Town Guard:Population ratio?

[ChampionWiggles]

I know that it will probably vary from town to town and person to person, obviously, but I was curious what people's opinions are on how much of a town's population should be guard/city watch. To add to that, what stats do people like to use for guards? This is more because recently a player kind of shoved a customs officer over while he asked them to disarm themselves. The customs officer dismissed it, but I plan on maybe having the guards try to cause a little trouble for the player later on in the town (guard loyalty, right?) and I wanted to know what people's opinions were on how tough they make their town's guards when dealing with PCs. Personally, I'm thinking that most of them should be the standard Guard creature at the back of the MM, then have Lieutenants/Sergeants be things like the Veteran/Knight creature, with the Captain/General being the Gladiator creature possibly. But I wanted to know the guard/population ratio opinion to prepare in the (unlikely) event that when the guards try to cause trouble for the player, he'll start a fight and guards will start dying and all hell will break lose. How many guards would have to die before the town was rendered defenseless, I wonder? I'm kind of leaning that guard:population ratio should sit somewhere in the 5-10% range?

[Arelai]

5-10% is pretty big. If the town doesn't have a hostile border they're really just around for civil disputes and small crimes. If there was anything bigger they'd grab the men who. An fight and form a militia.

I'd say, for a 1000 people, you probably only need 15 guards.

[Tanarii]

This guy has the ratio at one law enforcement per 150 pop. Or about 7 in a small town of 1000 people. He has a bunch of other stats that might be useful.

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

[Kane0]

Depends on 'time period' too. Taking away the fantasy part of most default settings you didnt really see town guard types in most smaller places, just people rallied together when a threat comes up and maybe a judicial person to settle disputes, usually a local noble/lord that also acted as mayor.

That aside, suprisingly few in most settlements. 1 per 150-200 is probably still generous.
Unless youre playing a game where threats are common. In that case 10% of the population on permanent duty doesnt seem such a waste of resources, and you start to see individuals beyond the level 1-3ish range.

[StoicLeaf]

other thing to keep in mind is that a city guard (if it's a big city) will also need some mages.

[Unoriginal]

Here is an article on medieval demographics:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

There is a link to a calculator at the bottom.

[Fishyninja]

I know in the UK (about 5 years ago {I haven't read the updated SOP's yet}) the rough number was given for One Officer (Guard) per 451 people.