DM Help DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards [Archive]

ddude987

2014-07-31, 08:19 AM

nedz

2014-07-31, 08:32 AM

It depends upon the situation, but guards are really there to block low level nuisances and raise the alarm if something bigger comes along.

As for the tactical question: ganging up on your enemies one at a time is a standard tactic which is why things like Whirlwind Attack are quite poor. There are also the teamwork benefits in PH2 if you really want to go to town with this approach.

Red Fel

2014-07-31, 08:48 AM

Would it be fair for the guards to gang up on one PC at a time specifically trying to kill them?

Fair? Not in the traditional sense of the word. Sensible? Entirely.

If we're looking at guards in light of other NPCs, they tend to be roughly on par with others - at least at lower levels. So it's not unreasonable for guards to engage in one-on-one or two-on-one engagements.

But when you're looking at guards versus PC-level threats, the dynamic changes. As Nedz suggests, part of their role is to buy the city time to bring in the big guns; in that sense, they're basically redshirt meatshields, intended to block as many people as possible and prevent as much collateral damage as possible. But if the guards decided that their objective was actually to apprehend or subdue a target, focused fighting is perfectly reasonable as a tactic.

This is similarly true for PCs. I know there are some people who like to spread damage, or are afraid to waste excess damage on a near-dead enemy when there are other enemies about, but as a rule, this is a tactically poor decision. A weakened enemy is still a threat; a dead enemy isn't. (Exception: Undead.) Ganging up on a foe is just as valid a tactical choice for PCs as it is for NPCs.

Tl;dr: Yes. Guards would be perfectly justified in ganging up on the biggest threat they could find, subduing him, and moving on to the next-biggest.

rexx1888

2014-07-31, 09:05 AM

Tvtyrant

2014-07-31, 09:35 AM

I give my Orcs flamethrowers and jetpacks (faerun artificer class.) If I was using guards for a big city their swat would have the equivalent.

ddude987

2014-07-31, 12:10 PM

In response to why low level guards, as you increase level the amount of people at that level depreciates greatly. Not only does it seem unfeasible to have a city garrisoned by high level guards, but the cost of hiring them would be enormous, and in addition, if they are such a high level why would they take a generic city guard job instead of other more profitable and interesting (and respected) jobs.

winter92

2014-07-31, 12:24 PM

The only time I've seen NPC's not prioritize targets like this is when they're expressly stupid or actually incapable of thought (raging, animals, etc.) The last encounter my DM gave us involved invisible assassins with spears and short swords - they all appeared to hit the psion in the same round, 6 on 1. Killing the easiest target or biggest threat first is a natural, sensible tactic - it's even more important if they're badly outclassed, because getting one kill might drive away the terrifying attackers.

If you want to make your guards seem rational but be lower threat, abuse movement rules. Don't give them reach weapons and make them not want to fire into melee, so that they can only gang up on each PC at 5-6:1 instead of 30:1. If you feel confident in your players, I say go for it. Spears, crossbows, the lot, all on the juiciest target. Your PCs are attacking a defended caravan, so they get the initiative to set traps, split up or lure away guards, and do whatever else they can think of to avoid getting mobbed.

Hand_of_Vecna

2014-07-31, 12:34 PM

sleepyphoenixx

2014-07-31, 12:41 PM

As long as your party is competent there is no reason not to play your NPCs to the best of their abilities.
Normal example warriors almost never have reach weapons (or useful feats), but the assumed level of PC optimization is also rather low.

If your players optimize there is no reason not to do the same to your NPCs. Instead of longswords give them reach weapons. Exchange crappy feats for more effective options. Then have them use those things to the best possible effect. Curbstomping weaklings isn't much fun.

If they're intelligent they're going to use tactics. Every level 1 warrior should have at least a basic understanding of tactics, as should intelligent monsters.
Your players may have some problems if they optimize and are used to standard enemies straight out of the MM, but they'll learn to deal with it soon enough.
Having serious opposition instead of stomping all over weaklings definitely makes the game more enjoyable, at least to me.

winter92

2014-07-31, 12:47 PM

Having serious opposition instead of stomping all over weaklings definitely makes the game more enjoyable, at least to me.

To me, this is huge. The standard Player's Handbook example of attacking a caravan would be, roughly "Fire crossbows from the woods, then charge. Kill or disable the low-level, unoptimized guards who try to fight the closest enemy."

That's great and all, but I have so much more fun when the plan is "Lure away the outriders with Ghost Sound and ambush them before they can call for backup. Ride ahead and rig a large tree to drop across the middle of the caravan. Send half the party to noisily threaten the guards on one side, and leave the caster and rogue lying in wait to take out the guards from the other side as they try to circle the tree."

Good tactics are way more fun, but they're only worth employing if you need them. I honestly prefer attacking the caravan with outriders, good tactics, and caster guards hidden in the wagons to disable us as we fight the obvious enemies.

jedipotter

2014-07-31, 01:57 PM

Let's assume foes are the players at this time. The players want to assault a merchant caravan, and the caravan has some guards. Taking into account power creep, and thus putting the PCs on a low, but above the average mook, level, probably the 5-8 range, the guards either are going to number in a small army, or aren't going to provide true protection. Would it be fair for the guards to gang up on one PC at a time specifically trying to kill them?

Sounds fair to me. I make most of my guards tough. Now, does this make every guard an epic level threat? No. But it does make roughly half of the guards in the world a challenge for the PCs.

Now the game rules make this impossible, like WBL and the demographics. By the rules, everyone in the world is a low level useless character. Though there is a twist, as you could make the merchant caravan an ''official encounter''. And once you do that, you can make the guards anything the DM wants. The rules ''allow'' the DM to make an encounter challenging. But if you do, you will unbalance the ''every NPC is useless'' rules. A group of guards that can take on 7th level player characters, would be demi gods to just about every other NPC in a town. Though this is true with any encounter.

So the best thing to do: throw all the ''weak NPC'' rules out the window and ignore them.

Snowbluff

2014-07-31, 01:59 PM

So the best thing to do: throw all the ''weak NPC'' rules out the window and ignore them.

Then why the hell does anyone need adventurers to do anything?

Synar

2014-07-31, 02:01 PM

If your guards know they will fail, why do they keep fighting? Are they loyal to death (supposing they don't do it for the money or have some code of honnor) and are trying to buy the people of the caravan time? Else, really, they should just run. Honestly, knowing that you killed at least one of them is a poor consolation when you are dead.

(And if it is they general role as you implied, I hope they are paid a fortune, since they will and are expected to die at the first encounter with any threatening ennemy.)

BRC

2014-07-31, 02:02 PM

Perfectly fair. Guards are intelligent, if they know that the PC's are all powerful combatants, they'll try to focus-fire them down one at a time.

It's the PC's job to figure out how to counter that.

That said, Don't make the guards perfect tacticians. Maybe there is an officer shouting orders and coordinating the attack, if the PC's kill him the guards are more likely to become unfocused. Guards with a fighter in their face are going to be trying to deal with that fighter, rather than rationally five foot stepping away to keep attacking the wizard.

Plus, they'll switch focus based on what they see as the biggest threat, not what you, as the DM, Know to be the biggest threat.

Alex12

2014-07-31, 02:03 PM

ddude987

2014-07-31, 02:28 PM

For caravan guards specifically, ganging up on targets is sensible. Caravan guards are there to protect from essentially two things: wild animals (non-sapient dangers) and bandits (thinking and planning creatures).
Thinking specifically about bandits, it only makes sense that part of the equation is that the guards' main job isn't to kill all the bandits, it's to make it so attacking the caravan in the first place isn't worth it. If they can make it dangerous enough to attacking bandits that they'll lose a few men and/or have to expend consumable supplies greater than the value of probable gains, then they won't attack in the first place.

That was my process, I was just curious if it was "fair" to the players. Players tend to treasure characters they spend a lot of time on so killing them is often a hard blow to the player. On the other side, even though we have challenging encounters at my table, perhaps the players should learn to be more careful, and think beyond can we beat them or can they beat us.

As to the guards-are-strong-screw-the-rules-I've-have-money thought, I like to keep verisimilitude and I can't see higher-leveled people actually taking guard jobs at a point. Sure it challenges the PCs but in terms of verisimilitude is seems to crumble.

Arkhaic

2014-07-31, 02:46 PM

Yeah, generally I would deal some nonlethal damage first. Maybe one of the guards has a merciful weapon. In general nonlethal damage scares PCs more than lethal: being dead is less of a hassle than being imprisoned at higher levels. You could adapt Psionic Restraints (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#psionicRestraints)to effect arcane and divine opponents as well: Lesser gauntlets let them cast up to third level (no somatic components), Average can cast up to second level, Greater can cast 0 and 1st level spells, Damping only casts 0 level spells.

ElenionAncalima

2014-07-31, 02:58 PM

It depends on your players.

Some players will take it personally that you are only targeting them and/or won't appreciate that they are going to end up sitting out and watching everyone play.

Other players wouldn't expect anything less that the NPCs using such an obviously superior strategy. They may even be flattered that they were chosen as the prime threat.

You probably have a better idea than we do, how your players will react.

VoxRationis

2014-07-31, 03:05 PM

It depends a lot on your setting, I suppose. In higher-level, higher-magic settings, guards play a much different role than in my settings, where threats tend to be more mundane and not especially dissimilar from those which appear in real life.
It's fallacious to assume that guards are routinely taking on encounters in the way adventurers see the term. While I am not a member of a police department, I would consider it unlikely that the average police officer gets in life-or-death firefights on any sort of regular basis. I doubt that analogous officers in past times and places did either.

Arbane

2014-07-31, 03:10 PM

There's a reason "Geek the Mage First" is standard operating procedure in Shadowrun, and it applies just as well to D&D.

Snails

2014-07-31, 03:19 PM

The reasoning would be if the threat of one of the party members dying is very very real the party would not be so careless. From the guards perspective, they know they won't succeed in killing all the attackers, so why not seriously kill one.

If it is so obvious that defeat is certain, then why are they not parleying to negotiate terms of surrender? Why do they not flee? Why do they not offer to work for the PCs?

There are some kinds of opponents who will relish blood so much that a chance at revenge will seduce them away from a small chance to save their own life. But that would be an atypical kind of combatant, not a guard.

The guards do not like their options. You, the DM, do not like the guards options. That is not a good reason to metagame so that the guards act irrational in a manner that lets you, the DM, feel less bad about your own encounter design.

Knaight

2014-07-31, 03:26 PM

their job is literally to participate in encounters all day every day, get paid for it with a monthly stipend, and that doesnt count bribes and or random stuff dropped from criminals that isnt catalogued. I dont see why a guard has to be low level when level one characters level up doing less than them.

The vast majority of guarding is standing or walking around keeping an eye on things. It's hardly constant violence.

Hazrond

2014-07-31, 03:42 PM

There's a reason "Geek the Mage First" is standard operating procedure in Shadowrun, and it applies just as well to D&D.

Honestly i think that the guards should gang up on the fighter first, until they actually KNOW a guy is a mage then they can only see the wall of muscle thats charging their line and at that point its a more reasonable plan to actually kee fighting the fighter, remember guys there are no such things as "Tiers" in the actual game world, they wouldnt know that the fighter is so much less powerful than the wizard and would probably focus on what aears to be the biggest threat, the fighter (at least till the wizard pulls some flashy crowd control like black tentacles or something)

torrasque666

2014-07-31, 03:42 PM

If it is so obvious that defeat is certain, then why are they not parleying to negotiate terms of surrender? Why do they not flee? Why do they not offer to work for the PCs?

There are some kinds of opponents who will relish blood so much that a chance at revenge will seduce them away from a small chance to save their own life. But that would be an atypical kind of combatant, not a guard.

The guards do not like their options. You, the DM, do not like the guards options. That is not a good reason to metagame so that the guards act irrational in a manner that lets you, the DM, feel less bad about your own encounter design.

I would imagine the guards have some sort of sense of honor, one that says "it does not matter if I live or die, stop the foes!" and while spreading out into multiple 1v1 fights means that there is a high chance that they all die and nothing is achieved, if they gang up and kill one attacker, well, that is one foe that has been stopped. 1 > 0, so they accomplished SOMETHING.

As for those who say "well if they're that strong, why aren't they adventurers?" what if the guards have a family, or some other sort of attachment to the settlement? Adventurer's typically live out of inns and on the road, going from loot-to-loot. The guard doesn't want to leave their family alone, in a vulnerable position, when they are away for months at a time making money, so they take a more steady job. They don't want to risk their lives on a daily basis to make ends meet. There are a number of reasons for why they wouldn't adventure, just like why you don't see thousands of Wizards adventuring(even at lower levels). They are likely getting a steady income without personal risk, while still conducting magical research, or doing whatever. Use your brains peoples.

awa

2014-07-31, 03:45 PM

Not only will the typical guard spend very little time fighting most of his "fighting" will be against much weaker foes and not to the death. Even soldiers spend very little time fighting and only a small fraction of an army actual dies in combat.

icefractal

2014-07-31, 03:58 PM

If it is so obvious that defeat is certain, then why are they not parleying to negotiate terms of surrender? Why do they not flee? Why do they not offer to work for the PCs?Pretty much this. The guards should be using tactics, but they should be using tactics with the goals of:
1) Staying alive.
2) If possible, protecting the cargo.

So making a quick rush at a single target, when it looks like they might be able to scare away the attackers with an early victory - sure, go for it. Pursuing that even when they're getting defeated, and could be taking steps to survive instead? Doesn't really make sense.

Now regarding challenge -
At low levels, a dozen caravan guards are a tough challenge, just using normal tactics. Once the PCs get to the point where that's not longer true, then normal caravans move into the "cakewalk" category - that's what a level system means! You can have a royal caravan with higher-quality guards and stretch things out for more levels, but eventually "rob a caravan" is a just a simple task like "kick open a door" that isn't supposed to be a big deal. Time for something new.

jedipotter

2014-07-31, 04:13 PM

Then why the hell does anyone need adventurers to do anything?

Sure, the classic D&D idea is that the whole world is low level useless people that can't handle anything more powerful then a fly. Then if anything more powerful then a fly, like say a rat, comes along they scream for adventurers to help.

It's a ''great way'' to ''trick, force, and manipulate'' the players to play the game. I guess it's one way to run a game....

nedz

2014-07-31, 04:22 PM

One of the standard tactics to attack any target is to launch a diversionary attack to draw the guards off the real target.

So making a quick rush at a single target, when it looks like they might be able to scare away the attackers with an early victory - sure, go for it. Pursuing that even when they're getting defeated, and could be taking steps to survive instead? Doesn't really make sense.
Which is what the guards could well have fallen for here. Even worse they have now bunched up and can be taken down with AoEs.

It depends how tactically savvy the players are really.

