Going from NPC to Heroic NPC

[unseenmage]

How is it supposed to be handled by RAW?

How do you handle it at your tables?

I have this bog standard goblin who will be tagging along with the hero and as he retrains from ranger to artificer she will gain a PC class as well. Probably rogue with lots of points in UMD.

Thing is, I'm curious how best to go about the transformation, both describing it in story and executing it in the rules.
This got me wondering how the Playground advances their unremarkable monsters into the realm of Heroic NPC-dom.

[heavyfuel]

Class wise, I'm pretty sure you just start picking levels in whatever class makes sense for you now.
For example, the vampire king in Eberron has 2 levels of Aristocrat before he started picking levels in Fighter.

Ability Score wise this is tricky. I suppose those who become heroic do so because they're already above average people. I suppose you could gradually raise the scores to indicate the hard work adventuring life is.

[Telonius]

Typically that would be a cohort or follower (per the Leadership feat), if it's in control of the PCs. Otherwise, it's a DMPC, with all the pitfalls that come with that. It would probably advance per usual, and count as a member of the party as far as party level and earned XP goes. I typically try to avoid using them, unless it's completely necessary.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Telonius
Typically that would be a cohort or follower (per the Leadership feat), if it's in control of the PCs. Otherwise, it's a DMPC, with all the pitfalls that come with that.

I don’t think it necessarily needs to be a binary choice. My current party has several tagalongs, who contribute (or not) in various modest ways. A couple of these individuals have class levels; another is a creature who will be gaining a class level shortly. I don’t really make a fuss about it in the game; the players don’t see the stats for these individuals, so I don’t feel there’s much to explain.

As for XP, I have a rule that these allies don’t take a share of XP from the PCs, but rather earn the same amount of XP without it affecting the party’s total. They’re also less likely, on average, to be involved in any given combat or other encounter, so they advance more slowly than the PCs. There’s no “transformation” per se, only a slight improvement in their abilities…which is usually completely obscured by the DM’s terrible rolls anyway. :smalltongue: