ffilz
Legendary Pubber
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- Dec 17, 2018
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Yea, these asymmetric impacts of the mechanics on PCs and NPCs creates a divide. It would be more fair for randomly encountered spell casters to have some portion of their spell resource already be used up, though just how variable that can be may be dependent on the situation. For example, in Cold Iron, where people try real hard to rest after every encounter of any significance, then someone in their lair should be at full power unless the GM actually wants to entertain the possibility their lair just got attacked, or they just came back from a sortie. In this case, hit points should also be down...See, I think this is something a lot of people don't understand: How different mechanics affect NPCs and PCs differently. Like crit/crit fails for instance.
Another example of this is the whole D&D thing of giving NPCs full spellcaster slots of a caster of a certain level as well: NPC spellcasters don't have to consider saving slots for further encounters, and unless the GM just marks some slots off, they don't have other encounters earlier to siphon slots away from them.
I think one of the problems with both designers and GMs, is a lack of understanding of math and probability.
As to crits, yep, they have a tendency to dis-proportionally affect PCs, at least for what's seen on screen. That doesn't make them bad, but it will lead to more cautious PCs (which should ALSO translate to more cautious NPCs and therefore more likelihood of NPC being closer to full power when encountered...).
Of course all of this thinking about how to power down NPCs is a lot of work...