Sorry to be such a nuisance but the whole NPC class thing is just confusing to me.
Why doesn an NPC Adept have access to such a limited list of spells? Arent there any NPC magic users using arcane powers? Or does that make them a PC class automatically? Why only devine spells?
Just what is an adept then? It appears as though they are a cleric wannabe but surely there is more room in the game for a wider variety of NPC spell casters and if so then why the Adept class in the first place?
Im confused
NPC classes, by design, are supposed to be less powerful than PC classes. They're the classes for the people that run the inns, rule the baronies, muck out the stables, grow the crops, guard the town gates, and tend the little shrines in the backwoods villages.
You can have NPC wizards/clerics/druids/whatever, sure, but they're not going to be very common.
NPCs can be of any class. The "NPC classes" are simply classes that there's little-to-no reason for a PC to take, and which are more common among the general population than the "PC classes".
The Adept class is a limited spellcaster, with spells taken from both the normally-divine lists and the normally-arcane lists. For instance, polymorph is otherwise limited to sorcerers and wizards, but the adept gets it as a divine spell.
The NPC classes are really there to expedite statting out characters that aren't important. They are simplified versions of PC classes which you can use to quickly create a "filler" NPC if the PCs go somewhere you hadn't prepared for. Essentially, they're cardboard cutout characters. They have HP and skill ranks so they can interact with the PCs, and nothing else to generate bookkeeping. Adepts have a lot of spells the PCs might ask a town cleric to have- healing, detect magic/ evil, minor buffs- so you can give those things without having to pick or remember cleric domains.
ok, but essentially if you wanted to build an NPC wizard living in the tower on the edge of town, you gotta build a wizard, not an adept. Right?
Would bard be considered an arcane using NPC class? :D
Would bard be considered an arcane using NPC class? :D
As a magus whose life has been incredibly better because of a bard, I resent this remark. ;)
R-town: know what I've done? Take the NPC Adept and given him only arcane spells of my own choosing. Bam; NPC wizard. He even gets a familiar at 2nd level.
Actually, taking an NPC Adept and messing w/it gives you a bunch of stuff if you swap stuff. Give him Arcane Strike at first level, change weapon selection to include martial, and change familiar to arcane bond w/weapon...Magus. Give him only animal spells and change familiar to animal companion...Druid.
Or, you could just make the PC version, but then it wouldn't be an NPC class would it?
The Eberron campaign setting for 3.5 had an arcane NPC class. The Magewright.
d4 HD, 1/2 BAB, Stong will save, 2+Int skills (including all knowledges). Simple weapons, no armor.
Int based prepared caster, spell slots/spell levels a little less than a Bard.
It's only class feature is Spell Mastery as a bonus feat at 1, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20; however they can only ever memorize spells they have chosen with Spell Mastery and do not have spellbooks.
What Im hearing here is that using an NPC class isnt all that helpful or time saving except if we are dealing in the very, very mundane - ie. innkeeper, tavern maid, fisherman etc.
Almost anybody of note or interest is going to have some skills and abilities that warrant making a real class out of them...
That or, as I see it, NPC classes allow you to custom build personae that really dont fit any of the PC class types.
Either way, its going to take a little time to work them up.
NPC codex makes hedge wizards out by multiclassing a low level wizard with a commoner. So, with the codex, no need to spend time making it up. Decent flavor too.
Just a thought.
Yes, the codex seems like a good resource but each time Ive consulted it Ive found the examples there don't quite fit and I have to modify heavily. (err this guy is way to weak for a stone cutter, wheres divination on this guy, I need a fortune teller? etc.)
But thanks, I think I have a better understanding where these fit in.
WA-BAM.NPC codex makes hedge wizards out by multiclassing a low level wizard with a commoner. So, with the codex, no need to spend time making it up. Decent flavor too.
Just a thought.
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I didn't even know this site existed but it's very cool. It has just been added to my favorites beside the SRD.
I feel like sometimes to mark "a person well out of the PC's weight class, but not as godly as someone of their level could be otherwise" you'll see NPCs who are something like "Aristocrat 2/ Witch 17". So consider giving arcane spellcasters NPC class levels as a sort of handicap (like in golf).