Editing NPC (section)

==Help with running NPCs==
GMs often have difficulty using NPCs appropriately in their campaigns. Depending on the particular brand of GM, they might spend a disproportionate amount of time statting them or writing elaborate back stories, only for them to get killed or utterly bypassed by the players. They might also have difficulty actually role-playing a NPC who might only have had a limited role in their storyline, but the players keep going back to them.

So here are a few useful tips to remember for running your own NPCs.

*If you really have to give them a long-winded, poncy, made-up name, make sure you give them a title that the players can use. No-one remembers the difference between "Sunatela Estavros", "Donitri Kaliean" or "Likorian Goldmantle" but they do remember "King", "Guard Captain" and "Court Wizard".
*You don't always need to create the characters using the same method as the players (adding classes, skills and talents in order to "level" them to an appropriate match for the encounter), especially if they are intended only to perform particular roles. It's easier to just use simple stat-blocks detailing hit points, any relevant saves, attacks and equipment.
**A GM-controlled NPC doesn't need Knowledge or Lore skills, but should have all necessary information relevant to his part of the plot. More can be added later if need be.
*When actually "role-playing" NPCs, sometimes it's easier to just play alignments rather than complex personalities, so you don't get stuck figuring out what a given character has to do when presented with odd situations the party inevitably generates. These are not exhaustive, but mostly it means you don't need to have a spreadsheet of motivations at hand when players press an issue.
**Good NPCs are generally helpful, Neutral NPCs usually aren't interested in assisting unless incentives are offered. Lawful NPCs typically have reservations against social faux pas and antisocial behaviour, while Evil NPCs simply want to take the player's stuff from them.

===Player NPCs===
The inverse of a DMPC, player-controlled Companions, Cohorts, Followers, minions and robots often cause nightmares for even the most accommodating GMs. Mostly because any opportunity the players get to create ''more'' characters will inevitably be an opportunity to powergame or munchkin the crap out of them.

What's the point of having one balanced character who can help out in several situations and has an interesting back story, when you have a team of one-dimensional guys who are unrealistically maxed out in single skills and have only ever done one thing in their life ever? This is natural player behaviour, because even the most innocent person is not going to enjoy retreading the same ground with new characters, so they will build new supporting characters with their primary PC in mind. In the worst case, you get experience batteries or crafting monkeys who do nothing other than selflessly make the PCs gear. But even in the most harmless of situations, you get nameless dogsbodies who do nothing other than carry player gear around and act as extra inventory slots.

Some rulesets, like [[Star Wars RPG|Saga Edition Star Wars]] or [[Only War]], do companion characters unobtrusively and subtly so that they cannot be broken and they end up behaving as an extension of the character themselves, while other rulesets suffer from creating their companions exactly the same way as PCs.

====Leadership====
One of the worst offenders is the 3rd Edition '''Leadership''' feat from D&D, which grants the player who takes it a major NPC cohort as well as a loyal group of low level followers. The main opinion among optimizers is that if the cohort and followers were separated into two feats (which [[D20 Modern]] did when it introduced them in ''[[D20 Past]]'') they would ''both'' be the at the top of the list of most powerful feats in the game.

The original ruleset explicitly stipulated that followers had to be generated from the shitty NPC classes of '''[[Commoner]], [[Warrior]]''' and '''[[Expert]]''', and never gained experience, though the later 3.5 revision and [[Pathfinder]] left that part out. The Cohort that was summoned also comes in at several levels lower than the player, and gains experience at a reduced rate.

Many DMs simply ban Leadership or any feat that grants cohorts and followers out of hand, rather than deal with the hassle and extreme [[Cheese]] of a whole bunch of mini-PCs, or else because they see no point in the feat if players can simply hire minions or gain additional companions through roleplaying. Banning Leadership might not be absolutely necessary if the GM considers a few things or institutes a few conditions on what actually gets obtained from the feat:

