How would you handle a player creating an army of constructs for free?

[gogogome]

So a player of mine got real excited about using Metamorphic Transfer with Madcrafter of Thoon to create his own personal army of Scythers of Thoon.

He's going to polymorph into a Madcrafter of Thoon and use share powers to turn his psicrystal into a Madcrafter of Thoon as well, spawn three Scythers of Thoon and have his psicrystal telepathically command the Scythers. Default behavior is guard him, new commands are only obeyed if a password is also given and doesn't conflict with previous orders, you know, the usual computer programmer anti-hacking defenses.

And he's gonna do this everyday. So each day he gets three Scythers. So if a month passes by he's gonna have 90 Scythers. A year later he's gonna have 1095 Scythers.

I'm not that worried about combat. The party is level 9 and CR9 creatures have spell resistance, high AC, and decent AoE so throwing enough of these creatures everyday at the party will stop his growth completely on the account of them all dying before the day is over. And I can just reduce XP rewards so in the end it's all the same. And I'm not worried about higher levels because Scythers will not be a threat regardless of their number.

What I am worried about is him taking over the spotlight with macro stuff. With his own personal growing construct army he can make every town fully guarded with an army of Scythers, he can set out patrols that regularly take out low level monster incursions like goblin or orc infestations. He can basically take over the entire world, threaten entire kingdoms, start building his own empire, etc.

I would like to hear your opinion on how would you personally would deal with all of this. My strategy is simply stressing him too much to be able to make a surplus of scythers but that would mean no downtime for the other party members. Another strategy is make my NPCs irrational and have them reject all aid from the Scythers and openly attack them whenever encountered so the player can't use them for macro stuff but that seems mean on my part.

Just to be clear, I don't want to ban metamorphic transfer. It's a core feat, it's on d20srd, and I like to promote player creativity. I'm having fun right now actually. Figuring out how to deal with stuff like this is a fun puzzle.

edit: changed to match the player's current plan.

[Madara]

I would say to run this is a similar way to how people run high-powered necromancers: You can have a pet or two on hand for combat, maybe a big beastie, but his other ones have to be off doing whatever else.

Back in the old days it was common for players to raise armies. 1,000 of pretty much anything isn't as big as it seems. Good old action economy can take them down if they go against a real army in a year. Let him play around with conquering villages and a region. Then it becomes a resource sink to keep them under control.

Organizations exist for hunting aberrations and evil, I'm sure this is a great time for some of those to roll out.

If you're not too swamped- run some stuff solo. Let him make decisions outside of game time and message them to you. Lots of it doesn't need to be done at the table.

When it comes to the other players, just say, "So-and-So came to me with this idea for how he wants his character to do stuff during downtime. If any of you want to do something for your character, let me know."

Not every player is gonna bite, but it's really fun as a DM to have even one that does.

[gogogome]

I would say to run this is a similar way to how people run high-powered necromancers: You can have a pet or two on hand for combat, maybe a big beastie, but his other ones have to be off doing whatever else.

Back in the old days it was common for players to raise armies. 1,000 of pretty much anything isn't as big as it seems. Good old action economy can take them down if they go against a real army in a year. Let him play around with conquering villages and a region. Then it becomes a resource sink to keep them under control.

Organizations exist for hunting aberrations and evil, I'm sure this is a great time for some of those to roll out.

If you're not too swamped- run some stuff solo. Let him make decisions outside of game time and message them to you. Lots of it doesn't need to be done at the table.

When it comes to the other players, just say, "So-and-So came to me with this idea for how he wants his character to do stuff during downtime. If any of you want to do something for your character, let me know."

Not every player is gonna bite, but it's really fun as a DM to have even one that does.

Do you happened to have a few links about dealing with high powered necromancers?

[Elves]

In D&D it's the natural course of things that as the PCs gain levels their own powers start to take over the plot and they become the main plot drivers, which is really one of the advantages it has vs a videogame. So I wouldn't be reticent about making his plan and its consequences part of the story. Becoming the leader of an army of thoon doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to achieve, especially in a case like this where it's growing linearly and not exponentially. And the plot consequences that stem from it don't even have to be about denying him his power, they just have to be about considering what the real impacts would be.

[False God]

So a player of mine got real excited about using Metamorphic Transfer with Madcrafter of Thoon to create his own personal army of Scythers and Stormclouds of Thoon.

He's first going to polymorph into a Madcrafter of Thoon, spawn a Stormcloud of Thoon, and then speak undercommon to the Stormcloud to obey him and him alone even if his form changes.
Why would the Stormcloud do this? Pardon if I'm missing something where like, they have to obey the Madcrafter who spawns them? What's to prevent the Stormcloud from going "Oh, you're not actually a Madcrafter, or even a follower of Thoon, so no." *checks stats* okay, they're not smart so the player can probably convince them, but his whole army hinges on a diplomacy check. Not mind control, not reverence to a god, not fear of a god-like creature, just a plain old mundane diplomacy check.


Then he's going to spawn two Scythers of Thoon and have the Stormcloud of Thoon telepathically command the Scythers. Default behavior is guard him, new commands are only obeyed if a password is also given and doesn't conflict with previous orders, you know, the usual computer programmer anti-hacking defenses. He also mentioned something about making the Stormclouds think that the actual thoon creatures if encountered are the false thoon and must be exterminated. etc. etc.
Now, Scythers on the other hand are unintelligent automotons. He's relying on a diplomacy check to middle-manage his army. Again, Stormclouds aren't bright, but they're not mindless. As for convincing them the Thoon are really not Thoon...even the entry for the creature says "If something unusual happens, a Stormcloud tries to think of the best response rather than mindlessly executing programming."


