Tips for making NPCs

[Jack99]

Just my quick thoughts on this, but shouldn't companion NPCs be weaker?

That's the official point of view, but not all DM's necessarily agree that it is always necessary. Without all items and powers, they are still a notch below normal characters. Not much though.

 

[Stoat]

For myself, I prefer NPC companions that are powerful enough to make a difference in combat, not so powerful that they overshadow the PC's, and simple enough that it's easy to run them in combat.

 

[Shin Okada]

I noticed a problem with companion characters as written, though, in the DMG2. I used 3 of them and found I was arbitrarily increasing various factors (AC, HP, Damage, etc) They're just not nearly as good as PC's, yet they demand an equal share of the experience points.

Yep. Even if well-optimized, Companion Characters are in overall a little bit weaker than PCs as they lack action points and dailies. But at least they fill the necessary role, and durable enough as they have better NADs than PCs in average.

And still, in some part, they can do something better than PCs do. For example, companion Barbarian can add their extra damage dice from companion striker feature on top of their strong at-will attack such as Howling Strike. Companion defenders can have better secondary stats than the primary stats to gain better rider effect without lowering their attack rolls. And so on (say, Con 20 / Int 14 Artificer companion using Magic Weapon) .

You can even give them magic items if you really want. They just don't gain anything from fixed bonuses from those items. But Companion Characters can still use magic items' other properties, critical effects, powers and such.

 

[ourchair]

I just gave my PCs the Adamantine Wyrmling from Chaos Scar: The Wayward Wyrmling. It's referred to as a companion character, and represented as a monster stat block.

I'm considering rebuilding it anyway. Should I just use the Monster Builder, the DMG-NPC rules or the DMG2-Companion Character rules?

Also, do you guys let your players control the companion in combat or do you run it yourself?

 

[LostSoul]

They're just not nearly as good as PC's, yet they demand an equal share of the experience points.

I have them subtract a number of XP from the encounter equal to a monster of their level. That is, a 1st-level henchman/companion reduces the amount of XP gathered by the PCs by 100.

This comes off the top; there have been encounters in my campaign where the PCs did not get any XP.

 

[Jack99]

For myself, I prefer NPC companions that are powerful enough to make a difference in combat, not so powerful that they overshadow the PC's, and simple enough that it's easy to run them in combat.

One thing to keep in mind is the huge difference you can have in PC optimization. I think its safe to say, that the more optimized your PC's are, the better you can safely make your companion characters, without worry of overshadowing one of your players.

 

[Shin Okada]

I just gave my PCs the Adamantine Wyrmling from Chaos Scar: The Wayward Wyrmling. It's referred to as a companion character, and represented as a monster stat block.

I'm considering rebuilding it anyway. Should I just use the Monster Builder, the DMG-NPC rules or the DMG2-Companion Character rules?

Also, do you guys let your players control the companion in combat or do you run it yourself?

Well, neither of them will work as they are. You need to your own homework somehow.

Both usual monsters and DMG NPCs are indeed monsters and meant to be used as an opponent in combat encounter. And they are not meant to adventure with PCs for a long time. They will fight well in an combat encounter. But as they don't have enough healing surges per day, they cannot endure typical party's adventuring day. Also, they cannot use second wind and thus somewhat easy to die.

IMHO, downgrading the monster to a standard monster (sorry I don't know if the Monster Builder has that function) then converting it as a companion character (DMG 2) will be the way to go. As it is a Soldier monster, it can make either a good defender or a striker.

But as the DMG 2 indicates, adding a flying monster can give the PC party a really big benefit which usual adventurers can't gain. That is basically something not recommended in DMG 2. So careful control by a DM may be needed anyway.