Should commoners be more powerful?

[danzibr]

I don't necessarily mean the Commoner class.

The other day I was walking home from work and saw a stray cat in my yard. I thought if this were 3.5, I could be in serious trouble. Then I got to thinking about how stats are done for NPC's. The average person probably won't be equally (when it comes to modifiers) strong, hale, swift, smart, wise and charismatic.

So. What changes would you make to commoners in D&D?

[LoyalPaladin]

This is a tough'n. I think I'd say all commoners would have an array of 8's still, with one or two scores of 10. I think if we exported our world over to the D&D verse, you'd have to somewhat nerf the common world (cats). But it makes sense for fantasy creatures to be so blatantly overpowering. We can't fight a bear normally, so we'd have no chance against a dire bear. That's an extreme example, but still.

[The Glyphstone]

I only use the actual Commoner class for children, beggars, or people otherwise infirm in some manner - the baseline 'NPC class' for games I run is Expert, even if their Expertise happens to be in farming or whatever.

As for stats...well, the 10 baseline is supposed to be average. If you want to raise one, drop another by a point or two. Or just use the Stat Arrays; there is a Non-Elite Array and an Elite Array of NPC stats you can use.

[Spore]

First of all you have obviously never seen a cornered domesticated cat fight for survival. I have neither but I have witnessed my cat scared to death by a Bernese dog in my apartment. These things are vicious. My cat didn't let ME touch him, an I owned him for 7 years and was trusted.

Secondly the main problem in my opinion is that unarmed human(oid) creatures without natural attacks never count as armed. Still, if you grab something that qualifies as "tougher stick" aka club, you're golden, even as poor commoner. That's the problem. Lastly, unlike stubborn humans, cats flee when they have a chance. They would never pit their strength against a human. Even feral cats would flee because even surviving the encounter could mean they could starve (personally I see a broken appendage as unconscious or worse) or getting attacked by other wildlife (I recall bleeding giving a bonus on Survival checks using scent).

So scrub off the illusion that you can snap a cat or dog on two just because you are a human.

[Ruethgar]

Mostly what Soreegg said. If a cat were really intent on hurting you it could cause some serious injury. But something D&D doesn't take into account very well is fear. Most animals, especially smaller ones, will default to flee unless they have reason to fight like babies, revenge, food, or being cornered. True, a cat shouldn't be able to almost instantly always kill a human, but you can solve that with a commoner flaw and toughness unless you're needing that feat for optimization in which case the problem should be moot anyway since low level optimized commoners can be up around T3-T4 or so and easily able to deal with most level appropriate(or slightly above) encounters.

[Chronos]

Yeah, if a housecat seriously intended to kill you, come Hell or high water, you'd have a significant chance of losing that fight. You'd be favored to win, but the odds wouldn't be at all comfortable. Just like the D&D first-level commoner, who (despite the cliche) also has a better-than-even chance against a housecat. What saves us from cats isn't our brawn, so much as the fact that cats (usually) aren't that insane.

And commoners don't have straight 10s for stats. That's just a shortcut to speed the game along, for NPCs of little importance. Though, to be honest, if they're that unimportant, then they probably shouldn't be given any stats at all. It's never explicitly stated in the rules, but the designers seemed to be working from the assumption that ordinary NPCs all have stats drawn from a roll of 3d6. So, yeah, you can have a few farmers (about a half of a percent of them) who just happened to get an 18 Int or whatever.

[Karl Aegis]

"Commoner" is such a distasteful word. Are they not people like you or I? Should they not be treated with the dignity of a person? I would do away with the term "Commoner". Without the term, there would be no need for the class. Can we not represent the normal man with a variation of Expert?

[Zanos]

I think it was brought up in a previous conversations that if you were actually trying to fight a cat you would grapple it, not make attacks, and the cat has a -12 grapple mod. If you can start a grapple you can just strangle it fairly easily.

[danzibr]

Thanks for the responses all!

In no particular order...

Karl Aegis: The 3d6 makes more sense than the straight 10's. Answers the equally strong/etc. question.

