NPCs Without Statblocks

[noob]

This is what any sane person says until he see the evil manual of gods and demigods after that he take a rifle and try to kill manual writers.

[goto124]

There should be very very few NPCs so powerful that they don't need statblocks.

Unless it's a god-game. But god-games should use systems designed for them. Exalted?

[Slipperychicken]

If the dragon is sequestered in its personal demiplane, is immortal, and is basically a god... then why would anyone talk about it as a "dragon"? It would probably be referred to as a dragon-god if anything, residing in its own private heaven, away from other gods and only accessable through a fifty mile journey while casting the correct ritual. It would be fine without stats, much like the deities themselves. (Most deities in D&D are unstatted and stats you do see are for their avatars, not the deities themselves.)

I would imagine that someone would have come up with a name for it, even if the dragon itself didn't tell anyone its name.

[Zalphon]

Honestly as to why he's referred to as a dragon? He's the closest thing to a deity, but not quite there. A great analogy would be the Sorcerer-Kings of Dark Sun.

They're immensely powerful, but they've not crossed the threshold. Same in this case. They're have been no gods (they disappeared) for a few thousand years.

He's considered a god by those who reside in his Demi-Plane, but outside of there, he's viewed as the last of a dead race--if he's even real.

[Lord Torath]

*snip stuff about polymorphing/transmuting the hydrogen inside a black hole*

Interesting idea, but there's no hydrogen inside a black hole. After matter passes the event horizon it's compressed so much by gravity that neither protons, neutrons, or electrons can keep themselves separate from each other. You no longer have atoms, or even sub-atomic particles, let alone elements. Even outside of black holes, you can have matter so dense there's no hydrogen left, like with neutron stars (protons and electrons can no longer support their own weight).

Honestly as to why he's referred to as a dragon? He's the closest thing to a deity, but not quite there. A great analogy would be the Sorcerer-Kings of Dark Sun.

They're immensely powerful, but they've not crossed the threshold. Same in this case. They're have been no gods (they disappeared) for a few thousand years.

Except that in the initial vision of Dark Sun, Sorcerer Kings are eventually meant to be defeatable by the PCs, who were meant to bring major change to the setting as they reached higher levels (Wow. That sentence got away from me a bit, didn't it?).

A better comparison would be the Star Beasts that hold some planets aloft in the Spelljammer setting. Even if the PCs manage to land on one (star beasts don't have gravity), there's just no meaningful way for them to affect one, short of DM-introduced plot devices/mcguffins.

In any case, I fully agree with not statting the "forces of nature" in your campaign

[mephnick]

I don't stat anything except a few major NPCs that may affect the story line through combat, those that could become "boss fights".

Gods: No stats, you'll have to come up with an RP reason/strategy to confront a God and kill it. There's powerful demons and stuff with stats if you want to feel badass.

Low level or story NPCs: If they're unexpectedly in combat I can estimate what their stats should be based on other creatures I know. There's also usually templates I can flip to in the back of the Monster Manual (I primarily play 5e).

I have kids and a tiring job. I'm not statting up every little thing in my world just for the sake of a player's verisimilitude.

[BWR]

NPCs need stats only when directly interacted with mechanically. If they don't have any mechanics interacting with them they don't need stats. If they are not intended to interact with mechanics but for some reason do come into contact with mechanics, you should be able to just throw whatever (semi-)appropriate numbers and abilities on them to prevent bogging down the game with inventing stats. You can even get away with assigning a few things that are likely to show up but not have to bother stat'ing out the whole thing, like noting "Trick People X" or "Read People Y" or "Alter Reality at a Whim" .

But the most important thing to note for any NPC that isn't a random passer-by is Name, Profession, Personality and Motivation, and Initial Reaction to PCs (followed by Current Opinion of Other NPCs) and some note of about how powerful they are in the grand scheme of things. Just tell your players to start playing other games where NPCs aren't given proper stats or where the stats are given but generally useless because no one every encounters them.

[Frozen_Feet]

Any description whatsoever of an in-game object is, in essence, a stat block. Any mathematical model is just a choice on how to simulate said object. If you're not constrained to a set of already-existing simulations, it's fairly trivial to make a truly invincible NPC. Then again, so is making almost any other sort of NPC.

