Creating Your Own NPCs With Gear -- Need Help

[kevin_video]

So I'm making about a half dozen boss characters for the PCs to go up against, and they're all averaging around CR 12. Now, from what some people have told me, they're to have the NPC wealth table used, which means that they have 27k worth of gear. That seems really low to me, but I was going with it. That was until I started looking over other characters that were pre-generated throughout all the books. I can't find a single NPC that's worth what they're supposed to be. I'm looking at one CR 14 NPC that shouldn't be worth any more than 45k, but I added it up. He's worth 90k. That's double. So does this mean that the gear wealth table is what he's worth when everything's sold? That would kind of make sense if that's the case. This would therefore mean that my NPCs get to have 54k worth of gear each, but when sold it's only going to be worth 27k split up amongst the group.

Can anyone verify this for me?

[kevin_video]

I've continued looking, and it looks like characters who could very well be the bosses of the game have nearly double the amount of money spent on their gear (but no increase in CR save Warduke), and anyone that'd be considered a lieutenant has +20% spent on theirs. Cannon fodder seems to have almost exactly the right amount of gold spent on them.

Again I ask, is this supposed to be a common occurance?

[RobbyPants]

I'm not looking at the sources you're mentioning, so I'll trust you and assume that they did indeed give the bosses extra treasure.  Honestly, it doesn't surprise me.  The people probably wanted a tougher boss enccounter, and givnig more treasure will make the fight tougher.  That, and they probably see WBL as more of guidelines for the DMs to keep PCs in line.  That being said, it seems like giving out extra treasure on the boss fights means the group will get too much treasure!

Anyway, just do what you want.  Figure out how much treasure the boss has, divide it by the number of PCs, and see where that would put them.  If it give them too much treasure, then you probably want to scale back a bit.  If not, don't worry about it.

Another dirty trick is to give the boss some potent consumables which have the double benefit of giving a strong boost to their stats and the item is gone when the fight is over.  This was also a strong point to the original design of the drow back in the old days: their gear would turn to dust in the sunlight, so the DM could pit all kinds of "mirror matches" against the PCs without giving them a crapton of permanent magical items.

[veekie]

Well, NPC gear gives a rather different CR from PC gear(I've been building some pathfinder NPCs for a friend and boy, their ACs are like the PCs, a full 6+ level lower), so presumably heightened gear amounts are accounted for.

Presumably. Best to eyeball your prospective NPCs abilities(primary attack modifier, secondary attack modifier, primary DCs, secondary DCs, ACs, saves, etc can be compared, while class features and spellcasting are basically the eyeballin bit) against monsters of the same CR to see if they're anything alike. Note that caster NPCs can be present in a buffed/unbuffed state, and that makes a world of difference.

[kevin_video]

I continued looking around, and I found a few characters that didn't even come close to the NPC gear value. Of course you'd never fight those guys. They're the good guys. So therefore they should be less? What? There's no consistency. The Thayan Slaver gets 90k worth of gear at 14th, the Thayan Knight gets 16k at 10th, and the War Chanter get 12k at 13th. Just to name a few.

I'd like to do whatever I want, but I need some kind of reference. WotC isn't exactly giving me that. Maybe what I'll do is I'll start looking at the adventures that are up on the site, choose from my favourite ones, and then take the average from that. Other than that, I don't know what'd be "too much".

Other than that, the CRs will be balanced as per the standards of one for every four PCs, kind of deal. There's a few casters there, but at half caster level for three of them, it's not going to be that big a world of difference.

[wotmaniac]

I've used the NPC WBL exactly once -- and that's when I figured out that they are woefully under-equipped.
That's when I started equipping them with PC WBL -- but then I noticed that the PCs were getting WAY too much stuff.

So, what I started doing (and will never do it any other way) is this:  I don't even pay attention to WBL anymore.
I give the boss whatever it is that I am comfortable with the PCs getting (generally slightly less than NPC WBL), and then I buff him up with whatever consumables I feel like (this includes stat-boosting tomes/manuals, which would have been discarded after whenever it was that they read it -- ZOMFG, do those stat books soak-up wealth really fast).  the PCs in my game are usually really powerful/effective, so "standard" encounters (up to about a +4 cr) are usually cake-walks for them.

