My recent sessions in my D&D campaign have pitted the PCs against a party of evil adventurers - in this case a mastermind rogue, a barbarian, a druid, and an evil paladin. They were secretly doing business of a cult the party has been fighting in the empire's capital.

They followed them some through a gateway into a labyrinth, and ended up capturing one of them. In today's game, the conclusion was laying a trap for the others to rescue the prisoner. And he almost got away with it, but they ended up capturing the two rescuers though the prisoner did get away.

It worked as an interesting change of pace for the players to be considering PC powers among their opponents. Dealing with wild shape, rogue skills, and their magic items was definitely a challenge for the players. I plan to go back to dungeons and monsters soon, but it was an interesting side adventure.

I was just wondering about how often DMs do this, particularly in D&D-like systems. I felt like it made them think about their opponents more, which made the exercise more interesting.

More than once I've had additional parties of adventurers in a dungeon. If the location is newly-discovered, for example, there may be a "gold rush" to plunder the good stuff first!

Players can be quite wily, too, letting the other guys get mauled by monsters first, then swooping in to nail both the monsters and the NPCs when their resources are depleted.

The other parties need not be of different alignments to the PCs either, just another group of treasure hunters. I've not had them team up yet, only for a sudden-yet-inevitable betrayal over the spoils, but that could work really well,  though could increase the DM's workload significantly.

Quote from: jhkim on August 28, 2023, 12:55:52 AM
I was just wondering about how often DMs do this, particularly in D&D-like systems. I felt like it made them think about their opponents more, which made the exercise more interesting.

Back when I ran dark sun for 2nd ed dnd, I used rival adventurers often. It was a good way to create tension, especially when the rivals were working for the same contractor.

Before I abandoned dungeons and dragons (and Wotc), I was working on a series of eberron adventures where rival adventurers would play a big part. It's got good flavor (rival adventurers). Three rival groups competing for the same prize. Lots of potential!

Classed opponents have a thing in D&D adventures since the early days. Look through classic adventures for B/X or AD&D and they will be full of them. I use them all the time, not always as blood enemies but sometimes merely rivals. Just other adventurers after the same loot that the party is after. It helps to motivate players to ACT when they know if they fart around, another bunch of yahoos is going to eat their lunch. " You guys hung out in town for two days because you wanted to scribe scrolls -NO SOUP FOR YOU."

AD&D DMG has tables for rolling up random friendly, or rival, adventuring parties.

Also in Keep on the Borderlands you can end up saving one or more evil adventurers who will turn on you the moment they get a chance.

Quote from: Omega on August 28, 2023, 08:07:41 AM
AD&D DMG has tables for rolling up random friendly, or rival, adventuring parties.

Also in Keep on the Borderlands you can end up saving one or more evil adventurers who will turn on you the moment they get a chance.

Oh man we hated that ungrateful barbarian guy. I think most of us were about 3rd level when we rescued him. We had to kick his ass. Fun times.

Don't forget about the slave lords! They were all classed enemies, and nasty too.

GM's don't do this all the time?  Who knew?

Using classed NPCs is automatic for me. Those NPCs can be anything, too--deadly enemies to friends and everything in between.  If nothing else, they are always a pool of potential henchmen, though that potential is thwarted in various ways more often than not. 

I treat all adversarial NPC's no different as the PC's. If they're "adventurers" - then they will use every dirty trick I expect players to do assuming I believe the NPC's are of sufficient cunning and intelligence. I play to my NPC's actual stats - so low-Wisdom characters might be smart, but they lack cunning. The inverse is true too.

But my players can expect my NPC's to be as well constructed and thought-out as their own PCs. It keeps everyone sharp and on their toes.

So, my kids current party makeup is a Tiefling Wizard, Bue Dragonborn Barbarian, Drow Paladin of Loth, Tabaxi Assassin, Tabaxi Ranger.  And they're going down a long, dark corridor in the somewhat silly dungeon with the killer vending machines at the enterance that I've mentioned before and they see a torch light coming down the corridor.  Ahead of them stand a Human Paladin in full plate, Human Cleric in Breastplate with a shield, Dwarf Rogue with leather armour, generic Elf Ranger that might as well be Orlando Bloom, and a Human Wizard in a robe and pointy hat.  That's right a classic D&D party.  The Human Paladin, upon spotting the PCs shouts, "Wandering Monsters!" and the party forms up for battle.

Quote from: tenbones on August 28, 2023, 11:46:18 AM
I treat all adversarial NPC's no different as the PC's. If they're "adventurers" - then they will use every dirty trick I expect players to do assuming I believe the NPC's are of sufficient cunning and intelligence. I play to my NPC's actual stats - so low-Wisdom characters might be smart, but they lack cunning. The inverse is true too.

