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View Full Version : NPC classes in non-human PC races vs humans



Scalenex
2008-12-19, 09:30 PM
A case can be made that most non-human races would have proportionally fewer Commoners, especially the longer lived ones.

Dwarves: They have longer lives than humans by far, long apprenticeships and crosstraining apprenticeships with other clans and a martial culture. They'd probably all be experts and warriors.

Elves: They have really long lives, flit from interest to interest, they pretty much should all be Experts.

Gnomes: Less long-lived than the other two they are still have long lives, they are curious and the very first sentence in the 3.5 PHB mentions technicians, alchemists, and inventors, aka Experts.

Halflings: Largely the same, longer lives and a driving curiosity, though they don't have the tech focus or quite the long life span, so if anyone had the same makeup as humans, they would.

Half-Elves: They got longer lives than humans, more drive than elves, and a need to prove themselves. They'd probably have proportionally more PC classes. Then again they aren't that different from humans.

Half-Orcs: Probably proportionally more Warriors, with areas where they are second class, they'd be restricted to menial labor and mostly be Commoners. Whehter they are second class or not, they probably would rarely be Experts. Though like Half-Elves, they could have proportionally more PC classes as they rise above their mean station.

gibbo88
2008-12-19, 09:37 PM
Given that elves get weapon proficiencies, in 3.5 at least, this would suggest that they have all had martial training of some sort so there would be a decent number of Warriors in the race, even if its something like 1/5th of the expert population.

You would also think that all races would possess a decent number of Warrior classes, since someone always needs to protect those who don't/can't.

Also, whats the question there?

Scalenex
2008-12-19, 09:44 PM
Given that elves get weapon proficiencies, in 3.5 at least, this would suggest that they have all had martial training of some sort so there would be a decent number of Warriors in the race, even if its something like 1/5th of the expert population.

You would also think that all races would possess a decent number of Warrior classes, since someone always needs to protect those who don't/can't.

Also, whats the question there?

I wanted to see if people would agree or disagree with these assertions and how strongly they would agree or disagree and whether anyone would derive follow up things from that.

Kyace
2008-12-19, 10:09 PM
I might disagree about dwarfs. Mining is long, boring, back-breaking work. Bricklayers, cutting supports, hauling rock/ore, they'd have plenty of commoners.

An elf commoner might be someone who gathers herbs/berries, tends plants/trees or such. A basic carpenter might be a commoner. A woodcutter would most likely be a commoner. Basically any job that goes twice as fast if you double the workers would be something a commoner can do or any job that takes time or muscle, not skill and training.

Devils_Advocate
2008-12-19, 11:21 PM
I've been meaning to write up my own spins on D&D's common races for a while now. One of my ideas for humans is that they're really the only race that does the whole thing with a great big agrarian underclass supporting a few privileged people at the top. And consequently, there's a damn buttload of humans compared to other races, but a much smaller fraction of them are suited to become adventurers and whatnot.

Good training for longer-lived races is just much more cost-effective, since they get to put that training to use for way longer. They also live long enough that every one of them can get good training, use it for long periods of time, and do a bunch of boring manual labor. But of course, they've advanced beyond the need for nearly so much manual labor as humans need to do. They do things more efficiently with more advanced methods than mere human peasants.

Halflings are more likely to make time for better training by simply avoiding having to do a lot of work, through... various methods. (One of those methods is getting above-average pay by traveling to places with labor shortages. This makes them helpful and appreciated. At least until they wear out their welcome through use of other methods, 'cuz labor shortages don't last forever so they're gonna be leaving soon enough anyway...)


I might disagree about dwarfs. Mining is long, boring, back-breaking work. Bricklayers, cutting supports, hauling rock/ore, they'd have plenty of commoners.
Ah, but all of those dwarves are also trained to fight, so that if anyone decides to pull together an army to bust in and take their great big hoards of mineral wealth, there will be a Great Frelling Big Army of Dwarves to stop them.

So there. :smallwink:

Teron
2008-12-19, 11:51 PM
Remember that commoners can use a Craft or Profession skill as well as anyone else; the real place of experts is in jobs that require varied or esoteric skills, or to represent people who happen to have well-developed skills beyond the requirements of their job (in that case, the job itself might even be a menial, "commoner" one, performed by a person who happens to be capable in other areas such as social interaction). Blacksmiths, tinkers, and other such "experts" in the conventional sense work just fine as commoners with the appropriate Craft or Profession skill and maybe Skill Focus.

