Worst D&D 3.X NPC Statblocks

[ColorBlindNinja61]

It's pretty well known that most people who worked on D&D 3.X didn't have a clue what they were doing, and nowhere is that more evident than with the NPCs they designed.

Since I'm bored curious, I wanted to see what examples of terrible statblocks would be nominated as the worst of the worst. Bonus points if the NPC in question is supposed to be a giant penis insert that the players can easily slaughter because the game designer didn't do their job right.

I nominate the Lich King from WoW d20. This guy is supposedly CR 50 but his build and suggested tactics are awful.

The Lich King leads off with a mind blast and quickened sound burst, then another mind blast and a quickened telekinesis literally to throw his enemies into disarray. While they struggle with the effects of these attacks, the Lich King summons various forms of undead to send at them. Once the undead separate the group sufficiently, the Lich King unloads all manner of violent frost-based spells. Anyone left standing must contend with the Lich King himself as he wields Frostmourne into melee combat.

[Whatever]

I've never played WoW, but I assume that's his scripted behavior from the game.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

I've never played WoW, but I assume that's his scripted behavior from the game.

Nor have I, so I can't really confirm or deny that assumption. But good god those tactics suck balls in D&D...

[Blicero]

Early 3.0 products (especially third-party adventures) tend to have heavily multiclassed spellcasters that just flat-out don't present level-appropriate challenges. That sort of multiclassing was a valid life decision in AD&D and 2E, and it took a bit for people to realize that 3E was different.

The Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia book I reviewed a while ago (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=431053) for example, has a Druid5/Cleric9.

The Caverns of Thracia adaptation from the same publisher as a Druid12/Sorcerer6 as the scary end-boss.

Honestly, if you crack open a random page of the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, you're guaranteed to find awful multiclassers. Doing a quick skim of it now, I see:
- Wizard12/Fighter6
- Sorcerer11/Fighter4
- Rogue6/Sorcerer6
- Fighter5/Wizard4
- Rogue1/Fighter4/Sorcerer12/Bard8
- Fighter11/Sorcerer8
- Monk6/Sorcerer4
- Wizard7/Rogue12

and that was just a few countries.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Honestly, if you crack open a random page of the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, you're guaranteed to find awful multiclassers.

I remember the king of the terrible in that department being Elminster. Although, I think his most current statblock is in the Epic Level Handbook.

[OgreBattle]

Did the ever accidentally create an OK multiclass NPC like fighter1/barbarian1/rogue1

[Blicero]

Did the ever accidentally create an OK multiclass NPC like fighter1/barbarian1/rogue1

You occasionally see Rogue/Fighters and the like.

I remember the king of the terrible in that department being Elminster. Although, I think his most current statblock is in the Epic Level Handbook.

Yeah, you open up the book and get slapped on page 7 with this bizarre Fighter1/Rogue2/Cleric3/Wizard20/Archmage5/"Epic4" CR 45 monstrosity of a statblock. The FR sourcebook came out before the Epic Handbook / "D&D Jokebook" was released, so they mostly punt on the details of epicness with a pointer.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Fighter1/Rogue2/Cleric3/Wizard20/Archmage5/"Epic4"

That reminds me of the sort of stat block you'd see in Deities & Demigods.

[Emerald]

Yeah, you open up the book and get slapped on page 7 with this bizarre Fighter1/Rogue2/Cleric3/Wizard20/Archmage5/"Epic4" CR 45 monstrosity of a statblock. The FR sourcebook came out before the Epic Handbook / "D&D Jokebook" was released, so they mostly punt on the details of epicness with a pointer.

Looks like that's a direct port of Elminster's AD&D stats, which followed his backstory (started off as a noble heir with fancy armor and everything, became a sellsword and brigand after his family was killed, turned to Mystra and became her priest, then learned a shitload of wizardry under her tutelage) pretty closely; that's at least fairly defensible compared to 3.0 Caverns of Thracia having a totally nonfunctional Druid/Sorcerer when the big bad in the original was a plain ol' Minotaur Magic-User 6.

