Questions about NPC and Enemies

[AJ the Ronin]

A few questions about NPC and Enemies. So far, the release we have being told do not includes a Monsternimicon kind of book and since is a new system there won't be a Monster Manual for enemies. The first question is:

1. The main book will include a healthy collection of enemies and npc for the PC to interact with?

The other question:

2. Will there be rules for npc/enemy creation?

And finally, 2 more question that are system related:

3. The stat block of enemies will be similar to PC or simplified?
4. There will be rules for minions/mooks?

[PPS_Simon]

More on all of this over the next couple of months.

[AJ the Ronin]

Ah! The Wait! The Wait!

[Iron_Peanut]

Ah! The Wait! The Wait!

Picture a medieval painting of an immense celebration, where feudal lords and ladies are seated around a great table. Lavish in attire, they are consuming a grand feast. Minstrels serenade these lords and ladies, and servants bring them platters of ever more sublime and refined delights.
To one side of the painting, you can see that one of the lords is throwing a scrap of meat to a pack of dogs. The dogs, emaciated with hunger, beg wantonly for such treats, and leap eagerly for any tender morsel they can snatch.
At times like this, I feel like we are those dogs. We are hungry for even the merest scrap of delicious content.

[Nyarlathotep333]

Picture a medieval painting of an immense celebration, where feudal lords and ladies are seated around a great table. Lavish in attire, they are consuming a grand feast. Minstrels serenade these lords and ladies, and servants bring them platters of ever more sublime and refined delights.

To one side of the painting, you can see that one of the lords is throwing a scrap of meat to a pack of dogs. The dogs, emaciated with hunger, beg wantonly for such treats, and leap eagerly for any tender morsel they can snatch.
At times like this, I feel like we are those dogs. We are hungry for even the merest scrap of delicious content.

Woof...

Also, did I miss something? We're not getting a book of monsters? Where was this mentioned?

[AJ the Ronin]

Woof...

Also, did I miss something? We're not getting a book of monsters? Where was this mentioned?

From the TempleCon thread:

# First book is mechanics and overview:

* Core rules
* Character classes
* Game Master rules
* Nation overview
* Cosmology


*Second book focuses on the various civilized kingdoms (Cygnar, Khador, Protectorate, Ord, Llael)

*Third book focuses on the wilds? rules for warlocks, etc. (Spud note: best pictures we've ever seen of Trollkin towns and other "wild civilations")

*Fourth book is the ?kitchen sink?:

* Cryx
* Rhul
* Ios
* Skorne empire
* etc

[baronvonchaos]

Woof^2.

I just want to get my campaign going. I don't want people to have to redo their chars 3-4 months into it.

Are all 4 books coming out at the same time? I think they said, but I don't remember.

[AJ the Ronin]

Sadly no. In the same thread Simon says that the release will be staggered and beyond the fact that the book will be on GenCon he can not comment on the rest of the books.

[FrankJaeger]

The second book looks exactly the place for monsters, in my opinion. And a few related creatures in each book seem good enough to me.

[AJ the Ronin]

Agree. But if we have to wait months for NPC and Enemies and there aren't any available on the main book (or rules how to make enemies) we have a small problem right there.

Although hopefully the main book will contain enough opposition to keep us occupied until the other books arrive.

[Munindk]

When we have the core mechanics and the character creation rules, making NPC's should be very straight forward - you just need to know which parts of the character sheet are essential and ignore the rest.

[Iron_Peanut]

I just want to get my campaign going. I don't want people to have to redo their chars 3-4 months into it.

This is a thing that can happen when more content gets released for a game. If a player says "Oooh! This new content makes me want to play this other guy now!" maybe he should and maybe he shouldn't, depending on the needs of the game as it is right now. If the only reason he wants to play this new character is because the new character is more optimized mechanically, that's usually a no.
If a player says "Oooh! This new content lets me better represent my original character concept!" Then our group has typically let a player "respec" his character. Even if that "better represenation" is in the interest of being more mechanically effective, provided it moves things towards being more in line with the original concept, that's fine. Everyone should be able to play a character that is effective.

When we have the core mechanics and the character creation rules, making NPC's should be very straight forward - you just need to know which parts of the character sheet are essential and ignore the rest.

I think most RPGs work better where the rules are different for PCs and NPCs, at least most of the time. The PCs are the protagonists, and they should get more attention. A simplified or even wildly different system can suffice for NPCs. Mainly I say this because I recall back to the NPC statblocks for D&D3.x, and how dumb and overwrought they were, especially for high-threat enemies.

I can already see room for differences between PCs and NPCs. PCs have a life spiral, and that could be a pain in the butt to keep track of for a horde of enemies. Maybe there are three tiers of baddies, using the tabletop as an example:

Mooks are 1-wound warriors/solos, taken out of commission if they suffer enough damage to exceed their ARM. These are great when you need to fight thirty of them; endless hordes of Dregg pouring forth from dark tunnels, small-time gangs and pirates stalking Five Fingers, tribes of feral Bogrin chasing you though the Gnarls, non-thrall reanimated undead, etc.

