction. They do not exist. An NPC does not turn into a PC when a Player chooses them as an avatar, a PC appears ex nihilo from the void, created whole cloth out of airy nothing and retroactively granted a past and a present. Fiction isn't real. This is a game and these are game pieces. Only people who've had a psychotic break from reality, like Tom Hanks in Mazes & Monsters, really believe otherwise. Pardieu didn't exist as some platonic ideal to be inhabited by Robbie Wheeling.
Can't speak for you or anyone else, but I assume the game world has an existence above and beyond just those bits with which the players/PCs interact; and that existence includes the prior lives of certain characters before they became PCs.
Ideally there's no such thing as retroactive anything, but practical considerations trump this.
The only stance that makes sense is to separate the character from the mechanics. They are not wedded together. This becomes crystal clear when you take a character and translate it across different game systems. You will quickly find yourself having to make choices about what is important -- fidelity to the character's history and general capabilities, or fidelity to the mechanics of the system you've chosen. Something will have to give. Either slavish devotion to mechanical purity, or the history and backstory of the character you say had to live the levels you've assigned to them.
I mean, you don't even have to go outside D&D to see this in action -- just take the same character and translate it into every edition of the game. It's the same character, right? He had all those experiences and upbringing, right? So it should be relatively simple to create a character that is identical, in form and function, in every single edition of the game...right? Right?
The very notion is absurd. 6 Levels mean very different things in each edition. Heck, you said "Thief" and not "Rogue," which most modern players wouldn't even recognize as it's own class. Doing this brings you into contact with The Ship of Theseus question -- what defines a thing? How much of a thing can be replaced and still be considered that thing? Or is the idea of the thing more important than the materials that make up the thing? (materials, in this context, being mechanics)
What's the difference between Duergar and a Skulk or other humanoid that they never got around to making stats for? Why not allow dopplegangers? One of those would be awesome to play.
What's the difference between Duergar and a Skulk or other humanoid that they never got around to making stats for? Why not allow dopplegangers? One of those would be awesome to play.
The only reason I think about whether a species is PC-playable or not is because those are the species that most require symmetry. An Elf is an Elf, doesn't matter who (if anyone) is playing it.
My argument here is that the elf has a different metafictional purpose depending on who is playing them. If this is a character that's being passed through the hands of different players (GM included), I can see the case for them having the same build as a PC, but absent that, having them go through the same generation process as a PC strikes me as a lot of unnecessary work.
Alrighty, I can see this perspective. I think the roles are different enough in game function to require a clear separation, though. We've all heard the sorts of horror stories that come from tables where the GM has decided to insert their own PC into a group. Clear boundaries between PC and NPC are a guard against this particular pitfall. This may or may not be a concern for you, depending on how cleanly you can separate yourself from your characters.
The perils of GMPCs aside, a GM is still in the position where they are arbiter of an entire world. That's a large amount of stuff to keep track of at once, both in design and in play.
Can we at least agree that, as a time-saving tool, considering NPCs a subset of monster works as a time-saving shortcut for people who might not have the free time/mental bandwidth to keep track of an entire teeming population.
Not sure I'd call it arbitrary but fictional purity is kind of important, isn't it?
Can't speak for you or anyone else, but I assume the game world has an existence above and beyond just those bits with which the players/PCs interact; and that existence includes the prior lives of certain characters before they became PCs.
Ideally there's no such thing as retroactive anything, but practical considerations trump this.
There's a trick in Manga* of variable granularity -- for most normal panels of a work, a thing (let's say a sword, in this example) is rendered in a simplified art style. However, when particular attention is paid to the thing (such as a close-up on the sword), we zoom in and, lo and behold, we see details pop into place! Then we go back to an action scene, and those details vanish...but the reader still "knows" those details are present. Their mind fills in the blank.
and other visual media, too, but it's most prominent in Manga.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, mechanics are the medium with which we paint characters in RPGs. And I'd argue that you can save yourself a lot of brushstrokes by only focusing on the NPC-to-PC details when and if they matter.
But! You've already acknowledged you don't have an issue with treating monsters as monsters, and you don't have an issue with using approximations to get into a ballpark of equivalent PC abilities. Yes?
So the real core of the contention is: should NPCs have access to abilities PCs can't get? Is the fictional life of the character bound forever to a 1-to-1 translation to PC mechanics, or should the DM have the freedom to paint their NPCs with any mechanics they see fit?
Well, the the thing is, if your goal is fictional purity, neither PC nor monster rules are pure. They're both abstractions. There's no such thing as a "6th level Elven Thief," there's only this guy, of Elven descent, who has skills and abilities he's gained from a life of larceny and petty crime. He never "earned levels," he picked pockets, opened locks, searched for traps, and so on. The whole process of assigning levels to him in the first place is artifical and imprecise. It will not and cannot capture his nuances -- something will get lost in the translation from pure fictional entity to impure mechanical game constuct that can be manipulated by a player.
Moreover, while PCs and the GM are playing a game together, they aren't playing the same game. It's a Player-vs-Environment system, and the GM is the Environment. So while the PC's mechanics are pencils and inks, the GM's mechanics are acrylics. They can both be used to depict the same character, but do so in vastly different ways and with different techniques.
And this isn't even getting in to the sticky quandry of asking whether or not to consider monsters people. Because that, I think, is what the true crux of the issue is. Are the PC races the only people in the world, in an ontological or moral sense? The only beings with souls, minds, and free will?
Hey, I've gone and made the same character in Mutants & Masterminds, FATE, Savage Worlds, Storyteller, ShadowRun, and a bunch of other systems. Some of the versions were closer to the conception than others, admittedly, but that was because the games the designers were trying to make were seeking to accomplish different goals and play outcomes. Fidelity to concept is more important than fidelity to a set of statistics.