[amethal]

Yeah, you open up the book and get slapped on page 7 with this bizarre Fighter1/Rogue2/Cleric3/Wizard20/Archmage5/"Epic4" CR 45 monstrosity of a statblock. The FR sourcebook came out before the Epic Handbook / "D&D Jokebook" was released, so they mostly punt on the details of epicness with a pointer.

Looks like that's a direct port of Elminster's AD&D stats, which followed his backstory (started off as a noble heir with fancy armor and everything, became a sellsword and brigand after his family was killed, turned to Mystra and became her priest, then learned a shitload of wizardry under her tutelage) pretty closely.

I've never had the pleasure of reading any FR novels about Elminster, but I think it is reasonable his character has grown organically and his stat block reflects that.

I look on it as an example of what happens if players decide to build their characters on that basis. It doesn't matter for Elminster, because he has a secret "Elminster is better than you" ability the author / DM can call upon when needed (and they can always give him another 10 warlock levels or whatever based on the latest novel). It does matter for PCs though.

My pet hate is D&D statblocks where noble characters get a level in Aristocrat to reflect their noble upbringing, and then the levels in their actual class. Paizo used to do that all the time.

Conversely, I'm quite happy if they did the other way around - retired adventurer settles down and picks up a few levels in an NPC class - but these are the sort of NPCs that don't normally need stats anyway.

[Orion]

Honestly, as long as you're not seriously expecting them to perform at their CR, making the big bad boss be some terribad multiclass is a pretty good decision. That Druid/Sorcerer gets to have enough HP and saving throws for a little staying power without getting spells that blow away the whole party.

[Leress]

Warduke d20 version from Dungeon Magazine #105

[OgreBattle]

Read on here that you can go from lvl 1 to 20 in the in-world time of less than a year.

Drizzt is still slicing up orc mooks even after battling big demons and big liches, so maybe this wonky multiclassing can work if we acknowledge that 'level appropriate challenge' is not how the game is expected to be played.

Can a Balor still be taken out by a wizard10/something 10? The non-casters don't get anything after lvl10 as a monoclass so might as well multiclass yeah? If so that doesn't sound too bad.

[Blicero]

Read on here that you can go from lvl 1 to 20 in the in-world time of less than a year.

Drizzt is still slicing up orc mooks even after battling big demons and big liches, so maybe this wonky multiclassing can work if we acknowledge that 'level appropriate challenge' is not how the game is expected to be played.

Yeah a sequence of level-appropriate challenges isn't how D&D has always worked. The guy from thealexandrian has written fairly compellingly on the topic (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/20 ... ter-design, https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/27 ... on-modules).

The only major lacuna in his analysis, I think, is how he fails to grapple with 3e's guidelines for magic-marts and the like. Once you have enough glo-stick cure and AoE wands to not have to worry about exhausting your resources, it's more difficult to find large numbers of under-CR'd encounters fun.

[Emerald]

Read on here that you can go from lvl 1 to 20 in the in-world time of less than a year.

Drizzt is still slicing up orc mooks even after battling big demons and big liches, so maybe this wonky multiclassing can work if we acknowledge that 'level appropriate challenge' is not how the game is expected to be played.

It's definitely the case that the game isn't expected to be "all even-CR challenges all the time, speedrun to 20th in 66.5 days" at all. That idea is based on a misunderstanding of the explanation of the math in the DMG, where people read this:

The experience point award for encounters is based on the concept that 13.33 encounters of an EL equal to the player characters’ level allow them to gain a level.

...and fail to read the next bit:

Thirteen or fourteen encounters can seem to go by very quickly. This is particularly true at low levels, where most of the encounters that characters take part in are appropriate for their levels. At higher levels, the PCs face a varied range of Encounter Levels (more lower than higher, if they’re to survive) and thus gain levels somewhat more slowly. Higher-level characters also tend to spend more and more time interacting with each other and with NPCs, which results in fewer XP over time.

