Having Mooks Matter

[michaelmichael]

So I was wondering, what is the board consensus on making ordinary folk more relevant to your campaign? Can the army/townsfolk/guards be realistically level inflated or employ some equalizing tactic? What sort of demographics should we expect in a campaign setting with a steady-state level distribution?
:thog:

[Tibbaerrohwen]

So I was wondering, what is the board consensus on making ordinary folk more relevant to your campaign? Can the army/townsfolk/guards be realistically level inflated or employ some equalizing tactic? :thog:


It depends on the group/story imho. I prefer to have regular townsfolk usually below players level or skill, with a few NPCs higher. I like to view the story as centered around them and, since they are the "heroes", they should be greater than the average towns person.
That being said, I have also played in campaigns with more realistic parameters, and they are equally enjoyable. It depends on how and when you implement these equalizing tactics.

[Yora]

Making ordinary people more relevant is one of the selling points of E6. At 6th level, 1st level commoners with spears can still kill a wizard if they are willing to suffer some heavy casualties. But even with attack bonuses of +0 and just 1d6 damage, a 6th level wizard doesn't hold out long when surrounded.
And when you have 3rd level warrriors with banded mail, large shields, and masterwork longswords, even a 6th level fighter warblade isn't too keen about taking 10 of them at the same time.

A 6th level PC is still way greater than any 2nd or 3rd level NPC and would win any 1 on 1 fight. And probably also 2 on 1s and 3 on 1s. But then things start getting a bit more dangerous.

The downside, or rather the tradeoff, is that you're limited to 6th level, which does not work that way for many kinds of fantasy campaigns. But when you want to play 3.5e and are looking for some grit in your game, E6 works like a charm.

[Eldariel]

So I was wondering, what is the board consensus on making ordinary folk more relevant to your campaign? Can the army/townsfolk/guards be realistically level inflated or employ some equalizing tactic? What sort of demographics should we expect in a campaign setting with a steady-state level distribution?
:thog:

Guards and in general, trained soldiers should IMHO be a match or superior to the PCs for most of the game. Fact is that in a world with tons of various high level monsters and a notable amount of high level humanoids, survival of communities requires guards of rather significant competence. Further, with magic being rather common, guards need some competence in dealing with spells and spellcasters as well.

Level 1 soldiers don't really make sense; I'd place the lowest men in service at level 3 with levels 1-2 still in training. Veterans, elite troops, and many officers would be higher. Now, conscripts are another matter entirely but conscription shouldn't really be a relevant player in most games anyways so I'd bypass that one. Tactics should of course be developed around the common threats you'd expect to deal with with elite units trained for more grave dangers; things like Scrolls and Potions should be heavily employed for things they cannot accomplish otherwise. Small formations around Aid Another can accomplish quite a bit in terms of fighting martial enemies and mobility, ranged attacks and stealth are rather key against spellcasters (low level ones, anyways). And of course, every efficient fighting force needs to have spellcasters of their own (even if only so many due to the stat requirements); the utility they add is incomparable, especially the more advanced War Wizards.


On the other hand, non-combatants shouldn't probably have that many levels. Of course, again, skill ranks determine what's needed here; the game treats 5 ranks as some sort of a competency-limit (you get synergies, know natural north, aren't flat-footed while doing X and such at 5 ranks) so I'd say most adult non-combatants who are professionals on any given field should be at least level 2 (Experts, Commoners & Aristocrats mostly, of course).

[Choco]

I play with a DM currently who has a very video game world. We start out in the "noob zone" where everything is around our level, and from there everywhere we go EVERYTHING is "level appropriate". I really don't like this. Country A is allied with Country B, the soldiers in Country A are lvl 3 and Country B's are lvl 10. A couple of soldiers from Country B could easily solve all of Country A's problems. Only the power of plot stops this from happening. Basically, if the world lvls up with the PC's, it makes them feel like they are not really getting stronger.

I like to run settings similar to 4e's points of light. There are a few bits of civilization, even a few actual empires, but for the most part it is untamed wilderness. The average member of a humanoid race is lvl 1, with a few individuals getting higher. Anyone lvl 5 or higher that the PC's run into is someone legendary in the area.

Of course this means that the higher LA humanoid races have an advantage. Weaker ones (like most of the PC races) have been able to survive through cunning, numbers, and (most importantly) help from the few high-level heroes that crop up from time to time. The PC's are also the only ones in the area (or at least among the very few) that can take down the few high level critters that become a nuisance from time to time.