This interpretation of NPC class roles role is amusingly exemplified by a famous elven chef in Eberron -- she's a venerable level 20 commoner.

Kyace
2008-12-20, 12:04 AM
Ah, but all of those dwarves are also trained to fight, so that if anyone decides to pull together an army to bust in and take their great big hoards of mineral wealth, there will be a Great Frelling Big Army of Dwarves to stop them.

So there. :smallwink:
I disagree, if all dwarfs were trained to fight, they'd /all/ be proficient with dwarven waraxes, rather than just the ones who can use martial weapons. You can be tough and strong without being a skilled/trained fighter.

Now elves, elves are trained warriors, gracefully putting arrows into the eyes of orcs from a hundred yards in moonlight. :P

Besides, dwarf outposts are helpless if you don't put cage traps at the entrance.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-12-20, 03:26 AM
This interpretation of NPC class roles role is amusingly exemplified by a famous elven chef in Eberron -- she's a venerable level 20 commoner.You mean Faerun, right? I don't think Eberron has 20th level.

Scalenex
2008-12-20, 05:14 AM
I might disagree about dwarfs. Mining is long, boring, back-breaking work. Bricklayers, cutting supports, hauling rock/ore, they'd have plenty of commoners.

An elf commoner might be someone who gathers herbs/berries, tends plants/trees or such. A basic carpenter might be a commoner. A woodcutter would most likely be a commoner. Basically any job that goes twice as fast if you double the workers would be something a commoner can do or any job that takes time or muscle, not skill and training.

You raise some good points, and Commoners can have maxed out profession and Craft easily enough. But if people are trained in several Crafts, they probably need to be Experts to have enough Skill points.

I would point out that Dwarves can't mine all the time because they still have to eat, unless they import most/all of their food in which case their traditionally awesome fortifications aren't much use if they can be starved out by a relatively short siege. If everyone mines, everyone also has to know how to raise cave fish, cultivate fungi, farm terraces, or herd goats and the like.

As for the elven chef thing, I kind of picture elves learning several crafts before I see them devoting their lives to a single pursuit, but I guess it can go either way.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-20, 05:27 AM
A case can also be made that the commoner class is an ugly kludge, and shouldn't be used to begin with.

Tengu_temp
2008-12-20, 02:31 PM
A case can also be made that the commoner class is an ugly kludge, and shouldn't be used to begin with.

If I ever ran DND, commoner would be the class for children who haven't learned any job yet, old people, beggars and complete failures at life. Everyone with some sort of proficiency in any trade/profession would be an expert, or something else.

Morty
2008-12-20, 02:38 PM
If I ever ran DND, commoner would be the class for children who haven't learned any job yet, old people, beggars and complete failures at life. Everyone with some sort of proficiency in any trade/profession would be an expert, or something else.

Same goes for me. I mean, why assume that, say, a farmer has absolutely no skills or knowledge to speak of? Tending to crops, animals etc. requires a good deal of attention.

Devils_Advocate
2008-12-20, 02:41 PM
I disagree, if all dwarfs were trained to fight, they'd /all/ be proficient with dwarven waraxes, rather than just the ones who can use martial weapons.
No, some of them might fight with spells or crossbows or other things.

The thing is, even if a dwarf starts out impoverished, he should be able to eventually earn enough over several decades to get a good education. (Lawful Good employers tend to pay decent wages.) But he doesn't start out impoverished anyway, because his parents got good educations and good jobs by the same logic. Assuming that dwarves are even capitalist, instead of everything being owned and managed by the clan.

... Except, of course, 50% of the population is below the median. If we say that you need a 14 in at least one stat to qualify for a PC class, that limits the number of people who'll have one. Of the remaining dwarves, some won't have the Str or Dex needed to be a good Warrior, or the Int needed to hack it as a Craft-based Expert. (They're competing against a bunch of other dwarves who also have a racial bonus to blacksmithing and stonemasonry, after all.) So I guess that a significant minority of them might wind up as simple Commoners who do just make Profession (miner) checks week after week.

