How competent should NPCs be?

[nothingforyou]

If the PCs optimize, should NPCs also optimize? What if PCs scry-and-die? PCs sell walls of salt to break the economy? PCs cast shapechange? PCs play 1,000 damage a second barbarians?

Essentially, should every NPC encounter be fair but potentially highly lethal? Would this encourage the creation of disposable, uninteresting PCs? Should PvE play a lot more like PvP?

I understand a lot of this comes down to personal preference. So, what the playground think. What would you prefer? Do you think one style of play is more interesting than the other?

[Honest Tiefling]

I'm a little confused as to what the question is. Is it, do you prefer a highly optimized game, or do you prefer a game where the NPCs and PCs have a similar power level? I think those are two different questions, really.

[oudeis]

If the NPCs can't give the players a run for their money, why even bother creating them? My favorite RPG memories, both tabletop and electronic, come from the situations my character/party just barely survived. Cakewalks where you're never in danger are boring and cheap; limping from the dungeon, out of spells, out of potions, gear hacked up, you/your party down to a handful of hitpoints but staggering under the weight of your loot... Now that's FUN. The best victories come only from the best fights.

[nothingforyou]

I'm a little confused as to what the question is. Is it, do you prefer a highly optimized game, or do you prefer a game where the NPCs and PCs have a similar power level? I think those are two different questions, really.

I guess I'm asking about the specific case where PCs are highly optimized. Should NPCs be equally as optimized as the PCs?

If the NPCs can't give the players a run for their money, why even bother creating them? My favorite RPG memories, both tabletop and electronic, come from the situations my character/party just barely survived. Cakewalks where you're never in danger are boring and cheap; limping from the dungeon, out of spells, out of potions, gear hacked up, you/your party down to a handful of hitpoints but staggering under the weight of your loot... Now that's FUN. The best victories come only from the best fights.

This isn't about merely close calls. More like trying to avoid death. Imagine a scenario where the party puts a day into preparing to enter a door in some suburban house, because around every corner is the risk of running into someone as powerful as the PC, who might be able to one-shot said PC.

[Flickerdart]

I guess I'm asking about the specific case where PCs are highly optimized. Should NPCs be equally as optimized as the PCs?

The PCs are the baddest-assed of the badass. Not every adversary should be as twinked out as the heroes, and it would strain credibility if they were. But their primary opposition - the BBEG, his trusted lieutenant, and so forth - should be able to put up a hell of a fight.

The problem with the phrase "someone just as powerful being able to one-shot the PCs" isn't "just as powerful," it's "one-shot." Enemies should never be optimized offensively to the extent that PCs are, because their job in the metagame is to show up, fight, and then die or run away, while it's the PCs' job to survive. Give them just enough offensive power so the PCs don't get complacent, and then make sure they can take a few blows. The enemy crumpling in one round is exactly as unfun as the PCs being wiped out in one round.

These defenses need not be AC/saves/DR/whatever. In fact, those are kinda lame, because failure sucks. Stacks of HP are a classic - the PCs feel like they are actually accomplishing something when they land a 10HP blow on a 100HP guy, whereas they'll feel like their characters are weak and useless when they miss nine times against a 10HP guy. The result is the same (ten attacks, one dead enemy) but if you make the enemy capable of taking a few hits, it feels much better and lets everyone contribute. It doesn't have to be HP, though - any ablative-style defenses are good. Minions, layers of protection like Prismatic Walls or Globes of Invulnerability that can be torn down, anything the PCs can gradually hew to pieces is good times.

[LibraryOgre]

NPCs should be as competent as they need to be to do the job set out for them. If that job is fighting the party, then they should be as optimized as the party is, to provide them a good challenge. If that job is to sell beer, then they can get away with little more than a name and a description.

[Heartspan]

lol Npcs should be real people, monsters, etc, trying to live their lives. PCs are murderhobos, even the most complacent. Npcs should be able to hold their own against the pcs, not go all murderhobo against the Pcs. i agree very much with what flickerdart said about one-shoting.

[valadil]

There should be NPCs who are more competent than the PCs. There should also be NPCs who are less competent than the PCs. The town guard is not well optimized, but the royal bodyguard is.

[jaydubs]

If the NPCs can't give the players a run for their money, why even bother creating them? My favorite RPG memories, both tabletop and electronic, come from the situations my character/party just barely survived. Cakewalks where you're never in danger are boring and cheap; limping from the dungeon, out of spells, out of potions, gear hacked up, you/your party down to a handful of hitpoints but staggering under the weight of your loot... Now that's FUN. The best victories come only from the best fights.

Well, I agree and disagree. Close calls can be a lot of fun. But so can PCs occasionally utterly outwitting an encounter, and mopping the floor by use of some clever plan or trick. And I say that from both sides of the DM screen.

