Gilladian
Adventurer
I want more stat blocks like in the MM. I always have to completely redo any "fluff" attached, including names and artwork, because it never suits my campaign world. Last week, for example, I had to wing an adventure based around the theft and recovery of a magic item from the PCs. They tracked the thief to a town, found out where the magic-item auction was being held (their rogue grew up in that town and had lots of contacts there), alerted the local watch commander and got him to accompany him on the raid of the auction/warehouse.
So I needed stats for the thief who stole the item, the auctioneer, his assistant, the six thugs they were employing as guards, the attendees of the auction, the watch-commander, and his five men. I had names for all these NPCs from my handy-dandy list of npc names for folks from towns in Greenvale, and I really only needed the personalities of the 3 most important folk (thief, auctioneer and watch commander) that the PCs actually interacted with. But the NPC personalities that are usually provided in books such as are being suggested here, are always so outlandish and odd that they never fit my NPCs. My watch-commander turned out to be an ambitious younger son of a nobleman; he wanted to prove himself to the city council to attain higher rank, and was willing to take risks to catch the auctioneer, a known criminal, but he was also very reluctant to catch any of the "attendees" at the auction, because he knew they were very likely to have ties TO the council he was trying to impress. So his guards neatly let the attendees escape while they were "busy elsewhere". His personality grew from what happened, and the framework of the world, not from "he's a dwarf ronin".
I used Thugs from the MM, but had to reduce their HP; I used the guard npc for the generic guards, but had to sort of fake up the watch-commander, because none of the NPCs I found suited. The thief turned out to be an assassin, but again I had to sort of fake him up, because the ones in the MM were either too powerful or too weak.
So I needed stats for the thief who stole the item, the auctioneer, his assistant, the six thugs they were employing as guards, the attendees of the auction, the watch-commander, and his five men. I had names for all these NPCs from my handy-dandy list of npc names for folks from towns in Greenvale, and I really only needed the personalities of the 3 most important folk (thief, auctioneer and watch commander) that the PCs actually interacted with. But the NPC personalities that are usually provided in books such as are being suggested here, are always so outlandish and odd that they never fit my NPCs. My watch-commander turned out to be an ambitious younger son of a nobleman; he wanted to prove himself to the city council to attain higher rank, and was willing to take risks to catch the auctioneer, a known criminal, but he was also very reluctant to catch any of the "attendees" at the auction, because he knew they were very likely to have ties TO the council he was trying to impress. So his guards neatly let the attendees escape while they were "busy elsewhere". His personality grew from what happened, and the framework of the world, not from "he's a dwarf ronin".
I used Thugs from the MM, but had to reduce their HP; I used the guard npc for the generic guards, but had to sort of fake up the watch-commander, because none of the NPCs I found suited. The thief turned out to be an assassin, but again I had to sort of fake him up, because the ones in the MM were either too powerful or too weak.
