These 2 factors are what I love about Savage Worlds--they are both satisfied by the rules. The rules for character creation apply to PC's, not NPCs. NPCs just get whatever stats & abilities they need and roll out. Brilliant, really.
Should NPCs Have to Follow the Same Rules as PCs?
These 2 factors are what I love about Savage Worlds--they are both satisfied by the rules. The rules for character creation apply to PC's, not NPCs. NPCs just get whatever stats & abilities they need and roll out. Brilliant, really.
Psion
Adventurer
See, to me, that's a "setting consistency and internal logic" thing, not a "fairness" thing.
Jack99
Adventurer
First of all, thanks for answering. This is why I love ENworld. The possibility of talking with some of the people who helped shape the game I love (and thank you for that).
However, I must say that I do not see how (lets stick with drizz't as example) him having a special attack that kills on a 20, steals anything from the players' show. I mean, unless you have him running around with the players, killing everything in their way, or showing up constantly to handle things when they are in trouble, then he is just another NPC. He will never be the star.
Giving special abilities to NPC's doesn't steal the players' thunder, but playing the NPC's as annoying, know-it-all, handle-it-all DMPC's does.
Cheers
This is because Drizzt is categorised by most ppl as a PC, not an NPC. He just happens to be played by RA Salvatore.
By contrast, the number of ppl who care if Szass Tam can do all kinds of nasty NPC-only things is likely to be far smaller, and the number of ppl who care if Kyuss can do all kinds of nasty wormgod-only things is likely to be far smaller still.
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Intense_Interest
First Post
Isn't this solely a quality of having an implied setting so thick and broad that PCs are defined by what they haven't done instead of what they have? FR is a corner case, not an example.
The "special" qualities of a PC should never be from using Power X, but in accomplishing Quest Y. Halberd Guard the Trippy will never slay a dragon and save a princess; "NPC Power" is created for dynamism within an encounter rather than a straight comparison.
And naturally, the Halberd Guard is actually a member of the At-Will Tripping Class. PCs can train in it if they sign up to be a life-time member of the guard and forfeit all but one of their Healing Surges.
Lucas Yew
Explorer
This certainly is a casting of Thread Necromancy, but I had to cast it... for I couldn't resist the urge to proudly announce that I am on the PC-NPC Equal Rules camp, that is.
As a simulationist who abandoned his personal first D&D edition (4E Essentials, that is) after learning about the existence of more simulationist editions without a second thought, it is my personal dream to create a CC free fantasy RPG rule system that is highly simulationist yet doing away with the dreaded LFQW problem. It will be hard, but I won't give up...
As a simulationist who abandoned his personal first D&D edition (4E Essentials, that is) after learning about the existence of more simulationist editions without a second thought, it is my personal dream to create a CC free fantasy RPG rule system that is highly simulationist yet doing away with the dreaded LFQW problem. It will be hard, but I won't give up...
Broadly, I've rarely seen a game that really needs the NPCs to work the same way as PCs.
I also don't see any problem with having some NPCs built by PC rules, either. I just find that level of detail excessive for most NPCs, so I want some "fast and dirty" methods as well.
Celebrim
Legend
Yes, but it can become a fairness thing in several ways:
For most of D&D's history, the statement "NPCs don't need to follow the same rules as PCs" was used to justify techniques for disempowering PCs. For most of D&D's history, the NPCs were consistently more special in small or great ways than the PCs and tons and tons of justification was used for this. In my experience as a player, the vast majority of DMs are more often and more powerfully tempted to make their NPCs more special than the PCs than they are tempted to make their NPCs less cool and less special than the PCs. So we regularly see for example, "NPCs can create magic items; PCs can't.", "NPCs can use power of plot magic to build lairs or effect the game world; PCs can't.", "PCs are limited to a certain point buy NPCs aren't.", and in general, "PC's are limited by the rules; NPC's aren't." This can eventually reach the point of, "NPCs don't even need to follow the rules of action resolution like the PCs." For example, "The NPC gets as many actions as he needs to serve the story."
Of course, you don't mean to take it that far, but its a nasty can of worms and it quickly gets out of control particularly if the game gives the GM no markers to represent how much resources/favor an NPC is receiving and doesn't encourage them to think about it or reflect on it. The problem here is that mostly we can justify the NPCs not using the same rules as the PCs because of the high burden this would put on the GM. But if you take it too far, and its very easy to take too far, you end up with a justification for GM laziness.
Another way it becomes a fairness thing is that if it invalidates the player's ability to reason. All game systems need to provide a framework for player prognostication. A player needs to be able to anticipate, at least slightly, the sort of consequences that are likely attached to a proposition, in the same way that in the real world you learn that if you jump you move in a certain way and land in a certain way, that heavy things are usually hard to move, water is wet and so forth. If the game system provides no consistent framework for reasoning, you end up in a situation where the player isn't really capable of taking control of the story because everything that happens seems random, arbitrary, and uncontrollable from the vantage of the player. And in fairness, some GMs actually see this as a positive and run wild, zany, crazy, hugely unpredictable situations as a sort of a power player to keep the game in their control. And also in fairness, that can even be entertaining as long as long as the GM isn't particularly brutal, you were willing to relax and just let the GM run with it, and give back your minimal feedback - which usually amounts to "I hit it with a stick." and "I hit again, but harder."
When the NPCs aren't following the rules the PC's are following, they tend to not be following any rules at all save when it is convenient for the GM. And when you take away "setting consistency" and "internal logic" from the players like that, the players tend to become passive consumers of the setting because they have no choice in the matter.
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