VoxRationis

2014-07-31, 04:40 PM

As for those who say "well if they're that strong, why aren't they adventurers?" what if the guards have a family, or some other sort of attachment to the settlement? Adventurer's typically live out of inns and on the road, going from loot-to-loot. The guard doesn't want to leave their family alone, in a vulnerable position, when they are away for months at a time making money, so they take a more steady job. They don't want to risk their lives on a daily basis to make ends meet. There are a number of reasons for why they wouldn't adventure, just like why you don't see thousands of Wizards adventuring(even at lower levels). They are likely getting a steady income without personal risk, while still conducting magical research, or doing whatever. Use your brains peoples.

First off, adventurers need not always wander great distances from their homes. Urban campaigns are a thing. Not always the default, but they do exist. A metropolis can have oodles of adventure within a few miles of one another.
Second off, adventurers are not necessarily "making a living" as their primary focus for why they do what they do. I find this attitude a lot around here. The "murderhobo" is NOT the default adventurer. He is a parody, a caricature of the adventurer, who typically has a good reason for embarking on the dangerous but lucrative missions he or she might undertake. These good reasons are why we DMs bother writing plots.
Third, if, as you say, the guards are high-level, capable sorts who encounter large amounts of danger frequently in their battles against magical monsters and renegade wizards, a little dungeon crawling is not a steadier, less dangerous career path than guarding.

firebrandtoluc

2014-07-31, 05:20 PM

Assorted thoughts.

Your job as the DM includes making sure encounters are appropriate for your group.

What is logical in real life might not be logical in DnD.

Guards ganging up on someone has the advantage that the target has an okay chance of just being knocked out rather than knocked to negative ten in one hit.

Guards aren't there to deal with combat demigods. They keep the local riff raff in line. They sound alarms.

Zanos

2014-07-31, 05:37 PM

I skimmed the thread and saw a lot of "That's perfectly fair and logical." If they guards know they can't win and are only going to be able to "win" by forcing the other side to have a Pyrrhic victory, why the hell would they fight at all? Guards can't get paid if they're dead. Now if the guards don't know the PCs are powerful, all bets are off and ganging up on one target is a perfectly viable strategy, although it may aggravate your players quite a bit.

As was already mentioned by other people, guards aren't there to stop high level characters. The PCs actions should have consequences, but a regular caravan or general merchant shouldn't have high level guards. Only a very small fraction of people in the world are high leveled. If this is a very expensive shipment or a magic item merchant, all bets are off. But that sounds like the kind of thing you'd hire a group of well known adventurers to protect, not a bunch of regular people who just want to get paid and go home to their families.

High Level PC's should feel powerful. Guards aren't a threat to them unless they have a hilarious amount of numbers. Now if the PC's make a habit of pushing guards around and doing whatever they want, there will be consequences, but those consequences shouldn't be "The grain merchant can now afford 10th level guards." But they're dipping into somebodies pockets by screwing around, and when there's enough money and somebody you want dead...

jiriku

2014-07-31, 05:53 PM

I finally reached a conclusion, guards aren't there to kill all foes against them, they are there to cost their foes losses.

Hiring guards for your caravan is a deterrent, like putting a lock on your front door. The lock won't stop every thief, but it will stop casual criminals who aren't skilled and motivated. The lock reduces the size of the pool of people who could potentially rob you. The guards will stop casual brigands, those who aren't seasoned combatants willing to risk death for the goods in the caravan. The guards reduce the size of the pool of people who could potentially rob you.

Let's assume foes are the players at this time. Would it be fair for the guards to gang up on one PC at a time specifically trying to kill them?

From the DM's perspective, yes it is fair. You are expected to play NPC threats according to their Intelligence, training, and background. Concentrating your forces is such a basic military principle that even poorly trained guards have probably been exposed to the idea, at least. The answer changes if your guards have never worked together, are all Chaotic in alignment, or don't like/trust one another, but in the default case they'd be expected to use team tactics.

The reasoning would be if the threat of one of the party members dying is very very real the party would not be so careless. From the guards perspective, they know they won't succeed in killing all the attackers, so why not seriously kill one.

Although I agree on the fairness, I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Caravan guards do not have any interest in encouraging their attackers to avoid carelessness. Nor are they likely to know that they are doomed until the fight is already joined and clearly going against them. And the perspective of "no man kills me and lives!" is one that not every caravan guard will share, although some might. Most would just run once it became clear the fight was hopeless. I think it's more likely that caravan guards would gang up on someone because they think it will help them win the fight.

Chronos

2014-07-31, 05:55 PM

Even most animals are smart enough to gang up on one target at a time. At least, social animals (which are the ones you're most likely to encounter in groups anyway). The only difference is that an animal isn't smart enough to do as good a threat assessment as a human is.

And remember, even if the guards are so hopelessly outclassed that they can't possibly win, they don't know that. At least, not until the combat actually starts and they have a chance to see how it's going. If the party attacks a caravan, they're probably going to assume that you're just low-level brigands, and not hesitate to fight you.

Knaight

2014-07-31, 06:42 PM

nedz

2014-07-31, 07:17 PM

I'd expect surrender would be an earlier option, but if they're getting attacked and are already stuck in the fight, trying to take someone down with them is an entirely sensible way to go about things.

Well morale roles are a thing — just not in 3.5 :smallsigh:

jedipotter

2014-07-31, 09:58 PM

And remember, even if the guards are so hopelessly outclassed that they can't possibly win, they don't know that. At least, not until the combat actually starts and they have a chance to see how it's going. If the party attacks a caravan, they're probably going to assume that you're just low-level brigands, and not hesitate to fight you.

How don't the guards know that?

Take like Thor:The Dark world as an example. The jail guards watch Kurse blast out of the cell and start to slaughter everyone. Yet they run up and do the ''for Asgard'' and die. Yet, you'd think they would know ''well ok, we are dead'', right?

How about the thugs a bit before, the ones ''making the Nine Realms full of Chaos''. They attack Thor, as if they have a chance of even hurting him, let alone killing him. then they all give up once Thor kills that rock giant. Guess it was the first giant Thor ever killed right? The same goes for the ones that escape. They run up to Thor and attack, like they have a chance.

It's like the Ye Old Superman Tv show. The bad guys would always shoot Superman, even though everyone knew he was bullet proof. So the bullets just bounced off him. And then they would throw the gun at Superman, and he would duck.

heavyfuel

2014-07-31, 10:54 PM

To answer OP's question, yes it's fair. Have you ever seen a party not focus fire? I haven't. So there's no reason guards shouldn't also do the same.

I will agree, however, with the people saying that having a small army guiding a caravan is stupid, and that guards shouldn't throw themselves at swords because that just makes them dead and unable to receive payment.

why are all your guards low level :\

their job is literally to participate in encounters all day every day, get paid for it with a monthly stipend, and that doesnt count bribes and or random stuff dropped from criminals that isnt catalogued. I dont see why a guard has to be low level when level one characters level up doing less than them.

Maybe the Dmg says otherwise, but if it does you should discount that. Theres nothing within ranges 1-8 that players will do that it isnt perfectly ordinary for people to expect guards to do as well... So, rather than murdering players with focused fire, why not make some of those guards a higher level an make it a fair fight :D

Completely agree. I usually run "high-power-E6" games (sounds contradictory, but basically every one worth a damn is lv6 with PC class levels) and guess what? ALL guards are lv 6. If they're regular guards, Lv6 Fighters, if they're elite, Lv6 Mystic Ranger with "Extra Spell: Faerie Fire" for those pesky Rogues.

This makes it incredibly difficult to anyone to do anything in the face of a guard. The way it should be! If the castle guards are lv1 Warriors, then the lv6 Rogue can sneak past them 100% of the time, making them useless 100% of the time, as all it takes is a single theft from the treasury to not only break WBL but also send the entire kingdom into disarray.

You want to go on a crime spree, do it outside the sight of the guards, be that in a slums, be that out of town. But guards are there to guard, not to be insignificant obstacles.

Then why the hell does anyone need adventurers to do anything?

While this was directed at jedipotter, the same question could be asked me. So here's my preemptive answer :smallwink:

Adventurers can still be strong. Even in an E6 game, the guards might be lv6, but you're also lv6 with a dozen feats to boot. That makes you inherently more powerful than them, but not enough to take down a whole army by yourself. Dungeoneering knowledge (not the skill) also helps you excel in situations where guards aren't optimal.

Outside of this, on the few regular games I ran (note that I'm a firm believer that D&D completely and absolutely breaks after lv 11) elite guards were lv7 Mystic Rangers with the eventual Mindbender Wizard with Mindsight. There's no reason a regular joe won't want to be as good at his job as possible. This translates into optimizing so they can be the best possible guards they can be. But even then, a lv 11 PC would still be stronger than these guys. So that's where adventurers come in again.

Zanos

2014-07-31, 11:04 PM

Completely agree. I usually run "high-power-E6" games (sounds contradictory, but basically every one worth a damn is lv6 with PC class levels) and guess what? ALL guards are lv 6. If they're regular guards, Lv6 Fighters, if they're elite, Lv6 Mystic Ranger with "Extra Spell: Faerie Fire" for those pesky Rogues.

This makes it incredibly difficult to anyone to do anything in the face of a guard. The way it should be! If the castle guards are lv1 Warriors, then the lv6 Rogue can sneak past them 100% of the time, making them useless 100% of the time, as all it takes is a single theft from the treasury to not only break WBL but also send the entire kingdom into disarray.

You want to go on a crime spree, do it outside the sight of the guards, be that in a slums, be that out of town. But guards are there to guard, not to be insignificant obstacles.
That depends entirely on the style of game you're running. In my opinion high level characters should be rare, and being a double or high single digit leveled character is an accomplishment. You're important because you can accomplish things that other people can't.

Also, unless they just leave the vault open and conveniently have cover right in front of the door, they rogue shouldn't be able to sneak past. You need cover to hide, and he still needs to be able to pick the lock, which could also be magically sealed in addition to being of supreme craftsmanship. And I really don't see a problem with someone technically capable of taking on hell's bodyguards(Bearded Devils, CR 5) being able to sneak past castle guards.

heavyfuel

2014-07-31, 11:18 PM

That depends entirely on the style of game you're running. In my opinion high level characters should be rare, and being a double or high single digit leveled character is an accomplishment. You're important because you can accomplish things that other people can't.

I've ranted about this once or twice. The problem with this is that it leads to one of two scenarios:

#1: Players take forever to level up, because leveling up should be difficult (aka, not everyone is high level). This is incredibly boring because that means they'll have to spend many real-life encounters stuck at the same level and that gets boring very fast, especially when you can only meet twice a month.

#2: Every NPC is daft. If the PCs can reach high levels rather quickly, why can't the NPCs? Are they stupid? If people can get rich and strong after just a few weeks of kicking goblin ass why isn't EVERYONE strong? Unless I'm missing something here, there's no reason why this shouldn't be the case.

Also, unless they just leave the vault open and conveniently have cover right in front of the door, they rogue shouldn't be able to sneak past. You need cover to hide, and he still needs to be able to pick the lock, which could also be magically sealed in addition to being of supreme craftsmanship. And I really don't see a problem with someone technically capable of taking on hell's bodyguards(Bearded Devils, CR 5) being able to sneak past castle guards.

Lack of cover is pretty much a moot point since every Rogue worth his salt has HiPS from one source or another. Even at E6 lvs its possible (though harder) but then its just substituted for a Use Activated item of Invisibility. An AMF could work, but at the worlds I run they're incredibly rare (minimum lv11 to cast one, lv11 chars are extremely rare).

awa

2014-07-31, 11:24 PM

npcs run on different rules then pcs that why they don't level. Pcs have ecl npcs have cr they arnt the same and they don't work the same.

edit nothing says you need to allow custom magic items and hide in plain sight is hard to get at level 6. Even with hips detect magic can be used not to mention if you just stick some guards in front of the door he cant open it without alerting them to his presence and once they know hes there they have a lot of options to stop a sneaking rouge.

Zanos

2014-07-31, 11:30 PM

I've ranted about this once or twice. The problem with this is that it leads to one of two scenarios:

#1: Players take forever to level up, because leveling up should be difficult (aka, not everyone is high level). This is incredibly boring because that means they'll have to spend many real-life encounters stuck at the same level and that gets boring very fast, especially when you can only meet twice a month.

#2: Every NPC is daft. If the PCs can reach high levels rather quickly, why can't the NPCs? Are they stupid? If people can get rich and strong after just a few weeks of kicking goblin ass why isn't EVERYONE strong? Unless I'm missing something here, there's no reason why this shouldn't be the case.
Leveling up is difficult because those people aren't special. They're average. They have average ability scores. Their levels are in NPC classes. They aren't exceptional. Even few exceptional people make it past early levels when they decide to go out and fight orcs, as 4-15 HP does not respond particularly well to crossbow bolts and falchions. It's lethal. People die, even adventurers. People with average ability scores and NPC classes die more. I guess your adventurer could care enough about their squishy parts to just stay home, but then they're not really interesting to play. D&D (in my view) isn't about the average people. It's about the top 5%(roughly) of gifted people.

Also, if there are only six levels, how is that less boring? I guess you get a feat, but that's not nearly as interesting as a level in many classes.

Lack of cover is pretty much a moot point since every Rogue worth his salt has HiPS from one source or another. Even at E6 lvs its possible (though harder) but then its just substituted for a Use Activated item of Invisibility. An AMF could work, but at the worlds I run they're incredibly rare (minimum lv11 to cast one, lv11 chars are extremely rare).
Do you only limit your players to six levels? :smallconfused:
My point about fighting hell's bodyguards and not being able to get into the vault still both stand.

heavyfuel

2014-08-01, 12:02 AM

Leveling up is difficult because those people aren't special. They're average. They have average ability scores. Their levels are in NPC classes. They aren't exceptional. Even few exceptional people make it past early levels when they decide to go out and fight orcs, as 4-15 HP does not respond particularly well to crossbow bolts and falchions. It's lethal. People die, even adventurers. People with average ability scores and NPC classes die more. I guess your adventurer could care enough about their squishy parts to just stay home, but then they're not really interesting to play. D&D (in my view) isn't about the average people. It's about the top 5%(roughly) of gifted people.

Also, if there are only six levels, how is that less boring? I guess you get a feat, but that's not nearly as interesting as a level in many classes.

I suppose this makes some sense, but there's still no reason a group of average lv2 guys can't go out and deal with some CR1 encounters. They'll level up slower, and be one lv behind in wealth, but overall they'll still be richer than when they started and a it stronger. It might not be as I said, but even a group composed of standard array lv2 Warrior, Expert, and Adept*2 can pretty much anything an Elite-array (the average adventurer from the PHB) adventurer party can do at lv 1.

Hmmm.. Don't think there's a boredom problem there... I don't know about you, but I love me loads of feats. It allows for SO much flexibility when you're no longer bound to a single measly feat every 3 levels. It's quite refreshing being able to build a character picking from a variety of flavorful but not so effective feats instead of always spending 4 out 7 base feats of Power Attack, Imp BR, Leap Attack and Shock Trooper (or whatever combo you pick for your particular build)

Do you only limit your players to six levels? :smallconfused:
My point about fighting hell's bodyguards and not being able to get into the vault still both stand.

