I’ve played a few RPG / adventure games in my day (both pen and paper, video and PC games) and I think that the NPCs I’ve encountered could benefit from a little advice. Maybe we can all come up with enough to create some kind of manual for them.
I’ll offer the first few pieces of advice:
**[list=1]
[li]Avoid using barrels and crates for storing your money, gems and other items. Some adventurer is sure to come by and help themselves to your hard earned loot. Try depositing money in the bank and getting a safe deposit box for your other valuables.[/li]
[li]If you see an adventurer who you feel you must kill, take a deep breath and count to ten before rushing out to attack them. While counting to ten take some time to find out whether or not the adventurer is accompanied by a giant half-orc warrior who will wipe the floor with you. If that is the case, perhaps you can try your attack some other time.[/li]
[li]If you feel you absolutely must attack an adventurer, do so with your back against the wall to avoid being stabbed in the back.[/li][/list=1] **
Learn to count. When there are more of them than there are of you, run away.
When the adventurer you’re trying to extort money from is wearing an ogre’s hand around his neck, has a flaming sword in his hand and has more steel wrapped around his body than you do, reconsider your tactics.
Don’t just let anyone walk into your house and rifle through your chests and desks. They will take anything not nailed down.
The shortest path between you and a user is not always a straight line. If you find your progress is halted by a rock, barrel, building, etc., go around it! Many a sadistic user will delight in sniping a hapless NPC stuck against an obstacle.
If you witness a user wiping out twenty of your more powerful colleagues without showing signs of fatigue, consider retreat, and perhaps a career change. Henchman doesn’t pay as well as it used to, and the medical benefits are usually lacking considerably.
If you see a buddy of yours walk througha door to investigate something you didn’t see and then he doesn’t come back after a long while, tell the captain of the guard/head orc/dark elf-in-charge. Don’t go lookin’ to be a hero.
If you keep getting hit repeatedly by lightning strikes and there’s not a cloud in the sky, look beyond the people you’re currently fighting. Most likely there’s a guy wearing purple robes and a pointy hat adorned with moons and stars waving his hands around. It would also be his fault that your opponents wounds seem to miraculously heal in short order. Poke this guy with a sharp stick.
Single file attack is the worst offensive tactic there is.
Wanted murderers should be treated nicely. Being rude and hiking prices to someone known to kill at the drop of a hat will test your life insurance policy.
Shouting, when you start with the element of surprise, will alert the opponent of your presence.
If you’re undead, a pulse check won’t tell them anything. Play dead when they hit you, then get back up when their backs are turned. It gives you a free attack, and scares the crap out of them. (“Endlessly regenerating undead! Run away, run away!”)
If you happen to run across adventurers who are willing to talk, do so. Vary your dialog a bit so that you don’t frustrate them into killing you anyway.
If you’re a critical informational encounter, wear a big placard that says, “Critical Informational Encounter–Do Not Slay”.
If you’re not a critical informational encounter, wear a big placard that says, “Critical Informational Encounter–Do Not Slay”.
Combat NPCs train hard, fight hard, and die anyway. Go to night school and learn to be an informational encounter instead.
A shrub with no leaves does very little to hide an ambusher…especially if the adventurer has a 3/4 overhead view.
Keep a sappy, half-finished letter to your mother in your pocket to make the b******* looting your corpse feel guilty.
Have an emergency exit plan. When the inevitable brawl starts in the tavern, “run around waving your hands in the air” is not going to save you.
If you need something from a PC, let them come to you. They’ll come around as they talk to everybody else in town anyway, and PCs immediately distrust anyone who walks up and initiates a conversation.
If you’re someone the PC will visit again and again, please for the love of Og vary your opening soundbite. After the four billionth “Stay a while and listen” or “Hail to ye!” the PC just might buy a Deadly Great Maul of the Leech from you just to smash you into the ground like a Lawful Good tent peg.
Hmm, that’s a nice heavy-handed mixture of two of my favorite games.