To be fair though, I quite enjoy it when either side pulls a fast one, so long as it was clear it was by cleverness rather than fiat. Some of my favorite defeats (as a player) involve a devastating ambush by NPCs, or the DM pulling something cunning. The main difference between "wow, that's total BS" and "why you deviously evil bastard" was that the DM left a bunch of clues all over the place that it really had been planned the whole time.

Example:

A standard "you're exploring the sewer" situation. The DM has been throwing rat swarms at us, which we keep countering with fire of one kind or another. We eventually get to a junction, where the rats are swarming by some kind of waste pit by a bunch of pipes. As we approach, the DM repeatedly tells us how it's starting to smell worse and worse. We even have to make fortitude saves against the smell.

Then when we attack the rats at the junction... we trigger a gas explosion, which hits the whole party. The DM had been baiting us with the rat swarms specifically to trick us into exploding ourselves. It didn't wipe us, but still an awesome moment from my point of view. Now, I probably would have been irked if it was just a forced "you guys take damage" situation. But he gave us every opportunity to avoid the situation. We could even have walked right past that encounter if we had wanted. But we bit hard on the bait, and it was glorious.

[Vitruviansquid]

There is a sweet spot in difficulty that you should usually be aiming for, and that is just difficult enough for your players to feel threatened but not so difficult that they have no chance to win. For maximum excitement, you actually want to spike and relax difficulty within that sweet spot with some regularity, to make rising and falling tension.

[Susano-wo]

NPCs should be as competent as they need to be to do the job set out for them. If that job is fighting the party, then they should be as optimized as the party is, to provide them a good challenge. If that job is to sell beer, then they can get away with little more than a name and a description.

QFT, and I'll also note that their level of optimization should match the tone of the world. If all the wizards are optimized to the hilt, the world and how it treats magic should match

[BWR]

NPCs need to be as competent as they need to be to do what you want them to do.
If you need them to be vastly inferior to the PCs, then that's what they should be.
If you need an NPC to overshadow the PCs and basically be untouchable, at least at this point in the game, then that's how competent the NPC should be.
If your players like challenging encounters that are basically pvp levels of optimization and games of rocket tag, then that's what they should be.
If your players like charging through encounters without being in too much danger, then that's what you should optimize for.
If your players like cunning, intelligent opponents who prepare the battlefield and use every dirty trick in the book, then go for that.
(Note on 'players like': Generally I'm very strongly on the side of "the GM is always right" and there's nothing wrong with throwing something unexpected at your players now and then, but at the end of the day the goal is to have fun, and if the GM always runs the game in a way the players dislike, something is wrong.)

This is how I handle things in my games.

[Svata]

Depends on the NPC.

Dirt Farmer? 5% as optimized as a PC.
Town Guard? 20-25%
Royal Guards? 30-35%
Badass captain of he Guard? 55-60%
Badass warrior, who is eiher friend or rival to one or more PCs? 75-90%
BBEG's first lieutenant? 85-95%
BBEG? >95%


EDIT: Note: this is a rough guideline.

[Mastikator]

NPCs should be as competent as they need to be to do the job set out for them. If that job is fighting the party, then they should be as optimized as the party is, to provide them a good challenge. If that job is to sell beer, then they can get away with little more than a name and a description.

This. Only give them the stats that they use. That way you can add stats as you evolve the NPC (if you choose to do that).

Though, to be honest if the players start exploiting the system I tend to go the other way, the NPCs suddenly become easier. Your barbarian deals 1000 damage? Oh good because everyone you meet has 4 hp. You want to sell a wall of salt? The richest NPC has 10 gold.

[goto124]

New Spell: Wall of Salt.

The salt is hard as stone, for some reason. Snails, slugs and related animal get an extra 10 damage from the wall. And useless when cast underwater.

[Jay R]

"as optimized" is not the crucial idea. If you have a moderately optimized 6th level party, it is fair for them to face a highly optimized 4th level party, or a moderately optimized 6th level party, or an unoptimized 8th level party.

Or they could face a horde of 2nd levels, 2-1 odds against them in 4th levels, even odds in 6th levels, or a half-party of 8th levels.

Or major traps set up by a few kobolds.

The issue isn't how "optimized" the enemy are, but how challenging they are.

What the players want today is a quick, easy way to beat the encounter safely. But what they will want tomorrow is to have brilliantly and bravely turned the tables to barely survive a deadly encounter where it looked like they were all about to die.

[Beta Centauri]

If the PCs optimize, should NPCs also optimize? What if PCs scry-and-die? PCs sell walls of salt to break the economy? PCs cast shapechange? PCs play 1,000 damage a second barbarians?