What? Of course not. When not playing E6 players usually reach lv 11+ before the adventure ends. I do think these last few levels are broken as hell though.

And they can't really defeat hell's bodyguards. If they all gang up on a single one? Sure. But when's the last time you saw a bodyguard alone? Even if the SRD says they can be found solitarily, I don't think it's a fair assessment that they'll be alone when guarding hell/lower planes.

Synar

2014-08-01, 03:42 AM

Just one point: if caravan guards are mid to high level, then it would be probable that there is an esay access to at least one high level wizard, and then why not just teleport the caravan rather than pay a bunch of elite (costly) guards to protect (and risk losing) it during its (long) travel? Also why not make it a flying or underwater caravan to protect against most ennemies if such high level magic is not accessible (for exemple if mid level is common but high level is very rare)? And why not put illusions over the caravan? Also, bags of holdings for discretion (paired with invisiblity cloaks)*?

My point is that if mid-high level guards are common enough that you can afford to pay them, you should not expect your caravan to be any sort of classic caravan, or a caravan at all.

*(As one or small group of invisible flying guys without cargo is much more difficult to detect and attack than a normal caravan)

Hazrond

2014-08-01, 03:51 AM

ddude987

2014-08-01, 08:05 AM

The thing about bearded devils is cr 5 really means 1 of that monster is adequate for a standard 4 person party at level 5.

Mystia

2014-08-01, 08:12 AM

I think it's also worth mentioning that, depending on how precious is the caravan's cargo, how much money can the merchants taking part on it pool, and how much they're expecting to profit... The caravan is likely to have adventurers as guards. If they happen to be transporting several magic items, a powerful one, or just something really important, chances are that they'll hire some of the best to protect them from the undefined dangers of travelling. And usually, that means an adventuring party. And that means, yes, they'll use a lot of tactics, and ganging up on one at a time is going to be the least of an attacker's problems.

That is considering that your party wants to attack an caravan because they have something valuable, required for their current quest, or something like that. Of course, mundane caravans, carrying boring items, should have guards as mundane and boring as their cargo. Like others said, just to keep away most bandits and people who would rob them should they be unguarded. I agree wholeheartedly with who said that, faced with an obviously stronger enemy, most "common" guards would flee or surrender.

In a mundane caravan, guarded by mundane guards, they're expecting bandits, a single troll, and similar, and will probably fight the threat, since their training - more often than not - is enough for that. Now, if said mundane caravan was attacked by an adult red dragon, don't you doubt that the guards would flee just as quickly as the merchants, even if they made that save versus Frightful Presence. Most people value their lives way more than money, at least if they can't afford resurrection.

This is how I, personally, see combat between high level adventurers and common caravan guards happening:
First, the party probably strikes from the woods or something. Chances are they are getting that surprise round, and dropping a couple guards. In the confusion that being attacked out of the blue provoked, the guards attack the closest enemies, 1v1 or 2v1 at best, since they don't know how strong their foes are. The next round, chances are more guards die. The ones left realize that this is no common enemy, and that they'll need better tactics to win this fight. The most experienced guards left order the rest to form some sort of battle formation, be it a shield wall, a position in which they can flank the melee fighters without being flanked, or else - but yes, this is the first moment they should be able to acknowledge the enemy's strength, and may start to gang up on one target at a time. However, should their new tactic also fail and only bring more death to their side, it'll be as clear as day that it's a lost fight. Next comes fleeing or surrender.

I think the guards would act like how I described above simply because they won't understand how powerful is their enemy from the get-go, unless they can recognize it as something clearly superior to their abilities, akin to my dragon example from earlier.

Zanos

2014-08-01, 08:15 AM

The thing about bearded devils is cr 5 really means 1 of that monster is adequate for a standard 4 person party at level 5.
A level 6 rogue is CR 6. They should be able to win against a single bearded devil more than half of the time. The CR system doesn't work as intended so that probably won't be true, but the intent is that one of them is roughly equivalent in strength to a level 5 PC.

MrConsideration

2014-08-01, 08:38 AM

If they're attacking the caravan at a level where the resulting battle is easy, surely the wealth plundered will be substantially smaller than what the adventurers could earn in a dungeon of the right challenge level? Make your PCs plunder several tonnes of grain, ceramics or lumber, or some other heavy, low-value commodity not suited to adventuring. If the caravan is carrying gold bullion, silk or magic items, people would expend money on a mix of lower-level mooks and the occasional adventuring group to protect their investment. Throw in boring guards and then a bizarre adventuring group to back them up.

NPCs don't earn their levels. Maybe Guard Rodgar spent his entire life doing drills and sparring - it still allows him to be a reasonably competent combatant. Maybe before becoming a Guard he was a soldier and saw numerous real combats, surving by pluck, guile and skill. Sure, he's not an adventurer, but he could be more than a speed-bump with numbers on his side. As for ganging up, this isn't a dramatic combat where player-character death would have much meaning - let them win and feel powerful, and have the consequences be further complications.

A caravan robbery has loads of other complications that add to the drama even if the initial fight if trivial: if anyone escapes, your PCs are now outlaws and might have to face being hunted by a more powerful force from a nearby authority, or be denied entrance to local settlements or be sanctioned by local merchants. Maybe they capture individuals travelling with the caravans who are vulnerable and now stranded, unguarded, in the wilderness. If your players are Evil or amoral make some of the travelers plot hooks. Low-level banditry could remind a high-level character of just how powerful he is before steering the party to a more appropriate challenge.

With the RAW guards, how do these communities survive the antagonistic wildlife, monsters and vast empires specifically trying to wipe them out (Drow, Ithilid etc) who possess numerous high-level characters?

PersonMan

2014-08-01, 11:19 AM

I suppose this makes some sense, but there's still no reason a group of average lv2 guys can't go out and deal with some CR1 encounters. They'll level up slower, and be one lv behind in wealth, but overall they'll still be richer than when they started and a it stronger. It might not be as I said, but even a group composed of standard array lv2 Warrior, Expert, and Adept*2 can pretty much anything an Elite-array (the average adventurer from the PHB) adventurer party can do at lv 1.

Most people, even if they could theoretically go out fighting for loot, won't. When an Adept can just offer spells to make a good living, and an Expert can just take some Profession or Craft ranks. The Warrior can offer his services as a man-at-arms or guard.

They can all have a relatively good living, except without risking their lives in numerous deadly battles.

Sure, some will have the mentality needed to go adventuring, but that will be a subset of those talented enough to. There will be a caste of people with the talent and experience to have many levels, but they won't be numerous enough to guard every caravan or fort or gate.

bekeleven

2014-08-01, 12:56 PM

These guards were actually contracted through Elminster security. Sure, they're all level 2. But if one sees a threat he can't handle, he snaps his Elminster Token©, and help is guaranteed within 3 rounds or your money back!

More cost effective than hiring Elminster personally for every caravan...

malonkey1

2014-08-02, 01:20 AM

Honestly i think that the guards should gang up on the fighter first, until they actually KNOW a guy is a mage then they can only see the wall of muscle thats charging their line and at that point its a more reasonable plan to actually kee fighting the fighter, remember guys there are no such things as "Tiers" in the actual game world, they wouldnt know that the fighter is so much less powerful than the wizard and would probably focus on what aears to be the biggest threat, the fighter (at least till the wizard pulls some flashy crowd control like black tentacles or something)

Well, you can often tell a wizard by their clothes (they usually wear all sorts of weird robes), and honestly, I'd go for the soft target in a group, exploiting their vulnerabilities, so even if I'm not able to tell who's a wizard, I'm going to stab the wimp before I stab the big guy, because there's a reason that a big badass guy like the fighter would let Noodles McGee follow him around, either as an escort (unlikely in a robbery), or he has some vital skill that Badass Fighter lacks (magic, lockpicking, tracking, etc.) and needs. Ergo, attack Noodles, you put Badass on the defensive.

Stella

2014-08-02, 02:24 AM

So, I'm not going to say that this philosophy is out right wrong, but I see two problems you'll need to contend with.

1. Piling on rather than reacting to the closest threat goes against natural instincts. It's the kind of thing that will really need to be drilled into someone. This makes it more suitable to fanatics than work-a-day guards and raises the question of whether this training time could have been raising their character level rather than drilling tactics.

If anyone asks about the "why" and gets an honest answer; they're being told that they're expendable trash. This will probably be bad for morale.
I disagree. Fighting smart is the way to give the group the largest possibility of survival. That is the "honest answer" they should be given if they ask why they should fight smart. Yes, this may mean that any particular guard might be ordered to do something which is best for the group but which might not be so great for them at the time. Any professional should recognize that they also might be the recipient of orders which help them at the risk of their fellows, and should be willing to do the same for their comrades.

2. By trying to inflict a death rather than win they may be hurting their chance of winning and also risk provoking escalation. Going out of your way to kill one attacker increases the odds that your enemy will not accept surrender, use coup de graces, and chase you down and kill you to the last man possibly desecrate corpses.
Unless the attackers are just skirmishing in to grab what they can and then withdraw there isn't much of an escalation beyond "These attackers are trying to kill us off so they can loot the caravan we're supposed to guard." If the attackers are using deadly force (shooting arrows, casting spells, inflicting damage which isn't of the non-lethal type) then there should be no hesitation for the guards to act intelligently rather than hesitating for fear that things might "escalate."

The bottom line should be that the guards should act with the level of professionalism which is appropriate to them, their history, and the merchant(s) who hired them. Which should mean that a group of six unrelated guards who were picked up just before the caravan left town will act appropriately. Not as a team, more interested in their own hides than their fellow guards, and not terribly concerned with the merchant's goods. They are there mostly as a deterrent, because six men with loaded crossbows and some armor and weapons are typically a decent deterrent to the typical bandit gang of poorly armed and armored outlaws who might be more interested in where their next meal is coming from than in taking on an armed group and facing the attrition which will surely ensue. And these six guards are being paid appropriately, and are guarding goods of an appropriate value as well.

A more established trading house which employs permanent guards and which regularly transports valuable goods through dangerous territory should have guards with much more discipline and esprit de corps, and these guards should act for the best benefit of the group and to protect the goods of the merchants, and should be well aware that their continued employment is dependent upon demonstrating an appropriate level of loyalty to their employer.

Well morale roles are a thing — just not in 3.5 :smallsigh:
Any good DM uses common sense to rule these things. The animal who attacks should typically run before fighting to the death, unless perhaps it has young who are threatened. This is how animals act in the real world, and unless the particular animal has a reason to act differently it should act appropriately. A group of lesser goblinoids should also break and run rather than force a fight where one side or the other is wiped out, probably about the time they take ~30% losses if they haven't managed to inflict any casualties of their own. They are clearly outmatched, and while having them fight to the finish will drain the party of more resources it doesn't promote much in the way of immersion or suspension of disbelief. Not many groups, even trained soldiers, will fight to the death rather than retreating when they find that they are clearly outmatched. At this point the teachings of Sun Tsu can be called into play. If the party pursues and methodically hacks down the broken and fleeing remnants, it's absolutely fine to have them turn and fight to the death out of desperation.

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.

Stella

2014-08-02, 02:42 AM

A level 6 rogue is CR 6. They should be able to win against a single bearded devil more than half of the time. The CR system doesn't work as intended so that probably won't be true, but the intent is that one of them is roughly equivalent in strength to a level 5 PC.
I think you have this fairly wrong. The CR system is designed to determine which encounters a party of 4 consisting of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Rogue, and a Wizard of a certain level should be able to beat 3 of per day. Not which single party member should be able to beat which single encounter half of the time. If you reduce it to a single person vs. encounter fight you have broken the system beyond any recognition of the intent for its use. It isn't a perfect system by any means, but it works far better if used as intended than if used well outside of the scope of the intent.

Story

2014-08-02, 02:46 AM

they usually wear all sorts of weird robes

Says who? There's no mechanical reason for Wizards to wear robes unless they're a magical item. Guess it's just tradition, but I'm sure some Wizards would prefer not to stand out so much.

Or alternatively, they might want to stand out in a different way (http://th02.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2012/017/b/f/calmasis_wallpaper_by_quig_alchemist-d4mq25x.jpg) (this was the inspiration for my first Wizard character).

Douglas

2014-08-02, 02:47 AM

2. By trying to inflict a death rather than win
:smallconfused:

Teaming up to take down one party member at a time is their best chance of winning. The reason this does not match real world tactics well is that in the real world a single wound is very commonly lethal or at least crippling.

In the real world, if each guard has a 50% chance of inflicting a serious wound in a given time interval, 10 guards pairing off 1v1 with 10 assailants will on average take 5 of their opponents out, while all 10 teaming up on 1 guy will almost certainly take out that 1 but no more than that. Teaming up more than a little bit is usually redundant and wasteful.

In D&D past the extreme low levels, that "serious wound" is merely a fraction of the target's hit points and has no effect on his capabilities at all. 10 guards pairing off 1v1 will on average accomplish nothing meaningful, while all 10 teaming up on 1 will likely actually take that 1 out, thereby reducing the enemy's immediate combat ability. Teaming up a lot is vastly more effective.

Teaming up like this, in D&D, should be the default tactic of any group of trained combatants with significant discipline. Exceptions may exist for specific combatants who use non-damage based disabling or hindering techniques, or if necessary for specific objectives, but they are just that - exceptions.

Fizban

2014-08-02, 06:29 AM

Was just gonna quote one but,

Though there is a twist, as you could make the merchant caravan an ''official encounter''. And once you do that, you can make the guards anything the DM wants.

I think it's also worth mentioning that, depending on how precious is the caravan's cargo, how much money can the merchants taking part on it pool, and how much they're expecting to profit... The caravan is likely to have adventurers as guards.
This is how I, personally, see combat between high level adventurers and common caravan guards happening:
First, the party probably strikes from the woods or something. Chances are they are getting that surprise round, and dropping a couple guards. In the confusion that being attacked out of the blue provoked, the guards attack the closest enemies, 1v1 or 2v1 at best, since they don't know how strong their foes are. The next round, chances are more guards die. The ones left realize that this is no common enemy, and that they'll need better tactics to win this fight. The most experienced guards left order the rest to form some sort of battle formation, be it a shield wall, a position in which they can flank the melee fighters without being flanked, or else - but yes, this is the first moment they should be able to acknowledge the enemy's strength, and may start to gang up on one target at a time. However, should their new tactic also fail and only bring more death to their side, it'll be as clear as day that it's a lost fight. Next comes fleeing or surrender.

I think the guards would act like how I described above simply because they won't understand how powerful is their enemy from the get-go, unless they can recognize it as something clearly superior to their abilities, akin to my dragon example from earlier.

