I have been using dndbeyond as a player since the beginning of last year. I recently decided to purchase a subscription to dndbeyond and I am presently creating a campaign for my group. I am wanting to use dndbeyond for as much of it's creation as possible. I have found a lot of great videos out there on how to do this, but I am wondering about incorporating my NPCs that I create into my campaign. I started to create these NPCs before I bought my subscription, so they are in 'my characters' area. Is there a way to bring them into my campaign or should I just create them as homebrew monsters? I am wanting to create them like PCs, because I love the character builder on dndbeyond. Thank you for any help and guidance anyone can provide.
I am wondering about bringing in my NPCs that are adversarial to my characters. So will this still work to just join them? I was thinking that was just for the members of the gaming group and their players. Thank you
My advice is, don't use a full character sheet for NPCs. Create a monster stat block for them. Give them whatever abilities seem appropriate. Do not use the rules and limitations and restrictions the PCs follow -- those rules are for PCs, not for NPCs.
I find that it helps not to give the NPCs, in my head, a PC type character class. The evil NPC casting Warlock spells is NOT a Level 7 Warlock... He is a CR 9 Shaman, or what have you. He has some Warlock stuff but maybe also some cleric and druid stuff, and some innate spell casting, and if he's a boss, some Legendary stuff.
This is much easier to deal with as a GM, than worrying about all the nonsense PCs have to worry about. That stuff works for a PC because the player has ONE to worry about (and even then, I find my players often forget their abilities). A DM-run NPC, when you are controlling 75 other things, should be much more streamlined and less complicated. Give the NPCs the things you need them to have (as abilities, spells, etc.) and not one thing more.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
You can join NPCs as characters, but your players will be able to see their race and class (including subclass) levels. Even if you wait until the last second, I don't think that's ideal.
That aside, I fully agree with BioWizard that it's much better to create NPC statblocks for all NPCs. Even if you want them to be PC-like and follow most of the regular character rules, it's not worth the extra time and the limitations. It's not a big deal at low levels, but the higher in level the campaign goes the more unnecessarily convoluted things will get. Plus, as the campaign progresses you might find you want to change things on the fly at times. Easier to just drop or add something than having to open the character builder.
Character creation is fun, absolutely, but you can create as many characters as you want and put them in your archive for another time. But for NPCs, it's easier and more convenient to use NPC methods.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I have been using dndbeyond as a player since the beginning of last year. I recently decided to purchase a subscription to dndbeyond and I am presently creating a campaign for my group. I am wanting to use dndbeyond for as much of it's creation as possible. I have found a lot of great videos out there on how to do this, but I am wondering about incorporating my NPCs that I create into my campaign. I started to create these NPCs before I bought my subscription, so they are in 'my characters' area. Is there a way to bring them into my campaign or should I just create them as homebrew monsters? I am wanting to create them like PCs, because I love the character builder on dndbeyond. Thank you for any help and guidance anyone can provide.
If you want to add characters from your character list - just follow your own campaign join link - the same way your players would.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
I am wondering about bringing in my NPCs that are adversarial to my characters. So will this still work to just join them? I was thinking that was just for the members of the gaming group and their players. Thank you
My advice is, don't use a full character sheet for NPCs. Create a monster stat block for them. Give them whatever abilities seem appropriate. Do not use the rules and limitations and restrictions the PCs follow -- those rules are for PCs, not for NPCs.
I find that it helps not to give the NPCs, in my head, a PC type character class. The evil NPC casting Warlock spells is NOT a Level 7 Warlock... He is a CR 9 Shaman, or what have you. He has some Warlock stuff but maybe also some cleric and druid stuff, and some innate spell casting, and if he's a boss, some Legendary stuff.
This is much easier to deal with as a GM, than worrying about all the nonsense PCs have to worry about. That stuff works for a PC because the player has ONE to worry about (and even then, I find my players often forget their abilities). A DM-run NPC, when you are controlling 75 other things, should be much more streamlined and less complicated. Give the NPCs the things you need them to have (as abilities, spells, etc.) and not one thing more.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
You can join NPCs as characters, but your players will be able to see their race and class (including subclass) levels. Even if you wait until the last second, I don't think that's ideal.
That aside, I fully agree with BioWizard that it's much better to create NPC statblocks for all NPCs. Even if you want them to be PC-like and follow most of the regular character rules, it's not worth the extra time and the limitations. It's not a big deal at low levels, but the higher in level the campaign goes the more unnecessarily convoluted things will get. Plus, as the campaign progresses you might find you want to change things on the fly at times. Easier to just drop or add something than having to open the character builder.
Character creation is fun, absolutely, but you can create as many characters as you want and put them in your archive for another time. But for NPCs, it's easier and more convenient to use NPC methods.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I agree with the previous commenters. Keep them secret, unless you intend to bring them in as a traveling companion for a while.