Think classic fantasy: Peaceful village is being terrorized by <whatever powerful creature you want> that just moved in, and they are powerless to stop it. PC's show up and solve the problem, become heroes, then move on to the next town. The PC's of course are not the ONLY ones that powerful, but they are among the very few.

As the level of the game goes up, the PC's could walk over entire empires if they wanted to. The number of "normal" (AKA, non-templated, etc.) humanoids they fight drops the higher level they get, because each level gained puts them in an even more exclusive club.

I guess I didn't solve your problem. The way I like to run fantasy games means that mooks truly don't matter after lvl 4 or so. And that's the way I like it :smallwink:. The group seems to love it too, it really gives them a sense of accomplishment knowing that the evil empire they were afraid of at lvl 1 is begging them for mercy at lvl 10.

[jmelesky]

I tend to fall on Choco's side of things: i don't like average mooks being high-level. It's a verisimilitude thing.

That said, there are still ways to make mooks matter. A single mid-level transmuter could make a dozen 2nd-level fighters into an actual threat for a mid-level party.

Alternately, if you want to keep it mundane, give mooks numeric advantages and reasonable tactics.

Melee squads can form up in two lines: one with greataxes, one behind them with reach weapons. Bowmen target casters and hold action till they start casting. Irregulars sneak into position then attack from behind (getting sneak attack, and giving flank bonuses to the axemen, etc).

Pathfinder has a bunch of teamwork feats (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/teamwork-feats) that can increase the effectiveness of the average mook squad. Swap Places can be used to swap in fresh mooks at the front line (and move wounded ones back for healing or ranged cover), Paired Opportunists is a great one for a line of pikemen with reach.

None of these methods will make mooks into a challenge for a high-level party, but they can stay relevant far longer than level 2 if you try at it.

[holywhippet]

I think the level of average citizens should depend on the kind of world they are living in. If they are living in conditions where they never really face danger then level 1 seems appropriate. If they are in an area where they are required to undergo militia training every week or month then level 2 would be more realistic. If they live in a dangerous area or get attacked every so often then they could be level 3 or higher.

It would depend on their background though. Someone who's just reach adulthood might still be only level 1 or 2 even if the average person is level 3 or 4 because of monsters in the region. People living in a city should have a lower level than people who have to fight for a living.

Think about the Darksun setting as an example - only the strong can survive in such a world.

[Cicciograna]

In my campaigns I tend to agree with what Eldariel says: professional soldiers, full duty guards and in general men-at-arms should be of at least 3rd level, independently from the threats faced by the community. More, this is not related to combat experience alone.

The way I see experience, it's not merely something that one earns in fights and brawls: I think one should be accorded experience every time he performs something meaningful and over the ordinary.

If a blacksmith is usually working on mundane items, the moment he receives a request for a Masterwork Full Plate, if he succeeds into crafting it he should be awarded experience; if he sets up an armor shop, in the first times, when he's still getting accustomed to his new work, he'll round up much XP and start levelling to 2nd or 3rd (or even 4th, if working with exotic materials, answering strange calls or crafting different guises of armor); when he's become really proficient in armor making, then a Masterwork Full Plate wouldn't be something extraordinary, and his leveling stops.
If someone becomes a soldier and receives a formal training in basic combat techniques, tactics, weapon use and the like, the more he practices the more skilled he becomes, increasing his level to 2nd, 3rd or 4th - up to the point that even basic training becomes routine, and then he ceases gaining further experience.

Coherently with this system, if someone lives in a border town, standing against monster attacks every couple of months and having to constantly to face alerts, then he is frequently experiencing something unexpected, dangerous and out of the ordinary, so he'll net more experience than a simple guard in a powerful town where crime is low to non-existent.
Again, a farmer living in a bountiful countryside, where crops are rich and rains are plenty will be much lower level than a farmer living in a barren plain, trying to eke out a living deriving sustenance from a famine-infested land, oberated by the taxes of an evil baron.

[Doc Roc]

Simply put, D&D is really phenomenally bad at this, with no conception of non-combat characters, no model for throw-away opponents, and gameplay that's halfway to asymmetric.

[Rejakor]

On the topic of having mooks matter.. technically they have all the same tips and tricks that PCs have. Nothing says that everyone in the world is level 1, and nothing says that everyone in the world only has levels in npc classes.

However, more in the original thrust of your question... with clever tactics, mundane weaponry, and low level caster dirty tricks, groups of 'mooks' can very much take on even high CR monsters and win. Of course, against anything hardcore they're going to take serious losses, pikemen tossed aside like ragdolls and whole fighting platforms or detachments decimated by special abilities.