If they're attacking the caravan at a level where the resulting battle is easy, surely the wealth plundered will be substantially smaller than what the adventurers could earn in a dungeon of the right challenge level? Make your PCs plunder several tonnes of grain, ceramics or lumber, or some other heavy, low-value commodity not suited to adventuring. If the caravan is carrying gold bullion, silk or magic items, people would expend money on a mix of lower-level mooks and the occasional adventuring group to protect their investment. Throw in boring guards and then a bizarre adventuring group to back them up.
I also liked Mystia's sample combat, but the main thing I wanted to respond with is that Arms and Equipment Guide actually has a section on merchant caravans, and this is exactly what it says to do: the caravan guards make up an Encounter Level such that the goods are an appropriate treasure for the encounter. This doesn't quite work since it ignores the fact that humanoid NPC guards need NPC WBL just to keep their CR even remotely plausible and thus already overload the treasure, but I guess it's the thought that counts? Guard animals and mounts, especially if trained to only obey certain owners or cryptic commands, could fill out the encounter without boosting the treasure. Or you could compensate by lowering the value/weight ratio until it's not even worth filling a Bag of Holding: even a cheap cart holds more than a Bag and if the horse won't listen to you it's gonna be hard to get back to town, and then the buyer sees someone he doesn't know (and if they jump through the hoops for another encounter or so then they can get the money!). And naturally any super exotic or magical load would have hired adventurers to guard it, that's a standard filler/hook/whatever quest the PCs could be doing themselves.

Also like this line:

Low-level banditry could remind a high-level character of just how powerful he is before steering the party to a more appropriate challenge.
The rate of level-gains mentioned above is a serious problem with my own immersion. In order for professional adventurers to make any sense one has to assume that the bulk of time is either spent just hanging around waiting for the next big score, or doing the low-level trivial jobs that still pay out enough to rent the whole inn without exposing themselves to any real risk. I'm basically playing a chaotic good murder-hobo, so if she's survived aggressively hunting evil for years and is only level 9 then most of her time must be spent on level 1 thugs worth no xp. But since that happened before the game started and most published adventures I've seen don't leave any real downtime, the part where you go around Batman-ing cheap thugs is sadly undocumented. Evil chararacters knocking over the corner store (for peanuts) or good characters swatting bandits who didn't expect them should happen more often.

rexx1888

2014-08-02, 08:04 AM

The vast majority of guarding is standing or walking around keeping an eye on things. It's hardly constant violence.

the hell kind of job do you lot think guarding is in dnd world :\ adventurers are supposed to be rare right, thats what makes them special. In that case, that means all the lairs, thieves, murderers etc are all doing their thing until adventurers turn up and the random folks on guard have to deal with it themselves. Its got nothing to do with encounter tables. No one in dnd world looks at a guard an goes "oh, your twelfth level, better pay you more". They go "oh, your good at your job, well give you a bonus this week". What sets adventurers apart is not what they are doing, its the fact that they are choosing to do it. What sets a guard apart from everyone else is almost the same thing, except they were looking for a day job to pay for the medicine to look after their sick grandparents instead of thinking it was a good idea to raid the nearest dragon den (An thats not even counting the fact that half the PC classes would feel perfectly at home guarding things(like say a paladin of st Cuthbert, or a bored fighter, or a bard that wanted some stories or any other number of class choices).

there is no sane reason why normal npc's cant be a little higher level. They arent going to make the PC's look bad by doing it. NPC classes are rubbish, so a few extra levels of them doesnt suddenly turn an NPC into an adventurer. Just makes it a bit more of a challenge. Then you use tactics as well. We arent talking about making every guard a level ten swordsage multiclassed into sorceror with levels in JPM. Were talking about a lvl 7 warrior with a few points in INT so he can actually be competent at his job when some random thief rocks up and decides to knock over the nearest magic item shop. Yeesh, what kind of wierdo incompetent filled campaign worlds are half of you playing in :p ... ok maybe a little too much hyperbole in that last paragraph, sorry if it offends, thats not the plan. point still stands though.... even if it does mean i agree with jedipotter for once :\

mr_odd

2014-08-02, 10:49 AM

A weakened enemy is still a threat; a dead enemy isn't. (Exception: Undead).

This is now one of my new mottos.

CombatOwl

2014-08-02, 11:13 AM

Anachronity

2014-08-02, 12:00 PM

In real life guards actually don't lead very active lives for the most part. You could live your whole life as a police officer and never experience a single shootout, and yet it takes (very roughly) 15 to 20 encounters to gain a level in the D&D world.

It would make sense that PCs, who go out and actively seek danger, would be higher level than guards, who stand around waiting for danger to come to them. Most of their levels will be from training rather than active experience. As a general rule of thumb (found nowhere in any book) I would say that the maximum level attainable for typical training (i.e. not monk-like dedication to living a life of martial mastery) is the square root of the mentor's level, meaning that experience is the most important factor.

That being said, caravan guards are probably more experienced than most because
1: Merchant caravans are often poorly guarded compared to the wealth they contain, making them more attractive to bandits and the like.
2: Random encounters are a thing in D&D, and a caravan is going to attract much more attention than a small group of people.

I would personally represent caravan guards as an exception to the wealth by level: Their experience puts them at a higher level than, say, temple guards who are just there to look intimidating and scare off the riff-raff. However, their lack of association with a wealthy noble would mean that they probably have less expensive equipment (unless the merchant is doing particularly well and really wants well-outfitted guards).

When dealing with frequent danger, the rational human response is to learn how to make it through those dangerous situations with minimal loss of life. The most frequent threats a caravan faces are bandits and monsters, so their tactics should be particularly effective at efficiently dealing with those threats with minimal loss of life to the caravan.

Scare tactics like "kill the scariest one as quickly as possible" would be particularly effective against monsters, but not as much against bandits or other organized bands of humanoids. For those groups the best tactic is often "throw them into disarray". That way they're more likely to retreat or easier to defeat if they don't.

However, the huge difference in D&D is the existence of wizards, sorcerers, psions, druids, and the like who can cause significant damage from a distance. Such characters would likely be viewed more as artillery pieces than soldiers, tactically speaking. When presenting organized bands of humanoids as a threat, you should ask yourself how much experience these caravan guards have with casters. A typical group of bandits might have a wizard or cleric if they're lucky, but if they do that caster could present a huge threat with mass disruption like glitterdust, web, fireball, or invisibility sphere. A well-defended caravan would need to be ready against such threats. The caravan would itself likely employ a caster or two if it could afford to do so, preferring the sorts who employ spells effective against humanoid groups (since monsters are usually more predictable).

Nothing the caravan will have encountered would be very much like a group of PCs, since bandits are generally more numerous and less individually skilled. Still, lacking a well-practiced strategy for dealing with the PCs, their most likely response would be to treat them as bandits: make the casters stop casting, try to create disarray. This means they would probably underestimate the martial party members, since most bandits lack well-trained soldiers (depending on how common things like swordsages or uberchargers are in your campaign world), and go for the casters...
For a caravan with no casters this would likely make it a short fight in the adventurers' favor: The guards would try to maneuver to the backlines and the abnormally powerful marshal characters would surprise them and rip them apart before they could reach the casters, who would then proceed to destroy everything else.
For a caravan with casters, there are a lot more disruptive options: The caravan casters try to hit as many people as possible with disables like confusion, glitterdust, web, etc. while the majority of the guards bum rush the PC casters.

Keep in mind that stopping the PC casters from casting would not necessarily require killing them: silence, counterspells, or a readied action with a ranged weapon to disrupt a spell being cast would all be good options.

Threadnaught

2014-08-02, 12:30 PM

How don't the guards know that?

Because they're not psychic?

Take like Thor:The Dark world as an example. The jail guards watch Kurse blast out of the cell and start to slaughter everyone. Yet they run up and do the ''for Asgard'' and die. Yet, you'd think they would know ''well ok, we are dead'', right?

Those guards' purpose was to keep the prisoners contained and in the serious threat of a breakout, buy the Asgardian military enough time to mobilize.

How about the thugs a bit before, the ones ''making the Nine Realms full of Chaos''. They attack Thor, as if they have a chance of even hurting him, let alone killing him. then they all give up once Thor kills that rock giant. Guess it was the first giant Thor ever killed right? The same goes for the ones that escape. They run up to Thor and attack, like they have a chance.

Let's see, at the time they don't seem to recognize him and it isn't until he destroys the Stone Giant, that they understand how strong he really is. If you'd never seen Thor before, but had heard of him, would you be able to point him out in a crowd before he starts wrecking stuff?

During the finale, all the low level mooks attacking Thor are doing so to prevent him from stopping their leader from winning. The whole point to anything any of the villains do at that point is to keep the heroes away from the main bad guy.

It's like the Ye Old Superman Tv show. The bad guys would always shoot Superman, even though everyone knew he was bullet proof. So the bullets just bounced off him. And then they would throw the gun at Superman, and he would duck.

Yeah, the people who shoot Superman usually suffer from one of three things.

1: Fear, people and animals who are afraid of something may sometimes violently lash out, even when they know it'll have no effect. Many of these people are afraid of Superman.

2: Desperation, people who are desperate are prone to doing some pretty crazy things, like shooting the guy they know is invincible in the vain hope that it'll give them an escape route.

3: Stupidity, some people are just stupid and will believe that what has never, ever worked before will somehow work now because... Well, because they're too thick to understand that the reason Superman cannot be harmed by bullets, is because he's immune to bullets.

Sounds fair to me. I make most of my guards tough. Now, does this make every guard an epic level threat? No. But it does make roughly half of the guards in the world a challenge for the PCs.

What level are the guards of a hamlet, when the PCs are 20th level and have just defeated an Ancient White Dragon by collapsing it's lair and luring it into a confined area before smashing it?
Y'know, to challenge the PCs.

So the best thing to do: throw all the ''weak NPC'' rules out the window and ignore them.

Level 5 is calculated to be the peak of Human ability, anything rated at CR5 is (assuming a nonbroken CR system) a serious threat to most games' villages. Anything below that is more manageable, but still a threat.

I don't know about you, but there are a lot of creatures at CR5 and below. Many of which are far more powerful than your average house fly, or mouse.

A 5 Headed Hydra is a CR6 creature and not only is it obviously stronger than a Mouse or a fly, but it appears to be able to trivially take on a pack of wolves. Yeah, one single creature that can do the job of a dozen men with sticks.
If one of these creatures attacked somewhere in the real world, eventually the armed forces would be called in to use anti-armour weaponry. I challenge you to find someone in the real world who can punch a hole in a tank with their bare fists, like a 10th level character.

Your game sounds very videogamey.

jedipotter

2014-08-02, 12:38 PM

In real life guards actually don't lead very active lives for the most part. You could live your whole life as a police officer and never experience a single shootout, and yet it takes (very roughly) 15 to 20 encounters to gain a level in the D&D world.

Well, just take some ''real world'' examples from the Forgotten Realms. Most guards in a big city like Waterdeep or countries like Thay don't have very active lives. This is true. But then there are other places. Most guards anywhere on the Moonsea sure have active lives, even more so the guards that are in caravans in and around Thar. And the guards on caravans on the Long Road, from Waterdeep going south, sure have active lives as they go past hundreds of miles of monster filled wilderness.

The Realms is a very dangerous place and guards are needed everywhere. No place is 100% safe. ''Law and Order'' does not extend very far past the city limits. And there are bandits, monsters and monster bandits everywhere. To get trade goods from anywhere in the North to say Waterdeep or Luskan is a big chore.

Even a small town, like Daggerford, is more like a 'wild west town' then a 'folks sit around and watch the grass grow town'. Everyone is armed. The law, unless they have ready access to magic, have no way to do CSI stuff. So if a halfling is found dead by the pond, they can't do more then guess and try a little simple investigation. This makes a lot more lawlessness, as people know they won't get caught. And remember, everyone is armed.

Knaight

2014-08-02, 01:21 PM

Even a small town, like Daggerford, is more like a 'wild west town' then a 'folks sit around and watch the grass grow town'. Everyone is armed. The law, unless they have ready access to magic, have no way to do CSI stuff. So if a halfling is found dead by the pond, they can't do more then guess and try a little simple investigation. This makes a lot more lawlessness, as people know they won't get caught. And remember, everyone is armed.

The actual "wild west" had way, way fewer weapons than the typical medieval city. Most people weren't armed, and it was generally accepted that travelers hand their weapons over to the local sheriff once they got to town. Sure, there was the occasional shoot out, but westerns and the like drastically exaggerate the rates of that sort of thing.

Just getting to level 6 involves about 65 fights to the death - more, if they aren't close to even fights. A society in which the typical guard is involved in 65 fights to the death is ridiculously violent, not to mention too unstable to realistically survive. Lets say the average guard has been doing guard work for 10 years - some are higher, more are lower, etc. That works out to a fight to the death more than once every two months. It's ludicrous.

jedipotter

2014-08-02, 02:46 PM

The actual "wild west" had way, way fewer weapons than the typical medieval city. Most people weren't armed, and it was generally accepted that travelers hand their weapons over to the local sheriff once they got to town. Sure, there was the occasional shoot out, but westerns and the like drastically exaggerate the rates of that sort of thing.

.

Remember we are not talking about reality. We are talking about the fictional wild west. Or the fictional anything. Starfleet has thousands of ships, but only the Enterprise (and Voyager) runs into truly amazing, bizarre and fascinating adventures every couple of weeks. Think what a Enterprise reunion would be like: "Hey remember when we all deaged to like 12? Or the time we all became animals? Or that time we traveled back in time to 19th century? Then you have the USS Starlight: ''Well, remember that time we mapped them stars in sector 17564?''

The same way ''cop shows'', like any CSI or Bones encounter crimes and bad guys every week. But not every ''cop'' in Miami has awesome encounters like the CSI Miami ones, most of them ''don't do much.'' Or the way the Sons of Anarchy lead amazing active, violent lives...but real bikers just...well...you know...ride their bikes.

It's not ''real'', it's fiction. It is made that way. Reality is very boring. No one would watch the 100th StarTrek episode where ''nothing at all happens''. The same way no one would play a D&D game where ''nothing happens''.

Knaight

2014-08-02, 03:07 PM

Remember we are not talking about reality. We are talking about the fictional wild west. Or the fictional anything. Starfleet has thousands of ships, but only the Enterprise (and Voyager) runs into truly amazing, bizarre and fascinating adventures every couple of weeks. Think what a Enterprise reunion would be like: "Hey remember when we all deaged to like 12? Or the time we all became animals? Or that time we traveled back in time to 19th century? Then you have the USS Starlight: ''Well, remember that time we mapped them stars in sector 17564?''

Exactly. The Enterprise (and Voyager, and Defiant, and the runabouts on DS9) is an exception in it's own setting. It's basically the PCs. The typical guards are more like the USS Starlight, with largely uneventful careers. It's not completely uneventful, much as the other ships don't have completely uneventful careers (there was the one that had the experimental cloaking device developed on it and ended up embedded in an asteroid, there was the one that was disabled by the Maquis, so on and so forth), but it's nothing like what the PCs encounter.

Even in the fictional wild west, it's usually along the lines of "this one town is a violent place" or "the handful of towns that have the misfortune of dealing with these particular characters see a lot of violence" rather than "everyone is armed all the time and gunfights are routine".