The Glyphstone: That's a good take on it.

LoyalPaladin: Yeah, I thought, in my example, it might not be the human being underpowered, but rather the cat being overpowered.

Sporeegg: I have no such illusion to ``scrub off'' (this seems quite rude to me, but maybe it's just me). There have been several threads on commoners v. cats. This one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?318517-Commoner-vs-Cat-A-Mathematical-Analysis), in particular. A person with a club has a 44% chance of winning? That's simply absurd. I accept the fact that a cat could damage a healthy adult human with a club, but... again, win 56% of the time?

[atemu1234]

Thanks for the responses all!

In no particular order...

Karl Aegis: The 3d6 makes more sense than the straight 10's. Answers the equally strong/etc. question.

The Glyphstone: That's a good take on it.

LoyalPaladin: Yeah, I thought, in my example, it might not be the human being underpowered, but rather the cat being overpowered.

Sporeegg: I have no such illusion to ``scrub off'' (this seems quite rude to me, but maybe it's just me). There have been several threads on commoners v. cats. This one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?318517-Commoner-vs-Cat-A-Mathematical-Analysis), in particular. A person with a club has a 44% chance of winning? That's simply absurd. I accept the fact that a cat could damage a healthy adult human with a club, but... again, win 56% of the time?

Well, the game is hardly a realistic model of life.

[BowStreetRunner]

Keep in mind that the power-level of the average person is going to be highly dependent on the culture. In a society where there is no social mobility you should have a mix of commoners with high and low stats. In a society with social mobility however, you can assume most commoners with high stats will rise above their original station, so the remaining commoners would all have low stats.

[icefractal]

I think this was tweaked in Pathfinder specifically because of the cat-vs-commoner scenario - attacks that would do less than a point of damage do a point of nonlethal damage instead. So at worse the commoner gets KO'd, which seems plausible if you consider it 'unable to fight' rather than necessarily unconscious.

[Tvtyrant]

Only if you assume most people are level 1. I tend to put adolescents at level 1, people in their early 20s at level 2, people after that levels 3-5. Old people become venerable, which axes their physical stats but makes them into hyper wise elders.

[Seerow]

If you set an average person as Commoner 3, then it works out quite a bit better. A level 3 commoner will generally survive his fight with the housecat, and has a bit more room in skill ranks to allow for some diversity in skill level and capability. I've seen some people say commoner 1 = child, commoner 2=adolescent, commoner 3=adult, and I think that's a pretty fair starting point.


Of course having a Commoner 3 be the norm makes playing level 1 adventurers seem a bit weird. But you don't want your level 10 character still maintaining 3 commoner levels. So the solution is that you begin trading out levels as you improve. First from commoner to a better NPC class, then from NPC class to real PC classes.


So you go something like:
Commoner 3
Commoner2/NPC 1
Commoner1/NPC 2
Commoner1/NPC 3
NPC 4
NPC 3/PC1
NPC 3/PC2
NPC 2/PC3
NPC 1/PC4
NPC1/PC5
PC6


Add in a few clauses like your skill points/BAB/HP won't go down as a result of trading out levels even if your new PC class is technically worse than your NPC class, and you get a little bit of background flavor for a character when they decide if they want to have been an Expert, Aristocrat, or Warrior.

Anyway, I like it because it provides a pretty clear power progression over 10 distinct steps, despite only covering 3 actual hit dice of progression. If you want to play a gritty low level game where a group of nobodies progresses into a team of heroes, you can start all the way down at 2 or 3 commoner hit dice and work your way up through it. If you want to start as actual player characters, start as NPC3/PC1, and those extra 3 hit dice will make the characters involved feel much more durable and heroic, and give you a fair bit more leeway on what you can send at them without an accidental TPK. And from that point following the progression you're gaining 1 PC level every levelup, just gradually losing the NPC levels.

It also fits nicely into an E6 world since you finally get rid of the last NPC hit die right as you hit level 6, so if that kind of lower level game is what strikes your fancy, you can just move right into gaining feats instead.