So, yeah, even in an advanced society, not everyone has what it takes to be a trained professional, and there's still grunt work that has to be done by someone. Barring levels of personal enhancement and/or automation yet unseen in the real world. And even then, that just creates a more prosperous class structure; some work is still more valuable and requires higher skill than other work. (It might mean no more Commoners, though. :smalltongue:)

So I guess that demihuman society is still stratified, just more by competence than by nepotism. But they can still have a smaller underclass than humans, with far more individuals getting a chance to excel. I'm thinking like the difference between modern first-world countries and medieval feudalism, if not quite so extreme.

Elven weapon proficiencies are silly. A Chaotic race that nigh-invariably trains all of its members in the use of one specific set of weapons? They're meaningless for a bunch of classes, too. Rangers, Fighters, Paladins, Barbarians, and a lot of non-core classes are proficient with all of those weapons anyway, so they get nothing extra. A lot of spellcasters are gonna attack with spells instead of weapons. But if she does have to fall back on using an actual weapon, a low-strength wizard would be better off with Rapid Reload than longbow proficiency.

Elves really should get some other sort of non-lame bonus instead. They don't have enough compensating for a penalty to the one ability score that's important for every character of every class.


A case can also be made that the commoner class is an ugly kludge, and shouldn't be used to begin with.
It makes sense for dirt-poor human peasants.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-20, 03:06 PM
If we say that you need a 14 in at least one stat to qualify for a PC class,
Why would we say that?

Minimum stats went out of fashion after 2E, and even there you only needed a 9+ for the basic classes.


It makes sense for dirt-poor human peasants.
The commoner class makes sense, but only at level 1. The other NPC classes are superfluous: instead of making the city guard 3th level warriors, make them 1st level fighters. Done, and more elegantly.

Morty
2008-12-20, 03:09 PM
The other NPC classes are superfluous: instead of making the city guard 3th level warriors, make them 1st level fighters. Done, and more elegantly.

The problem is, fighters are supposed to be "elite" combatants, more skilled than a guy who doesn't see a fight more often than once per week. It gets even worse when you use one of the numerous homebrewed fighter fixes.
I'd say that from all NPC classes, warrior is least justified to be called superfluous. It just doesn't need progression above, say 5th level or so, because at this point it's better to give him fighter levels.

Teron
2008-12-20, 04:58 PM
You mean Faerun, right? I don't think Eberron has 20th level.
No, I mean Eberron. She's in Sharn: City of Towers.


Same goes for me. I mean, why assume that, say, a farmer has absolutely no skills or knowledge to speak of? Tending to crops, animals etc. requires a good deal of attention.
That's Profession (Farmer) and maybe Handle Animal. A non-human commoner with 10 Int can max both just as well as an expert.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-20, 05:22 PM
The problem is, fighters are supposed to be "elite" combatants, more skilled than a guy who doesn't see a fight more often than once per week.
Says who?

A first-level fighter is not, by my book, an elite anything. And if he fights more than once per week, well, he'll quickly be higher level.

And yes, that means that the King's Personal Guard is going to consist of moderate-level fighters, at least.

Devils_Advocate
2008-12-20, 07:35 PM
High-level characters are superhumans capable of defeating big, fearsome monsters. D&D normally assumes that most NPCs have abilities near to the sorts of things people can do in real life. You can certainly have a campaign world that breaks that assumption, though. A major factor is how easy it is to get XP without facing deadly challenges. Could the PCs levels up by practicing stuff in town long enough?


Why would we say that?
Because if your highest stat is lower than that, it triggers a reroll. Despite rolling 4d6 instead of 3d6 drop lowest, apparently you accidentally generated some chump-NPC-level stats instead of those appropriate to an adventurer (and a PC class).

No love for the Expert class?

Kurald Galain
2008-12-20, 08:04 PM
High-level characters are superhumans capable of defeating big, fearsome monsters. D&D normally assumes that most NPCs have abilities near to the sorts of things people can do in real life.
Yes. I, at least, also assume that low-level characters have abilities near to what people can do in real life. Well, other than casters, of course :smalltongue:


Could the PCs levels up by practicing stuff in town long enough?
Sure. Plenty of intrigue there.



Because if your highest stat is lower than that, it triggers a reroll.
Ah. I see a difference there - I've only once had to roll for stats, and that was in my very first campaign over a decade ago. Every other DM I've met since (including myself) used point buy even for 1E or 2E campaigns.

