Archmage wrote:If DMs can use NPCs with PC classes as adversaries, don't PC classes need to be balanced against each other evenly?
No.
The player party wont be full of fighters only, and the NPC party wont be full of wizards.
The thing you have to understand is the PC party must be ready to take on all comers, and the NPC party wont be.
The main force a PC party faces isnt a opposing group of adventurers. Even if it was, it would be that group of adventurers is made the same as the PC party with regards to cooperating for tactics and such, so would automatically balance out. Wizards on both sides following the same rules, etc.
Take 4th edition. It tries to tell what monsters should be fought at what levels. This forces the DM and players into only having certain things in certain places. This is NOT the way to get the DM to understand proper encounter creation. This is jsut something that takes time for the DM to figure out for the group they are running the game for, as all groups will work differently.
Some people just wont make good DMs, if they cant figure out how to balance an encounter. The encounter would depend also on the threat level to the PC group. If you NPC was supposed to be hard, then they would be of higher level, or whatever, likewise to be easier, they might be at lower level.
DMs being asses, doesn't make for a flaw in the game, if they have a group of "optimized" wizards as an encounter. No NPC in his right mind would take only fighting spells to use. This would make them dead pretty quick, if they are doing things on their own. Either they try something they cannot and fail...like handling traps, or they send in others to do the task, and after the NPC's henchmen die too often, they revolt and kill the NPC.
When you remember the world is not jsut a board for a game, and these NPCs should have lives that are part of other lives, then there is a chance and risk for them too, and the things they do have consequences, and still must fit within the world and story.
There wouldn't be an encounter designed for the PC fighter, to solo against an NPC wizard of equal level. This is where the problem with viewing the characters in a vacuum comes in, because they shouldn't be working alone. So when you consider you have the rest of the PC adventurers there to help, the NPC party, even if EXACT simulacrums of the PCs, then it will be balanced as the group is made using the same rules.
This is a reason that if the PCs find another adventuring party, it isnt meant to be a combat encounter, but to further stress that the players group isnt the only one that may be in the world, but they are the important one for the game.
It is more a plot device than an encounter.
If the game was designed around the idea of a single character doing everything for himself, then balance between the classes, to make it fair for the players would be appropriate. Since the game is made so that a group of players are working together, it assume the players understand the game functions this way, and is designed around the PC group being balanced against the encounters it faces within a margin that allows for a threat level to reward XP, or an encounter that shouldnt take place as it would end in TPK, the hopeless actions; or an encounter that shouldnt take place because the PCs are just killing people that dont stand a chance against them.
Both wizard and fighter BBEGs would have "minions" The fighter would be a general of a large army or a king and have his army or militia as the rest of his group to oppose the PC group, and the wizard would have his constructs or slaves for his. So even that single BBEG v PC group fight, has been all along a BBEG group ala Team Evil.
Linear Guild v OOTS does a good job of showing how NPC vs PC adventuring groups would be balanced.
