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Creatures in 5e is a general term covering all living entities, from NPCs to PCs, wolves to level 20 gnome wizards. Monsters, characters, and NPCs are all creatures.

Monsters are creatures with a stat block, such as wolves.

Characters on the other hand appears to only refer to PCs with a character sheet, such a level 20 gnome wizards.

We also have NPCs, which are otherwise monsters, but the DM is using them to interact with the party socially.

I see some evidence of this in various sections. For example the proficiency bonus section states "Characters have a proficiency bonus determined by level, as detailed in "Step-By-Step Characters." Monsters also have this bonus, which is incorporated in their stat blocks."

This quote from the difficulty class rules states:

If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success--the creature overcomes the challenge at hand. Otherwise, it's a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the DM.

Are these definitions correct?

V2Blast
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user-63873687
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    The title asks if they're interchangeable, but the body of the question defines them as 2 slightly different concepts and asks if that's correct. Right now, an answer of "yes" to the body would correspond to an answer of "no" to the title, which is likely to lead to some confusion. You should probably edit the title to match the body of your question, or vice versa. – V2Blast Jul 03 '20 at 00:02
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    Welp, golden badge... As far as I understood, this is a duplicate of the question I have marked. In particular, the question asks what is the definition of terms such as creature, character, monster, NPC, and asks which ones are interchangeable. If there is anything in that question that you want to ask specifically, please clarify. – HellSaint Jul 03 '20 at 00:08
  • @V2Blast It's ok, "yes/no" answers without any text are kinda bad in the first place. – user-63873687 Jul 03 '20 at 10:05
  • Yes, but it's still useful for the title and the body to be consistent. – ikegami Jul 04 '20 at 05:17

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