[veekie]

Yeah, non-transferrable wealth does work out.
Though...it's an NPC, you could just raise his ability scores via DM fiat without needing to resort to Belt of Strength and stuff.

Mainly though, the big pain is in the AC, since that takes the biggest contribution off wealth.

[kevin_video]

Yeah, non-transferrable wealth does work out.
Though...it's an NPC, you could just raise his ability scores via DM fiat without needing to resort to Belt of Strength and stuff.

Mainly though, the big pain is in the AC, since that takes the biggest contribution off wealth.

Yeah, I've noticed that a lot of NPCs have 75 points put into their stats, where as using the 32 point system you tend to have a lot more (by 5 on average). This is of course before racial adjustments. There's a few NPCs that I've seen where I've looked, and didn't agree where the stats were put, and raised them up a bit (like 8 to 10).

I agree that AC is the hardest. Even with a tome to increase your DEX, if they're wearing a certain kind of armour (ie DEX of 12 in full plate), you're not going to increase it anymore more than it already is. The parties I like are the ones that yell at each other because someone used their Improved Sunder ability on what would have been their treasure.

[RobbyPants]

Well, one of the quickest boosts against physical attacks is to use miss chances over AC; they are a lot more effective.  You can run a 5th level wizard with an AC of 10 with Blur, Displacement, and Mirror Image up and be virtually immune to single-target physical attacks.  Of course, if you do this too often, the players will likely start using stuff like True Seeing.

Still, you could use all three of those as potions, which gives a solid boost to the NPCs defenses all for a cost of 1350 gp.

[kevin_video]

Well, one of the quickest boosts against physical attacks is to use miss chances over AC; they are a lot more effective.  You can run a 5th level wizard with an AC of 10 with Blur, Displacement, and Mirror Image up and be virtually immune to single-target physical attacks.  Of course, if you do this too often, the players will likely start using stuff like True Seeing.

Still, you could use all three of those as potions, which gives a solid boost to the NPCs defenses all for a cost of 1350 gp.

Yeah I got sick of having Mirror Image being used against me, and just bought a blindfold of that gives me blindsight. It's very effective. The blur, not so much. The red dragon has that on his armour, but I guess it's only because it's 20%.

But I like your potion idea.

[Tequila Sunrise]

There's no consistency.

You've just discovered a secret of not only NPC design, but encounter design in general. There are guidelines, but hardly anyone uses them. NPC WBL makes NPCs woefully underpowered, yet still provides victorious PCs with more loot than a dragon hoard after the NPC dies. This isn't a catch 22 though; there are a couple of ways to balance NPCs for combat and looting. As has been mentioned, consumables are useful. Your other option is to arbitrarily raise stats directly via DM fiat. For example, given the assumption that an NPC should have an AC of 13 + CR (just a number I pulled out of my butt), say you add up his gear and Dex and find that his AC is only 19. Well just boost his AC by 6 (about 5 of that should go to flat-footed and 2 of it should go to touch.) That might be frowned upon around here -- I don't know -- but it's the simplest and most effective way to balance NPCs.

[kevin_video]

I guess I could always do what my DM does... wow, I feel kind of unclean just saying that... 

He uses potions all of the time, and it's rather annoying. Especially when you think they're about dead, and they suddenly pull a potion of cure serious from their belt of potions. I'd forgotten those exist, but every boss seems to have one. That, and every possible version of teleport imaginable on all of them (whether magical item, supernatural, or personal spell).

I kind of like the idea of the AC thing, but to boost it I'd probably through in a haste potion, or a ring of protection. At the same time, a CR 15 humanoid in armour, should have at least the same AC as the lowest in the party attacking him.

[kevin_video]

I just read up on Warduke in a Dungeon magazine. Anyone who's watched the original D&D series is aware of who this guy is, but anyways he's written up as an 18th level fighter, but he's a CR 20. Why? Because his WEALTH is that of someone at lvl 20, not 18. This means that his CR went up by 2. So if that's the case, then the CR 14 Rogue 7/Thayan Slayer 7 is actually CR 16 or 17 because he's worth 90k. Add another 10k worth of items to him (not all that hard considering how many slots he's still got open, and the picture could easily depict other items like a mask or cool boots) and he'd be that CR 17.