[Doctor Awkward]

I heard a story one time from a guy who worked in an animal shelter. Whenever they had to handle feral cats they first dress up in full chainmail everything: gloves, smock, leggings.
In his words, cats can do the "Matrix thing" and claw straight up walls, and leap off of light fixtures, shelves, you, anything. When they do bite down, they never let go, and start tear at you with their hind claws. He once had a bone in his hand fractured through several layers of leather and chain.

Then there's the diseases. More than once, they had a volunteer get taken down and have to be rushed to the emergency room after trying to pet a feral.

So...

Your average housecat? Eh, probably couldn't kill a person.
Your average feral cat? Absolutely.

[Darth Ultron]

The vague 5 years = 1 level works. So for humans, starting at 15, that makes them 2nd level at age 20 and 10th level at age 50.

Though you could just as the ''average adult'' is 2-5 level.

[Telok]

I was actually thinking about this yesterday.

The commoner and other npc classes evolved from the old AD&D 0-level commoner. But AD&D didn't stat people the way 3+ does, you were either a monster (hp, ac, attack, saves, specials), had character classes, or were a 0-level. what this really meant was that the npc was either important enough in a fight to have stats, or was unimportant and ought to go down in one hit.

That 0-level commoner wasn't just unskilled, pathetic, dirt farmers. It covered master smiths, rich merchants, the kings advisors, and anyone who wasn't important in combat. 3rd edition changed that assumption and gave everyone character style stats without changing the fact that 90% of the npcs don't need stats. Then they kept the fact that since 90% of the npcs aren't important in a player character fight scene then 90% of the npc population must be the weakest type of commoner, the 1st level commoner. So you get this wierd distortion where most npcs have stats they don't need and thus can't, by the rules that govern those stats, earn enough to live on or survive falling off a stool.

And man, if you think cats are dangerous to 1st level commoners try a mule or a donkey.

[The Glyphstone]

Sure, but it's a lot easier to imagine a donkey or mule killing someone in real life, since they actually do it on occasion. I don't think I have ever actually heard of someone dying in a fight with a cat, feral or otherwise.

[Doctor Awkward]

Sure, but it's a lot easier to imagine a donkey or mule killing someone in real life, since they actually do it on occasion. I don't think I have ever actually heard of someone dying in a fight with a cat, feral or otherwise.

I'd still wager that this is because, in real life, a cat would only scratch and bite at you until it could get away. Then it would flee, rather than try to stay and finish the job.

[Amphetryon]

Sure, but it's a lot easier to imagine a donkey or mule killing someone in real life, since they actually do it on occasion. I don't think I have ever actually heard of someone dying in a fight with a cat, feral or otherwise.

I seem to recall stories of little old ladies being attacked badly enough by their beloved tabbies that they needed prompt medical attention to staunch the blood loss; it's not a HUGE leap for me to envision a time when medical care was more slapdash and cats were therefore more potentially lethal.

Granted, such stories may have taken on a life of their own by the time they reached my ears.

[Blackhawk748]

I heard a story one time from a guy who worked in an animal shelter. Whenever they had to handle feral cats they first dress up in full chainmail everything: gloves, smock, leggings.
In his words, cats can do the "Matrix thing" and claw straight up walls, and leap off of light fixtures, shelves, you, anything. When they do bite down, they never let go, and start tear at you with their hind claws. He once had a bone in his hand fractured through several layers of leather and chain.

Then there's the diseases. More than once, they had a volunteer get taken down and have to be rushed to the emergency room after trying to pet a feral.

So...

Your average housecat? Eh, probably couldn't kill a person.
Your average feral cat? Absolutely.

Oh ya, feral cats are nasty little bugger. I have barn cats which are like half-feral and when we would get to many we would give them to other farmers. Well we would catch them with a live trap and i can tell you i only reached in there while wearing my Carhart coat and a pair of welding gloves. Oddly enough i think welding gloves would work better than chainmail here.

And ya the 56% win ratio against armed human adult is ridiculous, so i feel adult humans being level 2 0r 3 commoners is more accurate. This also stops them from being killed by like 2 normal rats.

