Having NPC as a tag for monsters

Hi all (and devs if you read this)! Recently, I realized a bit of minor issues. I DM for DnD 5.5 and when I have to search up a monsters. But most books come with at least a few NPCs. Yet I can't specifically search up them unless I know their name. Sometimes I just want to look what NPCs I have in the Compendium and choose one. So adding NPC as a tag or monster type would be nice. If there is a way to filter for them I haven't seen, someone feel free to share! Thanks in Advance!

Hi Kecskepasztor,  Could you provide a couple examples of NPCs that you would like to find separate from NPCs that are monsters?

Gauss said: Hi Kecskepasztor,  Could you provide a couple examples of NPCs that you would like to find separate from NPCs that are monsters? Yes, bear with me while I try to express what I'm trying to do here: So when I'm putting together a campaign and one-shot, sometimes I like to just go over the monsters in my compendium. And while the search function is not the best, you can usually filter it down enough for the situation. However, sometimes I just want to search up "monsters" with NPC potential, like soldiers, tavern keepers or artificer, wizard. But all of these are seperate searches, I can't search NPC and have all of these in one comprehensive list.

Problem here is that NPC is the broadest category of creature. NPCs are not Player Characters. NPCs include soldiers, tavern keepers, artificers, bears, liches, dragons, and everything else that is not a Player Character.  However, what it sounds like is you are looking for humanoids.  I would click Monsters, then the Filter, then Type, start checkmarking Humanoid and the types of humanoids you want.  If you just want taven keepers you can also cut the list down by CR. Selecting a low CR will reduce the number of powerful humanoids. 

Yeah, I know it's humanoids, but humanoids also brings up random humanoid monsters mixed or doesn't always brings up all the named characters. It's a niche... issue I have, I know...

What I've done is create generic NPC character sheets for Commoner, Commoner-Teen, Commoner-Child, Server, Dockworker, Sailor, Barkeep, etc. (mostly all variants of "Commoner") and store them in a Journal folder. When I need one of these I drag it out to the VTT. I can also pull a token image from my art library to the VTT, open its edit menu and assign the image to the appropriate NPC character sheet. With a Plus account you would need to manually set up the token bars and bubbles if needed (Pro accounts can use a MOD to automate that). Edit: Then again, I almost always customize whatever I pull from the compendium by adding token macros, so my games have all kinds of NPC folders.

Rick A. said: What I've done is create generic NPC character sheets for Commoner, Commoner-Teen, Commoner-Child, Server, Dockworker, Sailor, Barkeep, etc. (mostly all variants of "Commoner") and store them in a Journal folder. When I need one of these I drag it out to the VTT. I can also pull a token image from my art library to the VTT, open its edit menu and assign the image to the appropriate NPC character sheet. With a Plus account you would need to manually set up the token bars and bubbles if needed (Pro accounts can use a MOD to automate that). Edit: Then again, I almost always customize whatever I pull from the compendium by adding token macros, so my games have all kinds of NPC folders. I have those too. But if I have all those monsters and creatures in my Compendium, it would be nice to search them easier.

It's a good idea, but I think the core problem here is that there's nothing to create such a tag from.  And that's not something Roll20 could fix. In D&D 2024, humanoid is the category used for humans, elves, and other non-monsters. Goblins and Hobgoblins are now Fey, and Kobolds are now Dragons. This is a change from the 2014 book.  So if you search humanoids in the 2024 compendium what you should get are only things like Guard, Wizard, Noble, etc (I can't test as I only have 2014 content).  If you play pure 2024 and don't include 2014 content, you could at least use a humanoid search that way. And 2014 wasn't really any better. The MM gave NPCs their own chapter, but the statblocks are alll just marked as Humanoid, with the added complication that there were humanoid monsters (Goblins etc) elsewhere in the book. There's nothing to distinguish a Guard from a Goblin other than the name (well, they did use subtypes, like (goblinoid or orc, but there's no "human" subtype, so that guard at the gate could be an orc). Looking at adventures doesn't seem any different.  My hardcopy of Ghosts of Saltmarsh has a chapter titled Monsters and NPCs, but the NPCs are only marked as generic humanoids, like Pirate Captain. The actual named NPCs in that book are described in text, which treats them like PCs with personality traits, but references humanoid statblocks like Gladiator.  But there's no statblock for the named NPC themselves and there doesn't appear to be a compendium entry for any of them. Wizards hasn't provided anything to base an NPC tag on.  Third-party content could do that for their NPCs, but it would probably be easier to create an NPC category in any compendium they provided, parallel to Monsters, rather than a tag within it (presuming that's feasible; I know nothing of content creation).