Also, anyone who thinks d20 deities can be killed "because they have stats" has either not read or not comprehended the rules in Deities & Demigods. Because by the rules-as-written, it's possible to stat out a god with abilities exceeding those of the human GM and impossible to simulate even with a supercomputer.

If a d20 god is beatable at all, it's due to GM fiat, though to be honest, you can't really play gods without relying mostly on fiat because the rules as written are impossible.

[Jay R]

Engages a mundane NPC? Mechanics-Dependent Combat.

Engages an unstat-blocked NPC... Likely DM-fiat-based combat, as you put it.

Before getting too upset over that, let's remember that the stat block is itself DM fiat. It's just produced by fiat in advance. I don't create stats for every merchant, tavernkeeper, guard, or farmer. I only create stats for people that the PCs are likely to fight.

Since my players don't tend to attack random passers-by, that works fine. If somehow they start fighting an NPC without a stat block, I can usually provide all the stats needed on the fly, and be pretty close to what I'd have decided if I'd done it beforehand.

But I don't recommend telling anybody which NPCs aren't statted up. That's a clue about who might be preparing to attack them.

So:
1. There is no need to pre-build every NPC.
2. There is no need to tell the players that fact.

[Frozen_Feet]

Most rules-light systems, including several retroclones of D&D, are geared towards spontaneous stat generation. When you only have a handful of stats you need, there's negligible difference in time consumption between writing out statblocks beforehand versus creating them on the fly. In Noitahovi, to give a concrete example, "faceless obstacles" (such as minor NPCs and natural threats) only need one variable. Named NPCs or personalized threats might need four or five plus spells.

For something like BECMI or LotFP, you only need to know HD, morale, equipment (inc. natural weapons or such), and movement speeds. Things like saves and to-hit modifiers directly follow from HD, AC and damage follow from equipment. If you describe something as "a tall, strong-looking male clad in plate, with his arms resting on the hilt of his longsword", you and the players can extrapolate most of the information from that even if you threw the character out of your hat.

[Knaight]

If you describe something as "a tall, strong-looking male clad in plate, with his arms resting on the hilt of his longsword", you and the players can extrapolate most of the information from that even if you threw the character out of your hat.

Up to a point anyways - there's a lot of leeway past that. The character might be a heavily armed and armored noble who's strong, rich enough to buy expensive equipment, and lacking in actual combat skill. The character also might be a veteran of several wars, adventures, and the like, extremely capable but not showing obvious signs of it until they actually start using said sword. Mechanically, this could be the difference between a 1 HD and 9 HD character, which makes a huge difference.

With that said, the players are able to gather about as much as the characters, so that works out.

[Slipperychicken]

Up to a point anyways - there's a lot of leeway past that. The character might be a heavily armed and armored noble who's strong, rich enough to buy expensive equipment, and lacking in actual combat skill. The character also might be a veteran of several wars, adventures, and the like, extremely capable but not showing obvious signs of it until they actually start using said sword. Mechanically, this could be the difference between a 1 HD and 9 HD character, which makes a huge difference.

With that said, the players are able to gather about as much as the characters, so that works out.

There really ought to be rules for sizing characters up to determine their challenge or skill level. Seeing someone's response to violence and talk of violence, the way he holds himself, maneuvers, and talks about swordplay, may all serve as indicators. Perhaps a successful Insight roll could tell you, with disadvantage if the target isn't doing or saying anything related to combat.

[Knaight]

There really ought to be rules for sizing characters up to determine their challenge or skill level. Seeing someone's response to violence and talk of violence, the way he holds himself, maneuvers, and talks about swordplay, may all serve as indicators. Perhaps a successful Insight roll could tell you, with disadvantage if the target isn't doing or saying anything related to combat.

At the same time, there are a lot of cases where this doesn't necessarily fit. Once someone is actually fighting you can generally get some idea, but there's plenty of literary examples of people who deliberately hide their skill, or fundamentally peaceful people who aren't fond of violence but are very capable of it, or normal looking people who turn out to be extremely dangerous that having it be necessarily obvious isn't true to genre. Plenty of similar examples can also be found in history.

Then there are people who advertise. Known heraldry, known names, a tendency to brag (though plenty of incompetents have this one) and such are already there. The information is out there.