In that kind of setting, I see the reason humanity survive(s)(d) so long and so well is numbers, diplomacy, and society-building. Like the roman empire, turning the franks on the goths, and the goths on the huns, etc etc. If the lizardfolk are fighting the beholders, that's one less thing the humans have to worry about. Also, very occasionally, some human becomes a stupidly powerful dual-wielding scimitar illusionist, and in the brief gap between when he becomes powerful and when he buggers off somewhere, he murders the crap out of the local big bads. Not enough to make humanity safe forever, but enough to make a dent. In this kind of world, orcs or other humanoids might be very serious threats (especially because high powered adventurers rarely kill the orcs down to the women and children, like they do to other monsters), but in reality they and their high str scores and natural weapons, high rate of breeding and reliance (and greed) for human trade goods make them shields of the realm of man against all the dark horrible things that live in the world.

Also keep in mind a lot of the dark horrible things are location based... basically everyone just stays the hell away from the Annis Hags' Bog, and if the occasional traveler gets taken in the night.. well.. that's the price they pay.

While toughness is a nice way to decide what level people should be.. remember this is DnD, not the real world. Some guy who's been through a lot might be level 10 or something, so it's not like 5 is the highest npcs can go. Also, cities can be tough, very tough, places to live in medieval style times, and wizards gain xp by studying books and being old, so... yeah. Cities produce different kinds of high level characters (aristocrats, mages/philosophers, street fighters (blade bravos, thugs, rogues), occasional town guard/merc type, merchants (light casters, talky types), bards, priests) than rural lands (again bards, militia/hero of the peasants type, local leader (lesser aristocracy) types, strong or rough men (barbarians)) or wild lands (rangers, druids, barbarians, warriors), but due to population density cities produce MORE and higher level characters altogether. That is a good explanation for why cities exist and are necessary.. trade hubs are less necessary in DnD due to the way craft works and alternate means of transportation - amount and level of non-mook guys is way more important, and a city produces spellcasters and other good things nations like.


It might be interesting to post an optimization challenge - take a group of level 2 militia and some low level casters, no frostblood trollblood emerald dragon bloodline water orcs, just human without aberrant arms or anything similar/unique, and put together an encounter that would tax an iconic level 10 party (fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric, mildly optimized (competent, but not overly strong)). Incorporating things like harassment, striking and then blending in with commoners, terrain altering like setting fire to a field as they cross it, extreme long range attacks with longbows(trying for the 20 from 1000' away across impassable terrain), trying to fence them in with pikes and trip attacks, grenadelike weapons and touch ranged spells. Hell, perhaps even trained attack animals. All that kind of good thing.

[Coidzor]

The mob template. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129179)

Bards with war drums/alp horns.

[chainer1216]

the way i run things is, townsfolk are level 1, pretty awful in a fight, soldiers/guards are level 3, theyre officers (or whatever you call you're mid ranked soldiers) are going to be lvl6-9 and the top of the chain will be filled out with lvl10-13

to make a large number of mooks more effective, i suggest useing the teamwork rules from PHBII, i find the missle volley to be extremely effective.

[Tvtyrant]

The mob template. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129179)

Bards with war drums/alp horns.

Cannot agree more; this is probably the best solution anyone has come up with.

[Rejakor]

Pfff. Buffchaining and the mob template is cheating.

Cheating!

[Bob the DM]

Take a look in the DMG and it'll tell you all you need to know about the "standard" layout for human/humanoid settlements.

[Tvtyrant]

Pfff. Buffchaining and the mob template is cheating.

Cheating!

There is another way; Warforged Warlock 1s. The touch AC of even high level monsters tends to be low, and by spreading your troops out by 60 ft. you can make a fight last almost forever.

[michaelmichael]

I once had no end of grief for making a sieging army 5th level, but you rarely want to hear "we can take em" from 6 guys against 6000 as DM. A quick napkin calculation yields astonishing level rates for forces in mock battles with large amounts of medics ( >25% ). A properly run army of all paladins could train everyone to 20th level in only a year with less than 10% training casualties. There needs to be some modification of XP accumulation rules, since even slowing that training time down to 2 or 3 years would still be demographically untenable. As far as base demographics go, a simple boltzmann distribution of xp across individuals could be a start, but I feel it suppresses outliers too much.
:thog:

[crazyhedgewizrd]

in the games i run, npcs are as follow
1-3 greenhorns/untrained
4-6 competent
7-9 veterans
10-12 elite
and 13+ notable people

most npcs fall into the first two.

[crazyhedgewizrd]

I once had no end of grief for making a sieging army 5th level, but you rarely want to hear "we can take em" from 6 guys against 6000 as DM.

4 person party that is a CR17.5 with 25% resources.