If any kind of strange cult forms in your area, don’t join it. That charismatic man who runs the group will turn out to be the lacky of some horrid demonic thing. You will end up feeling severely used.
If you are hired by a party of adventurers remember this: Raise your stats any way you can, even if you have to cheat. As soon as they come upon another prospective party member that has better stats than you do, they will either kill you and take all your stuff or leave you naked and shivering in the middle of the mountains.
Advice for end level boss NPC’s: Unless you are part of the last Act of the adventure, the party will defeat you. Please notify your evil twin brother or dark master so they can set up another Dark Domain or at the very least have a decent Golden Parachute clause in your contract.
You guys are great! These are really making me laugh.
You might as well stop charging to appraise / identify items. The PC will just save the game right before he / she enters your shop, identify / appraise the item, and then go back to the saved game. Net gain for you = 0.
If you’re going to send an adventurer on a quest that takes their party half way around the world and forces them to face giants, dragons, or other large scary things you better damn well have something really, really good to give them when they complete said quest. If not, the party may just decide to stomp you into the ground and steal whatever else you do happen to have on you.
When an adventurer kills the 3 rabid dogs you sent in to take him / her down, call it a wash and retreat. You can always get new dogs.
When attacked by a large party, always, always, always kill the healer first.
Remember that the only time you are really powerful is when a hero is 95% done with a long quest: he came to you for a gidget, and you told him that you’d give him a gidget if only you had a dodad, a thingamabob, and a whatsit, so he crossed desserts nad mountains to get you a doodad, a thingamabob, and a whatsist, and the only reason he needs the gidget in the first place is to impress a lady so that she will tell him where the thingy is. Have fun with this! Say things like “Thank you, young hero. Now I have one last quest. In the kitchen, you will find a broom, a mop, and a variety of detergents. In order to make the gidget, my home must be spotless” or “Young hero, I am impressed by your heroism. Only one reagent remains: you must fetch me . . . . a ham and swiss on rye with mustard NO mayo and a coke”. At this point, he can’t kill you, or if he kills you, he will have to reload. You may want to consider ending the quest with some sort of cut-scene where you turn into a bird and fly awway or something, though.
If you happen to be an evil NPC that has set the hero on some time-sensitive misson, like he has five minutes to rescue the princess before the temple collapses, you are not obligated under Union Rules to provide a clock. You may think the countdown is nervewracking, but it just makes him cocky and shiftes the focus towards seeing how big a cushion he can finnish with.
If you are standing around with a large group of monsters or fellow npcs planning to attack the adventurer, and slowly, in groups of no more than four, your comrades wander out of the fog of war into the area that the adventurer would approach from, be wary. Those slaughter noises and screams of pain from your comrades is probably a result of them dying. Get a clue and go over there to help them.
If you are wandering around town minding your own business and some adventurer comes in and slaughters the whole town, have no fear. They are probably just having a bad day and will surely reload and make everything normal again once they have let off some steam.
If you have the money to buy all the exotic magic items an adventurer wants to unload on you, you could be doing something better with it than standing around in a cruddy shop all night and day.
If you are fated to die, no healing can save you. In such cases, you often won’t finish dying until the adventurer has spoken with you. Therefore, when mortally wounded, avoid adventureres at all costs.
Many NPCs are found dead with potions of Cure Critical Wounds about their persons. If you have such a potion, you might consider using it as an altertative to dying.
Before spreading the word about how an adventurer has graciously returned a family heirloom to you, check and see if it is still in your posession.
Sometimes the PC just might have more questions than “Name”, “Job”, and “Bye”. Try to know a few more responses, so you don’t sound like a total blithering idiot.
If you are a friendly monster NPC, wear a sign that says “Friendly - Don’t Kill!”
If you aren’t a friendly monster NPC, wear a sign that says “Friendly - Don’t Kill!” (You’d be surprised how easily PC’s can be fooled.)