[NichG]

Any description whatsoever of an in-game object is, in essence, a stat block. Any mathematical model is just a choice on how to simulate said object. If you're not constrained to a set of already-existing simulations, it's fairly trivial to make a truly invincible NPC. Then again, so is making almost any other sort of NPC.

Also, anyone who thinks d20 deities can be killed "because they have stats" has either not read or not comprehended the rules in Deities & Demigods. Because by the rules-as-written, it's possible to stat out a god with abilities exceeding those of the human GM and impossible to simulate even with a supercomputer.

If a d20 god is beatable at all, it's due to GM fiat, though to be honest, you can't really play gods without relying mostly on fiat because the rules as written are impossible.

I don't really think this argument makes sense. Rules-as-written, there's nothing which sets standards for the plans and decisions made by characters with a particular stat value. And even if there were, there's nothing specific to deities about that. This kind of thing would apply as much to the player of an Int 50 Wizard as to the GM of an Int 50 deity. So then it just becomes 'if anything happens in the game, its because of the players and the GM, not just because of the rules', which is certainly true, but that makes it even more important to stay aware of player psychology issues like 'if it has stats, they'll try to kill it'.

Or are you talking about the ability of deities to have foreknowledge regarding their domains? That can be made a non-issue via a number of different mechanical methods, so long as the would-be godkillers take it into account (teleport through time, doing all your planning within a few feet of an imprisoned Elder Evil, etc).

[Darth Ultron]

I guess you could have special pet NPCs with no stat blocks. Why does it even matter?


Say there is ''a guy in a cloak'', does not matter if he has stats or not...if the players attack him, it is all up to the DM's wishes of what happens. A PC can do 100 points of damage and the DM can just say ''nothing happens''. Now, I know some people think that the DM is to be played like a robot that follows the rules...but that is not how reality works.

It is not like the players ever see NPC stat blocks, so they would not even know there was not one.

[Knaight]

I guess you could have special pet NPCs with no stat blocks. Why does it even matter?

Alternately, you could have setting relevant NPCs who don't have stat blocks because you have better things to do with page space. This is hardly a "special pet NPC" category.

[Jay R]

There really ought to be rules for sizing characters up to determine their challenge or skill level.

In story-telling there is no such rule, and the Cardinal's guards (and the Musketeers) can fail to recognize that the young D'Artagnan is a great swordsman, and the westerner who wants to make his reputation can fail to recognize the skill of Kid Curry. Inigo can be astounded at the skill of the Man in Black, and a mugger can mistake Crocodile Dundee as an easy victim. Or the DLF can fail to recognize the fighting skill of Peter and Edmund, or the shooting skill of Susan.

And it often happens that an unknown athlete comes in and does what nobody thought he could do, as when Tom Brady came in when Drew Bledsoe was injured. Also consider the story of Jim Morris, the 34-year-old rookie. And I've been in fencing tournaments when we all knew who the best fencers were - until some guy we didn't recognize suddenly turned out to be brilliant.

"All that is gold does not glitter.
Not all those who wander are lost."

[Frozen_Feet]

I don't really think this argument makes sense. Rules-as-written, there's nothing which sets standards for the plans and decisions made by characters with a particular stat value.

Yes there is. Starting with basic things like alignment and skill checks and continuing to things like portofolio sense and remote sensing, the rules explicitly and clearly define a possible design space, a standard, for character actions. And divine rules grant deities mechanical knowledge of events which are unknowable to a human GM before they happen.

Then there's the fact that Divine Rank 1 actually does kind of give you overwhelming mechanical power, even forgetting the ridiculous amounts of HD and class levels typically accompanying it. The first god(s) to ascend can pre-empt every attempt to usurp them. Elder Evils etc. corner cases are, frankly, meaningless, because a god can trivially exclude access to such character resources.

A GM can purposefully ignore those rules impossible to simulate or leading to undesireable results, but if you claim "the argument doesn't make sense" because of that, it's akin to saying "the rules aren't broken because you can just not use the broken parts".

[NichG]

Yes there is. Starting with basic things like alignment and skill checks and continuing to things like portofolio sense and remote sensing, the rules explicitly and clearly define a possible design space, a standard, for character actions. And divine rules grant deities mechanical knowledge of events which are unknowable to a human GM before they happen.