But my players can expect my NPC's to be as well constructed and thought-out as their own PCs. It keeps everyone sharp and on their toes.

Yeah.

I'd actually be interested in doing more with adventurer NPCs, but it's a pain in the ass as far as bookkeeping to manage many NPCs in combat compared to handling monsters in D&D. I'm considering ways to simplify the bookkeeping while still keeping the ideal of NPCs who run by the same rules. (I'm using 5e, but especially spellcasting NPCs in any version of D&D are a pain.)

Quote from: jhkim on August 28, 2023, 03:16:23 PM

Quote from: tenbones on August 28, 2023, 11:46:18 AM
I treat all adversarial NPC's no different as the PC's. If they're "adventurers" - then they will use every dirty trick I expect players to do assuming I believe the NPC's are of sufficient cunning and intelligence. I play to my NPC's actual stats - so low-Wisdom characters might be smart, but they lack cunning. The inverse is true too.

But my players can expect my NPC's to be as well constructed and thought-out as their own PCs. It keeps everyone sharp and on their toes.

Yeah.

I'd actually be interested in doing more with adventurer NPCs, but it's a pain in the ass as far as bookkeeping to manage many NPCs in combat compared to handling monsters in D&D. I'm considering ways to simplify the bookkeeping while still keeping the ideal of NPCs who run by the same rules. (I'm using 5e, but especially spellcasting NPCs in any version of D&D are a pain.)

This(!) became a big issue for me in the 3e era. One of my longest running campaigns which ran multiple years, was a PF1e game that reached 20th+ lvl. I had a list of NPC's with minimalist (as in - index notes) of my NPC's that was *42-pages* long. Some of their actual individual stat-bloc's were 6-pages long. It was nuts. It killed any desire for me to run 3.x campaigns ever again.

It was only after I discovered Fantasy Craft, which has tables that lets you create and adjust NPC's on the fly to scale NPCs or monsters up/down as needed that I released my annoyance at 3.x

Of course... then I went to Savage Worlds... now this issue is pretty much inconsequential to me, so I get my cake and eat it too.

The next step is to have those enemy NPCs as recurring characters.  One of the most epic AD&D campaigns I've ever played in (30+ years ago now) was run by a good friend who had a pair of adventurers/mercenaries called "Fire and Ice."  Fire was a Magic-User with an artifact (making him punch way above his weight class), and Ice was a tall, bald, barbarian-type who had a permanent anti-magic field cast on him (that perfectly conformed to his body shape, so he could wield magic items, but not be affected by them).  We met them when we were 3rd or so, and they played Belloc to our Indy, which pissed us off.  Every couple of sessions, we'd catch sight of them, run a mission counter to theirs, etc., until we grew to hate them with a passion.  The final showdown (when we had leveled to 15th, if I remember correctly) is one of my most treasured RPG moments, just because it was the culmination of a long rivalry and payback for loss after loss to them.

I've used those types of characters over and over in my campaigns.  NPCs that stumble into the PCs plans and screw them up, then show up later and do it again.  I think these kinds of NPCs have gotten more passion and player involvement than any other monster I've ever run (though, there was that one campaign against the Githyanki that was so magnificent...).

The concept of the PCs having a Nemesis, which always seems to be a step or two ahead of them; until one day when......  Is a good story hook.

I've done it on occasion, but both generating and running NPCs as enemies is a lot more work that just using monsters.  I usually prefer to us my limited time on other things.

Quote from: jhkim on August 28, 2023, 03:16:23 PM

Quote from: tenbones on August 28, 2023, 11:46:18 AM
I treat all adversarial NPC's no different as the PC's. If they're "adventurers" - then they will use every dirty trick I expect players to do assuming I believe the NPC's are of sufficient cunning and intelligence. I play to my NPC's actual stats - so low-Wisdom characters might be smart, but they lack cunning. The inverse is true too.

But my players can expect my NPC's to be as well constructed and thought-out as their own PCs. It keeps everyone sharp and on their toes.

Yeah.

I'd actually be interested in doing more with adventurer NPCs, but it's a pain in the ass as far as bookkeeping to manage many NPCs in combat compared to handling monsters in D&D. I'm considering ways to simplify the bookkeeping while still keeping the ideal of NPCs who run by the same rules. (I'm using 5e, but especially spellcasting NPCs in any version of D&D are a pain.)

Switch to B/X or a clone like Labyrinth Lord or OSE. The Advanced versions of both of those clones have lots of character options and seperate race and class options. Also, stat blocks for NPCs, even higher level ones are a snap.