[Karl Aegis]

Cats are pretty dangerous. If you encounter dedicated resistance from cats, you need to call in the only surefire way to thin their numbers: Space Tigers of Saturn. Cats are perfectly capable of decimating large numbers of aberrations on the moon with no outside help using only their natural abilities.

[Sam K]

I always liked the 1 xp a day for a "normal" life (you can live off of your farm or your business). This means that assuming a commoner starts at level 1 at age 14 (this is when he's considered adult enough to have a say) he will be lvl 2 around the time he turns 17 or 18 (depending on how many days there are in a year in your world, I suppose). He'd be level 3 around 30. This makes some sense to me: around 17 the commoner would have taken part of the village activities a few years, he'd have made his mistakes, found his place, probably gotten married. He's a bit more sure of himself, more independent, and have picked up a few more skills. At 30, he has children of his own helping him with the farm, he's respected and his opinions are taken seriously in the village (assuming he hasn't screwed up too badly). He's at the physical prime of his life. Most humans won't get past level 3 this way unless they live active and successful lives (which could add some bonus exp), but you could have a successful town mayor be a level 4 aristocrat or a watch captain be a lvl 4 warrior (or even fighter).

This doesn't really change things at high levels, but it does mean adventurers at low and mid levels may actually have to pay attention to regular people at times. A warblade 1 might have done the fancy training at his weapons academy, but he could still get taken out by a less trained but far more experienced grunt (say, lvl 3 fighter).

This also gives a partial explanation to why some cultures seem so stagnant and some flourish despite low numbers and seemingly few advantages (like elves). Goblins are notoriously short lived. They may rarely see their people advance beyond 2nd level through their natural life span and the ones that do start feeling the effect of old age soon. Having a society made up mostly of level 1 NPCs compared to lvl 2 or 3 could be a serious weakness. On the other hand, elves will have a very high percentage of mid level NPCs because even if they live mostly uneventful lives, their experiences add up. The elven city guard could be made up of 5th and 6th level fighters, and their adepts and village priests would actually have some useful spells. This is a serious advantage for the elves - atleast until they suffer serious losses, as it takes them ages to rebuild the losses.

Finally, I would only use the commoner class for people who are on the botton of society: no training or education and unhealthy lifestyles (living in slums or poorly built cottages) and few rights. They are poorly treated serfs, slaves, downtrodden pesants taxed to death. Tough frontier farmers who own their own land would be warriors (hardier and capable of defending themselves), citizens in more advanced cultures would be experts. Basically, noone becomes a commoner unless they have to. It's a class that gives you nothing.

[Boost]

I don't necessarily mean the Commoner class.

The other day I was walking home from work and saw a stray cat in my yard. I thought if this were 3.5, I could be in serious trouble. Then I got to thinking about how stats are done for NPC's. The average person probably won't be equally (when it comes to modifiers) strong, hale, swift, smart, wise and charismatic.

So. What changes would you make to commoners in D&D?


Only if you assume most people are level 1. I tend to put adolescents at level 1, people in their early 20s at level 2, people after that levels 3-5. Old people become venerable, which axes their physical stats but makes them into hyper wise elders.

I could totally take a cat in a fight.

The heaviest thing in my apartment, a big old safe my dad gave me, weighs almost 100 pounds. I can just barely get that over my head. Based on the carrying capacity chart, this means I have a strength of 10. Which makes sense, since I'm big, but I don't work out (ever), so it evens out and puts me in a nice average range.

I can find my dexterity, based on the very scientific process of throwing a knife at a one foot wide (therefore diminutive) target with a stationary AC of 9 (10 +4 size, -5 dex). I threw the knife 20 times from 10 feet away (1 range increment) and hit 60% of my shots. Therefore, I probably have a 12 dexterity (rolling 1d20+1 vs AC 9 would net you a 60% accuracy rate).

My constitution is about average, since I've got really good endurance but my asthma cancels it out. Call it a 10.

My charisma I think is like an 8 but my girlfriend tells me is 16. That's not really relevant to the fight, of course.

Assume I'm a level 2 commoner, because I'm in my early 30's, but I haven't gotten into a fight since high school.