And he's gonna do this everyday. So each day he gets two Scythers and one Stormcloud. So if a month passes by he's gonna have 60 Scythers and 30 Stormclouds. A year later he's gonna have 730 Scythers and 365 Stormclouds.
That's a lot of chances to fail a diplomacy check.


I'm not that worried about combat. The party is level 9 and CR9 creatures have spell resistance, high AC, and decent AoE so throwing enough of these creatures everyday at the party will stop his growth completely on the account of them all dying before the day is over. And I can just reduce XP rewards so in the end it's all the same. And I'm not worried about higher levels because Scythers will not be a threat regardless of their number.

What I am worried about is him taking over the spotlight with macro stuff. With his own personal growing construct army he can make every town fully guarded with an army of Scythers, he can set out patrols that regularly take out low level monster incursions like goblin or orc infestations. He can basically take over the entire world, threaten entire kingdoms, start building his own empire, etc.
This is not an uncommon turn from 9th level and up, especially among casters.


I would like to hear your opinion on how would you personally would deal with all of this. My strategy is simply stressing him too much to be able to make a surplus of scythers but that would mean no downtime for the other party members. Another strategy is make my NPCs irrational and have them reject all aid from the Scythers and openly attack them whenever encountered so the player can't use them for macro stuff but that seems mean on my part.

Just to be clear, I don't want to ban metamorphic transfer. It's a core feat, it's on d20srd, and I like to promote player creativity. I'm having fun right now actually. Figuring out how to deal with stuff like this is a fun puzzle.
My opinion is that his great and terrible army hinges on the whole of some 365 Stormclouds believing he's really a Madcrafter.

As for the rest of it, not unusual, and I'd talk it out with the players that either A: everyone starts working towards more kingdom-styled goals, or B: they stick to a more adventuring party style with no more than a handful of minions.

Kingdom building is not uncommon, and can be a lot of fun when everyone is on-board. When they're not? Yeah there's problems.

[gogogome]

Why would the Stormcloud do this? Pardon if I'm missing something where like, they have to obey the Madcrafter who spawns them? What's to prevent the Stormcloud from going "Oh, you're not actually a Madcrafter, or even a follower of Thoon, so no." *checks stats* okay, they're not smart so the player can probably convince them, but his whole army hinges on a diplomacy check. Not mind control, not reverence to a god, not fear of a god-like creature, just a plain old mundane diplomacy check.

I thought about that but the MM entry directly says they don't use their intelligence and obeys orders without question. The MM entry also says they don't understand what Thoon is so they just obey. So as long as the player gives the initial orders in his madcrafter form, I don't think a 5 int construct that obeys orders blindly is gonna put two and two together. For all he knows Madcrafters have human alternate forms, the PC is an agent of Thoon, this madcrafter for some reason is unique and has the ability to polymorph into a human, or something like that.

So I think it's unreasonable for me to ask the PC for diplomacy or bluff checks when I'm pretty sure the real Madcrafters of Thoon don't need to do that.

[magicalmagicman]

Psicrystals have telepathy 30ft. Use Share Powers to turn him into a Madcrafter of Thoon too and have him command the Scythers directly.

[gogogome]

Psicrystals have telepathy 30ft. Use Share Powers to turn him into a Madcrafter of Thoon too and have him command the Scythers directly.

I shared this info with my player, he chose to exclude Stormclouds, which makes things a lot easier for me. Scythers can only be commanded telepathically. This really puts a damper on his macro capabilities since absolutely no villager can communicate with the Scythers, unlike Stormclouds who can communicate and join in on the problem solving meetings with the mayors of towns.

[Vander Nars]

Just say no, if its gonna break the game and give you a heart attack trying to work around it, once that is clear than you can go about limiting how many he can have while keeping balance. Prolly a max of 1 or 2 in combat and as many as your ok with off screen doing whatever.

Maybe look at leadership feat and compare the amount of followers your allowed and get an idea of how many you should allow as background chars.

[King of Nowhere]

What I am worried about is him taking over the spotlight with macro stuff. With his own personal growing construct army he can make every town fully guarded with an army of Scythers, he can set out patrols that regularly take out low level monster incursions like goblin or orc infestations. He can basically take over the entire world, threaten entire kingdoms, start building his own empire, etc.


no, he can't. you're way overblowing this.
he gets three per day. Just three. i don't know how durable those things are, but as you said you were not worried about combat, i'd assume not much.
so, his 3 per day won't even cover losses for regular monster-hunting duty.
it would take him one full year to raise an army of 1000, which a 13th level druid can mow down with a few casting of firestorm. or which can be defeated by any army of anything bigger than a city.

[gogogome]

Just say no, if its gonna break the game and give you a heart attack trying to work around it, once that is clear than you can go about limiting how many he can have while keeping balance. Prolly a max of 1 or 2 in combat and as many as your ok with off screen doing whatever.

It doesn't break the game. The problem is that he's gonna take the majority of my time. When he coordinates with a leader to make his scythers guard his village/town/city/kingdom, the other players are going to be sitting on their asses twiddling their thumbs. When a problem arises that took out the scyther guards, the other players are going to be sitting on their asses twiddling their thumbs. And when the PC figures out a solution and employs that solution, once again the other players are going to be sitting on their asses twiddling their thumbs.

Someone suggested solo sessions which partly solves the time issue, but the other players are going to feel like they're a side character and the campaign is the PC's personal story since he's influencing it significantly more than the other party members.

