Well,
I got myself a monster manual and looekd up a few things. NPCs are not PCs, looks like the 5e sees it the same way. I still do not get why those PC-race NPCs would have scores so way out of line with the PCs.
A CR 7 drow mage has Str9,Dex14,Con10,Int17,Wis13,Cha12 and 45 HP. Pretty reasonable. Now look at Nere. I haven't his stats looked up but how the heck did he get 74 HP?
A CR 6 Duergar Warlord has Str18,Dex11,Con17,Int12,Wis12,Cha14. Gekh Coal alone has Str18, Con18 i think and another 16 in the mix yet only 50 odd HP or not? (SC: Mordenkainen's ToF)
For standard PC-race NPCs i found nothing like that. The DM guide gives no Ability Scores, just kind of a recipe. Appendix B for generic NPCs of the MM has a few with low CRs.
Yet none of those i found had Ablity scores that were that far higher than equal level PCs. CR usually means that a party of 4 same lvl PCs can beat the mob, so i would think stats need to be a tad higher.
BG3 has levels for the NPCs instead of a CR. That would usually indicate a 1on1 comparison. Even if not, the higher stats of a lot of NPCs sours a lot. Especially Hit/Save ratio. Too high numbers on the NPCs make a lot of skills far less usefull than they should be since the NPCs get hit less and save more if hit.
You see that especially on spells like guiding bolt where a save completely negates the effect. I hardly use those because most of the time i get either a miss or a save if hit. For me, that takes a lot of fun out of combat. Many tactical choices fall because a magic missle is more effective just because it always works
(apart from the strange LoS they have in BG3, but thats another matter).
Last edited by UnknownEvil; 22/11/21 12:37 AM.