Zanos

2014-08-02, 03:22 PM

I think you have this fairly wrong. The CR system is designed to determine which encounters a party of 4 consisting of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Rogue, and a Wizard of a certain level should be able to beat 3 of per day. Not which single party member should be able to beat which single encounter half of the time. If you reduce it to a single person vs. encounter fight you have broken the system beyond any recognition of the intent for its use. It isn't a perfect system by any means, but it works far better if used as intended than if used well outside of the scope of the intent.
I know how the CR system works. And actually, what the book says is that an encounter of CR = Average Party Level should be routinely defeatable with no major losses, but should consume roughly 1/4 of the parties daily resources.

A human rogue 6 is a CR 6 enemy for a party of 4 to face.
A bearded devil is a CR 5 enemy for a party of 4 to face.

Therefore, a bearded devil should be able to consume 1/4 the resources of a party of 4 5th level characters daily resources, and a single sixth level human rogue should be able to consume roughly 1/4 of a sixth level parties daily resources. It is reasonable to assume that with their various skillsets that the rogue should have a more robust set of abilities than the bearded devil, simply based on their ability to consume another entities resources.

Regardless, that is not the original point of the comment and isn't particularly relevant. The point is that the rogue and his buddies, even at level 6, are pretty hardcore dudes. Sneaking past castle guards shouldn't be a big deal for him.

sleepyphoenixx

2014-08-02, 04:44 PM

The point is that the rogue and his buddies, even at level 6, are pretty hardcore dudes. Sneaking past castle guards shouldn't be a big deal for him.

It isn't. The guards are probably warriors or maybe fighters who don't get listen/spot as class skills and only minimal skill points. On the other hand, if the rogue engages the supposedly pretty well trained guards in direct combat he should get his ass kicked, so a level of 4-6 for professional guards is hardly out of the question.

Make it 2-4 for the grunts and 3-6 for a generic guard squadleader NPC. Any rogue worth his salt can sneak past those unless they specifically get items to counter it. Engaging them in combat isn't a good idea though without some support, preferably one or more competent spellcasters.

For elite guards you can add a spellcaster as squadleader and switch to levels of warblade for one or more fighters to significantly increase their threat rating without overpopulating your world with high level NPCs.

Threadnaught

2014-08-02, 06:35 PM

Smart stuff.

Way to not make a settlement's guards too strong for verisimilitude.

Fizban

2014-08-03, 04:22 AM

Level 5 is calculated to be the peak of Human ability, anything rated at CR5 is (assuming a nonbroken CR system) a serious threat to most games' villages. Anything below that is more manageable, but still a threat.
I kinda want to quibble on the meaning of "threat," but not really. Any CR5 that doesn't have a solid DR10 or serious fast healing/regeneration should drop to a big enough gang of anyone with weapons, but the fact that they had to send the whole guard or form a mob means that it was clearly a threat by any definition of the word. So it depends more on the size of the population for what fraction of the total amount of guards is required to subdue the threat. If it's a Thorp of 50 people then they'd need the whole town fighting instead of running, but you'd need a Large Town to sortie 20 full time guards without relying on militia. By that measure yeah, I guess a CR5 really does make a serious threat to a town, even a city if it's good at escaping (though once you hit Large Town the community modifier means there are easily high enough level NPCs to group and bring it down if they feel like it).

I would personally represent caravan guards as an exception to the wealth by level: Their experience puts them at a higher level than, say, temple guards who are just there to look intimidating and scare off the riff-raff. However, their lack of association with a wealthy noble would mean that they probably have less expensive equipment (unless the merchant is doing particularly well and really wants well-outfitted guards).
This is perfectly good reasoning, the only problem is that NPC classes really do need the gear to do anything (I compared warriors with NPC gear to summon monster at NPC level=CL for a different project and it was still impossible to keep damage up, only redeeming factor was AC via full plate+shield). If they use PC classes they'll need to be gear independant, fighters would need a strong damage focus or rely on rogues, and without a minimum full plate+shields they'll be basically defenseless against higher level PCs. But going back to the good idea, Arms and Equipment Guide once again agrees: mercenaries with better gear charge as if they're good enough to deserve it, and presumably you could force a guy desperate for work to take lower pay if his gear wasn't up to snuff.

The actual "wild west" had way, way fewer weapons than the typical medieval city. Most people weren't armed, and it was generally accepted that travelers hand their weapons over to the local sheriff once they got to town. Sure, there was the occasional shoot out, but westerns and the like drastically exaggerate the rates of that sort of thing.

Just getting to level 6 involves about 65 fights to the death - more, if they aren't close to even fights. A society in which the typical guard is involved in 65 fights to the death is ridiculously violent, not to mention too unstable to realistically survive. Lets say the average guard has been doing guard work for 10 years - some are higher, more are lower, etc. That works out to a fight to the death more than once every two months. It's ludicrous.
Woah, that's some solid perspective. I'm always aware of the seemingly cheap 13ish fights till next level (usually in terms of 4 chump fights per day for only 3-4 days per level), but that's ignoring how you reached your "starting" level and the fact that they are indeed usually fights to the death. Only they're not close to even fights: that's 65 fights where you outnumber them 4 on 1 or massively outclass them due to the CR system and the intentional skewing of danger to favor PCs*. It's still ridiculously violent for a town guard of course, but if the guards are trained to work together and they're never fighting more than once a day (and thus full heal between fights) they should survive plenty well barring an axe crit.

You could double it to 130 fights to the. . lose? Complete Warrior awards 1/2 xp if you defeat a proper non-lethal challenge where something's at stake in their tournament rules, which would be a make or break battle every month (and probably the maximum speed at which you'd want to allow such non-lethal xp). You'd either need a lot of prize money or some serious penalty for failure like dangerously hard labor, it'd work great for slave gladiators if those weren't to the death to begin with.

*As we know, supposedly PCs have CR=level, so a fair fight for a four person party would be four foes of equal CR rather than 1. To reduce PC mortality that's usually broken up into 4 separate fights in one day where the party attacks 4 on 1 or equivalent (and then monsters get skewed far tougher to compensate for this so an "even" fight is actually weighted for the monsters). Either way you'd get xp for 4 encounters of equal level, almost a third of a level in one day. If a group of four guards is fighting one encounter of appropriate level every 2 months then it'll take 10 years to reach level 6, but if they're actually fair fights it should take 1/4 of the time (but with a significantly higher mortality and failure rate). Huh: x4 1v1, /2 non-lethal, x50% chance of failure= x1 overall xp gain. If the guard is say, apprehending a suspect of equal level who has no intent of murdering him back. That would put him back on the original 10 year schedule.

Vaz

2014-08-03, 06:55 AM

It depends on the setting/settlement they are guards for.

For example, I rarely have higher level NPC's apart from when they are needed. There are enough fantastical creatures around that you don't need to be facing humanoid enemy number 193 with class levels, neither do they exist as allies, in so much as why have the party exist, then, when the NPC can do the task.

The king of a barbarian horde is probably a 6th-7th level barbarian, maybe even with a Prestige Class, his huscarls are 5th-6th level elites, mostly with elite array.

The rest of his horde probably consist of 3rd to 4th level veterans, maybe multiclassed with PC classes, but not necessarily elite array. They are hardly elites. These might act as shock troops, or squad leaders to the rest of the army - standard troops who haven't yet had the full experience of war, but have possibly fought one or two battles or skirmishes, while 1st level rabble are followers or hangers on to the horde, maybe non combatants pressed into the battle by circumstances, or something like a trappers or hunters who are used to provide support.

Meanwhile compare that to the Lawful armies - well organized and trained.

Maybe the king however, rather than through rule of might is at best a 3rd level aristocrat if he paid attention to his basic schooling, maybe even lower if he was stereopypical 16th century french aristocracy. He will have the money above his station or level suggests to afford a possibly even a couple of magical trinkets, either as heirlooms or specifically requested from the mages guild, if not mastercrafted at the least.

He is not the true leader of the army - that is his generals duty. A former soldier, or product of an academy who has shown a natural quality for the leadership of military, represented by a high intelligence (not necessarily a high charisma, although that may help with getting soldiers to do something they don't like) that has come from an elite array. NPC levels maybe retrained by the academy into PC, 6th level or so.

If the king takes to battle, he may take his Praetorians or elites. They are possibly highly drilled, and obviously well equipped, but maybe not exactly the most hard bitten of troops with battlefield experience. Conversely, they might be 'by appointment only' forming a truly elite bodyguard based purely on ability. They probably have at least masterwork equipment. Going toe to toe wth the elite huscarls of the barbarians led by the barbarian king would probably see them chewed up, unless they are by appointment, where an elite array and maybe PC levels would be in order.

The army has lots of well trained basic infantry, maybe well equipped, but no mastercrafted stuff, but things of higher protection. Whereas the barbarians might wander around in leather jerkins, maybe a few scavenged chain shirts, the lawful army might have breastplates, maybe even full plate for some of the elite guards.

However that is not everything. The army leaves behind a guard. These are commoners given a job. They might recieve training, and low level equipment, or they might be given nothing aside from the meanest essentials to keep order.

Depending on the populace, the guard might be reasonably respected like todays police, or it might be the old school criminals in uniform style. The thing that sets them apart is their training, giving them an NPC class, and equipment. When breaking up a bar fight, they have staves or clubs, maybe armour etc, while those they face have improvised weapons or small concealed weapons. Or they just put down the populace where they are attacking commoners.

As you can see the armies are evenly matched, the intelligence and training of the lawful general making advantage of natural locations to beat the stronger, more numerous and more experienced forces of the barbarians.

However, should those barbarians be found to be fleeing something (maybe they awoke a great wyrm dragon, say), then they need to ask for adventurers. Maybe elites in the palace guard say? With captured huscarls... etc. That is how one of my campaigns started recently.

If you struggle with the verisimiltude of having a dragon not destroy everything, just think, do you go and hunt down everything you can kill just because you can? Flies etc? No, you only hurt that which annoys you in your vicinity, or that which is in the way of what you want.

Threadnaught

2014-08-03, 07:40 AM

If you struggle with the verisimiltude of having a dragon not destroy everything, just think, do you go and hunt down everything you can kill just because you can? Flies etc? No, you only hurt that which annoys you in your vicinity, or that which is in the way of what you want.

It is not a large enough Dragon refusing to destroy everything that hurts verisimilitude, just as people don't hunt down and exterminate every single insect on the planet.

It is the average town guardsman being powerful enough to swat said Dragon out of the sky as if it were a fly, that hurts verisimilitude, just as most flies can't beat a human in a one on one fight to the death.

A game in which the guards were more powerful that the PCs, no matter how many Demon Gods the PCs had defeated, is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Vaz

2014-08-03, 08:20 AM

I don't think you properly read my post. A Great Wyrm Dragon is out of the box, an epic level encounter. This is independent of giving them a point buy/elite array, class levels, templates, feats, spells known, psychoses or alternate SLA's from Dragon Mag.

If such a cataclysmic, world ending, armageddonlike event like a great wyrm dragon awakening on the material plane (there was a thread a while back about how a dragon would fair against non magical armies - conclusively the dragon won and it wasn't even that old), considering it has a WBL roughly equivalent to the US annual debt as well, you have to consider 'why is it not already in charge and everything already in thrall to it?' - as that is tippyverse discussion as well - one logical conclusion is that the dragon doesn't care, they can't hurt me, so why bother?

I made no mention whatsoever of having town guard equivalents, those i suggested were at best level 2, or even 1st level commoners with a bad attitude and a uniform. The most lethal individuals that were not adventurers being 6th level generals, or 7th level barbarians superhuman. To deal with an extinction level event like angels from heaven or the pits from the lower planes opening up, or as said the coming of an older dragon, you need either mcguffin/artifacts, or to be of a similar level.

I don't like levelled games for that reason. In elder scrolls, facing a level 5 bandit cutthroat early on then facing a level level 55 one later makes you wonder why the level 55 one is hanging out in l55 areas and not killing the l5 ones and taking control of the low levelled cities.

I much prefer leveled games that way, and mod TES games like so ASAP.

AMFV

2014-08-03, 08:50 AM

Level 5 is calculated to be the peak of Human ability, anything rated at CR5 is (assuming a nonbroken CR system) a serious threat to most games' villages. Anything below that is more manageable, but still a threat.

Just a nit-pick, but levels really don't correspond all that well to regular human ability. After all many boxers could land more than four hits in six seconds successfully, that would require that they be around mid-high levels. Olympic Strength folks could easily lift weights that would put them in the mid-low twenties for strength (unattainable at level 5 without items for a human).

It's a model, just because you could theoretically model most humans conceptually at level 5, doesn't mean that level 5 is the peak of human ability. That varies completely from setting to setting. In FR it's common to see guards in small towns at level five or six, and those in big cities at as high as thirteen or fourteen. In Eberron there are very few non-PC characters over level 6 and that's actually a design choice.

The problem is that D&D is a model, designed for fun gameplay, not designed for presenting an accurate picture of humanity, so one is remiss to say, "the highest level for normal human ability is five, since to model many human abilities you would need much higher levels than five.

Vaz

2014-08-03, 09:20 AM

Basic human can make two punches without training. Basic boxer, with str12 and twf can likely land both of those, each one capable of doing enough damage to knock out a commoner.

A monk being the nearest analogue gives you flurry for a third attack, and at l10 being mid-high can make 4 attacks, 5 with itwf. Many fights struggle to keep up the tempo of landing 4 hits every 6 seconds.

Being able to lift weights is a strength check, not carrying capacity. With a strength check, the average human has a 1 in 20 chance of lifting what a strength 30 character would need to take 10. Plus, technique has more to do with i. Very few people can do an unassissted pullup, yet the rules suggest it is easy.

Your point is valid, but those examples you chose were poor.

If you want to consider what superhuman abilities are around, an average human commoner can shoot 1 arrow a round, that is every 6 seconds. A trained one might hit. These can do enough damage to kill. A 6th level rapidshot archer can fire 3 killshots in that same time. Said monk can drop 3 men in that same time, maybe more if he uses his Combat Reflexes. 6th level human whirling frenzy barbarians played as visaged with Cleave and TWF fighting and improved twf can drop 6 men in that time.

That is superhuman.

AMFV

2014-08-03, 10:58 AM

Basic human can make two punches without training. Basic boxer, with str12 and twf can likely land both of those, each one capable of doing enough damage to knock out a commoner.

True, but in real life if you had a well trained boxer and put him in a fight with three guys, he'd probably lose. But in D&D that would be not correct, a level four character could probably fight many commoners. The point is that D&D is not a good model, it just doesn't work like real life, you can use it to model concepts, but modeling people is almost impossible, since people just don't function that way.

A monk being the nearest analogue gives you flurry for a third attack, and at l10 being mid-high can make 4 attacks, 5 with itwf. Many fights struggle to keep up the tempo of landing 4 hits every 6 seconds.