The same goes for the PCs in the D&D series adventure book. Hank, Sheila, Bobby, and the others all have a wealth that makes the ECL 9, not the lvl 7 characters that they're written out as. Now, I don't care what anyone says, but I honestly think they're lvl 9, not ECL 9 because of the weapons. I've watched that series countless times. They're mid-level, at least.

I see boss characters getting away with it, but it still makes it iffy. It just makes them harder to fight, and I do believe it should affect their CR. But that doesn't mean I won't take what's written with a grain of salt.

[Runestar]

One thing about potions is that they can be quite easily dispelled, given their low caster lv, and that mid-high lv combat tends to degenerate into dispel spamfests anyways.

This is why I don't bother with base-race classed npcs anymore - it just takes too much effort trying to ramp their power lv to be consistent with their cr. So I prefer using a monster as a base (for the physical stat boosts), then tack on a few class lvs.

For instance, why bother with a human sorc12 when I can have a spellweaver npc? If I want a mid lv fighter, I would use that eberron raksasha variant which grants bonus fighter feats. Reskin them into humanoid npcs if need be.

Alternatively, if you have MIC, there is a table at the end which helps you to quickly outfit your npcs (though it admits that the gear selection generated this way will be far from optimized).

[PhaedrusXY]

Yeah, the entire WBL system is crap, and D&D wealth has always been totally out of whack. We literally used to throw away magic items that we didn't want in earlier editions, because we had too much crap and didn't want to bother carrying them, and there was basically no exchange system for them. Using the crafting rules, basically no sane person should ever craft a magic item, and yet every adventure was dripping with useless crap like the Eternal Salt Shaker.

I'm trying something totally different out in the current game I'm running.

[saethone]

there are other options as well. Let them kill the NPC decked in magic items...and then don't let them loot him - the tunnel is collapsing, while on fire he trips and falls into the lava, etc.

[kevin_video]

there are other options as well. Let them kill the NPC decked in magic items...and then don't let them loot him - the tunnel is collapsing, while on fire he trips and falls into the lava, etc.

Yeah, my Friday DM does that to us a lot. "Okay, you've beaten him. But since he's dead, this dimension is collapsing on itself. You have enough time to grab one item for yourself before it's too late, and you don't have enough time to strip him of his armor. Go."

[Havok4]

there are other options as well. Let them kill the NPC decked in magic items...and then don't let them loot him - the tunnel is collapsing, while on fire he trips and falls into the lava, etc.

Yeah, my Friday DM does that to us a lot. "Okay, you've beaten him. But since he's dead, this dimension is collapsing on itself. You have enough time to grab one item for yourself before it's too late, and you don't have enough time to strip him of his armor. Go."

That tactic strikes me as a bit of a jerk move and would make the player's fell cheated out of their deserved rewards for their accomplishment. The magic items that cannot be taken because they are inherent like grafts would seem a  lot less unfair and have the same effect.

[veekie]

Well, if you go with making the 'basic bonus set' all inherent to all characters(basic Enhancements to stat, resistance to saves, enhancement to weapons and armor, deflection and nat AC sources), then you basically wouldn't need to drop so much loot

That stuff alone is a massive fraction of wealth for PCs and NPCs often have nothing BUT those.

[kevin_video]

there are other options as well. Let them kill the NPC decked in magic items...and then don't let them loot him - the tunnel is collapsing, while on fire he trips and falls into the lava, etc.

Yeah, my Friday DM does that to us a lot. "Okay, you've beaten him. But since he's dead, this dimension is collapsing on itself. You have enough time to grab one item for yourself before it's too late, and you don't have enough time to strip him of his armor. Go."

That tactic strikes me as a bit of a jerk move and would make the player's feel cheated out of their deserved rewards for their accomplishment. The magic items that cannot be taken because they are inherent like grafts would seem a  lot less unfair and have the same effect.

Uh-huh. We are talking about the Friday DM here after all. Hell, there have been sessions where we've only gotten XP, and no rewards whatsoever.