Essentially, should every NPC encounter be fair but potentially highly lethal? Would this encourage the creation of disposable, uninteresting PCs? Should PvE play a lot more like PvP?

I understand a lot of this comes down to personal preference. So, what the playground think. What would you prefer? Do you think one style of play is more interesting than the other?

It's the very presence of lethality that drives optimization. The intent of the game is that the GM have all the control. The GM should follow the rules, but within those rules can still control exactly how tough a time the characters have. Players who don't like that one-sidedness work with the rules to get a share of the control, playing the game entirely on their terms by trivializing mysteries, challenges, and metered rewards. The GM can do whatever they want, sure, but those players will make sure that nothing the GM does really matters.

So, if you have such players, fighting fire with fire isn't going to work. Regaining control by using the players' tactics will just drive them to do other things to retain that control. Maybe they buy-off all the NPCs who could stand up to them, and wipe out anyone else before they can get powerful enough. Whatever, I don't know. But rest assured that they're not going to just say okay and let the GM take back control.

The only thing I've found to work is to share control from the get go. When the players have a hand in deciding the challenges their characters will face, they have much less incentive to short-circuit those challenges.

[Templarkommando]

I think it's fun in certain circumstances for this to run the gamut. Obviously, everything belongs in its place (By which I mean that you don't want completely incompetent badguys), but the occasional incompetent city guard is fun. The thing that I really want to get away from is the stereotype that all of my guards are incompetent. My home party gets angry sometimes when their plots are foiled by an average cop that's walking an average beat.

[nothingforyou]

The PCs are the baddest-assed of the badass. Not every adversary should be as twinked out as the heroes, and it would strain credibility if they were. But their primary opposition - the BBEG, his trusted lieutenant, and so forth - should be able to put up a hell of a fight.

The problem with the phrase "someone just as powerful being able to one-shot the PCs" isn't "just as powerful," it's "one-shot." Enemies should never be optimized offensively to the extent that PCs are, because their job in the metagame is to show up, fight, and then die or run away, while it's the PCs' job to survive. Give them just enough offensive power so the PCs don't get complacent, and then make sure they can take a few blows. The enemy crumpling in one round is exactly as unfun as the PCs being wiped out in one round.

These defenses need not be AC/saves/DR/whatever. In fact, those are kinda lame, because failure sucks. Stacks of HP are a classic - the PCs feel like they are actually accomplishing something when they land a 10HP blow on a 100HP guy, whereas they'll feel like their characters are weak and useless when they miss nine times against a 10HP guy. The result is the same (ten attacks, one dead enemy) but if you make the enemy capable of taking a few hits, it feels much better and lets everyone contribute. It doesn't have to be HP, though - any ablative-style defenses are good. Minions, layers of protection like Prismatic Walls or Globes of Invulnerability that can be torn down, anything the PCs can gradually hew to pieces is good times.

That's a good point, at a meta-level the idea of having NPCs be optimized the same way as PCs makes the game very radically different from what most people are looking for in an RPG.

How would you feel about a rocket tag game? Isn't this pretty much what D&D 3.5e/GURPS 4e PvP looks like?

NPCs should be as competent as they need to be to do the job set out for them. If that job is fighting the party, then they should be as optimized as the party is, to provide them a good challenge. If that job is to sell beer, then they can get away with little more than a name and a description.

Perhaps the beer merchant should be optimized for beer selling? I mean, pragmatically that's not realistic to do for most DMs, but in a hypothetical world should the merchant's Profession (merchant) ranks be optimized?

The only thing I've found to work is to share control from the get go. When the players have a hand in deciding the challenges their characters will face, they have much less incentive to short-circuit those challenges.

OK, so I always have played with mature people, and have tried to be mature myself. These kinds of social meta issues aren't a concern, I was wondering how people felt about games where PCs and NPCs are equally high-op.

[Knaight]

OK, so I always have played with mature people, and have tried to be mature myself. These kinds of social meta issues aren't a concern, I was wondering how people felt about games where PCs and NPCs are equally high-op.

I'd say go for it. With that said, it's often less about the optimization than the power of the character, whether that's personal power or the power of an institution they represent to some extent. If I wanted to make a very dangerous warrior in a 150 pt. GURPS game, I could use the 150 points that PCs had access to and optimize the heck out of the character, particularly as GURPS optimization is often a matter of getting the same stats a different way that costs less. It's an exercise in tedium, but it's doable. On the other hand, I could just set up the character to be more along the lines of 200 points, not tracking points at all.

The same applies to the other end of the scale. If the character in question is the prefect's drunkard nephew who's an embarrassment to the family, and that character's cousin who as assigned to keep an eye on them rather than do something more important because they aren't exactly hot stuff, I could take those 150 points and squander them. Or they could just be made weaker more directly.