Party composition is a Psion, a ranger who traded out his spellcasting, a fighter/wizard gish, and a fighter.


Maybe look at leadership feat and compare the amount of followers your allowed and get an idea of how many you should allow as background chars.

That's a good suggestion.


no, he can't. you're way overblowing this.
he gets three per day. Just three. i don't know how durable those things are, but as you said you were not worried about combat, i'd assume not much.
so, his 3 per day won't even cover losses for regular monster-hunting duty.
it would take him one full year to raise an army of 1000, which a 13th level druid can mow down with a few casting of firestorm. or which can be defeated by any army of anything bigger than a city.

They're not that durable. They have no DR or hardness, and they heal 1hp after 8 hours of full inactivity.

I go by the DMG's demographics stuff so high level spellcasters are an extreme rarity unless they're the villain faction. So in a world where human armies wage war with one another, the Scyther army is gonna be stronger than any army except the largest of kingdoms can muster since only they have the high level spellcasters and since the Scythers are significantly stronger than warrior NPCs.

[Him]

You got few few options, from what you say, I believe your are wrong when you say it doesnt break the game because it gets spoilt for the other characters.

Having said that, I remember when I used to think up how I would make similar armies, but chos e not to as i was playing as part of a group, apart from once maybe, just to shut someone up. Anyway.

So my 3 suggestions for your player situation.
1. No
2. Time to build a lair and they all hang there apart from like 2 or 3 (As above) great meat shields for casters.
3. Tell the player he needs to assign some to each of the other players during town defence(or whatever) so they got their own platoon to control and have something to do. This IS supposed to be a group game.

I say this, but my stuff doesn't seem to be the run of the mill.

[aglondier]

Make the player take the Leadership feat, with the Scythers as his "followers", the Stormclouds as higher level "followers" and some other synapse critter as his "cohort" to manage them on his behalf...

[Troacctid]

Wouldn't the psicrystal also need to have Metamorphic Transfer?

[Him]

Make the player take the Leadership feat, with the Scythers as his "followers", the Stormclouds as higher level "followers" and some other synapse critter as his "cohort" to manage them on his behalf...

The leadership feat is OP enough without basically giving the player 2 epic level feats and a leadership score that is only available in the mid 20 levels and that his just for the 10 x 9th level followers. Not getting anywhere near the numbers mentioned.

No.

[gogogome]

Wouldn't the psicrystal also need to have Metamorphic Transfer?

No. Scythers only obey telepathic commands given to them by a creature of Thoon. Psicrystals have Telepathic Speech, Human Psions have no form of telepathy. So in order to command the Scythers the PC needs a Telepathic Thoon creature be it a Psicrystal polymorphed into a Madcrafter of Thoon, or a Stormcloud of Thoon. The Psicrystal is not using any supernatural abilities of his polymorphed form so he does not need Metamorphic Transfer.

[Goaty14]

Some things to consider:
-The launch spawn ability specifies that a madcrafter of Thoon takes a full day (longer than the duration of metamorphisis, short of shenanigans) to spawn anything, unless threatened. He should be able to get out a few constructs based on abuse ideas (ie "Oh no! I'm in danger from the CR 1 cat over there!"), but after that, he'll have his own personal guard, and won't reasonably be in danger unless anything actually threatens him. (Thus, he'll have a small guard, but after that, he'll have to continue adventuring with the party in order to keep getting in danger and therefore spawning in more constructs)
-Once he has a few constructs following him around, won't the existing Infiltrators/Thralls of Thoon take notice? Perhaps, give the party an assassin squad encounter consisting of Shadow Flayers with PC levels. If they question the Shadow Flayers afterwards, then they'll be explicit that the Psion must be stopped, for all that is good Thoon.
...
Also, consider that the existing kingdoms and governments may also take note of this. You're right; an army of Scythers would be impossible to stop, so therefore now is the best time to get friendly with this guy, or exterminate him before he becomes a threat.
-No specific rules on how Thoon crafters work with quintessence, but you could easily adjucate that spawning in scythers/stormclouds each have an associated cost of quintessence, thus giving him something to seek out while in his adventures, and limiting how many of these he can spawn.

As for balancing this with the rest of the party, scaling up their influence and power through fluff-interaction may also help - perhaps the ranger becomes affiliated with a group of druids/fey that share his interests? From there, he wields influence over the more uncharted parts of the reigon, and has a friend in every corner of the world. The fighter becomes the head of a fighting school, which specialzes in the same thing that he does. From there, he commands a great amount of respect from officials, and has his own squad of fighting specialists to call upon when he is in need. The fighter/wizard gish finds himself in a similar position, only for a school of offensive magic, whom he can direct to research custom spells (or not, if you don't want to get into that), or conduct circle-magic spells when he runs into great challenges to overcome.

The Psion may eventually come to command a full army of CR 6 scythers and CR 5 stormclouds, but if the fighter holds command over an elite squad of CR 12 Shock-Troopers, the ranger holds influence in the Fey and the Spirits of the land, and the wizard can shape together massive spells through virtue of circle-magic* with his pupils, is the psion really the greatest threat?

