NPCs in the Party — Advanced Old School Revival

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NPCs ending up in the party is an inevitability. The PCs make friends with an NPC and invite them to join the adventure, or perhaps there is an NPC that needs to accompany them for whatever narrative reason.

In any case, the presence of NPCs in the party poses a problem: mechanically, more NPCs in the party means more actions to resolve in an encounter, where you end up talking to yourself as the NPC engages with other NPCs. What this results in is less time for the spotlight to be on the players, and when that happens, you end up playing the game with yourself.

NPC Story Tags

The solution in OSR+ to the problems described above is to treat NPCs as story tags.

When you create an NPC in the first place, you already have the NPC's stats in NPC shorthand—this reference should remain with all your other stats in your prep as normal. However, when that NPC joins the party, their mechanical function changes. Instead of the NPC having a full range of actions as would be expected like a PC, the NPC is reduced to its tag, and PCs may invoke its tag once per round to aid them in the action.

Let's use the NPC named Korg as our example throughout this section. He's a muscle-bound Beastmaster of the Fighter class. Mechanically, Korg has a high Mighty and lots of AP and HP. But he's also kindhearted and extremely loyal to his friends.

Invoking NPC Story Tags

When Korg becomes an NPC in the party, you set aside his stats as far as what he can do from round to round in the encounter. Instead, he becomes a global story tag that any player can invoke, but only once per round, as a bonus action. You decide what story tag best represents Korg when you write up his stats. For example, Korg might have Heart of a Golden Retriever to signify his loyalty to friends, or Friend of the Forest to signify his power over animals as a Beastmaster. You can also give Korg multiple tags, if he's high enough level.

Any player can then invoke Korg's story tag in addition to whatever they're doing as their action for the turn. If Korg's story tag makes sense in conjunction with the PC's action, then you treat his story tag as a +2 to the PC's action, as you would any other story tag. From the point of view of the fiction, Korg is doing stuff that helps the PC carry out their action.

NPC Tags in Action

For example, if the PC is under assault by a mob of enemies, the player might invoke Heart of a Golden Retriever when they're being attacked to add a +2 to their defense roll. This could be represented in the fiction as Korg rushing over to help the PC fend off the attack, because he is so loyal to his friends.

Taking the Aid Others Action

In this model for NPCs-as-story tags, they cannot take actions in an encounter. The assumption in the fiction is that NPCs are always doing something beneficial in the fight, but mechanically, only the PCs can advance the narrative. While the NPC might be exchanging blows with enemies, only PCs can strike the final blow. (Alternatively, the NPC could be conceived as "striking the final blow" if their tag is invoked as the PC acts.) This way, the spotlight is always on the players.

That being said, NPCs can take the aid others action if a player invokes this action in lieu of invoking the NPC's story tag. As is the case with players invoking the NPC's story tag, the NPC can only take the aid others action once per round. So if the party wants Korg to grab the artifact while they engage with the baddies on the field, one of the players can have Korg take the aid others action on their turn, so that he can go do that (this does not use up the PC's action). Korg would then act on the same turn as the player who invoked him.

Note that Korg cannot take the aid others action to participate in group action (which ordinarily confers a +2 to the roll). Any time he participates in group action, he confers no mechanical benefit, unless the player invokes his story tag.

Using a Stance

Additionally, you may choose to enhance the usefulness of an NPC by giving him a single stance that the PCs can invoke instead of the +2 (provided the NPC is level 2 or higher, or a Daredevil at level 1). Suppose, for example, that we give Korg the stance Barber Surgery, because he's used to bandaging his injuries on the battlefield. In this case, any PC can invoke Korg's Barber Surgery stance, so long as it makes fictional sense (Korg is close enough to the wounded in the scene to perform the surgery). Korg's stance, once invoked, cannot be invoked again until he rests.

Engaging GM-Controlled NPCs

Generally, NPCs aren't "in danger" in the same way the PCs are, in that enemies in the encounter do not bother targeting the NPCs directly—from a fictional point of view, the enemy NPCs are engaged with the party's NPC, it's just that that engagement has no chance of moving the narrative forward unless a PC is involved. If the PCs are defeated, so too are the NPCs in their party. However, you may have a need to up the stakes by putting NPCs in harm's way. So here's how you do it.

As a bonus action, any PC may assign an NPC (once per round) to engage an opposing NPC in the encounter.

To engage the opposed NPC, the NPC trying to engage the opposing NPC must be the same or higher level, or the levels must add up to the opposing NPC’s level. For example, if Korg is 3rd level, he can engage three 1st level NPCs, a single 3rd level NPC, or any combination that adds up to his level. Similarly, a mob of three 1st level NPCs may engage Korg.

Once engaged, the two NPCs cannot be invoked by the PCs except to move each other’s clock (see below). Of course, it must be fictionally possible for the NPCs to engage each other: a ranged NPC can engage from a distance for example, but an NPC wielding a melee weapon might have to first move into a personal space of his opponent.

