Leveling Up NPCs

[DeathmatchFM]

I am the DM of a game that has a heavy focus on roleplaying and interacting with NPCs: a very social game. One issue that I've run into is when NPCs level up. If NPCs stay at the same level all of the time, it makes characters who were meaningful to interact with rather useless for anything outside of chatting with.

However, using "DM fiat" to level up NPCs has some issues that I don't like. It means that if a situation comes along when an NPC would be useful, they're only useful because I leveled them up. And if a situation comes along where an NPC would be useful but is lagging far behind in levels, they aren't useful because I didn't level them up. So essentially, it puts the pressure on me.

I don't need a complicated system, but I'm looking for some sort of mechanic or hack I could implement that could sort of fix this for me, by putting the "growth" of NPCs into the hands of the players so that it's a more hands on experience.

Thanks ahead of time for suggestions and recommendations!

Edit: A thing to point out. Cohorts provide a method of adding in NPCs who level up alongside a PC, but this game has a wide number of NPCs, and while I did want to use cohorts at first it didn't work out as well.

[Opuk0]

Are these NPCs adventuring along with the party? If so, there's nothing strange about having them level up once or twice so they're not liabilities.

Are these NPCs not really for combat but just help the party in other ways? Combat isn't the only way to get exp, there's plenty of examples in APs that get you exp by accomplishing certain things.

Even a farmer gains a few levels in Commoner to show their expertise in animal handling or crop tending, and maybe even killing a regular wolf or two that threaten their cattle.

[Thanael]

Not every NPC needs to be "useful".

This is essentially a question of world building and adventure/encounter design. Avoid the scaling guards problem where at lvl 10 every town guard is a lvl 10 character, so that he is a "useful" obbstacle to the PCs. 10th level PCs are meant to curb stomp normal town guards.

OTOH avoid the PCs and antagonists are superspecial meme, where the average guy is always a commoner 1 and only plot important people get to level. [IMHO a lvl 1 (N)PC is almost always an adolescent, and i excpet "normal (fantasy) people" to be between level 2 and 6, but not very optimized. See my post in the level demopraphics thread ]

Finding a balance between overpreparing and believable NPC demographics is a fine art. The NPC codex and internet in general help though. there are also lots of excellent 3pp products with pre-made NPCs.

A few useful threads:
A village of NPCs and average Joe Farmer
Level demographics
Revisiting Encounter Design
Alexandrian's Gamemastery 101

[DeathmatchFM]

Thanks again for the replies!

Some of the NPCs adventure with the party, and a lot of them have been useful for combat situations in the past but become out-leveled by the PCs, who are gaining experience. Of course I could just say "X levels up" but this is DM fiat, which I want to avoid. I'm looking for a semi-interactive system for the players.

(As a side note, while not totally relevant for this conversation, no XP is gained from fighting. It's all quest-based.)

Also, Thanael, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about leveling up threats around the PCs. A character with no name and no face is not an NPC, they're scenery. I'm talking about fellow adventurers and companions that interact with and participate in quests alongside the PCs.

I also don't need help designing the NPCs or populating the world, though I do appreciate the suggestions.

I know this request for suggestions is a bit hard to fill. I want a way to model the companions that work with the party to gain levels over time, without me just deciding that they level up on occasion.

[Eltacolibre]

My suggestion:

Well usually npcs have their own lives and quests, or adventures. In case of NPC X, maybe he just came back from killing the dragon that made him an adventurer in the first place, explaining how he is still keeping up with the PC.

Something my dm did in his campaign, you can imbue knowledge and experiences from your fighting to npc:

Basically every session you get XP, half of this XP, not taken out of your xp but half of the xp that you earned can be used to level up an npc , essentially you can say that you are sharing your experience and skill with said npc with a limit that the npc will always be 1 level lower than you. Currently we are very high levels...so leveling npc is actually very easy for us, like we could take a level 1 npc and make him level 6 or 7 in one session of adventuring. As you can see, it works decently, it just at higher levels, it tends to become a bit ridiculous on how easy it is to level up npc.

[Cinderfist]

Okay.. if they are adventuring with the party then they should be getting XP just like the pcs.
Either they should be getting a share of the entire party XP or you should give them the same individual amount a pc earned if you don't want to penalize the party for the NPC's presence.

If they are only with the party part of the time. What are they doing when they aren't with the party? Come up with a story of what they did to gain XP if you really feel the need.
But why do you feel you need to justify every xp point an NPC has? Do you play out the lives of your villains so they earned the Xp to be 10th level? Do you insist on role playing out the childhood of your bugbears before they attack the party?

This isn't DM fiat, this is standard adventure design.

You're the DM, if you want the NPC to be 7th level.. then boom he's 7th level.

[DeathmatchFM]

That suggestion isn't actually that bad, though I'm afraid it might be a bit too "math heavy" for some stuff.

We also use a strange XP progression method, which was medium up until level 8, after which it turned into slow (with a curve at level 9 to balance it).