Hey there, I am planning out my first campaign. And I have a question for making my main villain and their cohort. Should I use character creator or monster builder? Does one make more sense than the other for important NPCs? Pro vs cons for either method.
Well, they don't have to follow rules. I don't recommend using the character builder, it's a lot of extra work for little benefit, but it's sometimes desirable to at least create the illusion that the NPCs are following the same rules as the PCs.
Monster builder all the way. PCs are glass cannons, built to be in groups not on their own. You'll get a whole bunch of functionally useless stuff for your BBEG (like never getting lost) and have low enough hitpoints that they'll drop within 1 round of combat if you're not careful.
Pick the abilities you like, and which are relevant. An NPC doesn't often need expertise in sleight of hand, but they will likely need the sneak attack damage and bonus action dodge/dash from rogue. An NPC built as a bard will have X amount of inspirations, where a homebrew monster can just inspire a minion every turn - they won't likely need to use resource management, nor will they likely have 6 encounters per day, or take short rests - the PC creation rules are for players. You need to have efficient, to the point statblocks. The rest of it, you need to be familiar with their character, and if they are good at lockpicking, it doesn't matter what the statblock you've made says, you can just give them +10 on the check if it suits the narrative!
Monster builder all the way. PCs are glass cannons, built to be in groups not on their own.
That's actually only true at low to mid levels; after level 5 defense tends to scale faster than offense, so PCs get progressively less glass cannon-y as they continue leveling up (though level 5 is extremely offensively focused, it takes until around level 15 to be particularly balanced).
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Hey there, I am planning out my first campaign. And I have a question for making my main villain and their cohort. Should I use character creator or monster builder? Does one make more sense than the other for important NPCs? Pro vs cons for either method.
Monster builder every time for everything. Bad guys don't follow rules.
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Well, they don't have to follow rules. I don't recommend using the character builder, it's a lot of extra work for little benefit, but it's sometimes desirable to at least create the illusion that the NPCs are following the same rules as the PCs.
Monster builder all the way. PCs are glass cannons, built to be in groups not on their own. You'll get a whole bunch of functionally useless stuff for your BBEG (like never getting lost) and have low enough hitpoints that they'll drop within 1 round of combat if you're not careful.
Pick the abilities you like, and which are relevant. An NPC doesn't often need expertise in sleight of hand, but they will likely need the sneak attack damage and bonus action dodge/dash from rogue. An NPC built as a bard will have X amount of inspirations, where a homebrew monster can just inspire a minion every turn - they won't likely need to use resource management, nor will they likely have 6 encounters per day, or take short rests - the PC creation rules are for players. You need to have efficient, to the point statblocks. The rest of it, you need to be familiar with their character, and if they are good at lockpicking, it doesn't matter what the statblock you've made says, you can just give them +10 on the check if it suits the narrative!
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That's actually only true at low to mid levels; after level 5 defense tends to scale faster than offense, so PCs get progressively less glass cannon-y as they continue leveling up (though level 5 is extremely offensively focused, it takes until around level 15 to be particularly balanced).