When a PC wants to interact with an NPC in some way that might be challenging for example being diplomatic, lying their asses off, or threatening them all we need to do is ask ourselves 'on a scale of 10 to 20, how difficult is this?'. Anything above 20 is likely too hard unless they're picking the doors to Lolth's vaults in the Demonweb Pits. Anything below 10 we can assume the characters just do without a check. In just about any interaction that has a challenge, the DC is all we really need to come up with between a range of 10 (easy) and 20 (hard). Pick a Number Between 10 and 20Īt its core, D&D 5e comes down to rolling a die, adding a modifier, and checking it against a difficulty check (DC). Luckily we have the Monster Manual to handle all of this for us. Monsters in D&D have a lot of crunch to them with six attributes, hit points, armor classes, saving throws, attack scores and detailed attacks. The rest of the monster's statistics can be easily generated from this single number between 1 (easy) and 10 (very hard).ĥe's design won't let us design a system as simple the one in the Cypher system for combatant NPCs. Numenera and the Cypher RPG system has an easy way to manage this. Often some quick statistics are all we need to run most NPCs and monsters.

Monte argues that the details our game needs for player characters to stay interesting doesn't apply to NPCs or monsters. A game that explores how well a PC is at combat, at interaction, at a wide variety of skills and actions, and makes all those things equally interesting is a great game. That's because the game has all these great rules for fleshing out PCs and making them cool and interesting. NPC (and creature) detail is one of the ways in which designers and GMs are often forced to waste a lot of time. These non-playing characters (NPCs), he argues, just show up, talk for a bit, and disappear forever. Monte Cook, designer of the third edition of D&D and the Numenera roleplaying game, wrote an interesting article called PCs versus NPCs in which he discusses the time we often waste putting together statistics for NPCs.

Attack Bonus / Primary Saves = 3 + 1/2 CR.

If you want some quick creature statistics, try out the following formulas (round down): If you end up needing combat statistics for your NPC or monster, grab the closest stat block from the Monster Manual and reskin it for flavor. When improvising an NPC or custom monster during the game, you can often start with a base DC between 10 (easy) and 20 (hard). Note, this article has been updated from the original posted in February 2016. New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Instant NPCs for Fifth Edition D&D

Dnd stat block maker