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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9576120" data-attributes="member: 42582">Although if the PC build rules are left alone, and are generalised to also serve as world building rules for the GM, the resulting world is likely to be a silly one (eg every second-story burglar is now, for no clear reason, also an accomplished assassin!).There are RPGs whose PC build rules are also reasonably (not always perfectly) well-suited to serve as world-building rules (RM and RQ are the classics; Classic Traveller can also handle a fair bit of this; Prince Valiant and Burning Wheel, while departing from "simulationism" to various degrees in action resolution, have PC build rules that are also quite workable for building NPCs).But - particularly because of the way that combat ability is inherent to D&D classes, in a niche-protection-ish way - I don't think D&D's PC build rules are very suitable to be used in this fashion.This seems close to tautology - the question becomes, then, are there any/many other clerics? Well, I think it is a premise of the D&D game that PCs are distinctive from most of the rest of their world, in that they are (i) powerful (or, at least, potentially very powerful) and (ii) violently capable and (iii) ready and willing to tackle dangerous situations.The PC build rules ensure (i) and (ii); and (iii) follows from the way the game presents the GM and player roles (ie the players play their PCs through adventures presented by the GM; the GM uses the Monster Manual to build encounters; etc).Whether the PCs are prodigies or not is probably a further, more discretionary matter - maybe they're just lucky, or tenacious, or something else. There are a range of possible reasons that (i) might be true."Minion" is a metagame label - like PC or NPC - but it's not an in-fiction thing.And to be a minion is to be statted a certain way. But I don't see how statting a creature / NPC as a minion is "gamist" in a way that statting a creature in some other fashion is not. These different ways of statting a creature only affect how it interacts with the combat resolution rules (AC and to hit; hp depletion; roll needed to hit; etc), but don't bear upon the fiction. It's not like an Ogre (say) really has 100 hp rather than 1 hp, or really has AC 20 rather than AC 25, or whatever.</blockquote>

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