PC's fighting NPC's who are classed...

[Petrosian]

Remember challenge of even Cr is only supposed to be a light fight taking about 20% of their resources.

Also dragon CRs have been noted as presuming the party knows they are after a dragon and where...

My two cents...

I get riked every time i see PRESUMPTIONS like were posted earlier... that the NPCs are all spelled up and are always aware the PCs are coming and so on...

In my games, with a wide variety of settings and challenges the PCs are the surprisers about as often as they are the surprisees. Matter of fact, in the various cases its roughly... very roughly... 10% bad guys have major setup advantage (prespelled, favorable terrain and/or good knowledge and timing vs either surprised or unprepared party), 20% bad guys have minor setup advantage (they spot party first but preparations can be overheard... basically a surprise round), 40$ even steven setupm 20% PCs have minor advantage and 10% PCs have major advantage.

The difference between a "hey there is trouble" scenario and one where we have only one side prespelled is HUGE, at least 2 maybe more in El. Often for me its the difference between rout and fight.

My NPC wizards, clerics and druids OFTEN have spell slots open, for those day to day uses they will need a spell for. They rarely have ALL COMBAT spells unless they knew ahead of time it was such and such coming. As such, BARRING time to prepare (and foreknowledge) they usually have only about half their spells as BATTLE spells. Items can assist this but items are usually less deadly than their spell counterparts due to lowest save Dcs and usually low caster level.

Thats one of the things that makes sorcerers and bards so much more dnagerous as an adversary, their 1-2 combat spells are available with every slot they have. never an unprepared moment.

Anyway, i use classed NPCs all the time and find them to work great. Plan them reasonably and it should be a challenge. Don't have them all walking around as if five minutes ago they decided for some reason to cast all their combat prep spells and that they knew this morning they needed every spell for combat.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

well, since I just last week ran an encounter with a ogre I ckassed with some levels of adept I'll tell you what happened. The one ogre ended up beating the snot out of two PC's before the rest of the party ripped him apart.

You see the problem I found is that you can class up a monster to provide a challnge to your party, but when things end up going differently then you intended it can get wonky.

Case in point with the ogre. He was supposed to be a challenge by himself for the entire party. He was supposed to come out after the party had ealt with all his little minions. Well, the party dealt with them by blocking the passage they used and then two of the 6 member party then tried to tackle the ogre on their own. After all "he's only an ogre". Well, several rounds later I had a thief at -9, and a monk at 0. The rest of the party couldn't get near the beast until because the passage was blocked by a rather large couple of web spells. (sigh)

So you see, when you have a "living" dungeon where the creatures fight with some intellgence and they move about and out of their assigned rooms, you can end up with encounters that can get a lot more out of hand then you intended. Just be mindful of what your designing and things should work out though.

And just for the record, my final body count for the day night was one thief at -9, a monk at 0, and one fighter at -18 after challenging an axe armed ogre and two orcs to single combat. Ouch. things just didn't go as planned.

 

[Errant]

Personally I like to use NPC/classed groups. Most of the humanoid races IMC are classed (MM Orcs are those out on their first raids for instance, experienced ones have levels).

I do however try to build my NPC encounters based on what the NPC would be doing when the PCs encounter them.

If the PCs surprise the NPCs in their lairs, the NPCs are only as prepared as they would be all the time.

If the PCs have ticked off a powerful NPC organisation, the NPCs are liable to be prepared and well matched to push the PCs to their limits. The NPCs' Classes I base on campaign circumstances, the NPCs' tactics, depend on how much they know about the PCs.

In the end, if the PCs are careless, don't listen to/look for clues, or think about who they're antagonising, I figure they deserve what they get.

Major NPC encounters can make for great sessions.

Thats how I do it anyway.