The cat has a higher dexterity, so it probably wins initiative and goes first. But it's a Tiny creature, so it provokes an AOO for crossing into my space. I'm wearing boots as my weapons (treated like gauntlets since they let me treat my unarmed strikes (kicks) as being armed). I attack, using my Weapon Finesse feat (learned from all those years working in restaurant kitchens, where you need to be really fast with your hands) which gives me a total +2 to hit (+1 BAB, +1 Dex). On my turn, I kick again as my regular attack, then move back away, so that the cat has to enter my space again to attack. I can do this indefinitely, giving me an AOO every round. I have about a 40% chance to hit (1d20+2 vs AC 14), so mathematically, I'm almost definitely going to hit by round 2 (since by then I've had 4 attacks (2 regular, 2 AOOs) and that adds up to 160%). This cat is therefore going to last only 2 rounds, because it has 2 hit points and the average damage on my kick (1d3) is 2 points, so one hit leaves it incapacitated, maybe dying if I roll high on damage (small chance it'll take two kicks if I roll min damage).

Regular cats don't get the Pounce feat that lions and tigers get, so the cat can only make one attack per round if I keep moving away. But for the sake of argument, let's say the cat gets a full attack. It's claw/claw/bite combo is at +4/+4/-1. Against my AC 11, it has 65%/65%/40% chance to hit. Added up across two rounds, that's a total of 340%. So it scratches me 3 times maybe four if it got lucky rolls. I take 3 damage, but as a level 2 commoner I should have about 6 or 7 hp (automatic 4 at level 1, average 2-3 at level 2). Those scratches hurt, sure. I need a bandaid and some bactine. But I'm not being seriously threatened.

I win, I gain 75 XP, and then I feel really guilty for the rest of my life that I killed a poor little kitty.

EDIT: I realized after posting I won't get an AOO on round one if I'm flat-footed, but that still gives me 120% chance of landing a hit by round 2.

[Doctor Awkward]

Three things: First, as noted in the house cat stat block, they prefer to hide and ambush their prey. So the first thing that happens is that the cat is going to use a surprise round to execute a partial charge as a standard action against your flat-footed AC.

Spoiler alert: He hits.

Second, you don't get to take attacks of opportunity while you are flat-footed unless you have the Combat Reflexes feat. As someone who hasn't been in a fight since high school, you do not.

So what will really happen is the cat will charge you for 1 point of damage, win initiative, then claw you for probably another 3 points of damage. Then your ass gets a turn.

And lastly, you're going at the thing with not just an improvised weapon, but a weapon you are proficient with. Try the same math with you unarmed and tell me how you like your odds then. :smallwink:

[Boost]

Three things: First, as noted in the house cat stat block, they prefer to hide and ambush their prey. So the first thing that happens is that the cat is going to use a surprise round to execute a partial charge as a standard action against your flat-footed AC.

You're assuming I failed my spot and listen checks. You can't be guaranteed of a surprise round.


Spoiler alert: He hits.

Ahh, no. Even if I lose my Dex to AC, he's still only got 70-80% chance tops.


And lastly, you're going at the thing with not just an improvised weapon, but a weapon you are proficient with. Try the same math with you unarmed and tell me how you like your odds then. :smallwink:

Unarmed strikes are not improvised weapons. You're always proficient with them. Unless you're trying to say I take a -4 penalty for kicking something while wearing boots.

[Doctor Awkward]

You're assuming I failed my spot and listen checks. You can't be guaranteed of a surprise round.
Have you ever owned a cat? :smalltongue:


Unarmed strikes are not improvised weapons. You're always proficient with them. Unless you're trying to say I take a -4 penalty for kicking something while wearing boots.

What I was trying to say was that you aren't using an improvised weapon in your example and therefor have an advantage over someone just grabbing something and taking an Improvised Weapon penalty.

