When should NPC's get PC classes

[Sejs]

Personally?

When they're not Commoners, Experts, or Adepts. And even Adepts are a bit different from normal when I run; I let Adepts have a fully customizable spell-list that coincides with their concept. Village healer? Healing spells. Magical tailor? Spells that are appropriate for making enchanted clothing. Generally for tribal shamans and the like, I'll just use one of the normal divine caster PC classes.

 

[Buttercup]

Anything is playable so long as the player doesn't mind the character being gimped compared to other members of the party. There's no question that the NPC classes are fragile and ineffective in combat compared to a standard PC class, though.

Ah, but if all the PCs were either warriors, experts, aristocrats or adepts, you could have a very interesting game indeed.

 

[Nifft]

Ah, but if all the PCs were either warriors, experts, aristocrats or adepts, you could have a very interesting game indeed.

Ooo! Ooo! Make them all Kobolds, too! With only Weapon Proficency: Brittle Stick!

-- N

PS: I jest, but Buttercup has a valid point: there's something to be said for both genuine humble beginnings and thus genuine earned hero-hood... but it's unlikely to be said by my frothing psychotic munchkin players.

 

[Dareoon Dalandrove]

IMO it's based on level and "drive".

At higher levels, NPC classes simply vanish. Running into a 10th-level adept is very rare, even in FR.

I think D20 Modern and Spycraft do this slightly better. In those systems, you can have mid-level NPC classes without being total wimps. You would have a leader, several henchmen (frequently of different classes) and some grunts. Grunts only have NPC classes.

You usually fight only one or two henchmen at a time, with a bunch of grunts. You will need to tweak things if your party is big, however, as two henchmen will quickly get killed via the "Akbar" method.

I agree Modern does this very well. You have the ordinaries. They get average stats and don't get class ablities. To a certain degree that is the npc class but instead of being close they're a whole new class.