NPCs and Clocks

Finally, a PC can invoke an NPC to move his opponent’s “clock”, once per round. If Korg has engaged the enemy Imperial Knight, the PCs can't tell Korg to take the aid others action, nor invoke Korg's stance or get a +2 from his story tag: instead, the only option available to them is for Korg to try to move the Imperial Knight's clock.

NPC Clocks

An NPC has as many clock segments as levels. If the Imperial Knight is 3rd level and so is Korg, they both have a clock of 3 before they're out of the action. You can think of the NPC's clock as an abstraction of its HP. Once its clock hits 0, the NPC's tag is out of play. What that means in terms of the fiction is up to you to decide: if Korg got stabbed repeatedly by the Imperial Knight and that's what brought his clock down, well then Korg is on death's door. If Korg was fighting a spellcaster, maybe that final spell put him to sleep, and he's unconscious.

Moving the Clock

When the PCs invoke Korg to move the enemy's clock, both NPCs make a contested rolls that best model what they're doing in the fiction (such as an attack and defense check, or spell checks, etc) and whoever succeeds moves the enemy's clock by 1 for every 3 levels. For example, suppose Korg is attacking the Imperial Knight: you would have the PC who invoked Korg roll for Korg's attack, and you would roll for the Imperial Knight's defense. Success means the Knight's clock moves 1 (because Korg is 3rd level). Two more segments, and the Imperial Knight is out of the action.

As another example: if Korg is 3rd level and the Imperial Knight is 6th level, the Imperial Knight moves Korg's clock 2 segments if the Knight is successful in the engagement, whereas Korg can only move the Imperial Knight's clock 1 segment.

It’s important to note, here, that this engagement is an abstraction. Korg isn’t going to make multiple attacks, even though he’s a fighter and would be entitled to two attacks per round normally. This single roll to move the clock determines the outcome of the engagement, even if it involves multiple attacks. Korg also isn’t going to factor in any stances he may have on his full character sheet, or other like triggerable abilities. Again, the point of abstracting NPCs this way is to move non-PC action along as fast as possible, so we don’t want to treat NPCs in the engagement as full characters unless they are engaging with the PCs.

In the same vein, we might count successful spell checks as segments moving the clock. For example, if the Imperial Knight is an Eldritch Knight and can cast spells, maybe he casts Slow on Korg and so the two make contested spell checks. Even though the spell Haste / Slow doesn’t cause lethal harm, the Knights’ success against Korg still counts as moving Korg’s clock.

More on Engaging & Clocks

Non-Adventuring NPCs. A non-adventuring NPC has no stance and is treated as “0th level” for engagement purposes.
Wounds & Clocks. When an NPC’s clock hits 0, the NPC is either on death’s door or incapacitated in a way consistent with what happened to them. If the NPC's clock is moved more segments than there are left, you can treat those negative segments as wounds, so they function as penalties in a stabilize check to revive the NPC. (If the NPC has a clock of 1 but is moved 3 by a 10th level opponent, then their stabilize check receives a -2 penalty).

Low-Level NPCs vs. High Hevel. NPCs that can’t engage other NPCs (for example, the NPC is too low level) can still attempt to move an opponent’s clock, it just means the higher level NPC isn’t prevented from being invoked by PCs, or used otherwise by the GM. Such an NPC can disengage and do something else without penalty.

GM Prohibitions. The GM may designate that certain NPCs cannot be engaged by other NPCs and do not have clocks—instead they are handled as full characters (such as bosses or BBEGs). NPCs can’t directly affect these characters except through the invocation of their tag by a player while their PC is taking action, through the aid others action, or by the player’s invocation of their stance.
One-to-Many Engagements. An NPC engaged with multiple other NPCs can move the clock of all the NPCs he is engaged with on a successful engagement. So if the NPC normally moves an enemy NPC's clock 2, he can move the clock of two of his opponents 1 each, or one of the opponents 2, for example.

Non-Adventuring NPCs

Most people in the world are not adventurers and so their stats are not quantifiable in the same way the PCs are.

NPCs like the neighborhood barmaid or the lowly blacksmith just roll a d6 when they're required to roll against something, and explode on a 6. They have 1 HP and are on death's door when they take any damage at all. You can optionally give them a skill that makes sense—the barmaid probably has Craft (Bartending) and the shop owner Craft (Blacksmithing)—but in general, they are no match for the PCs or other adventuring NPCs that actually have stats.

On "GM NPCs"

A "GM NPC" is a derogatory term for an NPC who is acting as a mouthpiece for the GM. The NPC is there to suggest courses of action that steer the players in a direction the GM desires.

The long and short of it: don't create GM NPCs. The use of GM NPCs is equivalent to railroading, as you're just using the NPC as a puppet with the goal of pre-determining outcomes in the narrative. All of the rules for NPCs-as-story tags, as described above, are written with the intent to keep NPCs out of the spotlight, so the last thing you want an NPC doing is influencing the decisions the players make via thinly-veiled advice from the GM, unless the party specifically asks for the NPC's advice.

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