NPC Creation

[amertes]

I am very interested in the True 20 game. I'm currently running a Midnight campaign and am thinking of converting it to the True 20 system when I get my hands on it (I just placed an order for the book on Amazon.com). I have a question for those who have been playing around with the system or with Blue rose. Do you major NPC creation takes more or less time than it does in regular d20? And why? This is the biggest drain to my GM prep time and I am hoping that it is quicker with True 20.

Adam

[timemrick]

It will depend on just how much time you normally put into major NPC creation, but in general, I'd say it goes faster in True20. The most time-consuming part is assigning feats and choosing equipment, but that should rarely be as hard as choosing feats, spells, magic items, etc., in d20--especially if the character concept requires multiclassing in d20 (which it might not in True20).

Blue Rose has a few additional tools for fast character creation. The core rules include the concept of "paths," which are examples of how to build particular archetypes (knight, scout, healer, etc.) using the three roles. The Blue Rose Companion expands upon this by giving a list of feats for each path, up to 20th level, which can be used for quick PC or NPC creation. Those lists won't translate exactly to True20, mostly because of the differences in the magic/powers rules, but you could easily create similar tables for your own game. Paths are just a shortcut; once you know the rules, it shouldn't be too hard to just build effective characters from scratch.

[JBowtie]

I've actually been able to create fully statted NPCs in less than 5 minutes with True20; something I could never do with d20 systems.

Abilities are easy; just needs to add up to four or six. This is faster than rolling dice, especially when doing multiple NPCs at once.

With only three classes and no prestige classes to consider, picking a class takes almost no time.

Without skill points or cross-class skills, you're just picking a few skills. Much, much faster for high-level NPCs.

Picking feats is the hardest part, but without bonus feats or class abilities to worry about, and with far fewer prequisites, it's very easy to know how many feats (level+3) and can even be done with minimal references to the book once you have some practice.

Without gold pieces and the magic item economy equipping characters is pretty fast and easy. We no longer have shopping nights in my games.

Finally, the hard part of putting together spell books, known spells and prepared spells is completely eliminated. In fact, thanks to the fact that it's driven by feat selection, it's no harder to put together a high-level spellcaster than a high-level warrior.