Then there's the fact that Divine Rank 1 actually does kind of give you overwhelming mechanical power, even forgetting the ridiculous amounts of HD and class levels typically accompanying it. The first god(s) to ascend can pre-empt every attempt to usurp them. Elder Evils etc. corner cases are, frankly, meaningless, because a god can trivially exclude access to such character resources.

A GM can purposefully ignore those rules impossible to simulate or leading to undesireable results, but if you claim "the argument doesn't make sense" because of that, it's akin to saying "the rules aren't broken because you can just not use the broken parts".

Since your initial claim was ambiguous, I addressed two possible interpretations which seemed likely to me as to what you meant. What you're objecting to here is mostly restricted to the first of the two, which is the usual assertion that 'very high mental stats are super-human in a way that means that the possessor would automatically know the right actions to take to counter any strategy, even if the GM would not be able to figure them out'.

Since it doesn't seem you're making that assertion, the second interpretation is the important one. In the second case, there's a handful of deific powers which potentially pose fundamental difficulties (e.g. difficulties that are distinct to going after deities). Everything else can be pretty much be emulated with things that non-deific characters can get access to within the realm of PO.

The handful of troublesome divine abilities are, essentially: Alter Reality (arbitrarily large permanent effect stacks), Arcane Mastery (similar issues to Pun-Pun if the spontaneous authoring of new spells is treated as truly open-ended), Rejuvenation (requires equal or higher Divine Rank to decisively defeat), Life and Death (and its variants), and Portfolio Sense.

However, not every deity will have one of those abilities. If we just ask about things that every deity with at least DR1 would have, there are a few things you mention. I would say that Remote Sensing is basically a non-issue because it requires a standard action to direct, so by the time the deity is using it they already have to know enough to target it since they can't just look everywhere, which just makes it a very flexible Scry. The troublesome ability is Portfolio Sense. That is also the 'non-computable' one that you mention since it provides the deity information across time and without the will to use it or need to be otherwise prepared, so lets focus on that. Demigods, Lesser Deities, and Intermediate Deities (DR1-15) can only use portfolio sense in the present and past, so that's actually quite manageable for a human to run since there are no time shenanigans. So within that range, we're still just talking about big numbers and a highly protected target, but its not fundamentally different than, say, any other highly prepared epic-level character.

The big thing is that even in the present, portfolio sense detects the location of events and the number of people involved, not the details. So even if 'a plot to kill the deity' always counts as part of their portfolio, that plot can be hidden in the noise of a lot of other portfolio-related events which will appear to be bigger or more important. The deity has to specifically choose to sense the event, which is a standard action, in order to get details. Even if, for example, the deity did gain automatic knowledge of a generic descriptor of how the event relates to their portfolio (e.g. 'this is a plot to kill you, therefore it relates'), a Demigod would need that plot to directly involve at least 1000 people to show up on their radar, and Lesser Deities need at least 500. So the standard party of adventurers would easily fly under the radar so long as they're careful to keep things contained.

There's nothing mechanical about a DR1 deity that would automatically let it exclude all possible counters to its abilities. Like any other character, if you're running it with stats and mechanics, it has to take a specific sequence of actions in order to achieve its ends. Therefore it can't just declare 'I don't like Elder Evils and how they can hide people from me, so therefore its not a problem'. They have to actually take the sequence of actions to find and deal with each Elder Evil individually - that isn't a mechanic they have access to (it could be a narrative power certainly, but there's nothing in Deities and Demigods which mechanically arrives directly at that end). Similarly, they don't have mechanics which let them simply declare that they will take out every character who could potentially ever become a threat - they would have to actually take a specific series of actions in order to bring about that end. And to that extent, there's no difference between a DR1 deity systematically wiping out sentient races to block the emergence of a threat, and a Lv20 Wizard systematically wiping out sentient races to block the emergence of a threat.

[Morty]

I don't think the need to provide statistics is dependent on "power" or "importance" of an NPC, which are nebulous terms anyway. What it depends on is whether the PCs are likely to engage with the NPC in a manner that involves your system's mechanics. No more and no less.

In Vampire: the Requiem chronicle I ran a year ago, I didn't bother statting most of the plot-critical NPCs, because the conflict didn't require it. The only mechanical interaction I had to take into account was determining how difficult it should be for them to pick up that the Sheriff isn't being quite honest with them. The NPC stats I did write up ended up not half as relevant as I'd planned, too.