TWF does not apply to unarmed strikes, furthermore D&D fighters can fight indefinitely. It's not a good model for real life. And in real life you could theoretically have somebody hit somebody else many more times. Four hits in six seconds is certainly possible, and it could certainly be an average people could hit, D&D is not a good combat simulator again. We're looking at where the verisimilitude breaks down.

Being able to lift weights is a strength check, not carrying capacity. With a strength check, the average human has a 1 in 20 chance of lifting what a strength 30 character would need to take 10. Plus, technique has more to do with i. Very few people can do an unassissted pullup, yet the rules suggest it is easy.

Most people can do an unassisted Pullup. A dead-hang unassisted pullup with very little assistance. In my entire experience training people who had difficulty with the PFT (I worked in a training shop in the Marines for a very long time), I've only ever met one man who could not do three unassisted dead hang pull-ups, ever.

I'm also not sure that being able to lift weights would qualify as a strength check rather than carrying capacity. Certainly truck pulls are carrying capacity and a large sized truck can weigh many tons, and I've seen a human being (although I'm not sure how human he is) pull a 747, weighing 947,000 lbs. Even accounting for the wheels making it much easier, we'll say he had to pull the equivalent to half that's still significantly beyond strength 50. Even at 1/9th of the weight that's still beyond strength 50.

So the point is that real life just isn't modeled well by D&D

Threadnaught

2014-08-03, 11:11 AM

Olympic Strength folks could easily lift weights that would put them in the mid-low twenties for strength (unattainable at level 5 without items for a human).

Level 5 Barbarian, 19 Strength, Rage for +4 Strength.
Can pick up, up to 350lb normally, 600 when exerting themselves/Raging.

I don't know much about weightlifting, but I do know that those two are heavy.

It's a model, just because you could theoretically model most humans conceptually at level 5, doesn't mean that level 5 is the peak of human ability.

Most of the greatest Humans in history, at level 5. And it isn't theoretical either.

That varies completely from setting to setting. In FR it's common to see guards in small towns at level five or six, and those in big cities at as high as thirteen or fourteen. In Eberron there are very few non-PC characters over level 6 and that's actually a design choice.

Faerun is a more fantastic setting than Eberron, which has a gritty Industrial feel to it.

The problem is that D&D is a model, designed for fun gameplay, not designed for presenting an accurate picture of humanity, so one is remiss to say, "the highest level for normal human ability is five, since to model many human abilities you would need much higher levels than five.

But you see, the highest level for normal Human ability in the real world as modelled by D&D 3.5 rules, is 5th level.

It's a much more realistic model than the "average" guard being able to survive a point blank headshot with a sawed-off shotgun (32 damage), or a direct hit from a rocket launcher (60 damage).

AMFV

2014-08-03, 11:20 AM

Level 5 Barbarian, 19 Strength, Rage for +4 Strength.
Can pick up, up to 350lb normally, 600 when exerting themselves/Raging.

I don't know much about weightlifting, but I do know that those two are heavy.

600 is close to the world record for clean and jerk. But again, it's nowhere near the pulling a 747, that Mario Pujanauski did. Again that can't be modeled sub-strength 50, so it's a bad model.

Most of the greatest Humans in history, at level 5. And it isn't theoretical either.

It is completely, COMPLETELY THEORETICAL. HUMANS HAVE NO LEVELS. I don't have a character level or experience points, I could model myself in D&D at level 1 or level 20. Actually somebody like me would be very difficult to model since I have a very diverse base of skills

Faerun is a more fantastic setting than Eberron, which has a gritty Industrial feel to it.

Yes, which is what we should care about. The feel you want for your setting.

But you see, the highest level for normal Human ability in the real world as modelled by D&D 3.5 rules, is 5th level.

It's a much more realistic model than the "average" guard being able to survive a point blank headshot with a sawed-off shotgun (32 damage), or a direct hit from a rocket launcher (60 damage).

That's completely mistaken, just because HP don't scale well, doesn't mean that modelling works that way. People have survived falls from airplanes. And people have survived point blank shots to the head, or direct hits from rocket launchers. HP is not a good model for anything.

It's a model, I can model something much higher than fifth level and it will still be an accurate model. Just the inaccuracies will be in different spots. It's unreasonable to expect that a trained opponent will land less than one hit in six seconds on average. So that means that means that most trained fighters would be higher level than sixth. Or else you're modelling wrong. So you can't model that accurately at lower levels.

You're going to have model inaccuracy in different spots, but you can model things at conceivably any level, but you are never going to have a model which is 100% accurate.

So model a character who can pull a 747 (947,000 lbs) at level 5, if you can do that, I'll buy your fifth level argument.

Vaz

2014-08-03, 11:30 AM

True, but in real life if you had a well trained boxer and put him in a fight with three guys, he'd probably lose. But in D&D that would be not correct, a level four character could probably fight many commoners. The point is that D&D is not a good model, it just doesn't work like real life, you can use it to model concepts, but modeling people is almost impossible, since people just don't function that way.

TWF does not apply to unarmed strikes, furthermore D&D fighters can fight indefinitely. It's not a good model for real life. And in real life you could theoretically have somebody hit somebody else many more times. Four hits in six seconds is certainly possible, and it could certainly be an average people could hit, D&D is not a good combat simulator again. We're looking at where the verisimilitude breaks down.

Most people can do an unassisted Pullup. A dead-hang unassisted pullup with very little assistance. In my entire experience training people who had difficulty with the PFT (I worked in a training shop in the Marines for a very long time), I've only ever met one man who could not do three unassisted dead hang pull-ups, ever.

I'm also not sure that being able to lift weights would qualify as a strength check rather than carrying capacity. Certainly truck pulls are carrying capacity and a large sized truck can weigh many tons, and I've seen a human being (although I'm not sure how human he is) pull a 747, weighing 947,000 lbs. Even accounting for the wheels making it much easier, we'll say he had to pull the equivalent to half that's still significantly beyond strength 50. Even at 1/9th of the weight that's still beyond strength 50.

So the point is that real life just isn't modeled well by D&D

Did you just equate a recruit for the marines to being average lard-o on civi street? During my military time I've seen enough naval recruits struggle to manage a single unassisted pull up. Marines none. Because they knew where they were going and that pull ups were a thing. Most managed the minimum 6, about half the desired 12, by the end of the 2nd week at lympstone ,, and by week 32, pretty much all could do 20+ in battle order.

I would answer to more of your post, but I think you are seriously overestimating the average human commoner suggested in d&d, and feel like I'm wasting my time.

AMFV

2014-08-03, 11:37 AM

Did you just equate a recruit for the marines to being average lard-o on civi street? During my military time I've seen enough naval recruits struggle to manage a single unassisted pull up. Marines none. Because they knew where they were going and that pull ups were a thing. Most managed the minimum 6, about half the desired 12, by the end of the 2nd week at lympstone ,, and by week 32, pretty much all could do 20+ in battle order.

I equated active duty Marines, recruits aren't a good example because they spend literally all of their time training. I've also seen people just into Boot, and very few of them couldn't manage 3. I imagine all of them could do at least one, or the vast majority.

Actually I will say that, the vast majority of civilians could probably do a single pullup. I would estimate that at higher than seventy percent.

I would answer to more of your post, but I think you are seriously overestimating the average human commoner suggested in d&d, and feel like I'm wasting my time.

My point is that D&D is not necessarily an accurate model. Rather than say "the best human ever is level 5", which is absurd, since humans don't have levels, and certain human things cannot be modeled at level 5, and certain things fall apart. For example if Olympic Weightlifters are Barbarians, then they should be able to outfight most boxers, but they can't.

Instead of saying: "The most powerful human is fifth level", say "The highest level people in my world are X Level" then characters more powerful than that are rewriting the world. In FR if you are 10th level you could be a nobody. In Eberron being 10th level is enough to be shaping empires.

We should recognize that it's a model, and that having all of the guards be 60th level isn't a problem if the players are 90th level. Because the guards are still a fraction of their power. We should choose somebody's level based on their role in the narrative, not on what would be realistic, since any realism as far as levels go it falls apart when compared to real life.

Coidzor

2014-08-03, 11:52 AM

In the world of DnD where wizards sling fireballs (except if you're on this board) and fighters cry in the corner slay demons and dragons, your average guardsman is quite useless. I've seen many-a-thread about the point of guards, and I always thought to myself "they kinda are useless." I finally reached a conclusion, guards aren't there to kill all foes against them, they are there to cost their foes losses.

Let's assume foes are the players at this time. The players want to assault a merchant caravan, and the caravan has some guards. Taking into account power creep, and thus putting the PCs on a low, but above the average mook, level, probably the 5-8 range, the guards either are going to number in a small army, or aren't going to provide true protection. Would it be fair for the guards to gang up on one PC at a time specifically trying to kill them?

The reasoning would be if the threat of one of the party members dying is very very real the party would not be so careless. From the guards perspective, they know they won't succeed in killing all the attackers, so why not seriously kill one.

tl;dr the bolded statement

Well, they really should be trying to avoid situations where the enemy is able to focus-fire them one-by-one without paying a terrible cost for it. Though generally I find that most combatants would care more about dropping foes than directly killing them, per se, especially casters.

But if it's going to be an encounter then either you need to let it be the roflstomp it's going to be by the caravan guards being so out-leveled or it needs to be a legitimately difficult encounter that they couldn't breeze through anyway, even if they weren't focus-firing.

VoxRationis

2014-08-03, 11:56 AM

AMFV

2014-08-03, 12:07 PM

Knaight

2014-08-03, 12:58 PM

Threadnaught

2014-08-03, 01:29 PM

People have survived falls from airplanes.

Natural 20.

And people have survived point blank shots to the head

From a sawed-off shotgun?

or direct hits from rocket launchers.

Do note, I wasn't referring to the rocket launcher being thrown or swung at people. I'm referring to a rocket being shot and exploding with an unarmoured person being as close to the epicentre as possible

HP is not a good model for anything.

It is, it's just not complex enough in D&D to replicate durability as accurately as it could if there were multiple types of HP for each thing. It isn't entirely possible to break someone's arm without killing them in D&D is it?
With multiple sources of HP, it would be possible to break or even remove limbs completely without too much risk to the character having their hand cut off.

AMFV

2014-08-03, 01:40 PM

Natural 20.

From a sawed-off shotgun?

Do note, I wasn't referring to the rocket launcher being thrown or swung at people. I'm referring to a rocket being shot and exploding with an unarmoured person being as close to the epicentre as possible

It is, it's just not complex enough in D&D to replicate durability as accurately as it could if there were multiple types of HP for each thing. It isn't entirely possible to break someone's arm without killing them in D&D is it?
With multiple sources of HP, it would be possible to break or even remove limbs completely without too much risk to the character having their hand cut off.

I've known people who survived IED hits from close range, just cause they got lucky. It happens. People have died from getting splinters if they get an infection and don't notice it. Health is already a complex subject in real life.

Furthermore you still can't model all that people are capable of, as we've pointed out, the 747 pull is probably not modelable without magical assistance at all. So the model is going to be inaccurate the question is which inaccuracies you'll tolerate.

Vaz

2014-08-03, 01:44 PM

Bellcurve outliers.

AMFV

2014-08-03, 01:50 PM

Bellcurve outliers.

The point is that you cannot create a model that accurately represents real life using D&D rules, you can say: 'I want to model how survivable people are', but then you can't model how strong and skilled people are. You're going to have some issues with the model in either direction, because it's at best a fitted model, and which things matter are issues of preference. Now somebody could say: "Here is the lowest level you could model something at", and that works, but you can't say: "This is the upper bound"

Vaz

2014-08-03, 02:20 PM

AMFV

2014-08-03, 02:29 PM

Honestly we are getting off track here.

The gaming system accurately enough represents the stereotypical human in a fantasy setting of whichever d20 based game setting the DM decides to play, until of course, some smartypants decides to prove a point because they absolutely must prove that someone is wrong.

Yes, it does quite adequately model an average human... As I said. But what an average human is, can vary completely from setting to setting without the model itself breaking down. In FR again, fourth level is not uncommon for completely average people. In Eberron at fourth level, you're pretty much a mover and a shaker.

The point is that fifth level is not adequate to model a human for the same reason that 20th level isn't. Humans do not transcribe effectively over to D&D without it being a model, and at that point we're looking at design decisions on the part of the modeler. So it's not that humans are fifth level, it'd be: "I want fifth level characters to be significant in my campaign world" or "I want fifth level characters to potentially still be relative nobodies". Neither model is more inaccurate, but both models are equally inaccurate in different ways, as far as real life is concerned. We should remember that we are not trying to replicate real life, but rather literary and fictional works.

Snails

2014-08-04, 12:50 PM

This "5th level = realistic, 6 & up is throw-reality-out-the-window" idea keeps popping up on this forum, and it bugs me, because the skill and attack bonus progressions make it very difficult to attain real-world degrees of proficiency at 5th level or below. You can't make a skilled but realistic fencer under that kind of philosophy.

It is a useful idea for illustration purposes, because we every so often hear the complaint "Gee, this Skill system sucks because a 13th level Rogue can do X, and that is completely unrealistic without magic." And the answer, of course, is "Good! Because once you get into the middling levels, the difference between very skilled and magic starts to become ambiguous, in our mundane lowish level eyes."

When it comes to detailed specific combat examples, D&D is designed to be unrealistic. So your suggestion that there may be a problem with how the system models fencers may not be a problem, but a feature.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 01:01 PM

It is a useful idea for illustration purposes, because we every so often hear the complaint "Gee, this Skill system sucks because a 13th level Rogue can do X, and that is completely unrealistic without magic." And the answer, of course, is "Good! Because once you get into the middling levels, the difference between very skilled and magic starts to become ambiguous, in our mundane lowish level eyes."

When it comes to detailed specific combat examples, D&D is designed to be unrealistic. So your suggestion that there may be a problem with how the system models fencers may not be a problem, but a feature.

I've never really heard anybody complain that the rogue was too powerful or really complain about realism in D&D at all. Realism isn't a design goal of the system as you say, even for skills. I have heard many people assert that "all real world humans are level five or below" which is kind of absurd, since people have no levels, but it becomes a problem when they go on to assert: "Therefore, no character could be more powerful than that if they aren't uberhighpowered" It's entirely possible to run a mid-level D&D game that isn't superheroes.

VoxRationis

2014-08-04, 03:25 PM

Well, I've complained about things being unrealistic in D&D a lot, but thank you for your assertion about a more down-to-earth mid-game.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 03:58 PM

Well, I've complained about things being unrealistic in D&D a lot, but thank you for your assertion about a more down-to-earth mid-game.

Well to be absolutely fair, most of the complaints I've seen from this aren't really all that grounded in how things work in reality, in any case. I'll amend my statement some, I've seen people complain about it, but never in a way I thought was significant.

The point is that if you file off and alter the numbers you can create similar sort of challenges for a mid-level or even a high-level party as a low level party. At low levels 5 Orc Warrior 1s could provide a challenge at mid Level 5 Orc Warblade 5s could, and so on and so on. It's a matter of upping the abilities of enemies. Of course this does create certain problems if you've started from low level, if you continually increase lower level enemies power players don't feel like they're progressing.

