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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 9147373" data-attributes="member: 93670">Not always.  There's been mentions of other systems where NPCs of various forms have anything they need to fill the role the GM is using them for & that anything is important in avoiding over/under-prep while keeping NPCs from exploding into uselessly gigantic statblocks too large for the GM to juggle on top of running the game.npc classes as a concept allow the gm to have the tough as nails bartender everyone knows not to cross in a hypothetical seedy bar that caters to a tough crowd of adventures to whip out the right spell for the situation that the gm needs and backfill in conditions about how much is involved in linking said spell to the bar's location through working with the guild or whatever even when the spell is different than the phb version or freshly minted by the gm... that's important because we have a hypothetical "tough as nails bartender that everyone knows not to cross" and that is no longer true if Bob can simply ignore or cross him without care now that he's level x. If the gm is given the design space but they space is linked  too tightly with consistency then it goes from being a useful thing to fit the gm's needs to being a maze the GM needs to navigate that simply falls apart when the PCs get a bit too high in level or happen to take particular build/gear/buff choices.Building from the justification for why they follow whatever the GM needs goes beyond that hypothetical bartender to include masterminds with their own organization and powerbase to draw from being able to convincingly do those things While leaving the GM free to build out the relevant bits no further than needed while allowing the NPCs to draw from the full weight of their role rather than requiring the gm to be the mastermind without an organization supporting him in using a consistent ruleset to equip the NPC with needed  tools.  NPCs can be both adversaries and allies at different times and they need to have the fluidity to accomplish that without overly burdening the gm.Well you could do that by contracting with the proper guild authorities to enchant your business with all the conditional triggers and such after you have the various permits and such.  Don't forget the side effects and time involvement either playerbob, people say that there's a reason why so many bars hire low level adventures to kill giant rats and spiders in the basement. Sure you could learn to do that kind of enchanting, but it's super specialized and what take quite a few levels just to learn part of the process that takes a whole team of guild enchanter's.... no playerbob it's not just security and safety, they bind it to the location with a bunch of conditions so it's cheap and easy enough to be useful for the bar without someone needing to build a deific artifact or something each time the bartender wants to stop s brawl.. it's just not useful for adventuring</blockquote>

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