[Frozen_Feet]

@NichG: that a deity has to "take specific sequence of actions" instead of just saying "no" doesn't matter, because it's a trivial to a an 20+ HD character with divine ranks to do so. It invariably takes a non-god more steps to threaten a god than for the god to cut them short, because gods have significantly expanded move and resource pool. Your argument is akin to an old one about computer not being able to win at Chess by simple number-crunching. Well, cut to modern day, your run-of-the-mill computer can basically beat any human player without computer aid themselves, and they do it... by number-crunching.

That the opponent is technically playing the same game does not mean it is beatable. For more extreme example, swap Chess for Checkers. As Checkers is a solved game, the best you can hope against an AI is a tie... and that's only if you play perfectly yourself. Make a single mistake, and the AI will win.

There are several abilities besides DivR 1 in d20 which give a similarly insurmountable advantage against anyone who doesn't also have them. In any scenario or simulation where there are multiple entities racing for such advantages, the first one to reach one is in a position to Win the Game, forever and ever.

[NichG]

@NichG: that a deity has to "take specific sequence of actions" instead of just saying "no" doesn't matter, because it's a trivial to a an 20+ HD character with divine ranks to do so. It invariably takes a non-god more steps to threaten a god than for the god to cut them short, because gods have significantly expanded move and resource pool. Your argument is akin to an old one about computer not being able to win at Chess by simple number-crunching. Well, cut to modern day, your run-of-the-mill computer can basically beat any human player without computer aid themselves, and they do it... by number-crunching.

That the opponent is technically playing the same game does not mean it is beatable. For more extreme example, swap Chess for Checkers. As Checkers is a solved game, the best you can hope against an AI is a tie... and that's only if you play perfectly yourself. Make a single mistake, and the AI will win.

Actually, the way you've set up the argument, the game is extremely asymmetric in the PCs' favor. By arguing that 'any' god should be unbeatable rather than just that 'some' gods will be unbeatable or 'an optimized god' will be unbeatable, you're giving the choice of target to the PCs, with the only requirement being that they have at least DvR 1. So that could easily be one of the full-noncaster-build deities such as Hercules (DvR 5, Fighter 20/Barbarian 20, fixed list of SLAs). In addition, since this is about stats, a statted NPC that is unaware of the PC plans to kill them has no reason to change its stats, but PCs who are proactively seeking to kill a target can use methods in the game to change their stats - retraining, advancement, careful selection of members of their hit squad.

So the deity in this case has to specify exactly what its abilities will be before it knows who its enemies will be. In essence, it has to optimize to defend against every conceivable enemy (and because of the 'any' clause in your argument, it doesn't get to do that with character build resources, only those things which are still flexible under the fixed build given by its stats such as gear, the contents of its divine realm, etc).

Having to play defense in a game of rocket tag is a severe disadvantage, and its baked into the asymmetric goals here. The deity, even if they try to wipe out every character who exceeds Lv10 in order to hold onto their power, has no final win condition. They would have to maintain that level of extermination consistently and systematically forever, and in every location across the planes. Places like Sigil and the Spire are automatic holes in the ability to be consistent - all it takes is a group of adventurers with long lifespans to hang out in Sigil for a few centuries and gathering power, and there's not much the deity can do to bring their DvR into play against them.

There are several abilities besides DivR 1 in d20 which give a similarly insurmountable advantage against anyone who doesn't also have them. In any scenario or simulation where there are multiple entities racing for such advantages, the first one to reach one is in a position to Win the Game, forever and ever.

You still have to provide the specific sequence of actions which sets the game into a non-recoverable state for all other agents (not to mention that the first entity who achieves one of those top-end powers would also have to have the ethos and motivation to implement that set of actions, which, depending on the actions required, could be entirely inconsistent). Otherwise there's a missing step to the logical argument. What is the state of the multiverse which prevents anyone from ever taking levels in wizard, and how does anyone who just has DvR 1 and no other particular abilities other than what they get from DvR 1 bring it about? What is the state of the multiverse which prevents anyone from ever being promoted to divine rank, and how does someone who just has DvR 1 bring it about? What is the state of the multiverse which prevents anyone from doing magic item crafting, and how does someone who just has DvR 1 bring it about?