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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Shark" data-source="post: 9147538" data-attributes="member: 6689169">In fact, having one pool of abilities for both PCs and NPCs is arguably more video-gamey -- you can see it in MMOs, for instance, where there's only so much of the budget that can go to animations and power design, so NPCs end up using copied versions of PC abilities.Plus, using PC-available spells or abilities to represent every kind of NPC ability leads to over-familiarity. If an angel, a dragon sorcerer, a wizard, and a fire elemental all conjure walls of fire, why should they work exactly the same and do exactly the same damage? Having played and run games that use both kinds of approaches, I'm now firmly on the side of "no." As a player, I don't particularly care whether NPCs have abilities I do or not, and as a GM, not having to worry about following the rules of PC creation makes it so much easier to design NPCs.</blockquote>