*Circle magic, not as in the CL-boosting shenanigans of 3.0, but moreso an arbitrary ruling that expands usage of spells in-combat, specifically for wider targets (so a circle magic fireball may produce multiple fireballs, or a circle magic Ray of Stupidity may affect whole squadrons, at a lesser effect, etc)

EDIT: If upscaling the party to have that kind of power/influence is too much, then you can tone it down by giving a NPC that kind of power instead, and making the PCs one of such organization's higher-level "followers" (followers as in followers, not being there because the leader has the leadership feat) So that would mean something like
-The Psion instead becomes an independent (non-thrall) agent of the Mindflayers of Thoon. The Shadow Flayers instead approach him with a deal: Join the Thoon in their goals and quests, or face their wrath (If he refuses, he gets to operate by himself, but has a notable enemy going against him and isn't as strong, balancing it out).
-The fighter is a teacher within a fighter school, but not a leader, similar to how a Sergant might lead his men in a battle, but doesn't lead ALL the men like a general.
-The ranger is an ambassador for a druidic sect; his purpose is to seek out and make contact with fey/spirits that the sect is unaware of, thus consolidating nature's forces to prepare for a time of great need.
-The wizard/gish joins a wizardly college. His goal is to find unique and otherwise unknown spells/rituals within the world and bring them back to the college. Sending a normal wizard would be too risky, but the gish has the amount of martial prowess, the college believes he can embark and return with reasonable success.

[King of Nowhere]

I go by the DMG's demographics stuff so high level spellcasters are an extreme rarity unless they're the villain faction. So in a world where human armies wage war with one another, the Scyther army is gonna be stronger than any army except the largest of kingdoms can muster since only they have the high level spellcasters and since the Scythers are significantly stronger than warrior NPCs.

scyter army? what army? it's 3 soldiers per day. 1000 per year. You'd need ten years to build up 10 thousands, which is the minimum i would call an army.

any hystorical army from the real world would be able to win by attrition. forum rules prevent me from going into specifics, but losing 20 thousand people in a large battle and replacing them by the next year happened fairly often.

so, your player would need one full year of downtime to get 1000 troops. which are still not enough to keep anything bigger than a city and its immediate surroundings.
if he stays holed up for 20 or 30 years, he may have enough to overtake a small kingdom. once. and he'd lost most of his army in the process, with no means of replacing it before some more decades have passed.

so, unless you gave your player a few decades of downtime, or unless he finds a way to speed up the process a lot, you won't have to worry about any scyter army doing stuff on the large scale. they are useful minions for sure, but nothing you can set to conquer a kingdom. depending on the rate of monster spawn in your world, they may not even be enough to keep the countryside clear of monsters.

[Spellweaver]

Well, I wounder about the whole Quintessence and construct creation: It does cost something, right? I read through the Thoon stuff but could find nothing. But it has to cost something?


Anyway...there there is always the Story way of dealing with this. It's hard to take over a world with mindless constructs.

Anything that is mindless, really needs something with a mind to lead them....or they fail badly.

They can ''guard" a town....well, you can tell them to stand there and ''attack anything that moves". And they will. But even the average halfling can outsmart them: say have a rabbit run by and all the guards will go to attack it leaving the way to town wide open. They won't ''guard" like ''ok double the watches on the south side and send out two patrols" or such.

And sending out a patrol to kill the goblins? Well, they sure can't do it alone. They would not even be able to find the goblins....let alone fight them.

How far can he send a telepathic command....100 feet? 200 feet? Well, even a village is bigger then that.

The mindless constructs also don't call for help. Some one attacks them or say tricks them into walking into a pit trap: and they only do what they were ordered to do.

And sure, if your game is ''the world is all zero level people except the PCs" things might work out......but if you have even an "average" buy the book world tons of monsters and characters could take out his "army" with no problem.

[Goaty14]

snip

Well, right, but these are CR 6 Scythers in question. Any standing army mostly consists of what, CR 1 warriors? Without number-crunching the specific stats of each scyther vs each warrior (though that could certainly be done), each scyther should be able to take down at least 8 warriors*, if not more. So, an army built over a year + ~83 days only has around a 1,250 body count, but can take on the minimum of what you'd call an army.

*My CR-calculating skills are terrible. This is based off of the idea of 2 CR 1's = CR 3, 2 CR 3's (consisting of 2 CR 1's) = CR 5, 2 CR 5's = CR 7, which should be able to defeat a scyther at an Easy encounter difficulty.

[Segev]

As has already been alluded to, you can make him realize that the Quintessence that the Thoon...people...are hunting is an actual resource they need for their stuff. So he can't just spawn without harvesting it. Now, he has to actually behave like a disciple of Thoon to actually get the stuff he needs to do it.


But that isn't really what bothers you, so let's examine player spotlight. Why will the other players be sitting on their hands when he interacts with leaders? Why don't they have their own things to bring to the table to do? I'm not saying this isn't a problem, and I'm not trying to shift blame, but I am wondering if you're overthinking it. What can you do to involve the other players in these scenes? Why CAN'T the other players have important, setting-shaping stuff to do?

[NigelWalmsley]

Well, right, but these are CR 6 Scythers in question. Any standing army mostly consists of what, CR 1 warriors?

Maybe? D&D mostly doesn't give firm numbers for armies. You could imagine that armies are 1st and 2nd level chumps, but that raises questions before you get to this particular scenario. Notably: why haven't dragons, who can kill as many 1st and 2nd level chumps as they want, conquered the world? High level D&D characters and monsters are capable of crushing essentially infinite armies of low level mooks, so any nation that is reliant exclusively on them for its defense is only going to last as long as it takes for someone to take an interest in destroying it. Therefore, either armies are mostly for show (with high level characters forming the backbone of national defense), or armies are comprised of troops that are at least moderately hard core.