Blink Knight

2014-08-04, 04:12 PM

Well to be absolutely fair, most of the complaints I've seen from this aren't really all that grounded in how things work in reality, in any case. I'll amend my statement some, I've seen people complain about it, but never in a way I thought was significant.

The point is that if you file off and alter the numbers you can create similar sort of challenges for a mid-level or even a high-level party as a low level party. At low levels 5 Orc Warrior 1s could provide a challenge at mid Level 5 Orc Warblade 5s could, and so on and so on. It's a matter of upping the abilities of enemies. Of course this does create certain problems if you've started from low level, if you continually increase lower level enemies power players don't feel like they're progressing.

This is completely false.

You could do that at low or even sometimes mid levels, but a lot of concepts flat out don't scale at high levels.

At high levels you don't care how many warriors or giant scorpions or Tarrasques there are, they're not on your level.

Conversely there are certain enemy types that don't scale DOWN very much as you outlevel them, and say... a group of 8 Shadows is more dangerous for a level 8 party than a pair of Shadows is for a level 4 party. Even though those are both level + 1 encounters and even though the level 4 characters aren't that far ahead of a Shadow.

SowZ

2014-08-04, 04:14 PM

why are all your guards low level :\

their job is literally to participate in encounters all day every day, get paid for it with a monthly stipend, and that doesnt count bribes and or random stuff dropped from criminals that isnt catalogued. I dont see why a guard has to be low level when level one characters level up doing less than them.

Maybe the Dmg says otherwise, but if it does you should discount that. Theres nothing within ranges 1-8 that players will do that it isnt perfectly ordinary for people to expect guards to do as well... So, rather than murdering players with focused fire, why not make some of those guards a higher level an make it a fair fight :D

Well, part of it is that most guards have probably killed very few real warriors. It's the same reason most soldiers in war don't get any kills. For every soldier that gets a kill, another soldier doesn't, (and is dead.) So unless everyone takes turns, (person A kills B who is killed by C who is killed by D and so on,) or literally half of each side is dead, most veterans of a war haven't killed anybody. The same is true of guards. They may have been in a number of fights, most of them non-lethal, but the majority of guards won't have had enough real action to be higher than level 3 or so. Look at cops. Most cops never discharge their weapon on someone in a whole career. Nothing prevents you from having special forces, though.

Those guys that get to level 3? The ones who want to improve and show the most promise, (maybe a higher array of stats,) get promoted to the equivalent of SWAT team. Most the time, they do the same crap as everyone else. So any given unit of guards may have one or two SWAT guys on patrol. But when a criminal hide out needs to be raided or a stronger monster/adventurer is in town causing problems? SWAT is who is called. So, yeah, you can have level 5-8 guards, but those guys are probably selected to get the most action. You will, inevitably, have mostly 1-3 level guards. A big part of this is because these guys wait for trouble to come to them. They don't go looking for trouble.

A caravan is not limited to guards, though. He can hire shady goons and mercs. They might be a few levels higher. After all, they go looking for trouble. And while mercs and goons are mostly not going to have kills under their belt either, the ones that have never killed anyone are mostly dead themselves. Most mercs are still going to be levels 2-5 or so, but one or two might be 6 or 7. The caravan dude is going to hire the best guys, guys better than all but the elite guardsman, because the outside world is very dangerous.

TL;DR. While I agree that guards are mostly low level, a few can be pretty strong. But it doesn't matter, because caravan guards are +1 to city guards.

icefractal

2014-08-04, 04:24 PM

I think the key thing is to be consistent. If a standard city watchman is a 10th level Warblade, then fine. That means that most creatures are no threat to a city. Troll shows up in the marketplace causing havoc? Nearest guard dices it up in a few seconds. Dragon flying around? If it's not Ancient+, it's going to be a pincushion the second it starts making trouble. Very different than the typical campaign, but not impossible to work with.

The thing that's just bad is when the guards scale to the level of the party. So back at 1st level, the guards were 2nd level Warriors, but now the party is 15th level and suddenly all the guards are also. That **** was terrible in Oblivion, and it's even worse in a TTRPG.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 04:31 PM

This is completely false.

You could do that at low or even sometimes mid levels, but a lot of concepts flat out don't scale at high levels.

At high levels you don't care how many warriors or giant scorpions or Tarrasques there are, they're not on your level.

Conversely there are certain enemy types that don't scale DOWN very much as you outlevel them, and say... a group of 8 Shadows is more dangerous for a level 8 party than a pair of Shadows is for a level 4 party. Even though those are both level + 1 encounters and even though the level 4 characters aren't that far ahead of a Shadow.

You are mistaken sir. I was never talking about how many, if you'll note the numbers remained identical but the levels and degrees of optimization shifted. It just takes optimization to create a challenge of the same type at a higher level. For example you can make a melee monster terrifying, you just need to give it the appropriate immunities and such to make it frightening for a few levels. You can make a horde of Orcs, terrifying, give them all Mad Foam Rager, and Instantaneous Frenzy, make them Frenzied Berserkers... now they are immune to death through damage (because Frenzy), and they can ignore one effect till the end of their Frenzy... so even on a failed save they may still be in the fight.

That's a pretty tough encounter, manageable, but it's likely to be pretty frightening for a mid-high level of people playing at anything under the very highest echelons of optimization. Of course if they are at the higher levels of optimization you'll have to construct different encounters. Remember if everybody's high level, nobody is.

I think the key thing is to be consistent. If a standard city watchman is a 10th level Warblade, then fine. That means that most creatures are no threat to a city. Troll shows up in the marketplace causing havoc? Nearest guard dices it up in a few seconds. Dragon flying around? If it's not Ancient+, it's going to be a pincushion the second it starts making trouble. Very different than the typical campaign, but not impossible to work with.

The thing that's just bad is when the guards scale to the level of the party. So back at 1st level, the guards were 2nd level Warriors, but now the party is 15th level and suddenly all the guards are also. That **** was terrible in Oblivion, and it's even worse in a TTRPG.

Well it depends, the guards scaling to the level of the party, may prove irritating or not. You can have the average guards remain low level (and note that may be different in different campaigns), and then have the players start to encounter Elite Special units and such. It really depends on the sort of campaign. Also a non-Ancient Dragon could shred a level 10 Warblade, remember Dragons can be optimized too, and Warblades have very few mobility options.

Blink Knight

2014-08-04, 04:37 PM

You are mistaken sir. I was never talking about how many, if you'll note the numbers remained identical but the levels and degrees of optimization shifted. It just takes optimization to create a challenge of the same type at a higher level. For example you can make a melee monster terrifying, you just need to give it the appropriate immunities and such to make it frightening for a few levels. You can make a horde of Orcs, terrifying, give them all Mad Foam Rager, and Instantaneous Frenzy, make them Frenzied Berserkers... now they are immune to death through damage (because Frenzy), and they can ignore one effect till the end of their Frenzy... so even on a failed save they may still be in the fight.

That's a pretty tough encounter, manageable, but it's likely to be pretty frightening for a mid-high level of people playing at anything under the very highest echelons of optimization. Of course if they are at the higher levels of optimization you'll have to construct different encounters. Remember if everybody's high level, nobody is.

They're melee only, you're flying. Or invisible. Or teleporting. See what I mean? You have no reason to ever get down there and trade hits even if you encounter them at all. Know what level of optimization that takes? Near zero. Just using core only abilities as intended. (By the way, Frenzy does absolutely nothing to prevent unconsciousness via nonlethal damage, it also inflicts nonlethal damage and therefore literally does nothing because they will be KOed, drop from frenzy, then die)

Now you can send a dragon in the sky after the party, and said dragon could even make melee attacks on the party or even be good in melee combat but we're no longer talking about any number of ground bound melee humanoids. We're talking about an entirely different sort of encounter (that doesn't scale to low levels, because even a weak creature with aerial ability would kill a low level party).

There is more to scaling than level or HD, and if you still don't believe that I'm gonna let you think whatever you want and keep talking to someone else about it.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 04:45 PM

They're melee only, you're flying. Or invisible. Or teleporting. See what I mean? You have no reason to ever get down there and trade hits even if you encounter them at all. Know what level of optimization that takes? Near zero. Just using core only abilities as intended. (By the way, Frenzy does absolutely nothing to prevent unconsciousness via nonlethal damage, it also inflicts nonlethal damage and therefore literally does nothing because they will be KOed, drop from frenzy, then die)

Now you can send a dragon in the sky after the party, and said dragon could even make melee attacks on the party or even be good in melee combat but we're no longer talking about any number of ground bound melee humanoids. We're talking about an entirely different sort of encounter (that doesn't scale to low levels, because even a weak creature with aerial ability would kill a low level party).

There is more to scaling than level or HD, and if you still don't believe that I'm gonna let you think whatever you want and keep talking to someone else about it.

There are lots of ways for melee characters to get flight... and my NPCs always have equipment... And if your first thought on encountered a Horde of Orcs is "Nonlethal damage," and you have effective ways of delivering it... Then you might just be Schrodinger's Wizard.

Your complaints are only valid if you take away the NPC's ability to have the same items. Furthermore, there are ways to force your players to fight in areas they can't fly... Some kind of thing... maybe something in the very name of the game Dungeons and Dragons.

There are also tons of ways to force things down... A shaman who casts Downdraft or Control Weather. Enemy Wizards making the top of the battlefield the exact place you don't want to be.

And yes, there are ways to beat the encounter, but remember a DM isn't trying to kill the PCs, he's trying to challenge them, and a horde of Barbarians who can't die, works really well as a challenge.

Also, Mad Foam Rager works just fine to stop unconsciousness.

icefractal

2014-08-04, 05:06 PM

Well it depends, the guards scaling to the level of the party, may prove irritating or not. You can have the average guards remain low level (and note that may be different in different campaigns), and then have the players start to encounter Elite Special units and such. It really depends on the sort of campaign.If they're explicitly different in the game-world, that's fine. I don't think anyone would complain that the emperor's personal bodyguards are more competent than a watchman in a small village. However, I do think they need to be taken into account from the beginning. If early in the campaign you have a plot like "a band of trolls is blocking all travel along [major trading route] and nobody can stop them", and then later on the Merchant's Guild employs 10th level guards for their caravans, that's going to seem pretty questionable.

Also, one thing that's as annoying as Oblivion syndrome, but different, is jRPG syndrome. That's where you start out in Corneria, a medium-sized village, and the guards are 2nd level. Then after quite a while, you end up in Airenroc, another medium-sized village, not particularly different in significance, but the guards there are 15th level (and the inn costs 10x as much :smallamused:) Going to a new place won't explain a shift in level, unless the new place actually has a reason for being different.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 05:08 PM

If they're explicitly different in the game-world, that's fine. I don't think anyone would complain that the emperor's personal bodyguards are more competent than a watchman in a small village. However, I do think they need to be taken into account from the beginning. If early in the campaign you have a plot like "a band of trolls is blocking all travel along [major trading route] and nobody can stop them", and then later on the Merchant's Guild employs 10th level guards for their caravans, that's going to seem pretty questionable.

Also, one thing that's as annoying as Oblivion syndrome, but different, is jRPG syndrome. That's where you start out in Corneria, a medium-sized village, and the guards are 2nd level. Then after quite a while, you end up in Airenroc, another medium-sized village, not particularly different in significance, but the guards there are 15th level (and the inn costs 10x as much :smallamused:) Going to a new place won't explain a shift in level, unless the new place actually has a reason for being different.

Well as long as level is an in-world construct, it's quite possible to have a game (like many video games) where level doesn't actually really exist in-world at all. So while you're getting more cool abilities and options, you don't become relatively that much more powerful. That's kind of the Oblivion way of looking at it, I think. I imagine it'd be fine as long as it was discussed with players first.

Blink Knight

2014-08-04, 05:17 PM

There are lots of ways for melee characters to get flight... and my NPCs always have equipment... And if your first thought on encountered a Horde of Orcs is "Nonlethal damage," and you have effective ways of delivering it... Then you might just be Schrodinger's Wizard.

You weren't paying attention to what I said. Here it is again:

Your Frenzied Berserkers are constantly inflicting nonlethal damage to themselves. That's what Frenzy does. Frenzy does not prevent unconsciousness from nonlethal damage, it also ends on unconsciousness. Your Frenzied Berserkers drop at the same moment they normally would (perhaps a little sooner). Unconsciousness ends Frenzy, killing them. Working as intended? Probably not, but any experienced D&D player is well used to these sorts of trollish game mechanics that lead you to think something is a good idea or will work when the truth is anything but.

The high level party (and some mid level parties) are not traveling on the ground if they're traveling in an interruptible form at all. If desired, they could hang out in the sky and watch the angry Orcs jump around and slowly knock themselves out with self inflicted damage.

Your complaints are only valid if you take away the NPC's ability to have the same items. Furthermore, there are ways to force your players to fight in areas they can't fly... Some kind of thing... maybe something in the very name of the game Dungeons and Dragons.

1: You're not talking about the same encounters with bigger number anymore, meaning you understand there's more to scaling than more levels or HD. 2: NPCs have low wealth. 3: Dungeons are the arch example of "concepts that scale horribly with level". You were better off with the Orcs outside. Location based adventures stop functioning at mid and high levels.

There are also tons of ways to force things down... A shaman who casts Downdraft or Control Weather. Enemy Wizards making the top of the battlefield the exact place you don't want to be.

And yes, there are ways to beat the encounter, but remember a DM isn't trying to kill the PCs, he's trying to challenge them, and a horde of Barbarians who can't die, works really well as a challenge.

Throwing in casters = no longer the same encounter.

And if your idea actually did work the way you thought it did, in no way, shape, or form is a literally undefeatable opponent a "challenge", and not a "you die now" so it's quite fortunate they lack the ability to even engage you, and their so called immortality does not function the way you think it does.

sleepyphoenixx

2014-08-04, 05:18 PM

Your complaints are only valid if you take away the NPC's ability to have the same items. Furthermore, there are ways to force your players to fight in areas they can't fly... Some kind of thing... maybe something in the very name of the game Dungeons and Dragons.

The problem is that you kind of have to. Giving every melee monster items of flight, Freedom of Movement, etc. goes way above the normal treasure scale. Each encounter the party wins throws WBL off more, making it harder and harder to challenge the party.
Even switching to potions is not really feasible because in the time it takes to drink enough for the standard buffs the encounter will effectively be over.

The more options the party gets the more you need to rely on innate abilities to counter at least some of them for your monsters to keep up.

Regarding your example, frenzied berserkers are not really a challenge to any half-competent party. They are stopped cold by anything that forces a balance check, breaks LoS (where they will instead start killing each other), appropiate BFC or just leaving and coming back a few minutes later. You'd have to force the party to actually engage in melee which is pretty hard to do with mid-high level PCs that don't want to.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 05:35 PM

The problem is that you kind of have to. Giving every melee monster items of flight, Freedom of Movement, etc. goes way above the normal treasure scale. Each encounter the party wins throws WBL off more, making it harder and harder to challenge the party.
Even switching to potions is not really feasible because in the time it takes to drink enough for the standard buffs the encounter will effectively be over.

