I'm wrapping my head around this kind of setting and it reminds me of that movie Tai Chi Zero, about a village of seemingly normal hardworking folk who also happen to be kung fu masters. If most NPCs had levels, that sure would explain how humans survive against the hordes of monsters, and it would unflinchingly embrace the D&D ruleset with the fiction.Assuming that NPC life really sucks, your example follows. Assuming that it doesn't; if we make higher baseline assumptions about the level, financial resources, and overall power of people in the world at large, it becomes more of a choice whether one wants to go into the adventuring business or not.
To an extent. Even a level 5 commoner isn't much of a combatant. He certainly can't beat what a PC would consider a "level appropriate" challenge. But he is a much better laborer, and he is in general more resilient.If most NPCs had levels, that sure would explain how humans survive against the hordes of monsters, and it would unflinchingly embrace the D&D ruleset with the fiction.
This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about. For instance, in 4e acquiring treasure isn't a source of XP; it's a consequence of XP (because XP drives levels, and levels drive treasure parcels).The D&D rules themselves are largely oriented around XP for adventuring tasks like acquiring treasure or killing monsters
This seems to be an artefact of 2nd ed AD&D and 3E. In AD&D, for instance, there is no particular incentive to kill goblins - the incentive is to loot them. And in 4e there is no particular incentive to kill goblins, unless that is the particular way you want to engage the ingame situation and thereby drive the game onwards.the "killing goblins makes you a better person" vibe
While I realize how it's supposed to work, every time I see the term "treasure parcels" my gut reaction is 'bleah!'; it sounds so pre-packaged, the antithesis of the freeform and random type of game I far prefer.This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about. For instance, in 4e acquiring treasure isn't a source of XP; it's a consequence of XP (because XP drives levels, and levels drive treasure parcels).
To an extent. I don't think any of them are really giving you experience for gaining life experience though. It's always been some variation of rewarding people for adventuring rather than modeling learning through experience.This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about.
In this case, it's a matter of the hobgoblin casting a spell through the staff, not the staff itself being magical. The fighter can't cast all the wizard's spells by borrowing his wand, either.In KotS there's an enemy - I think it's a Hobgoblin just near the stairs between the first and second decks - who carries around a staff that when touched to an opponent does something like 4d6 electrical damage. The module doesn't consider this to be treasure at all, but when my crew killed that Hob. and figured out how to get that shock-staff working they thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen! So into party treasury it went, meaning that later I had to assign a value to it for treasury division...it ended up being the most expensive thing in the adventure!
I don't think 4e wants things to work that way, but if an opponent can use something then in theory the PCs (usually) can too.
Lan-"that shock-staff hung around in the party for about 2 years until it got stolen from its owner by another PC who then lost it when he died"-efan
In 4E, are drow weapons mundane or are they magical and salvageable? If you disarm the hobgoblin's staff, does he lose his implement for shocking? How do the PCs "know" to spend 10 minutes or not differentiating the useful magical loot from the useless loot that were merely implemental to their owners? What do treasure parcels imply is happening in the fiction, or is it merely uninteresting to the story? I'm curious, because it seems to mirror the hit point self-awareness angle as well.In this case, it's a matter of the hobgoblin casting a spell through the staff, not the staff itself being magical. The fighter can't cast all the wizard's spells by borrowing his wand, either.
This was an attempt to avoid the wretched state of affairs in 3e of NPCs needing an overabundance of gear. 1e faced similar problems, so you had stuff like drow weapons that evaporated in sunlight.