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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 9044813" data-attributes="member: 6801228">The best stories use real world logic to come up with ways to make this work. However, you are correct, none if it usually looks like DnD is presented. These are great questions I love exploring. But here we run into a problem. As Stalker0 mentioned, it ends up mattering. For example, you say charging 50 soldiers isn't smart? But at 7th level, I may have access to Wall of Fire, and if the soldiers are normal guards with 11 hp... I might be able to rip apart that encounter with five PCs if even two of them are casters. So... are normal soldiers 11 hp guards or something else? What makes sense for the world?You say you don't think about levels as status, just what the PCs can do... but that is exactly the thing that we are saying gives them status. If you are the only person in a religion spanning hundreds of thousands of people who can raise the dead... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you are literally Jesus whether you are the second coming or not depends on if someone existed in the religion like that before. We have people in the real world who only fool others into thinking they can cure diseases with faith, and they have literal cult followings. Someone who can ACTUALLY raise the dead? The mind boggles. Or, let us think of this in terms of the warlock or wizard. If you can single-handedly wipe out all of the soldiers in a noble's compound, or worse yet, just destroy the compound without even needing to fight them... then that noble is going to either very quickly be dead, or swear fealty to you, because while they are "the state" their authority in part comes from being strong enough to back up their authority. This comes up a lot in discussions about alternative superhero settings. If you have someone with the strength of superman and the mindset of "do the right thing"... they effectively rule the world. Just de facto, they are in charge. Because there is no force on the planet that can constrain them, and their own morals will have them breaking any laws they disagree with... with no consequences. And things they say they want to happen will happen... because the only way they don't happen is if they don't care. At some point in the levels 1 to 20, PCs become a superpower. They contain, in themselves, so much hard and soft power that they are effectively nations in and of themselves. This has to happen, because at the end of the scale, they are fighting beings with the power to rule entire planes of existence. If you can dethrone Graz'zt and muzzle Yeenoghu, then Good King John can't do anything to you. The question is.... where on the scale does this start to happen. And if you decide it is something like level 7 where you have the strength of nations, well, then how do you have organizations with members who can challenge you? Because those organizations full of those members are already stronger than the countries they are threatening... which means they should already be ruling. And sure, you can ignore this, but at a certain point you have to ask how a normal nation even exists if you've fought a dozen things this week that could destroy it if they only got close enough. Because... you weren't fighting these things in the years you grew up, so what happened?</blockquote>

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