Devils_Advocate
2008-12-20, 10:46 PM
How low-level you talkin'? Like 1 through 5? I wasn't clear on what you meant by "moderate-level", I guess.

A point buy characters winds up with at least one 14 too, barring some sort of truly bizarre build. :smallwink:

Morty
2008-12-21, 06:13 AM
Says who?

A first-level fighter is not, by my book, an elite anything. And if he fights more than once per week, well, he'll quickly be higher level.

Rulebooks do. By the rules, Fighter class among the military is reserved for officers. It's even in the SRD. Then again, rulebooks also claim that classes are balanced and that CR system works.
Now, I don't subscribe to the notion that PCs are one-in-a-million superhumans and that all NPCs suck in comparision. It's just that Fighter class isn't really fit for a city watchman. Of course, it depends on what kind of city watch we're talking about.


And yes, that means that the King's Personal Guard is going to consist of moderate-level fighters, at least.

No argument here.

Scalenex
2008-12-21, 07:59 AM
Rulebooks do. By the rules, Fighter class among the military is reserved for officers. It's even in the SRD. Then again, rulebooks also claim that classes are balanced and that CR system works.
Now, I don't subscribe to the notion that PCs are one-in-a-million superhumans and that all NPCs suck in comparision.



You are hitting on my next project, which may or may not get a new thread. How many PC classes there should be. Figuring out how many Commoners and Experts there would be is necessary prerequisate for a realistic number of PC classes (since for their wealth by level, you need lots of commoners with surplus crops and lots of Experts to supply a PCs advanced purchasing needs). Also I need to figure out how many demihumans have in relation to humans. If they are too strong, and you wonder why the world isn't dominated by them not humans, too weak and you wonder why the faster reproducing humans haven't overwhelmed them. I think I'm leaning towards PCs being somewhere between one in a hundred and one and a thousand.

Tempest Fennac
2008-12-21, 08:25 AM
I thought Warriors were only conscrips or town guards? (Admittedly, town guards in my setting are Thug variant Fighters with Swim, Gather Information, Listen, Search, Sense Motive, Knowledge (Local) and Diplomacy as class skills.) I agree with the idea that most "experts" are fine as Commoners, though (a lot of people in my games are Experts due to the education system being quite good, though).

jcsw
2008-12-21, 09:10 AM
A case can be made that most non-human races would have proportionally fewer Commoners, especially the longer lived ones.

Dwarves: They have longer lives than humans by far, long apprenticeships and crosstraining apprenticeships with other clans and a martial culture. They'd probably all be experts and warriors.

Elves: They have really long lives, flit from interest to interest, they pretty much should all be Experts.

Gnomes: Less long-lived than the other two they are still have long lives, they are curious and the very first sentence in the 3.5 PHB mentions technicians, alchemists, and inventors, aka Experts.

Halflings: Largely the same, longer lives and a driving curiosity, though they don't have the tech focus or quite the long life span, so if anyone had the same makeup as humans, they would.

Half-Elves: They got longer lives than humans, more drive than elves, and a need to prove themselves. They'd probably have proportionally more PC classes. Then again they aren't that different from humans.

Half-Orcs: Probably proportionally more Warriors, with areas where they are second class, they'd be restricted to menial labor and mostly be Commoners. Whehter they are second class or not, they probably would rarely be Experts. Though like Half-Elves, they could have proportionally more PC classes as they rise above their mean station.

Why would humans have more commoners, then?

I quote Races of Destiny

The average human isn’t as hardy as the average dwarf
or as nimble as the average halfling. The average elf has
a greater knack for arcane magic, and the average orc is
certainly stronger. But human adaptability and energy
makes the concept of an “average” human pretty nebulous.
Individually, humans are vastly different from one another.
Two humans chosen at random have less in common with
each other than two elves—and if the two humans come
from different cultures, they might have less in common
with each other than an elf and a dwarf do.

Humans in DnD are known for their adaptability. Commoners are, well, common; the class is more or less built around being a farmer, and this is clearly not how the human race is envisioned.
With an extra skill point a level and a free feat, humans are well capable of having the professions to make successful experts, possibly better than other races.