[Jay R]

The PCs are the baddest-assed of the badass.

This is certainly one way to play, but it's not an automatic assumption of the game, or the way everybody plays.

In all the best games I've played, the characters started out at 1st level. It takes time to become the top.

[Beta Centauri]

OK, so I always have played with mature people, and have tried to be mature myself. These kinds of social meta issues aren't a concern, I was wondering how people felt about games where PCs and NPCs are equally high-op.

Oh, I see. I thought you were specifically talking about the kinds of players who would sell walls of salt.

I play 4e D&D, so the NPCs that appreciable screen time is spent on are either as powerful as or much more powerful than the PCs. Key to this is that the kinds of NPCs they face change as the PCs level. At first level, its shopkeepers and town guards. At 5th level, it's bounty hunters and dukes. At 11th level it's shopkeepers and town guards - who are also undead, because the characters are tooling around the Shadowfell. If the PCs return to the town they were in at first level, any interactions with those old NPCs is handled with, at most, an easy dice roll.

[Knaight]

This is certainly one way to play, but it's not an automatic assumption of the game, or the way everybody plays.

I'm seconding this. There are games where the PCs are the amazingly badass people, but then there are games where they very much aren't. For instance, Grey Ranks is a game about child resistance fighters in Nazi occupied Poland. It's a bleak game, and the PCs aren't big badasses in it.

[jedipotter]

Al most all foes have to be competent. That is the nature of the game.


Having incompetent ''goofy'' foes or weak foes, just wastes time. If you have powerful PC that can lay waste to weak or goofy foes in less then a round, then your just wasting time even having that round.

You can't really have the PC's be ''too awesome'', otherwise the game becomes pointless.

[LibraryOgre]

Perhaps the beer merchant should be optimized for beer selling? I mean, pragmatically that's not realistic to do for most DMs, but in a hypothetical world should the merchant's Profession (merchant) ranks be optimized?

Sure, you can do that. But, unless it's going to come up, why bother? Chances are very good I'm not going to need to know that... and I'm only going to need to know his saving throw numbers most of the time if I've got a play who is charm-happy.

[Knaight]

Having incompetent ''goofy'' foes or weak foes, just wastes time. If you have powerful PC that can lay waste to weak or goofy foes in less then a round, then your just wasting time even having that round.

That round establishes things about the setting, the characters involved, etc. Say there's a fantasy game which is using the trope a generally low tech setting with the occasional really high tech element. The first time the PCs take a plasma gun to a sword fight, it's probably going to be over quickly, and over easily. Once the PCs have a reputation as people that you fight at long range while hidden if you know what's good for you, the fights are probably going to take longer again.

Still, that one fight? It really emphasizes the setting element, where the technological disparity is clear.

[Flickerdart]

This is certainly one way to play, but it's not an automatic assumption of the game, or the way everybody plays.

In all the best games I've played, the characters started out at 1st level. It takes time to become the top.

Even 1st level characters stand head and shoulders above the rabble. Look at your typical human commoner - 2 HP and +0 to hit with one simple weapon. A level 1 fighter could cleave through half a dozen of these guys and then go back to his beer.

[LibraryOgre]

Even 1st level characters stand head and shoulders above the rabble. Look at your typical human commoner - 2 HP and +0 to hit with one simple weapon. A level 1 fighter could cleave through half a dozen of these guys and then go back to his beer.

Assumption of system not in evidence.

A 1st level fighter in AD&D? Aside from stats (which might be generated with an advantageous system), he hits about as well, has maybe one or two HP. Put them both in armor and you don't have much difference. A 1st level thief is about the same as all those 0th level commoners when it comes to combat.

In Hackmaster, your 1st level human fighter isn't much above a 0th level human... BPs spent more advantageously, giving maybe a +1 or +2 over them (and on opposed rolls, those matter a bit less).

[Flickerdart]

Assumption of system not in evidence.

Every country system in the world belongs to America 3.5.

[Knaight]

Even 1st level characters stand head and shoulders above the rabble. Look at your typical human commoner - 2 HP and +0 to hit with one simple weapon. A level 1 fighter could cleave through half a dozen of these guys and then go back to his beer.

If we're assuming that the PCs are all professional combatants, they're going to be better than noncombatants at combat. That doesn't mean they are necessarily more competent overall.

Every country system in the world belongs to America 3.5.

While this is an entirely too true assessment of these boards, this particular non-sub-forum actually does have the occasional person who isn't too hot on 3.5 and isn't assuming it. At least some of us have gotten to the point where the 3.x assumption is downright irritating.