Those come in potions, and furthermore, items of fly are certainly outside of a monster's treasure portions at mid level. NPCs get valuables too, and they should be set not to throw off wealth by level. Monster treasure is just fine, and you can adjust wealth by level as necessary.

The more options the party gets the more you need to rely on innate abilities to counter at least some of them for your monsters to keep up.

Regarding your example, frenzied berserkers are not really a challenge to any half-competent party. They are stopped cold by anything that forces a balance check, breaks LoS (where they will instead start killing each other), appropiate BFC or just leaving and coming back a few minutes later. You'd have to force the party to actually engage in melee which is pretty hard to do with mid-high level PCs that don't want to.

It can be, although it's not impossible, that was an example at moderate optimization, it's possible to have a similar example at higher optimization. I optimize my encounters to my players. But you can build a horde encounter that's still frightening for other reasons. Also even regular Barbarians with Mad Foam Rager are pretty aggravating for most parties, that and Thrall of Demogorgon, and you're looking at some serious problems for almost everybody. And flight is relatively easy to obtain, or to beat.

I'm not going to point out that most things can be countered at least temporarily, that's a known thing, the optimization level of my party and tone of my campaign determines if I deal with fliers by having the melee drink potions of fly, somebody cast downdraft, or an invisible flying Warlock with Reaving Dispel.

The issue is that as a DM you should know all of your party's strengths, and that's not fair, but it should allow you to present them with challenges that will prove to be difficult for them.

Edit: Also it's worth noting that Mad Foam Rager disables grease or most ways to force a Balance check and the Barbarians can do it twice, since they have both Rage and Frenzy.

Threadnaught

2014-08-04, 07:57 PM

Your complaints are only valid if you take away the NPC's ability to have the same items. Furthermore, there are ways to force your players to fight in areas they can't fly... Some kind of thing... maybe something in the very name of the game Dungeons and Dragons.

Yes, there are ways to force Players, it's called railroading.
Your Wizard doesn't Cast Fly, or fight the Orc Army in a canyon where you have reinforcements, you go underground where they can reach you without going through a storm of arrows and cast Disjunction on yourself to destroy all Magic Items and previously cast buffs, because it's challenging.

There are also tons of ways to force things down... A shaman who casts Downdraft or Control Weather. Enemy Wizards making the top of the battlefield the exact place you don't want to be.

Control Weather requires 10 minutes Casting and another 10 minutes for the effect to take place. You're either looking at some pretty lengthy combat lasting at least 200 rounds, or someone who is very prepared for a very specific enemy.

And yes, there are ways to beat the encounter, but remember a DM isn't trying to kill the PCs, he's trying to challenge them, and a horde of Barbarians who can't die, works really well as a challenge.

A horde of Barbarians who can't die are effectively the Tarrasque, that thing can't die either, but it's pretty easy to contain based on the numerous times someone has wrote up a method of keeping it locked up for eternity. The Barbarians are just slightly more numerous/dangerous.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 08:46 PM

Yes, there are ways to force Players, it's called railroading.
Your Wizard doesn't Cast Fly, or fight the Orc Army in a canyon where you have reinforcements, you go underground where they can reach you without going through a storm of arrows and cast Disjunction on yourself to destroy all Magic Items and previously cast buffs, because it's challenging.

And not all railroading is bad. Else there'd be no plot and it'd just be sandboxes.

Control Weather requires 10 minutes Casting and another 10 minutes for the effect to take place. You're either looking at some pretty lengthy combat lasting at least 200 rounds, or someone who is very prepared for a very specific enemy.

Like somebody who is prepared for legendary heroes that they've used divination spells to study, seems pretty likely.

A horde of Barbarians who can't die are effectively the Tarrasque, that thing can't die either, but it's pretty easy to contain based on the numerous times someone has wrote up a method of keeping it locked up for eternity. The Barbarians are just slightly more numerous/dangerous.

The Tarrasque is actually easy to kill, and can't ignore any spell or attack for a long period of time, twice actually, and more if we include IHS.

Blink Knight

2014-08-04, 09:11 PM

Or the players could be legitimately interested in what is going on in the game and voluntarily go in that direction.

In a game where higher level enemies are literal palette swaps of lower level enemies, just increasing numerical statistics as a means of increasing challenge makes sense. In a more open ended, flexible and dynamic game (like any tabletop game) creatures are expected to get different and more numerous as well as stronger abilities.

Treating a tabletop game like a video game is at best missing the entire point of a tabletop game. It inevitably results in complaints that [Powerful One Dimensional Creature] was easily slain via non HP damage based means or bypassed outright.

If a high level party encounters bandits, the bandits won't be doing the robbing. If you want to threaten them for their financial resources make a territorial dragon do it.

ddude987

2014-08-04, 09:13 PM

And not all railroading is bad. Else there'd be no plot and it'd just be sandboxes.

I disagree there, you don't need railroading to generate a story. If the characters (being played by players) act in a realistic manner, they could very well create a story without the DM railroading.

Story

2014-08-04, 09:29 PM

ddude987

2014-08-04, 09:43 PM

Which technically can be purchased via scroll pretty easily.

Story

2014-08-04, 09:53 PM

Yeah but WBL is an issue.

AMFV

2014-08-04, 10:40 PM

Your Frenzied Berserkers are constantly inflicting nonlethal damage to themselves. That's what Frenzy does. Frenzy does not prevent unconsciousness from nonlethal damage, it also ends on unconsciousness. Your Frenzied Berserkers drop at the same moment they normally would (perhaps a little sooner).

Which is when they're supposed to drop, after the players have had a little bit of fear and an exciting combat. I assure you I could build an unbeatable enemy (particularly since I can rule anything I like to my advantage). But that's poor form and it makes the game less fun, the tricky part is to make an enemy that fights well enough to frighten the players to have dramatic tension.

As to the palette swaps comment. I addressed it, two posts ago, if you aren't going to even read the things I'm typing then I'm not going to waste my time which is fairly valuable to type up complex and thought out answers to your posts.

Blink Knight

2014-08-04, 10:51 PM

As to the palette swaps comment. I addressed it, two posts ago, if you aren't going to even read the things I'm typing then I'm not going to waste my time which is fairly valuable to type up complex and thought out answers to your posts.

I read it. It's not directed at me and does not address that point. Though given that you're arguing in favor of using low level concepts at high levels by replacing the low level concepts with high level concepts I'm not sure that you're reading your own posts.

Although if your answer is seriously that you'll make an unkillable enemy and then kill it when you get bored we've went a bit past the lack of creativity and adaptability present in a video game like experience. Do tell, what are the players actually doing here if they have no control over what happens on a micro or macro scale?

AMFV

2014-08-04, 11:08 PM

I read it. It's not directed at me and does not address that point. Though given that you're arguing in favor of using low level concepts at high levels by replacing the low level concepts with high level concepts I'm not sure that you're reading your own posts.

I'm arguing that high level play can replicate lower level play if necessary without too much work (although it does take more work). I haven't argued FOR ANYTHING. I've only argued that certain things were possible, then when I pointed out how they were possible you then responded by accusing me of claiming that those things were the only things that were possible, which is a misrepresentation of my entire argument, again... are you going to actually read my posts? I've never said that anything was the way it should be done, only that it was possible.

Although if your answer is seriously that you'll make an unkillable enemy and then kill it when you get bored we've went a bit past the lack of creativity and adaptability present in a video game like experience. Do tell, what are the players actually doing here if they have no control over what happens on a micro or macro scale?

The players have control, and several ways to stop the Frenzied Berserkers were pointed out. The point I was making is that they can ignore one or two of those, which is probably two turns of game time, that's enough to make a battle significant and memorable instead of being: "The wizard sleeps everybody" or "the wizard casts grease". It would be "The Wizard casts grease, but the Barbarians sheer rage allows them to overcome it..." and a few rounds of that, allowing for a more memorable combat, using enemies that are functionally equivalent to lower level enemies.

As an important note, High level concepts are very hard to make work at lower levels. At higher levels you have so many more options it's not even funny, and a good DM will use them to great effect.

The Insanity

2014-08-05, 01:08 AM

I'm arguing that high level play can replicate lower level play if necessary without too much work (although it does take more work).
Then why won't you just, you know, play low level instead? It kinda misses the point of playing high level if it's the same as low level...

AMFV

2014-08-05, 08:44 AM

Then why won't you just, you know, play low level instead? It kinda misses the point of playing high level if it's the same as low level...

I don't like playing low level, first off. Second off, the point I'm making, and have been stating repeatedly, in fact in the very post before this one, and I believe in almost every post prior to that since this discussion, is that it is possible to use the same type of encounters in higher level. It gives you more options, it doesn't necessarily limit them.

Vaz

2014-08-05, 09:26 AM

Yeah but WBL is an issue.

Not really. Dischargeable goodies like Contingent Spells, Skull Talismans, Potions or Scrolls are fantastic. You can then give stuff to the party via Wands or Staffs, but for the more broken stuff lets you shore up defences to make your encounters more difficult. You do burn an action possibly, but you should have ways around that.

If you're using melee characters that can be got around by flying, you might as well save the time on stating them out and put a wall in its place. It's the same result in the end, a spent spell slot to avoid the hazard. It also shouldn't offer XP - it's hardly a challenge, or a significant reduction in resources.

It would be like saying you're a party with a Cleric 20 put on a desert island with a load of refugees from a crashed boat, giving them the shaken condition, some of them sickened . You must survive for 10 days. It can create food and drink (at most, having to wait a day), or it can even get off of the island on its own. It's no challenge, really waiting that long. A low level party however who does not have a Cleric with access to Food and Drink would be reliant on having to scavenge for food through the survival skill. The extremes of temperature might need shelters to be created etc. It's not just a matter of "expending resources", but to be challenging to do so. For example, a high level ranger with the ability to hit DC40 checks on a take 10 at each attempt with Survival lets it easily look after those people who crashed on the island, and it's not a challenge. One who has to scavenge for food for 15 people (DC40) with a total check of 15 on a take 10 might require him to teach some people how to forage (Retraining etc). That is what would be a use of the resources.

Now, like I said, a Fighter who cannot harm a caster thanks to Friendly Fire and Flying is no challenge whatsoever - especially if there is something like Echoing Spell or Persist going on with it. It is no challenge and has not reduced the resources massively. There should be no xp. If there is no xp, why should the party fight it? Either use small amount of resources to avoid, or use a few more and get more XP? Bear in mind this might be considered houserules, but we know that the CR system is screwy, and so used as nothing more than a guideline, so I've not got a problem with recognising that less resources used = less XP given to the party. A ninja who sneaks around hidden will get more XP if it has a higher chance of being spotted (risk = reward, basically). One which is wandering around with Darkstalker and a hide/move silently check of the targets spot/listen check +21 is not going to get as much XP as one with a check of +1 and no darkstalker - but only if they're successful.

I'm sure you're all going to tell me how terrible a DM I am that I don't let my party play using their abilities to the full - but that's a rare occurence - for example, against the ninja, I might use See Invisibility, and Touchsight, with boosted Wisdom scores for Listen/Move Silently, etc.

Against a flying ubercharger melee fighter with an insane Spell Resistance and AC, you can bet your bottom dollar that I have wings and some form of touch attack at range.

AMFV

2014-08-05, 09:38 AM

Before I start, I want to note that I'm not disagreeing at all, your post was excellent, and I agree fully with it. I just have a few tangential points to add.

Not really. Dischargeable goodies like Contingent Spells, Skull Talismans, Potions or Scrolls are fantastic. You can then give stuff to the party via Wands or Staffs, but for the more broken stuff lets you shore up defences to make your encounters more difficult. You do burn an action possibly, but you should have ways around that.

If you're using melee characters that can be got around by flying, you might as well save the time on stating them out and put a wall in its place. It's the same result in the end, a spent spell slot to avoid the hazard. It also shouldn't offer XP - it's hardly a challenge, or a significant reduction in resources.

This is true, you definitely need to plan your hazards to your specific party, as I was saying with a flying party, you need the adversaries to have ways for the enemies to fly, which comes in potions, as I said. Or some way to keep them on the ground, Downdraft, a precast control weather, a really big scary flying hazard that makes the ground seem safer. Or hell somebody could use a familiar to cast a fog spell in the sky above the enemies, that would block LoE and force your party down if they have to engage.

It would be like saying you're a party with a Cleric 20 put on a desert island with a load of refugees from a crashed boat, giving them the shaken condition, some of them sickened . You must survive for 10 days. It can create food and drink (at most, having to wait a day), or it can even get off of the island on its own. It's no challenge, really waiting that long. A low level party however who does not have a Cleric with access to Food and Drink would be reliant on having to scavenge for food through the survival skill. The extremes of temperature might need shelters to be created etc. It's not just a matter of "expending resources", but to be challenging to do so. For example, a high level ranger with the ability to hit DC40 checks on a take 10 at each attempt with Survival lets it easily look after those people who crashed on the island, and it's not a challenge. One who has to scavenge for food for 15 people (DC40) with a total check of 15 on a take 10 might require him to teach some people how to forage (Retraining etc). That is what would be a use of the resources.

Which is why you alter the encounter somewhat, you put the Cleric 20 on a desert island in a dead magic zone, or a wild magic zone. You put the island on the Elemental Plane of Fire, or Tartarus. You could make the Survivors all contract Mummy Rot, or something worse. You could make more survivors than the cleric could feed and have the local food supplies be corrupted.

Now, like I said, a Fighter who cannot harm a caster thanks to Friendly Fire and Flying is no challenge whatsoever - especially if there is something like Echoing Spell or Persist going on with it. It is no challenge and has not reduced the resources massively. There should be no xp. If there is no xp, why should the party fight it? Either use small amount of resources to avoid, or use a few more and get more XP? Bear in mind this might be considered houserules, but we know that the CR system is screwy, and so used as nothing more than a guideline, so I've not got a problem with recognising that less resources used = less XP given to the party. A ninja who sneaks around hidden will get more XP if it has a higher chance of being spotted (risk = reward, basically). One which is wandering around with Darkstalker and a hide/move silently check of the targets spot/listen check +21 is not going to get as much XP as one with a check of +1 and no darkstalker - but only if they're successful.

I'm sure you're all going to tell me how terrible a DM I am that I don't let my party play using their abilities to the full - but that's a rare occurence - for example, against the ninja, I might use See Invisibility, and Touchsight, with boosted Wisdom scores for Listen/Move Silently, etc.

Against a flying ubercharger melee fighter with an insane Spell Resistance and AC, you can bet your bottom dollar that I have wings and some form of touch attack at range.

I agree with this, however I want to add that building adversaries for each PC to be overcome by, can make them start to feel superfluous, at least to my thinking, you want a happy medium.