A Dozen Crossbows Aimed at You ..

[Delta]

...But what if the local law isn't capable of dealing with the troublemaking PC? Well, then you have a situation, but it's hardly one that is without parallel in storytelling...

Great post, great reading. Thanks for that.

 

[Arkhandus]

(sarcasm)
Why, I proceed to cluck like a chicken and do a little chicken dance, of course!



To throw them into confusion and laughter, wondering if I'm insane.


But primarily just to mock them and make fools out of them, as I swat their bolts out of midair with my gauntleted arms and suffer mere flesh wounds in the process. BWAUK! Neener-neener-neener, you stupid little peons!
(/sarcasm)

Seriously, this is the first thing that sprang to mind when I read your question.

 

[lukelightning]

This reminds me of a Chinese wuxia (fantasy action) novel I'm reading right now; it's the prequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and features Li Mubai (Chow Yun-fat's character). He's made enemies with a government official, who sends a few policemen to arrest him. The police know that he could totally whup their butts, so basically they resort to pleading with him; e.g. "if we don't arrest you we'll be punished severely, c'mon be a hero and help us out!" Being a good and noble person, of course he complies, and sits around in jail until a friend with connections gets the charges dropped (even refusing to escape when another super-kung-fu friend tries to bust him out).

 

[Numion]

Yes, that was my math up above. Using the DMG demographics, for a city of 9,000 -- as I noted, this is the LARGEST city in my Dark-Ages setting -- you have 443 warriors, of whom 8 are level 2, 4 are level 5, 2 are level 11. Are these not the city guard?

Them all? Why not, if the city wants to pay them 36 KGP a year.