A quick search through the forums didn't appear to pop anything up but I feel like this might have been asked before.
As a DM of a campaign (and the DMs on some of the campaigns I am in), sometimes you want to create an NPC that is either fighting the party or fighting with the party and keep track of them like a PC (health, spell slots, etc). However, if you are taking advantage of campaign sharing, you kinda have to put the characters in the campaign to take advantage of it.
You can make them "unclaimed" characters which reveals their race, level, and class, but nothing else, but players can claim them to view them. Or you can make them full on claimed characters and the players can view everything.
It might be useful for there be "Hidden" or "Private" characters the DM manages that are not visible to players like the private notes.
A workaround is to build them in the campaign, and then remove them from the campaign. The built character doesn't lose anything that you built with it that way. I have gone to building my NPCs as monsters. With the recent addition of the Creatures tab on the Character Sheet, I can have a player add an NPC ally to their sheet to run. Or if it's an enemy, I can use it like I would any other adversary.
Interesteing! Having the ability to make and keep track of NPCs in the campaign menu would be gold. I could imagine having a system where you could make NPC's and assign them a portrait and maybe some room for notes. Full character sheet functionality would be nice but not necessary, right now I do this with physical notes, but having the option of having it on dndbeyond would be nice.
Perhaps there could even be levels of hidden info, where if no boxer are checked the NPC is visible only to the DM, then you could choose to reveal the NPC, showing NPC descriptions and portrait to choice players, and then open for players being able to add notes to the NPC or to mark them as a contact, ally or enemy.
Yeah I really only do something to this extent when an NPC becomes a recurring character or there is a definite chance I need a bit more fleshed out skills and abilities for them. Most NPCs I make up on the fly or adapt sample blocks like those in the source books. But when I need a more complex character, its nice using the tools and builders.
For example, one of my player's backstory had his character's wife leave him and take their daughter with her. Several years later (the daughter is now around 20yrs old) she was coming back into the story based on how the narrative unfolded. Since I knew this was going to be a major character moment, she was much more fleshed out and had her own sheet and abilities. She became a paladin, and ended up healing her father without either of them knowing who each other was. So that in depth NPC development really led to some great moments.
In trying to work some of this out and not share the characters, I am actually thinking of creating a second campaign. I know, for some of you that makes it difficult to get the shared content, but as I am the one that is always the one purchasing and sharing, I don't have to do any sharing with this campaign and can quickly pull the more advanced characters / npcs from the second campaign without the players seeing it. I wasn't even heading down this road, as I too was looking for Hidden ways to add NPCs... and then it made sense... not ideal, but it will work.
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A quick search through the forums didn't appear to pop anything up but I feel like this might have been asked before.
As a DM of a campaign (and the DMs on some of the campaigns I am in), sometimes you want to create an NPC that is either fighting the party or fighting with the party and keep track of them like a PC (health, spell slots, etc). However, if you are taking advantage of campaign sharing, you kinda have to put the characters in the campaign to take advantage of it.
You can make them "unclaimed" characters which reveals their race, level, and class, but nothing else, but players can claim them to view them. Or you can make them full on claimed characters and the players can view everything.
It might be useful for there be "Hidden" or "Private" characters the DM manages that are not visible to players like the private notes.
A workaround is to build them in the campaign, and then remove them from the campaign. The built character doesn't lose anything that you built with it that way. I have gone to building my NPCs as monsters. With the recent addition of the Creatures tab on the Character Sheet, I can have a player add an NPC ally to their sheet to run. Or if it's an enemy, I can use it like I would any other adversary.
Interesteing! Having the ability to make and keep track of NPCs in the campaign menu would be gold. I could imagine having a system where you could make NPC's and assign them a portrait and maybe some room for notes. Full character sheet functionality would be nice but not necessary, right now I do this with physical notes, but having the option of having it on dndbeyond would be nice.
Perhaps there could even be levels of hidden info, where if no boxer are checked the NPC is visible only to the DM, then you could choose to reveal the NPC, showing NPC descriptions and portrait to choice players, and then open for players being able to add notes to the NPC or to mark them as a contact, ally or enemy.
Yeah I really only do something to this extent when an NPC becomes a recurring character or there is a definite chance I need a bit more fleshed out skills and abilities for them. Most NPCs I make up on the fly or adapt sample blocks like those in the source books. But when I need a more complex character, its nice using the tools and builders.
For example, one of my player's backstory had his character's wife leave him and take their daughter with her. Several years later (the daughter is now around 20yrs old) she was coming back into the story based on how the narrative unfolded. Since I knew this was going to be a major character moment, she was much more fleshed out and had her own sheet and abilities. She became a paladin, and ended up healing her father without either of them knowing who each other was. So that in depth NPC development really led to some great moments.
In trying to work some of this out and not share the characters, I am actually thinking of creating a second campaign. I know, for some of you that makes it difficult to get the shared content, but as I am the one that is always the one purchasing and sharing, I don't have to do any sharing with this campaign and can quickly pull the more advanced characters / npcs from the second campaign without the players seeing it. I wasn't even heading down this road, as I too was looking for Hidden ways to add NPCs... and then it made sense... not ideal, but it will work.