Just because the race isn't as interesting doesn't mean it's made of boring classes; they could be made of the same kind of classes of everyone else, but you just never hear too much about them. (Because, well, who really wants to hear about humans?)

Yahzi
2008-12-21, 12:10 PM
A case can also be made that the commoner class is an ugly kludge, and shouldn't be used to begin with.
What he said! :smallsmile:

Curmudgeon
2008-12-21, 12:34 PM
"Commoner" is just a convenient label for the game designers to designate "people we don't care about". In a medieval society, which D&D is loosely based on, most people were farmers because most of the technology to produce food efficiently wasn't invented yet. (Though the introduction of heavy plows did increase efficiency and led to a significant population increase around 600 CE.) However, this doesn't make sense in a world where a single Druid casting Plant Growth once can ensure enough food to feed a large community for a year.

"Commoner" is really just "Undescribed".

Kurald Galain
2008-12-21, 12:46 PM
"Commoner" is just a convenient label for the game designers to designate "people we don't care about".

Yes. That's why it's silly that there are rules (and advancement levels) for them.

Vexxation
2008-12-21, 12:49 PM
Yes. That's why it's silly that there are rules (and advancement levels) for them.

Well, you also need them for your Commoner 1 / Monk / Drunken Master / Bloodstorm Blade Chicken Infested Chicken Throwers.

And your Retributive Necromancy or whatever Commoner 1 / Warlock Chicken Infested negative-energy explosion builds.

Actually, come to think of it, the only reason to ever stat out a Commoner is to use Chicken Infested. Huh.

Morty
2008-12-21, 12:55 PM
Well, to be honest, commoners can participate in a fight, either at PCs' side or against them. So sometimes, they need stats. Of course, there's still no need for separate Commoner and Expert classes.

Devils_Advocate
2008-12-21, 06:36 PM
It is kind of silly that you can represent superior capability either through higher levels or a better class. It does give the DM some flexibility in creating NPCs, though. The NPC classes let you make a character with high BAB and hit points but not much else, or a bunch of skill points but no special abilities.

Of course, they could have provided even greater flexibility by providing classes that provide only BAB, or only skill points, or only hit points, etc., but the game and CR system aren't really designed to accommodate characters min-maxxed to that degree. It would be nice if they were, but they're not.


Why would humans have more commoners, then?
Because their shorter lives give them less opportunity to achieve the level of skill that non-commoners possess. That was sort of the OP's point.

Pay attention, now.

Edit: There's also a long history of demihumans, elves and dwarves in particular, being portrayed as older races than humans, with older, more advanced, more prosperous cultures. Basically, elves have shining magical cities with crystal spires and togas (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrystalSpiresAndTogas), and humans... don't.

Adaptability and diversity just don't help you much when you're at the bottom rung of a feudal society and farmer is pretty much the only job open to you. These are the people stuck in the turnip economy (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/dnd/archives/frankTrollmanFanservice)

Oslecamo
2008-12-21, 06:55 PM
If I ever ran DND, commoner would be the class for children who haven't learned any job yet, old people, beggars and complete failures at life. Everyone with some sort of proficiency in any trade/profession would be an expert, or something else.

I'm pretty sure that I played in a D&D campaign of yours:smalltongue: Ok, ok, it was 4e.

Anyway, if I'm not mistaken, that's the precise definition of commoner: it's a NPC who doesn't do anything above the other NPCs, thus not fiting in any of the other NPC classes.

Doomsy
2008-12-21, 07:37 PM
I always figured the elfin ranged weapon proficiency was because they were voracious hunters and predators, killing vast herds of deer they just summoned using their magic to support their vast magical cities.

Sorry, that's my fantasy racism speaking. Technically, 'weapons' training as a racial suggests a culture that is either still in hunter/gatherer mode or serious, fortified city Spartan siege mode mentality with a slave population to do the actual work. Someone who is really long lived will most probably end up multiclassed or insanely good at what they do. Dwarves would probably fall into the last category, elves the first. Dwarves are legendary for their stoic nature and well, stubborn ways. It would make sense for a dwarf armorer who has been doing it for two hundred years to be both insanely good and just plain likes his work. Elves tend to have ADD besides the omnipresent ELFIN MAGIC(TM) and a vague nature tilt that doesn't really make sense.