[gogogome]

Some things to consider:
-The launch spawn ability specifies that a madcrafter of Thoon takes a full day (longer than the duration of metamorphisis, short of shenanigans) to spawn anything, unless threatened. He should be able to get out a few constructs based on abuse ideas (ie "Oh no! I'm in danger from the CR 1 cat over there!"), but after that, he'll have his own personal guard, and won't reasonably be in danger unless anything actually threatens him. (Thus, he'll have a small guard, but after that, he'll have to continue adventuring with the party in order to keep getting in danger and therefore spawning in more constructs)

Regarding Quintessence, I thought about that, but the ability clearly states that the Madcrafter can sacrifice his own hp to spawn them, and since I believe polymorphed forms are fully loaded with ammunition upon transformation (you don't polymorph into a manticore with no spines), this is not the route to go. And even if I do the worst I do is force the PC to sacrifice 60hp.

Threatened is not a mandatory condition as far as I can tell. If it is, the player can just have his Psicrystal "threaten" the player by being in his threatened square, or take nonlethal attacks on him. The Psicrystal is the one that controls the entire Scyther army not the PC.


-Once he has a few constructs following him around, won't the existing Infiltrators/Thralls of Thoon take notice? Perhaps, give the party an assassin squad encounter consisting of Shadow Flayers with PC levels. If they question the Shadow Flayers afterwards, then they'll be explicit that the Psion must be stopped, for all that is good Thoon.

I'm not running a Thoon campaign. So unlikely that I will throw Thoons at the PC since they're not that strong compared to the other stuff I'm throwing at them which are fiends who teleport out before the PCs can kill them.


Also, consider that the existing kingdoms and governments may also take note of this. You're right; an army of Scythers would be impossible to stop, so therefore now is the best time to get friendly with this guy, or exterminate him before he becomes a threat.

That's what he plans on doing. Once he get a decent number he's going to gift a few to lords or kings as a gesture of good will and train the gift scythers to obey simple verbal commands in common like a dog. One word commands.


As for balancing this with the rest of the party, scaling up their influence and power through fluff-interaction may also help - perhaps the ranger becomes affiliated with a group of druids/fey that share his interests? From there, he wields influence over the more uncharted parts of the reigon, and has a friend in every corner of the world. The fighter becomes the head of a fighting school, which specialzes in the same thing that he does. From there, he commands a great amount of respect from officials, and has his own squad of fighting specialists to call upon when he is in need. The fighter/wizard gish finds himself in a similar position, only for a school of offensive magic, whom he can direct to research custom spells (or not, if you don't want to get into that), or conduct circle-magic spells when he runs into great challenges to overcome.

The Psion may eventually come to command a full army of CR 6 scythers and CR 5 stormclouds, but if the fighter holds command over an elite squad of CR 12 Shock-Troopers, the ranger holds influence in the Fey and the Spirits of the land, and the wizard can shape together massive spells through virtue of circle-magic* with his pupils, is the psion really the greatest threat?

*Circle magic, not as in the CL-boosting shenanigans of 3.0, but moreso an arbitrary ruling that expands usage of spells in-combat, specifically for wider targets (so a circle magic fireball may produce multiple fireballs, or a circle magic Ray of Stupidity may affect whole squadrons, at a lesser effect, etc)

Interesting idea. But I fear the fighter and ranger are gonna need the leadership feat as doing what you're suggesting is what that feat was specifically created for.

But you did give me an idea. These PCs will have connections and consorting with these connections to solve problems might balance the spotlight out.


But that isn't really what bothers you, so let's examine player spotlight. Why will the other players be sitting on their hands when he interacts with leaders? Why don't they have their own things to bring to the table to do? I'm not saying this isn't a problem, and I'm not trying to shift blame, but I am wondering if you're overthinking it. What can you do to involve the other players in these scenes? Why CAN'T the other players have important, setting-shaping stuff to do?

They don't have any macro capabilities other than "I will personally slay the problem myself". So it's hard for me to come up with something that lets them engage in macro that doesn't seem forced.


Well, I wounder about the whole Quintessence and construct creation: It does cost something, right? I read through the Thoon stuff but could find nothing. But it has to cost something?


Anyway...there there is always the Story way of dealing with this. It's hard to take over a world with mindless constructs.

Anything that is mindless, really needs something with a mind to lead them....or they fail badly.

They can ''guard" a town....well, you can tell them to stand there and ''attack anything that moves". And they will. But even the average halfling can outsmart them: say have a rabbit run by and all the guards will go to attack it leaving the way to town wide open. They won't ''guard" like ''ok double the watches on the south side and send out two patrols" or such.

And sending out a patrol to kill the goblins? Well, they sure can't do it alone. They would not even be able to find the goblins....let alone fight them.

How far can he send a telepathic command....100 feet? 200 feet? Well, even a village is bigger then that.

The mindless constructs also don't call for help. Some one attacks them or say tricks them into walking into a pit trap: and they only do what they were ordered to do.

And sure, if your game is ''the world is all zero level people except the PCs" things might work out......but if you have even an "average" buy the book world tons of monsters and characters could take out his "army" with no problem.

You and King of Nowhere might be right. I maybe overblowing things. If that's the case then all is good.

Mindless Constructs can accomplish simple tasks though. Attacking anything that isn't a humanoid or animal type will let them attack monster threats. Bandits however are another story.

[Segev]

I'm not running a Thoon campaign. So unlikely that I will throw Thoons at the PC since they're not that strong compared to the other stuff I'm throwing at them which are fiends who teleport out before the PCs can kill them."Your character has never seen nor heard of these things. They don't really even exist in my setting. So you can't turn into them. Sorry."

