Mercilessly Slaughtering Innocent Peasants

[Granulator]

Heeheehee. I like that title.

Anyway, on to the more important part of this thread: I'm thinking of tossing a situation at the PCs in which the only way to preserve the greater good and greater law(75% of them are Lawful Good, and the rest are still Lawful) involves seriously ticking off every peasant in the village. As such, it may come to killing and/or knocking unconscious hordes of level 1 commoners. Now I'm wondering, how do I award experience for this?

In the Dungeon Master's Guide, on page 38, it reads, "Since NPC classes (see Chapter 5: Campaigns) are weaker than PC classes, levels in an NPC class contribute less to a creature's CR than levels in a PC class. For an NPC with an NPC class, determine her Challenge Rating as if she had a PC class with one less level."

I can see this working in the case of a troop of warriors trying to apprehend the PCs after they inadvertently incite this riot, and warriors are even used in the examples right next to this small paragraph. However, commoners(And experts and aristocrats in a straight-up fight, but who cares about them anyway?) are even weaker than warriors, and as such should be treated with a lower CR. For first level commoners, this may entail giving them a CR of 1/4, but not every commoner in a village is going to be first level. Would one treat level 5 commoners as CR 3? Even that seems a little high.

[Zeta Kai]

Technically, Warriors & Commoners are of equal CR, so 1st level Commoners would be CR½, 2nd level Commoners would be CR1, 3rd level Commoners would be CR2, et cetera. As the DM, though, you are within your right to reduce the XP if you feel that the encounter does not present enough of a challenge to the party. Also, it should be said that I never offer XP for actions that blatantly violate a PC's declared alignment (just as, say, a LG party slaughtering a village of low-level Commoners).

And for the recond, this is not Homebrew.

[Silence]

Well, the point of XP is to be awarded when the players do something difficult.

If your players are level ten guys, then I might give them some story bonus XP, but it would take no effort, and therefore warrant no XP.

If they're under level five, and having slight trouble, then consider it.

Remember, it all depends on how hard it is.

[Granulator]

Technically, Warriors & Commoners are of equal CR, so 1st level Commoners would be CR½, 2nd level Commoners would be CR1, 3rd level Commoners would be CR2, et cetera.

This, I know, and quoted the very page (Edit: the very page in the Dungeon Master's Guide which says such rules, to be more specific) in the beginning post.


And for the recond, this is not Homebrew.

On the contrary, this is homebrew, as I am trying to deal with commoner CRs more reasonably than simply reducing CR by one in the same way as with warriors.

And I know it's my call, but I'm trying to see what others think of such an alteration to the rule.

[Zeta Kai]

1) Without knowing the specifics of your particular campaign, it would be imprudent to advise you as to whether or not lowering the CR of Commoners (& the resultant XP) would be a good idea. However, doing so would probably not hurt anything, as 1st level Commoners don't have far to fall, as it were. Dropping them from CR½ to CR¼ would only make a difference in exceptionally large groups. In which case, you should probably be using Mobs (DMG2, pages 59-61). A mob of 48 humans is CR8.

2) This is not a homebrewed spell, feat, skill, status condition, magic item, artifact, monster, race, class, NPC, campaign setting, plane, magic system, or combat system, nor is it any combination or variant thereof. You are merely asking if it is alright to bend the rules in a specific case; essentially stating that you believe the Commoner NPC class is especially underpowered. As valid as your question may be, it is not creative in any real sense that I can discern.

[Silence]

Wow. You guys are really sticklers for the rules.

[vegetalss4]

you could try to use the mob rules from the dmg 2.
i think that would suit your purpose better

[Silence]

It depends if the crowd is defending themselves or not.

If they are, then a mob would definently be better, but if they're not, then just use a level one commoner template.

[Drglenn]

At level 1 commoners are not that much worse than warriors (+4 Hp, +1 BAB and slightly worse weaponry won't really change much if your party is higher leveled than them) you can leave them at the same CR as warriors, its at the higher levels the differences start to show (e.g. at level 5 +3 BAB and +~14hp) you might want to lower the CR for the higher leveled ones