(That last bit fits Drizzt perfectly and explains his stall in leveling--in addition to the fact that a level 16 PC, as he is officially statted to be, no longer gets any XP for killing any number of below-CR-9 critters like the standard horde of orcs, and so he can go entire novels without gaining a single point of XP.)

It's just like how a lot of people view Wealth by Level as some sort of ironclad rule for how much treasure PCs are "supposed" to have at each level, when it's just a rule of thumb for making new characters based on average treasure rolls and expected consumables usage.

Can a Balor still be taken out by a wizard10/something 10? The non-casters don't get anything after lvl10 as a monoclass so might as well multiclass yeah? If so that doesn't sound too bad.

The problem with multiclassing like that is the way monster abilities and PC spells come online at roughly the same levels. Incorporeality comes online as an ability of even-CR monsters at around the same level the party casters get magic weapon, petrification comes online around when they get break enchantment, death attacks and negative levels become noticeably more common around when they get death ward and raise dead, and so on. Numerically, a party of [caster] 10/[noncaster] 10s can probably take on a balor, but they lack the utility and defensive magic to actually engage with it and recovery magic to deal with the aftermath.

If you wanted to encourage that kind of multiclassing-for-breadth, you'd have to make it explicit upfront to the players that you're going to err on the side of lower-CR encounters so they feel they can lose caster levels and dabble around without getting totally screwed, and then peg boss monsters to CR = 4/5 × [average party ECL] (or whatever's appropriate for the party in question) instead of CR = [average party ECL] + N at high levels. Which is totally doable, just not something that I think would ever arise organically for any party with sufficient 3e experience.

The only major lacuna in his analysis, I think, is how he fails to grapple with 3e's guidelines for magic-marts and the like. Once you have enough glo-stick cure and AoE wands to not have to worry about exhausting your resources, it's more difficult to find large numbers of under-CR'd encounters fun.

I don't think that's really a big issue. Partly because of the "I have 99 cure potions but I'm saving them all for the final boss just in case oh wait the game's over now and I never drank any" effect that makes a lot of players reluctant to lean heavily on consumables, partly because the standard for healsticks is the wand of cure light wounds (which is very efficient for out-of-combat healing but bad at in-combat healing, so combat is still tense, it's just easier to get patched up afterward) and if they go for a cure moderate/serious/critical wand that gets expensive fast.

In fact, if I were to run a campaign where the encounters leaned lower-CR so the party started stocking up on lots of wands and scrolls and potions to deal with it, I'd consider that a good thing! More consumables means less hoarding of magic items and more of a need for cash flow for constant restocking, which means more incentive for adventuring and looting; more spells coming from items means less of a need for half the party to be casters, which means players can experiment more with party composition and try out weaker classes and builds.

[OgreBattle]

Thanks for the info on CR and 'level appropriateness'

but they lack the utility and defensive magic to actually engage with it and recovery magic to deal with the aftermath.

This gets me thinking on the "Player Ability vs GM pity" axis, that if it's not on your character sheet you're relying on the DM. It also got me thinking about how Dark Souls has these curses that can be reversed with items, but if you run out of that rare item there's a specific shrine to decurse. It's a video game so all the world is already set, all the dangers and solutions are already set.

But if we apply that to tabletop RPG design it can be a matter of the players knowing what quests they have to embark on to ressurect their buddy or de-stone someone, instead of leveling up the party cleric to do that every day. It can be a downtime thing too, like you cash in the good will you accumulated from the people you've helped in quests. Like solving the problems of hexgrid 5A inhabitants gives you access to the remedies of hexgrid 5A. (kinda like what Orion talked about recently)

In the case of ressurecting a player character, can be a downtime thing so said player isn't missing out, or a sidequest where that player controls an existing NPC

[Emerald]

But if we apply that to tabletop RPG design it can be a matter of the players knowing what quests they have to embark on to ressurect their buddy or de-stone someone, instead of leveling up the party cleric to do that every day. It can be a downtime thing too, like you cash in the good will you accumulated from the people you've helped in quests. Like solving the problems of hexgrid 5A inhabitants gives you access to the remedies of hexgrid 5A. (kinda like what Orion talked about recently)

OSR types who don't like cheap 'n' easy resurrection often suggest replacing it with some kind of "go down to the Underworld and retrieve their soul" side quest, which basically forces the main plot to stop short for a session or more while the party does that and requires the DM and the player of the dead PC to come up with a filler PC and a reason for them to briefly join, so in practice that's not a great idea.