This isn't even being unfair; you're not running a campaign with this element, so there's no reason to let him introduce it when you have no interest in nor intent to engage the broader content it brings up. Thoon is an obscure thing by fluff and by the fact that it only shows up in one little-used monster manual. It absolutely does not have to exist in your campaign world.





Interesting idea. But I fear the fighter and ranger are gonna need the leadership feat as doing what you're suggesting is what that feat was specifically created for.

But you did give me an idea. These PCs will have connections and consorting with these connections to solve problems might balance the spotlight out.They only need the leadership feat if you insist they do. NPCs can follow them, be hired for money, be recruited by Diplomacy, and develop attitudes that YOU decide to give them. They're resources obtained as outside rewards, that way, more like treasure than levels, but that's a valid way to do it.


They don't have any macro capabilities other than "I will personally slay the problem myself". So it's hard for me to come up with something that lets them engage in macro that doesn't seem forced.Do they have personal goals?

And they can engage in the same negotiations as the Thoon-distributor. Let them participate and offer backup to him. Do any of them have skills in negotiation or logistics?

I can't really give much advice without knowing more about the PCs. :smallfrown: Sorry.

[Goaty14]

Notably: why haven't dragons, who can kill as many 1st and 2nd level chumps as they want, conquered the world?

Because dragons are too arrogant, narcissistic, and greedy to reasonably stop butting heads with each other and agree to conquer the world. Arguably they could expand their territory until the nations of the world are replaced with dragon-led governments, but only if those blasted adventurers would stop hunting dragons! :smallamused:


High level D&D characters and monsters are capable of crushing essentially infinite armies of low level mooks, so any nation that is reliant exclusively on them for its defense is only going to last as long as it takes for someone to take an interest in destroying it. Therefore, either armies are mostly for show (with high level characters forming the backbone of national defense), or armies are comprised of troops that are at least moderately hard core.

Maybe. The former depends on said high-level characters not going rogue/independent. If they already are (ie you hire adventurers to fight in your battles), how would you know they wouldn't abandon you based on their ambiguous moral beliefs? A dicey (literally! :smalltongue:) gambit, to be sure.

And the latter... look at the population demographics in the SRD (https://www.d20srd.org/d20/demographics/). Specifically, look for how many NPCs within a kingdom are 6th-13th level*. Using the population of England in the early 18th century (http://www.localhistories.org/population.html) (about 5.5 million), we can tell that number is 145. Enough to make a platoon? Sure. Enough to recruit 20k after a large battle? Ehhhhh... The number of 145 doesn't even count other factors, like age, class, or the like.

*Presumably, NPCs higher level than this are too small in number to form teams, and too high in power to be considered "moderate".

[NigelWalmsley]

Because dragons are too arrogant, narcissistic, and greedy to reasonably stop butting heads with each other and agree to conquer the world.

They don't need to agree. A single adult dragon can take on an entire nation, if we assume that nation is defended entirely by 1st and 2nd level characters. And what arrogant, narcissistic, greedy lizard wouldn't want a nation full of people whose sole purpose is to give them stuff?


Maybe. The former depends on said high-level characters not going rogue/independent. If they already are (ie you hire adventurers to fight in your battles), how would you know they wouldn't abandon you based on their ambiguous moral beliefs? A dicey (literally! :smalltongue:) gambit, to be sure.

Sure, there could be instability. But in the long run, if a high level character can take over a nation, and the nation can't kick them out, every nation ends up owned by the highest level character who cares about it.


And the latter... look at the population demographics in the SRD (https://www.d20srd.org/d20/demographics/). Specifically, look for how many NPCs within a kingdom are 6th-13th level*. Using the population of England in the early 18th century (http://www.localhistories.org/population.html) (about 5.5 million), we can tell that number is 145. Enough to make a platoon? Sure. Enough to recruit 20k after a large battle? Ehhhhh... The number of 145 doesn't even count other factors, like age, class, or the like.

Sure, that is one source you could use for NPC numbers. It generates a world ruled by magical monsters or powerful archmages, because it produces a power distribution that can't compete with either. But you could also look at the character advancement, Leadership, or Mentor/Apprentice rules for your demographics. Those make it a lot easier to produce 5th level or high characters en masse.

[Segev]

Dragons may not be interested in RULING. And they're rare. But given the mythic prevalence of knights having to rescue princesses from them and otherwise stop their rampage across countrysides, my guess is that dragons generally aren't stopped by armies. They're like forces of nature, making a region dangerous and forcing the people dwelling in their territory to live in a certain baseline level of fear. Much like Dracula made the villagers in his novel do.

The dragon isn't conquering. It just doesn't care about your rules. It might be benevolent (metallics usually are), but it's still dangerous, and you're definitely not going to tell it how to enact said benevolence.

[Goaty14]

They don't need to agree. A single adult dragon can take on an entire nation, if we assume that nation is defended entirely by 1st and 2nd level characters. And what arrogant, narcissistic, greedy lizard wouldn't want a nation full of people whose sole purpose is to give them stuff?

Well, right, but also presumably
-There's another big greedy lizard that also wants control of the kingdom
-The more imbalanced a ratio between <the dragon's CR> and <the hoard wealth>, the more incentive there is for somebody to, ahem, redistribute the wealth. Not an army of low-level characters, but a band of foolhardy adventurers willing to take the risk :smallamused:


Sure, there could be instability. But in the long run, if a high level character can take over a nation, and the nation can't kick them out, every nation ends up owned by the highest level character who cares about it.

That's one way to put it. 'Course, any such person could still likely be kicked out, but more along the lines of "this really doesn't sit well with the local wizard's college, and the resident archmage wants you dead". Note that being high-level and in a kingdom doesn't necessitate that you must be in their army*, nor that you really need to be interested in keeping the current government in power.

