Mr.Goblin's page

If you prefer liberty or death then you must GALT!!!!!!!!!

I understand PCs need to be exceptional so lets put this in perspective. In the span of one year an adventuring party can get to tenth level. But an NPC would likely take fifteen to twenty years to do the same.

So why do people feel threatened when a thirty six year old man does not get killed by a feral cat that he happens to piss off when walking down an alley in the city.

Or that a mother can take ten on a heal check and manage to get a fifteen even though it is not a class skill? (basic dc for first aid as well as high enough to help deal with most common diseases.)

Also this post is talking about other NPC Classes too. Since when has a guard who has been on the force for a few years first level?

A commoner can easily be a farmer or an unskilled laborer. An expert is someone who has a specialized craft that requires training. but they are two sides of the same coin. you would likely see a wealthy commoner eventually retrain into expert levels if he wanted to move up the ladder. Such as a dock worker becoming a foreman.

My bad for the double post. I caught a little lag there for a bit.

Combat is not the only way to gain experience and why should it be. You get experience points for role-playing your character well. For completing a story arch. commoner would get the same thing. He would make a master work item, survive a famine, fends off wolves in a particularly cold winter. Ask any homesteader about how many life building experiences they go through and you will be drinking and laughing and crying for weeks on end.

Besides take a look at a sixth level commoner and tell me if you applied all of his feats to non combat feats focused on making him better at his profession and giving him maybe one for self defense feat. He would still get his butt kicked in a throw down with a second or third level pc. He would give em a black eye to be true, but he still wouldn't stand much of a chance.

I have never understood why commoners and other npc classes like warrior are almost always 1st level. It is really bugging me right now cause I am playing in a King Maker Game and I am running into this nonsense all the time.

We are using "ultimate rulership" (Which is a fantastic supplement) and I am reading the recruitment edict that talks about percentages of your population that you can recruit into the military based on your kingdoms policy on war. But they also talk about numbers of elite troops vs normal troops. Elites are apparently 2nd to third level characters?! While normal is first level?!

This makes no sense to me because I see a thirty year old man and I assume he has seen some stuff he has been through a couple of jobs probably set in on a career a few years back. All in all he has experience. It is not Adventuring experience but that is why he levels up in the worst class in the game.

In my games as gm I always assume the average humanoid you run into is third level. If he or she is particularly old or young I give or take two to three levels. But it gets annoying as I see this concept of everyone but PCs and bad guys are all first level losers. Who couldn't even wipe their own arse if they took ten on the roll.

Am I alone here or do some of you guys wish we could presume a little more depth in the foreground here?

Does anybody have any thoughts on how to design a faction like in the faction guide in a balanced way. I am playing the King Maker adventure path and we wanted to create a adventures guild and wanted to make a faction similar to those seen in the faction guide. I was wondering if anyone had advice on how to go about doing that.

I am currently playing in Kingmaker adventure path and we have found a need for this. especially when it comes to warriors. But really why do the npc classes have to be so bland.

We have a book in my father's archives, "Warriors: A Comprehensive D20 Sourcebook for Fantasy Role-Playing Games". This is probably one of the first places you see archetypes in d20 system. The archetypes in this book act as feats that give a minor primary benefit while allowing you to exchange weapon, shield, and armor proficiency for new skills or feats. For example the levy peasant archetype makes all the commoner skills class skills in exchange for medium and heavy armor porf. AS well as martial weapon proficiency. This would make an easy archetype conversion and allow GM and players to better determine stats for militia peasants trained to defend their home vs peasants form a more peaceful country.

Other forms of archetypes that could be converted are bandits, pike-man, marine, Templar est..

The commoner is a tough one to make archetypes for because they don't have much to work with any way. Though Arcanemuses has a good class design that would make the commoner on par with an adept or warrior. You could also use some of those class abilities as "common" feats. To keep the commoner on the same power level as before but with a bit more customization.

As for the rest of the npc classes I would suggest playing with saves and base attack progression as a means to gain new abilities. as well as codes of conduct and oaths that limit behavior as a source for abilities too. An adept sworn to a vow of poverty may gain access to the cleric spell list for example. Or one sworn into a dark pact may gain access to the witch spell list. Also you may want to allow your npcs to gain a trait. I would only allow one and preferably limited to background or race.