But the idea of using some kind of shared virtual currency to gain access to settlement resources is actually pretty cool. Subsystems and minigames for things like contacts, honor/reputation, organization affiliation, and so on are fairly common, but generally feel bolted on and only matter for a subset of the party (each PC probably has a different affiliation, the honorable samurai really cares about reputation and the ne'er-do-well thief really doesn't, and so on), but if the reward for clearing out the Evil Temple of Evilness is N gp and M prestige and you can use the former to buy three magic swords and an airship and the latter to score two favors from the Thieves Guild and one "IOU 1 resurrection" from the Good Church of Goodness, that would be a pretty neat way to tie everything together.

[Previn]

Read on here that you can go from lvl 1 to 20 in the in-world time of less than a year.

I mean, honestly that's a really long time to hit 20 in terms of mechanics, even in 3.5. You're really looking at months in most cases.

For a 5e reference on this craziness you can look at Curse of Strahd. You literally advance a level roughly every 1.5 days, hitting level 10 in less than 2 weeks starting from level 1. If you've got an experienced/smart group, you'll hit a level a day no problem, and there's no reason to think you couldn't go from 10th to 20th in a like amount of days due the leveling/experience mechanics.

[Foxwarrior]

A hero's journey is sort of like a coming-of-age story... are level 1 NPCs actually manchildren and womanchildren?

[JigokuBosatsu]

Why shouldn't they just be children children?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Why should children have character levels?

[deaddmwalking]

Why should children have character levels?

Since hit points (or Hit Dice) are tied to level, effectively every creature has levels (or a fraction of one). Ie, a 1/4 HD cat effectively has 1/4 of a level of ANIMAL, and a 1/2 HD child has effectively 1/2 a level in Humanoid.

In terms of emulation, you want every creature to have some amount of durability (including children) that is roughly consistent with your expected fiction. Even if children are not specifically targeted by your game, you probably want to know what happens if the PCs try to use the village children as human shields against the evil Evoker - that is, can they survive a fireball or are the PCs inviting collateral damage.

Now, there are some aesthetic reasons why people like '1' for the starting point and that is traditional, but there isn't really any reason why you couldn't give Infants 1 HD, children 2 HD, and adults 3HD. If a bog-standard non-adventuring NPC had 3d8 hit points (average per level, no Con bonus), they would have 13 hit points. They could still be dropped by a greatsword (2d6+3 or more), and wouldn't be particularly resistant to a critical hit. Potentially, weapon damage could be adjusted to fine-tune expected durability as necessary.

Ultimately, all that does is lets you 'reset zero' to a lower level - cats are now 1 HD instead of 1/4 HD, and you can more easily define the differences between rats and cockroaches.

Since '1 hit and you drop' tends to be something that people dislike about 1st level, having some 'I'm an adult just like everyone else hit points' might be advantageous.

[OgreBattle]

By the way cats can actually KO humans in real life:
https://indianexpress.com/article/trend ... m-6558211/

So we need momentum damage rules to make up for wizards having more than 1 hp

[Thaluikhain]

I knew a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor that was KO'd by a cat hitting them.

Ok, I knew them years before they took up BJJ, and they were KO'd when they were very young, but still.

[nockermensch]

If we're talking about terrible 3.X statblocks, Drizzt himself went from a badass to a wimp, since the 2e -> 3e transition particularly fucked up his fighting style and weapon choice.

He's a low str / high dex drow that dual wields a non-light weapon. You do the math.