Ask not what your NPC can do for you. Ask what your NPC can do for the party.

John F. Kennedy – 35th Dungeon Master of the United States

NPCs without character sheets

NPCs can be a trap. Especially if you are a forever-DM, NPCs can seem like an opportunity to play a fully fledged character. Creating character concepts and turning these into character sheets with lots of fun abilities is a big part of D&D. But it is rarely a good idea to build NPCs using normal PC character sheets.

PCs often have a lot of abilities to use in many different situations. For players this is great, but if we run an NPC with such an arsenal of options, it can slow down play. In the worst case, our NPC could steal the spotlight from the player characters. That’s unnecessary. As DMs we are already in the spotlight for significant portions of the game. Keep the “Non” in Non-Player Character.

Instead, we can default to one of the many NPC stat blocks out there, and use the re-skinning techniques of the multi-purpose ogre to make them unique and flavorful.

NPCs without statblocks

Often, an NPC doesn’t need any statblocks at all. Not every shopkeeper, traveling minstrel, or city guard needs to have a statblock. We can adjudicate interactions between player characters and NPCs with D&D’s core mechanic: Players make checks against DCs that are appropriate to the NPC and the situation.

Sometimes, even a powerful NPC doesn’t need statblocks. Prof. Dumbledore doesn’t need a stat block, he can basically do whatever he wants, even if it breaks the rules. (He can teleport in and out of Hogwarts for example.)

Sometimes, the absence of a stat block lets us portray powerful NPCs that have many tricks up their sleeve. When the situation and the NPC call for it, we can shroud an NPC in mystery and keep the players guessing as to the limit of their powers.

The “non” in non-player character

Portraying NPCs is one of my favorite parts of running games. But these NPCs are not my characters in the sense that a player character is a player’s character. For starters, we DMs get to play an arsenal of NPCs, likely multiple in each session. To run these non-player characters, however, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about stats, and instead focus on motivation, roleplaying, and gimmicks.

NPC statblock resources

• NPC Villain Bundle by IllusoryScript. Cinematic NPCs built to represent character class archetypes.
• Open5e. Free basic NPCs.
• My favorite monster books. Different sources for different needs.