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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5316333" data-attributes="member: 14159">Why is that so bad?A 7th Level Commoner is pretty rare.  He's probably a middle-aged man who's been in a few bar brawls, been part of the town watch or militia to deal with orc raiders coming by every few years (and may have taken Simple Weapon Proficiency as a feat to have more proficiency than with just 1 weapon, like so he can effectively carry a crossbow or mace while on watch), has to chase away the wolves and coyotes from the livestock occasionally, had to deal with some highwaymen once, lived through some fierce storms, and even then he's only marginally better than 1st level fighter.  7d4 HP with no max HP at 1st level is about 17 HP, with a +3 BAB, but only proficient in 1 simple weapon and has no combat feats and bad saves in all categories.  That vs a 1st level fighter with 10 HP (plus CON), a +1 BAB but martial weapons, armor, and a couple of probably combat-oriented feats.  The 7th Level Commoner might not be an instant pushover, but he's still probably going to lose.NPC classes over 1st level in 3.x aren't the norm, they are the particularly skilled or outstanding.  A typical non-adventuring townsfolk is a 1st level commoner: 2 or 3 HP, +0 BAB and proficiency with 1 simple weapon (probably a club or dagger), AC 10, and a couple of skills at +4 (maybe one with +7 if they have Skill Focus as their 1st level feat and the character is actually somewhat serious about his occupation).They may well do that skill for a living, at least the "between adventures" living.  PC's, especially high-level ones, are the most talented and skilled people in the game world, the kind of people who tend to excel in just about everything they put their minds to.  Just like in the real world, you have the unmotivated lazy types that are marginally skilled and middle-aged having barely any skill, and the young go-getters that are good at their job and going to college to get their degree while taking martial arts classes or learning soldiering in the ROTC. They would have earned those levels by life experience.  Dungeon crawling and modules aren't the only way to earn XP.  As I listed earlier, there are many things in a typical townsfolks life which could earn XP.  They earn it slowly, and NPC classes represent the non-adventuring path they are on which is far weaker than those who live far more dangerous lives.The levels in NPC classes exist to be able to scale NPC's so that they have stats other than raw DM fiat (frankly, leaving the stats of 90+% of the population in the game world to DM fiat is the result of lazy designers, one bit of design elegance I love about 3.x is actual codified stats for almost every creature and person, instead of arbitrary fiat).  I'd be just fine with it being more like in OCR and RCR Star Wars, where only PC classes got vitality, and NPC's only had wound points (i.e., NPC classes get no HP after 1st level), but even then it's not that big a deal, since higher level NPC classes are relatively rare.As I said, I let NPC's do it because especially in a medieval-type setting, even the mundane people live lives far more dangerous than the typical 20th/21st century Earth civilian life.  If you've lived to the age of 30 or 40 in a typical D&D world, even as a townsfolk, you've probably seen more action than a 30 or 40 year old office worker or retail clerk.  Also, you don't have to get very high level at all to be able to do anything we typically expect NPC craftsmen to accomplish.  A 3rd level Commoner can be able to make masterwork items in his trade easily.  Renowned sages, grand-master smiths, highly skilled alchemists and other accomplished NPC's could just as easily be mid-level PC-classed NPCs as NPC-classed.I'm not a 1e expert, I learned D&D on 2e and became an expert on 3e.  To me Secondary Skills is a lazy bolted-on facsimile of a skill system that makes a token nod towards the idea that characters have skills other than purely class-related ones.  The idea that PC-classed characters can never learn trades because their adventuring life is far too rigorous is seems to be a flimsy rationalization.  Spend a few years on sailing ships doing adventures at sea. . .but you don't learn how to be a sailor because it's too much work practicing your lockpicking and backstabbing skills?  In the D&D games I've played in, PC's often had weeks or months between adventures, times PC's could quite plausibly be practicing skills only tangentially related to their character class (i.e. class skills like Craft or Profession).</blockquote>

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