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View Full Version : DM Help 5E; Starting PC's with NPC statblocks/Classes as rewards



SouthpawSoldier
2014-12-26, 01:55 PM
Writing my first module, based on The Goonies. Since the idea is PC's coming from the slums/docks of a city, I'm not sure about them start with the full run of PC classes and stats. My idea is for everyone to start as NPC's, then bump them up to the PC classes/stats based on actions through the dungeon crawl/roleplay sessions. Player desides he wants to fistfight a bully? After he rests and bruises heal, statblock changes to a Monk. Player tries to filch something? Rogue. Nerdy bookworm type might find an old low level wizard's spellbook, and learn spells.

The hard thing with this is working out how much the players will know about this ahead of time, and making the session interesting enough to hook them. One is a kid BRAND new to DnD (mother is a friend, and she bought him the Starter Box kit for Xmas), and I worry that being told he's starting as Fishmonger or the like will sour him.

Am I going in the wrong direction with this idea?

Demonic Spoon
2014-12-26, 02:22 PM
Is there a specific reason why you want to sharply limit your players' backgrounds? There are any number of ways that a barbarian, monk, wizard, or any other class could've ended up in a city slum; you can just set "your character must be from the slum" as a requirement, and perhaps limit their starting gold, and you're good.

Your mechanism isn't really well-suited for a class-based system like D&D.


Player desides he wants to fistfight a bully? After he rests and bruises heal, statblock changes to a Monk. Player tries to filch something? Rogue. Nerdy bookworm type might find an old low level wizard's spellbook, and learn spells.

A monk isn't just some guy who hits things with his fists - that's the tavern brawler feat. A monk is something different. Unless the player goes off and joins a monastery, a monk makes no sense here.

Stealing something does not make you a rogue, and being a rogue does not mean you steal things.

A bookworm type could also be a warlock or various kinds of cleric (e.g. Knowledge domain cleric).

How would you handle warlocks? Are your players going to run into extraplanar creatures they can make pacts with?

How about barbarians? How will you determine whether someone who hits things with a sword should be a barbarian or a fighter?


Furthermore, many classes assume some nontrivial amount of time spent learning the tricks of that class; monks and wizards are good examples which probably took years of study, not just randomly picking up a spellbook one day.


If the goal is just that the PCs should start out weak, I suggest one of two things:

Some people have had success starting at "level 0", where they get some stuff from their background and some super-basic features of their class (like cantrips for wizards, or weapon proficiencies) and then start leveling into their main class.

You could also just start at level 1. Level 1 in 5e is pretty low; adventurers are weak and their powers are very limited.