[Karl Aegis]

I can find my dexterity, based on the very scientific process of throwing a knife at a one foot wide (therefore diminutive) target with a stationary AC of 9 (10 +4 size, -5 dex). I threw the knife 20 times from 10 feet away (1 range increment) and hit 60% of my shots. Therefore, I probably have a 12 dexterity (rolling 1d20+1 vs AC 9 would net you a 60% accuracy rate).



Dang dude. Your normal malnourished first level commoner with a poor understanding of physics has a 70% chance of hitting the same target. Inanimate objects have an additional -2 to armor class and you can use a full-round action to get a +5 bonus to hit. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#armorClass) Throw on non-proficiency penalties for a -4 to hit. You need to step your game up.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'm guessing the cat would immediately flee the scene once you hit -1 hit points (after all, that's enough to get the XP, right?), which has you unconscious, with a ~62% chance to stabilize (0,9^9 gives a ~38% chance you never roll 1-10). So you multiply that into the cat's chance to win, to get their lethality.

Cats can't take much more than one hit (from a human) though, so they have to be very careful never to provoke. If I were a cat, I'd only ever act on surprise rounds. Unless tumble is a houseruled class skill for cats. +8 racial to tumble?

[Doctor Awkward]

Eh, I've seen cats that I would believe took Tumble cross-class.

[lsfreak]

Something I haven't seen pointed out yet is that average scores of 10s across the board does not really mean most commoners have 10s across the board, any more than the average person has one of each sex's reproductive organ. Straight 10s is just an easy approximation, but in reality a lot of people are going to have 12s or 13s, and 8s and 9, and a lot of people are going to have total ability modifiers of +6 or +8 (balanced out by others with total modifiers of -6 or -8). If I'm not mistaken the rules even state that NPCs use 3d6 to roll stats, but I'm AFB and the SRD doesn't appear to have the parts of the DMG about rolling up NPCs, it just says that the nonelite array is appropriate for monsters taking levels in NPC classes.

[goto124]

We're commoners IRL...

Okay not all of us. But still.

[Tvtyrant]

We're commoners IRL...

Okay not all of us. But still.

I should be more powerful. I demand a new term. Commonest, perhaps.

[Vizzerdrix]

We're commoners IRL...

Okay not all of us. But still.

Speak for yourself. I've worked at Wal Mart for over 11 years. I'm well into the survivor PrC by now. :smalltongue:

[johnbragg]

Something I haven't seen pointed out yet is that average scores of 10s across the board does not really mean most commoners have 10s across the board, any more than the average person has one half of each sex's reproductive organ. Straight 10s is just an easy approximation, but in reality a lot of people are going to have 12s or 13s, and 8s and 9, and a lot of people are going to have total ability modifiers of +6 or +8 (balanced out by others with total modifiers of -6 or -8). If I'm not mistaken the rules even state that NPCs use 3d6 to roll stats, but I'm AFB and the SRD doesn't appear to have the parts of the DMG about rolling up NPCs, it just says that the nonelite array is appropriate for monsters taking levels in NPC classes.

Fixed and/or ruined that for you.

But as for the cats vs commoners point, I think the problem is that the common housecat is wildly overrated by 3.0 and 3.5. Their claw/claw/bite attack routine is comparable to the small Badger's, rather than the single attack of the tiny (ie cat-sized New York subway) Rat (bite d3-4) or the Dog(bite d4+1) or tiny Hawk (d4-2) or tiny Weasel (d3-4, attaches for continuing bite damage). If the cat is scaled down to one attack, it's not nearly the Commoner-killer of 3.X forum lore.

[emeraldstreak]

Commoners are Tier 1 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?285984-Commoners-are-tier-1)

[FocusWolf413]

I could totally take a cat in a fight.
Snip
blah blah cat kicking math
Snip


Your terrible math makes me want to cry. You can't just add percentages like that. You can't have a percentage over 100%.
You need to multiply the miss chances.

[Chronos]

Quoth johnbragg:

Fixed and/or ruined that for you.
No, he had it right the first time: The human average is approximately one testicle and one ovary.

[ShurikVch]

What level are commoners in question?

If 1st, then maybe just give them back their racial Humanoid HD?
8 hit points, +2 Ref, Simple Weapon proficiency...