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Thread: NPCs in 5E

  1. #1
    El Condoro's Avatar
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    NPCs in 5E

    Has anyone seen any recommendations on how to create NPCs (not monsters) in 5E? I haven't seen anything in any of the play test packs.

  2. #2
    Actually no, I haven't seen anything about it. I pretty much make what I need. If they don't need stats, I don't assign them any. If I think they are going to end up facing off with the PCs in any manor, then they can be created the same way as a monster. If you need them on the tracker, set them up as a monster and set their faction appropriately (yellow is neutral, green is friendly to the party, and red is of course an enemy). That way you can give them a token and put them on the map with stats if they are needed.

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    El Condoro's Avatar
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    How are spells added to the NPC sheet in the 5E ruleset? Am I missing something or is this a feature still to be added once the official rules are released?

  4. #4
    From the way NPCs were laid out in the play test, it was unclear to me how NPC spells would be implemented (more like 3.5E (full spell casting class), or more like 4E (spells as powers for NPCs).

    So, each spell would be a separate one use action currently.

    JPG

  5. #5
    El Condoro's Avatar
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    Ah, OK. So they can't be dragged on from a parsed spell list?

  6. #6
    Not right now. Once we know more, we'll probably look at that approach.

    Cheers,
    JPG

  7. #7
    For the most part, if its a spell that the NPC will use more than one time, I add it as an action manually to the sheet. It looks like NPCs are going to handle spells pretty much the same way 3.5 NPCs would...which is basically the same way PCs would. They have a spell list they can cast from and a number per day they can cast.

  8. #8
    El Condoro's Avatar
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    I liked the way 4E abstracted the NPC stats to account for them being cut-down versions of PCs - one power of each type etc. I am going to follow a similar approach until I see different (allow more points to distribute among abilities, subsection of spells etc). It would be great - at some point in the future - to be able to drag and drop spells onto the NPC sheet, though. For now I use an Excel spreadsheet to create characters (based on the play test packs, so who knows how much the real thing will differ?) and NPCs. It creates a text list in the same format that the parser uses. Then I parse a whole bunch of NPCs into a module and drag them into a campaign - can create a lot of NPCs in very little time. The spells are the main thing missing...

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