Heroes and ordinaries

Earlier editions of D&D used to relegate most NPCs to "zeroth level." While they could have high proficiency in whatever skills they were expected to have, this did not translate to combat. Even the king of a country could be limited to zeroth level, meaning he would die to a single sword slash. Not all editions were like this.

In later editions of D&D, particularly the derivative Pathfinder, all NPCs were given levels that made them competent combatants regardless of their actual profession. Furthermore, their level scaled with their position in society. While commoners might have only a few levels, the king might have ten or more. This meant that, because of the way combat and hit points worked, said king could not be killed by slipping a dagger through his ribs during his sleep without DM fiat.

5e has NPCs and monsters built from scratch rather than leveled like player characters. Furthermore, 5e introduced the concept of "bounded accuracy," which meant that numerical bonuses were scaled in such a way that lower level characters or monsters could still pose a threat to higher level characters or monsters.

As such, taking a page from d20 Modern, I prefer to divide characters into "heroes" and "ordinaries." Or whatever terminology strikes your fancy. Heroes are mythic heroes (and villains) straight out of heroic fantasy. Ordinaries are the ordinary people rescued by heroes or victimized by villains.

You might disagree that D&D is heroic fantasy, since many adventure modules prefer a gritty dungeon crawling experience. However, gritty realism is not really supported by the rules. Nor, for that matter, is genuinely mythic fantasy.

It really deserves its own post, but D&D has a severe tonal inconsistency because it cannot decide which genre to best serve and ends up being a weird hodgepodge mishmash that does not do any single genre justice. Martials and casters have a huge disparity, comparable to the difference between Conan and Naruto. Neither Conan or Aragorn is really comparable to the martial classes either: martials are still doing things like fighting literally mythic and fairy tale monsters like hydras and chimeras and hags and dragons. Unlike Cuchulain or Sigurd, martials cannot perform mythic or fairy tale feats like shooting an arrow hundreds of leagues or speaking the language of the birds.

But I digress...

The real problem is that a leveling mechanic by definition is biased in favor of heroic fantasy over gritty fantasy. If you want gritty fantasy, then you will have to adopt the E6 limit or switch to a skill-based system like Mythras Classic Fantasy.

In any case, the PCs in a typical game of D&D 5e are literally mythic or fairy tale heroes. I respect that, and so I prefer to scale the NPCs to make the heroes stand out.

Relevant links:

• http://www.d20radio.com/main/the-workshop-dnd-5e-level-0-characters/
• http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com/2014/06/d-5e-0-level-npcs-wip.html
• http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-gap-beneath-first-level.html
• https://dungeonhacking.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/building-npcs-in-5e-and-the-einstein-problem/
• http://theangrygm.com/monster-building-101-its-alive-its-alive/
• http://theangrygm.com/monster-building-201-the-dd-monster-dissection-lab/
• http://theangrygm.com/monster-building-202-supplement-monster-building-with-angry/
• http://theangrygm.com/monster-building-202/
• https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2
• http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2014/10/might-and-magic-part-1.html