[Incanur]

Even random peasants with clubs are threat early on. Only by around level ten do PCs gain the ability to ravage towns with complete impunity. I don't necessarily have a problem with this level of power, though does create a dynamic unsuited to certain stories. As the DMG suggest, other high-level characters can keep the PCs in line if required.

[Absol197]

Like a couple people have said here, I tend to have a distribution of various levels in the NPCs in my games.

3rd level is about average for most of my NPCs, with 6th level being considered strong in-world, and 8th level being the highest the party might expect to encounter with any regularity. Anyone higher than 8th is almost always well known, and, going with the description of the legend lore spell, anyone of 11th level or higher is considered legendary.

I also tend to vary level by race: NPCs of longer lived races, such as dwarves or elves, tend to be at a higher level, simply because they've had more time to train and learn and grow powerful.

[theguineapigguy]

In a campaign world I ran I arranged the levels of NPC's like this.
1st. novice soldier (never had to fight in a war)
2nd. trained soldier (veteran, or well trained)
3rd. elite soldier (knights, assasins)
4th. highly elite soldier (Captains)
5th. charicter of heroic power (arch mage, supreme commander)

The reason 1st level enemys were always a challenge was because the world had few magic items, so the charicters armor class never rose above 20. I generally don't think charicters 5th level and up should be challenged by puny city guards, there's a huge diffrence in strenth. The party should fight enemys of similar level, perhaps backed up low level guards acting as cannon fodder. 20 crossbow-men will still do an average of 1d8 damage per round even agaist a high AC.

[Godskook]

Depends on how 'mook'ish you're getting. 20 level 1 warlocks can lay down some serious hurt on most PCs not prepared to deal with foes who are 250 feat away using touch attack eldritch blasts. And lvl 5 goblin swordsages using the elite array(dex primary), get a +8 to attack rolls on shadow garrote(another touch attack), and after the first failed save, the target is flatfooted(even if he wasn't), so he takes extra damage from Assassin's Stance.

[Incanur]

Yeah, ranged touch attacks can remain a threat at highish levels. I had a bunch of mere 1HD kobolds inflict some damage on a 10+-level party through vials of acid and alchemist's fire. A single area of effect spell wiped almost of all them out, though.

[Godskook]

Yeah, ranged touch attacks can remain a threat at highish levels. I had a bunch of mere 1HD kobolds inflict some damage on a 10+-level party through vials of acid and alchemist's fire. A single area of effect spell wiped almost of all them out, though.

See, that's the beauty of the warlock method. 250 feet is far enough away that hide checks are possible against most members of the party except the wis-casters and the skillmonkeys, and even then, -25 goes a long way on getting a surprise round.

[Coidzor]

I think the real beauty is the sheer amount of fire that can be focused, especially with a bardic ringleader.

[Choco]

There needs to be some modification of XP accumulation rules

Not really, you could just change how you look at it.

The way I do it, XP rules only apply to PC's and notable NPC's, not everyone. I interpret this as meaning that only a very small percent of the population even has the ability (or destiny, or divine blessing, or whatever else you want to use) to level up like described in the book. For everyone else I just fiat it (it is always slower progress than the PC's), though the more hardcore DM's can just multiply the rate of XP accumulation by a desired % different for each group of people.

[Boci]

And lvl 5 goblin swordsages using the elite array(dex primary), get a +8 to attack rolls on shadow garrote(another touch attack), and after the first failed save, the target is flatfooted(even if he wasn't), so he takes extra damage from Assassin's Stance.

I prefer this routine (assuming they are behind something that offers complete cover when they are prone)

Swift action: activate cloak of deception
Move action: Rise to feet
Standard action: Use shadow garrotte
Free action: fall prone

Next round: Full round action: Regain expended maneuvres

Repeat.


See, that's the beauty of the warlock method. 250 feet is far enough away that hide checks are possible against most members of the party except the wis-casters and the skillmonkeys, and even then, -25 goes a long way on getting a surprise round.

For the suprise round yes, but that penalty to spot checks drops to -5 as soon as they attack.

[Glimbur]

I'm a fan of off-hand net use. Sure, it's probably not worth the EWP, but a touch attack at -4 from a 4th level or so warrior is still ok odds. You only need to land one and suddenly the target is less dangerous: dex penalty, AC penalty, movement penalty... and if they spend actions getting out of the net that is even better.

[Incanur]

The warlock ambush sounds impressive but still trivial for an experience group with solid builds. Decent touch AC, SR, or ray deflection puts an end to the fun. Only bruiser types who relied on heavy armor would be really vulnerable.