Amassing a force of people

[Krug]

Taken from Ogre Cave's review of Monte Cook's Queen of Lies.

Monte Cook does something here that I've never seen in an adventure: rules for the characters to take an armed force with them. They gain some forces from Rhescan, but with a Diplomacy skill check, can recruit more. This force, made up of elves and human warriors, and the number of soldiers they gain is based off the party's diplomacy skill check total, the higher their skill check, the more troops they gain. This looks like it'd work great for other similar situations for those who don't have the leadership feat. Information on paying and maintaining the troops, and how the GM should play them, gives the GM an opportunity to show why low level characters should rarely travel with higher level ones. Or, if the NPC troops are lucky, how they can showcase real bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.

What d'ya think?

 

[James McMurray]

Kinda makes me think about geting Queen of Lies. Unfortunately I'd never get to run it (or at least not for quite a while). Plus, my money's already tied up in the ELH this month.

 

[Hand of Evil]

It works, think about if all henchman from a party were put together at the higher levels you start to get a small army, plus at the level the characters are in the adventure they should be well known.

 

[mmadsen]

Monte Cook does something here that I've never seen in an adventure: rules for the characters to take an armed force with them.

I'm a bit surprised there were no such rules in the DMG. Aren't spear carriers (and red shirts) a genre staple?

Information on paying and maintaining the troops, and how the GM should play them, gives the GM an opportunity to show why low level characters should rarely travel with higher level ones.

Low-level characters should rarely travel with high-level characters? Isn't every mercenary captain a high-level Fighter surrounded by low-level Fighters? Isn't every pirate captain the same?

 

[Rackhir]

Low-level characters should rarely travel with high-level characters? Isn't every mercenary captain a high-level Fighter surrounded by low-level Fighters? Isn't every pirate captain the same?

The problem is that things that are even mild threats to moderate-high lv char can simply disintigrate low level char. An 8th lv fighter for example isn't likely to be seriously threatened by a 6d6 fireball, but that can kill pretty much as many 1st lv npcs as you can cram into the blast radius. There's also things like area effect fear or gaze attacks, etc...

Your point is a good one, but D&D generally glosses over the fact that masses of people are not generally effective in a high magic enviroment. Very few book fantasy worlds are ones where there is a comparable level of magic to your typical D&D campaign and in the ones where there IS a comparable level of Magic they usually gloss over things by making references to the Mages "cancelling" each other out, which is not really how things work in D&D. At least on a mass scale there is really no counter to magic, you can protect individual targets, but there are no battle field area dispel magics/counter magics.

 

[mmadsen]

The problem is that things that are even mild threats to moderate-high lv char can simply disintigrate low level char.

Yes, that's definitely a problem with high-level characters having lots of hit points and high-level spells doing lots of damage to keep up with the high-level PCs and their gobs of hit points.

An 8th lv fighter for example isn't likely to be seriously threatened by a 6d6 fireball, but that can kill pretty much as many 1st lv npcs as you can cram into the blast radius. There's also things like area effect fear or gaze attacks, etc...

I think it fits the genre that our hero doesn't run away from the terrifying monster, that he doesn't quite go down from the poison gas, that he averts his gaze from the basilisk, but the "red shirts" run away, get knocked out, turn to stone, etc.

The fireball still doesn't quite work for me though.

Your point is a good one, but D&D generally glosses over the fact that masses of people are not generally effective in a high magic enviroment. Very few book fantasy worlds are ones where there is a comparable level of magic to your typical D&D campaign and in the ones where there IS a comparable level of Magic they usually gloss over things by making references to the Mages "cancelling" each other out, which is not really how things work in D&D. At least on a mass scale there is really no counter to magic, you can protect individual targets, but there are no battle field area dispel magics/counter magics.

Well put.

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Amassing a force of people

I'm a bit surprised there were no such rules in the DMG. Aren't spear carriers (and red shirts) a genre staple?

They all get killed, yes.

Low-level characters should rarely travel with high-level characters? Isn't every mercenary captain a high-level Fighter surrounded by low-level Fighters? Isn't every pirate captain the same?

How facile.


Hong "and mmadsen? is ending every sentence? with a rising inflection? again?" Ooi