Standard NPCs have mutliple wounds models with 5-10 HP, but no life spiral. They've got some staying power but don't require a lot of bookkeeping; the town guards dispatched to break up the ruckus the PCs have instigated, the caravan guards soldiers your PCs are ambushing, the pack of Tharn about to eat the heart of a nubile virgin sacrifice, etc.

Special NPCs are have fat stacks of wounds and a life spiral - these are guys that the story is invested in somehow. You want them around for a while and you want the PCs to notice when they start losing aspects and slipping up. The rule of thumb is that anybody who has a name has a life spiral; the corrupt Greylord that has been hunting your cell of Llaelese resistance members, the wizard your mage hunter strike team has been stalking, the maddened ghost that has been killing all the train passengers that come through this tunnel, etc.

[Munindk]

A HP amount, stats for an attack, a list of relevant skills and spells is all I really need for an NPC, regardless of the system. The more important NPC's get more skills and hp, maybe an secondary attack and some notes on what they know and what motivates them. If the core rules contain clever system for keeping track on NPCs thats all good, but I dont really see it as an issue if they dont.

If PP is making a NPC system I would love to see stat cards like those from Warmachine. No more flipping through your notes, no more keeping track of initiative and HP on scrap paper, just place the cards in initiative order and mark damage taken on the card. You could even assemble random encounter decks... I'm seeing a lot of possibilities here.

[Iron_Peanut]

If PP is making a NPC system I would love to see stat cards like those from Warmachine. No more flipping through your notes, no more keeping track of initiative and HP on scrap paper, just place the cards in initiative order and mark damage taken on the card. You could even assemble random encounter decks... I'm seeing a lot of possibilities here.

I agree with the sentiments expressed in this post.

I would love to see some kind of card generator that I could throw NPC (or PC) stats into that would compile and print out a card for my easy reference. I'm certain the community could produce something like that if they set their minds to it.
Also PP could come out with a "monster manual" full-color deck from which to assemble random encounters and the like. Easy money!

[Sosthenes]

I think most RPGs work better where the rules are different for PCs and NPCs, at least most of the time. The PCs are the protagonists, and they should get more attention. A simplified or even wildly different system can suffice for NPCs.

(Emphasis mine)

That all depends on how "special" the characters are -- often strongly related to how "realistic" the game is. If you take it very seriously, PCs being protagonists should shield them from "meaningless" deaths, i.e. a critical success from a mook or a sprung trap shouldn't end their career. This is especially true for TPKs, which would be weird even for a George-Martine-esque definition of "protagonist"?

I'm not the biggest fan of "mooks" and similar systems, for several somewhat personal reasons:

a) I don't like the implications this has. I like to go for a decent amount of immersion in my games, and treating some enemies as lesser beings in a mechanical manner, often extends this to a moral level ? subhuman, in other words. This is especially true for mook combat mechanics (e.g. one hit -> you're out), not as much for stats (just because I don't have "Disadvantage: Dependents (family of 8)" on the sheet doesn't mean that they don't exist). For the same reason I don't like strictly black/white, good/evil tendencies in most games.

b) They're quite often a design cop-out. If your system is too complex for game prep, NPC creating rules seem an obvious solution, but you're basically adding additional mechanics to the whole stew because you failed already. Adding curry to the mix to conceal the smell of rotten meat. Highly subjective, of course, as the other solutions often go against the grain for some people who like those problematic areas in the core system. Best example is level-dependence. In D&D 3E, everything is closely related, you just have that many skill points per lvl, BAB and spell progression is fixed, CR and ECL create complicated balance systems. That way NPCs with classes almost need to be fully fleshed out, just to be sure that you didn't give 'em to many points in "Move Silently" or got their attack bonus off by two points. Not as much an issue in other games, where you can just give your NPC a few spells and set their sword skill to 77%, without any possible rules contradictions. This enables you to abbreviate NPC stats a lot, while still sticking to the rules (mostly because there are fewer). To be fair, most of those systems make it harder to really balance encounters.

c) I'm a big proponent of making your players work for their money, preferring settings where they're not like unto gods. I'm not too fond of preparing slaughter-fests to cater to their egos. Apart from the moral POV I mentioned earlier, this often makes it to easy, thus resulting in the somewhat silly concept of "boss fights" and doesn't give enough incentive to avoid combat entirely.


As I've said, personal opinions. A lot of them depend on the game style. It's similar to the difference between e.g. a "serious" war movie and a Michael Bay 'splosion-fest. I'm not saying that one is wrong. It's just that with the amount of time invested in playing and preparing it, I'm less inclined to the "turn off your brain, you should really just relax" position -- especially as a GM. That works perfectly for movies, comics, and short stories. But with anything beyond the length of that, cerebral activity resumes and I've got my issues. Given enough hyperbole, comedy and over-stylization, I can actually make it work in games - super-heroes and martial artists being prime examples.

It doesn't work as well for the IK, which to me evokes a more "naturalistic" setting. Probably different if you've approach it from the "Epic Warcaster" angle, but that wasn't my way of exposure.

[Nyarlathotep333]

From the TempleCon thread:

Thanks! I'm assuming then that the first book will at least have some sample NPCs/monsters to use for setting up games?

More on all of this over the next couple of months.

Yeah, yeah...I know. We'll find out eventually.