apeironitis's page

For every level, I have to consult 10 different tables. Potentially 12, if I wanted to give them a small amount of spell casting. That's 200-240 table consultations over the course of an NPCs progression from 1-20.

That's referencing 10-12 tables, up to 20 times. This system works on the scale of a character that's expected to not grow, and is seen once and passed by.

How is that more complicated than:

I get the appeal of building NPCs like PCs. I like creating characters in Pathbuilder that I'll probably never get the chance to play from time to time. But as a method, it's nor worth it compared to the current rules for creating NPCs.

A lot of my players actually do want that.

We enable a lot of Battlezoo ancestries.

I have a succubus being played in one game, using their Demons book.

I have a hill giant in the same game, using their Giants book.

I have one player asking me to be a harpy by reflavoring a strix, and I know they will be very excited the day Roll for Combat finally does Harpy.

I have two players who are looking forward to being satyrs now that they are announced.

I know another who is considering playing a dragon.

So from my experience, yeah, there are players who do exactly want that.

It still has little to do with building NPCs like PCs.

Side note, one aspect of building NPCs like PCs is letting players marvel at what a high level NPC can do. During my Kingmaker game, I scrapped Lady Aldori's statblock and rebuilt her using PC rules, plus the home rules (Fighter with Aldori Duelist archetype using free archetype and ancestry paragon, though still with her default equipment)

The PCs earned the respect of the ice giants, so I added a secondary group of enemy mooks for her to fight. There's a certain thematic impressiveness when the person giving you a job is solo fighting a group and visibly keeping them from becoming a distraction in your fight.

In my opinion, it frankly did a lot to secure my players' respect for Lady Jamandi. I tried to use Jamandi this way to paint a picture of "This could be you," which I figured would be harder to get across if she was a statblock instead of a built character.

Frankly I build all important NPCs as PCs with a reduced equipment budget. or glossing over features they would get if they would not apply to their use as an NPC.

You can totally do that with the creature building rules. The players won't know the numbers, so your convoluted method is a pointless exercise.

I agree with the OP that there are some problems with the way pf2 has to use PC rules for building NPCs.

One infamous example is early in Strength of Thousands, where the teacher who recruited you, and has the unique power of outright granting/implanting cantrips into others, is stated to be a lvl 2 or 3 spellcaster.

Like, this senior teacher at the oldest magic school would probably be killed in that low-level combat if the PCs sat on the sidelines. The other NPCs in that fight are prospective *students*, and they can easily outperform him with a few un/lucky rolls.

And because he's not scripted to get into another fight, that's it for the guy. His stat sheet is static, set so that he'll not "outshine" a group of noobie PCs.

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The core issue is that pf2 is a level-scaling game. So many important things scale with level, but all the AP designers just pick something relative to the expected PC level (at that particular moment in time!) and then have to work with that. It's more important that the core saves, HP, etc, are "close enough" if they ever get into a fight, than for the NPC to make sense as a whole.

I don't think enough thought / consideration is placed into the fact that your Armor Class and literal Hit Points just keep going up because your level number has. It's outright not possible for a Level _ Oracle to have an AC lower than a certain number, NPC or otherwise.

World features, like a Master smith, or a Rank _ Spellcaster, are stuck and entangled with PC level and PC statistics.

I do think that pf2 would greatly benefit from official guidance / instruction on how to build NPCs in a way that splits their statistics so that you don't get PC scaling.

Something like splitting the "chassis/core level" from the "profession/class level". For that SoT example, that mechanic could allow the teacher to have a low-ish core level for the purposes of HP, AC, etc, but allow them to have a +6ish level bump in the Wizard department.

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Basically, too much is all...

The players don't know and don't need to know the level ir other stats of that NPC. All that happens behind the scene. You could easily hand-wave it as the teacher holding back to let their students shine. NPCs don't follow the same rules as players. Their stats are not set in stone either. Following the spirit of the NPC creation rules, you don't need to make the NPC stats any more complex if there's little chance of that NPC engaging in a more difficult combat later. You can always change the sheet if you need it.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills seeing this narrative that rangers are weak. I recently ran a homebrew campaign and my player with the bow precision ranger was an absolute terror. I feared him worse than the fighter, and he made me reevaluate my tactics with my monsters.

I get it, having to use Hunt Prey on every new enemy it's a considerable action tax. I think that makes them excel at taking down big targets, like bosses, where they'll use it once and just be done with it until the target drops dead, and less-effective action economy wise against multiple weaker enemies. I don't think that's necessarily bad. God forbid Rangers from having any weakness, I guess.

Or maybe people here spend too much time in the white room.

"Hey guys, we're going to remove the Kineticist and take it back to the drawing board because this dragonwhatever user doesn't like it enough. We'll need everyone to refrain from playing kineticist. To enforce this, we'll send the Pinkerton to your home to make sure that you're not using the class. If you have the Rage of Elements book, please, rip off the pages containing the Kineticist. We'll tell you when it's ready".

Seriously, OP. Have you read what you're asking?