I'm not saying high-level characters don't exist - I'm saying that they're too few in number to make an army out of, and too powerful to be used efficiently, or in a way that fully aligns with the kingdom's goals.

*Even if so, it can be really hard to find out IC the level of something outside of specific spells. So at that point you're kinda just ordering mandatory service and hoping these are level 20 fighters among your ranks, not level 3 commoners.


Sure, that is one source you could use for NPC numbers.
(...)
character advancement, Leadership, or Mentor/Apprentice rules for your demographics.

Well, no? The demographic very specifically numbers out how many character classes of what levels there can be. 'Course, the calculator spits out different numbers each time, but on a random load, it very clearly states that in a kingdom of 5.5 million, there will be only four 6th level barbarians - no more, no less.

-Character advancement only really applies to PCs, unless the DM is a masochist and really wants to track the EXP of every single level 1 commoner every time he has a dangerous encounter with a feral cat. In theory you can have NPCs practice math problems/gladiator fights/feral cats until they level up enough, but I think that's largely TO territory.
-Leadership doesn't grant any 6th level followers until an effective score of 21. Most NPCs will never reach that level of awesome, and those that do (such as the obligatory level 20 commoner in society) only gains one until a leadership score of 25. (Note: Conscripting your followers and sending them to war may count you as a cruel leader that causes the death of followers, who moves around a lot, but that's a straw-man).
-Mentor... doesn't do anything? You gain one NPC apprentice, whose level and class is ambiguous.

[Troacctid]

"Your character has never seen nor heard of these things. They don't really even exist in my setting. So you can't turn into them. Sorry."

This isn't even being unfair; you're not running a campaign with this element, so there's no reason to let him introduce it when you have no interest in nor intent to engage the broader content it brings up. Thoon is an obscure thing by fluff and by the fact that it only shows up in one little-used monster manual. It absolutely does not have to exist in your campaign world.
According to MMV, a DC 25 Knowledge (dungeoneering) check will tell you that madcrafters of Thoon are sluglike aberrations that can vomit out constructs. A similar DC tells you about scythers and stormclouds. It's a pretty reasonable hurdle to put in front of the player, but it's certainly not an insurmountable one.

[Him]

Notably: why haven't dragons, who can kill as many 1st and 2nd level chumps as they want, conquered the world?

The reasons you posted after were all nice, but it's actually much simpler. Dragons are magical beasts and they love treasure.. so why leave all the mooks(As you say)?

1. You don't throw the herd on the bonfire, you just eat when you are hungry.
2. Treasure ain't gonna mine itself you know, and I'm too friggin lazy/got better stuff to do (Someone pass the hemp rope please)
3. Where the fun in that?

They only really have problems when a group decide to try and become hero's.

Just fyi. It's part of the natural eco-system for a dragon.

[NigelWalmsley]

Dragons may not be interested in RULING. And they're rare.

Dragons live thousands of years. Using the figures in the Draconomicon, a White Dragon (shortest lifespan) born at the founding of the Roman Empire would still be alive today. Metallic Dragons could easily be old enough to have been adults in warring states China. With a lifespan like that, it only takes one dragon deciding that a country might be neat to have an empire that lasts longer than anything in human history.

As for rarity, that mostly relies on fiat. If you look at the figures in Draconomicon, you see that dragons live at least two millennia and become fertile after only a century. Even at exceptionally low rates of reproduction, dragons are going to reach carrying capacity unless you postulate either large numbers of extremely capable adventurers, or even more dangerous predators (neither of which is particularly consistent with "a bunch of 1st level mooks" as a primary national defense strategy).


-The more imbalanced a ratio between <the dragon's CR> and <the hoard wealth>, the more incentive there is for somebody to, ahem, redistribute the wealth. Not an army of low-level characters, but a band of foolhardy adventurers willing to take the risk :smallamused:

But that someone has to exist. At some point, you get to the top of the food chain. If you lose your holdings to a bigger, badder monster (or adventurer), that still doesn't put those holdings in the hands of people that can only muster a bunch of no-name chaff to defend themselves.


I'm not saying high-level characters don't exist - I'm saying that they're too few in number to make an army out of, and too powerful to be used efficiently, or in a way that fully aligns with the kingdom's goals.

Who needs numbers to make an army? Just as a Dragon can beat up essentially infinity 1st level Warriors, an 11th level Wizard can Planar Binding up a couple of demons that do the same thing.

As far as the kingdom's goals go, I still don't see how those goals are any different from "what high level characters will allow it to do". Even if those characters are nominally neutral, in practice the kingdom will be heavily constrained by which courses of action will result in a withdrawal of support while in another character's territory. Unless, of course, we postulate a reasonably flat level curve (at least locally).


*Even if so, it can be really hard to find out IC the level of something outside of specific spells. So at that point you're kinda just ordering mandatory service and hoping these are level 20 fighters among your ranks, not level 3 commoners.

Sure you can. Make anyone who joins take a Sleep spell to the face. If they fall asleep, they're too low level to join. You can repeat a couple of times, or use tricks with low-HD animals and positioning, to avoid false negatives. Alternatively, if you happen to be evil, you can instead hit people with N-1 negative levels, ensuring that only level N troops join your army, and supplying you with some Wights to use as shock troops.


-Character advancement only really applies to PCs, unless the DM is a masochist and really wants to track the EXP of every single level 1 commoner every time he has a dangerous encounter with a feral cat. In theory you can have NPCs practice math problems/gladiator fights/feral cats until they level up enough, but I think that's largely TO territory.