*'''Make distinctions between PC cohorts/followers and NPC hirelings/allies.''' The players have sacrificed part of their progression to gain companions or followers, so they should be able to have greater control over their minions. The feat is robust enough to apply penalties for poor treatment of followers, so a player doesn't really need to consider the motivation of each faceless Lv1 commoner who works for him and shouldn't be betraying him out or leaving him for no reason. An army of warrior followers who repeatedly get massacred by higher level monsters or forced to walk through minefields will result in progressively lower leadership scores, and eventually lead to the player not being able to earn the loyalty of any more followers at all. Alternatively, NPC hirelings or allies introduced via roleplay come with their own motivations and often work best under the control of the GM, who can make them come and go as the plot requires it.
*Those followers have to come from somewhere, so it makes sense to reinstate the 3.0e condition that '''followers should be [[Commoner]]s, [[Warrior]]s or [[Expert]]s''' who represent your "average" person in most locations. Immediately dropping Adepts means you don't have to do the paperwork for a hundred or so casting characters. Also if you walk into a city and start recruiting, you're simply not likely to be able to find fifty level 1 Wizards, Paladins or Druids unless you also have the allegiance of a major knight order or arcanist guild, which will require a roleplaying element anyway.
**On a similar note, also '''restrict racial choices for cohorts and followers to those relevant to the available setting''', you are not likely to find 145 Drow or Tiefling Experts in a city of mostly humans and dwarves.
**'''Don't allow point buy or random dice rolls for followers' ability scores.''' Just use a simple non-heroic array so you don't have to track character sheets for each and every faceless and nameless minion.
**'''Rule against any cohort or follower from taking Leadership or any kind of follower/familiar/companion through class features.''' This is simple common sense, as it restricts the amount of paperwork you and your players need to do with getting essentially double the number of followers for free. ''(The Mastermind Prestige Class from the Rokugan campaign setting is an exception to this, because it's a class built for followers.)''
*Realize that as players increase in level, low-level followers become less and less relevant. A 1st level [insert class here] will probably drop like a wet sack the moment you bring them into combat and take up more of the GM's time rather than actually be of any use. This pushes Followers into more narrative positions like running farms, providing base security, or crewing the ship. So giving them complete stat blocks becomes superfluous as any dice roll associated with them will have very little meaning.
**Put into context: Even if the player is wealthy enough to equip all of their lv1 warriors with +5 Full Plate, they still only have 10-13 hp and Ref saves of between 0-3 depending on race and starting stats. Taking them into an encounter appropriate to character with the leadership feat means they may have to face Fireballs doing 5d6 fire damage (Ref DC14 for half) <u>minimum</u>. They will die in droves.
**If you insist on bringing low level followers to war, then the only real use for them is to create armies for massed combat; this allows the player to stat up a single block of troops, rather than each soldier separately. Most 3.x based settings have their own rulesets for this. ''(Miniatures Handbook, Ultimate Campaign etc)''
*Cohorts are, by nature, just low-leveled PCs, and can suffer similarly to followers in that they become irrelevant in encounters with high-level opponents. However, some players will get around this by relegating them to do nothing but buff and heal the party. This is not a terrible thing in itself, and some inoffensive alternative classes choices ''(such as the [[Healer]])'' can be encouraged.
**A special note with regards to the Pathfinder wording: ''"A Cohort is generally an NPC with class levels, while Followers are typically lower level NPCs"''. The key point is '''non-player''' character, which by definition means ''"<u>designed</u> and controlled by the GM"''. The Ultimate Campaign book also states that while Cohorts are generally player-controlled companions, the GM can create the Cohort themselves and then hand it off to the player, and that the GM ultimately has the ability to reject inappropriate choices from that point onwards. For players who complain at the lack of creative control, remember that [[RAW]] the Pathfinder Leadership feat only lets the player/PC choose a race and class and places a restriction of alignments. It does not say they get to freely create a secondary PC.

Even if the these changes to leadership are made, however, it's still ''incredibly'' powerful and easily broken.

One situation leadership is actually balanced is in campaigns that are focused on politics, espionage and/or commanding. There minions work largely behind the scenes and can't be assembled on demand (they're busy supporting you) unless the situation actually calls for twenty good men to be bothered. While in these campaigns the followers are gained through roleplaying and status, as mentioned above, those granted by leadership have the advantage of being explicitly "loyal".