We can approximate what results it would produce, and those results are inconsistent with the random settlement rules. Certainly, you can decide that you prefer the latter, but the point is that there's not actually a single RAW answer.


-Leadership doesn't grant any 6th level followers until an effective score of 21. Most NPCs will never reach that level of awesome, and those that do (such as the obligatory level 20 commoner in society) only gains one until a leadership score of 25. (Note: Conscripting your followers and sending them to war may count you as a cruel leader that causes the death of followers, who moves around a lot, but that's a straw-man).

Leadership grants a 6th level cohort much more quickly, and can be chained.


-Mentor... doesn't do anything? You gain one NPC apprentice, whose level and class is ambiguous.

Mentor allows you to train people up to 5th level without them needing to go on adventures.

[Segev]

According to MMV, a DC 25 Knowledge (dungeoneering) check will tell you that madcrafters of Thoon are sluglike aberrations that can vomit out constructs. A similar DC tells you about scythers and stormclouds. It's a pretty reasonable hurdle to put in front of the player, but it's certainly not an insurmountable one.

Sure. If they exist at all.

The OP said he's not running Thoon in his game. That's plenty of reason to simply say it and its associated monsters don't exist. I'm not saying he has to make that choice, but I'm pointing out that "Thoon isn't a thing in this game" is perfectly valid to say.

[Goaty14]

But that someone has to exist. At some point, you get to the top of the food chain. If you lose your holdings to a bigger, badder monster (or adventurer), that still doesn't put those holdings in the hands of people that can only muster a bunch of no-name chaff to defend themselves.

Off topic, but it just sprung on me what would happen if the current rulers were actually given the position by the deities themselves? Think of it as how medieval monarchies were thought to be given the position by gods/godesses, but with real deities backing them up. As in, the moment an insurrection starts gaining traction, a seemingly never-ending amount of archons begin to teleport in and restore the order in the kingdom. In other words, the current rulers are the top of the power chain, short of epic-level threats, they just wield their power indirectly.


Who needs numbers to make an army? Just as a Dragon can beat up essentially infinity 1st level Warriors, an 11th level Wizard can Planar Binding up a couple of demons that do the same thing.

Ignoring the very obvious consequences to resorting to demonic infantry, and assuming this wizard in question is optimized to which they can reliably PB such things, sure.


Sure you can. Make anyone who joins take a Sleep spell to the face.

I don't agree with that, but more on the level of "I don't think spell descriptions are meant to be that specific in-character."


We can approximate what results it would produce, and those results are inconsistent with the random settlement rules. Certainly, you can decide that you prefer the latter, but the point is that there's not actually a single RAW answer.

There isn't, because presumably it's not supposed to happen (RAI). If it was, there'd be rules for it, but since there aren't, 'tis something to be arbitrarily ruled by the DM.


Leadership grants a 6th level cohort much more quickly, and can be chained.

:annoyed:
I don't mean to be a party-pooper, but I don't at all view that as a reasonable idea that would fly at most tables. We can agree to disagree on that.
Even with a cohort though (who, I'll say again, is of an NPC class), you double your numbers. That's ~250 of an army, which the PC in question can produce in ~83 days.

I think that the bigger difference of what we're comparing is that I'm thinking of generic D&D armies/kingdoms, whereas you're thinking of optimized D&D armies/kingdoms, which makes for a difference of perspective. (sized-up because I think it's important)


Mentor allows you to train people up to 5th level without them needing to go on adventures.

But only whenever the mentor themselves gains a level (DMG II, pg 179), which redirects back to if NPCs can gain experience.

[unseenmage]

Rod of Construct Control from Arms and Equipment Guide in the hands of a sneaky, clever enemy agent ought to spice things up.

Domain Draught for the Warforged Domain to be able to turn/rebuke/command Constructs is also an amusement.

Have a Construct related church start taxing the player's forces in exchange for their being allowed to do Construct stuff. Imagine oily, church attired thugs wielding wrenches threatening to break kneecaps.

Perhaps Construct corpses revert to useful materials when slain, or maybe a powerful merchant is convincing folk that's the case. That could be another reason some Constructs on away missions red shirt every so often.

Mindless stuff fails pretty hard to illusions. Maybe an enemy illusionist starts tricking these things into attacking innocent villagers and guards?
('I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took a Construct to the knee.' lol)

Think of it as a risk management situation. All manner of disaster could befall an Intelligent minion in a D&D world. How exactly are mindless minions avoiding all the perils of the random encounter charts that smart minions so commonly succumb to?


All in all, it isnt very many minions in the grand scheme. Basic WBL would rent more, stronger minions especially at higher levels (1gp/day per class level as per AaEG iirc).

As a minionmancers myself I say let them have their fun. Just be glad it's not custom magic resetting traps of Create Crawling Claw, Minor Servitor, or Awaken Sand. :)

[icefractal]

I think a big question is how much you want to limit the power in-setting vs limiting spotlight time. Because techniques to do the former usually add to the latter.

For instance, enforcing communication limits and having problems with standing orders arise frequently takes a lot more time at the table than "Ok, you have three dozen scythers guarding the town now." Ditto with enemies proactively trying to whittle down the numbers, diplomatic incidents, etc.

As far as balance of narrative impact (assuming the other players care), have you considered giving them the same potential capability, just by use of their skills and reputation? In theory, someone with great personal power, wealth, and skills that few can match should be able to achieve significant political influence and/or even start their own kingdom. It's not the typical way D&D games go, but it can be fun.