Confusion with Commoners. Damn Peasants! :P

Jurble

First Post
Hey guys,

so i was thinking today while making up characters for my new campaign which im running and I ran into abit of a "huh" situation.

Take the lvl1 commoner, your all round poor peasant who spends his life on a farm breeding chickens or somthing.

What makes him different from a lvl7 commoner and more importantly what the hell IS a lvl7 commoner?

I was trying to work out how that fits with game rules. I mean obviously a lvl5 fighter has more experience in warfare than a lvl1 fighter. Character classes increase in power, even with npc classes a adept becomes better with casting, an expert with...say crafting, an aristocrat (ok this ones abit hazy) gets better at conniving?

What makes a +1 lvl commoner?

Also ont he same almost philosophical line of thought, a fighter vs a warrior. So fighters are trained and fighters are not, but what does that make a lvl20 warrior?

Sorry if the questions sound stupid im just abit stumped! thanks!

Marc
 

log in or register to remove this ad

A level 1 commoner is, for instance, a teenager (or racial equivalent) either helping his Pa on the farm or just taking over the farm (probably a bit too early). He's the farmhand, blacksmith's apprentice, stablehand, baker's assistant, destitute street urchin, novice wheelwright, cooper (barrelmaker), or table-waiter.

A level 7 commoner is the experienced old farmer who's tended and protected his crops well into middle or old age, maybe even venerable age if he's particularly lazy and slow-working (or relatively untalented). He's fought off coyotes/wolves/stray dogs/street urchins who tried stealing some of his crops or eating his sheep/chickens/cattle/pigs. He's mixed it up in his fair share of bar-room brawls over the years, and survived probably more than one rough mugging where he had to struggle to keep the muggers from killing or crippling him. He might've joined the militia for a year but only for the free food or something, he probably didn't pay much attention and never had any real battles during the stint. Maybe he went to the village's defense back when that goblin tribe came by to make trouble, and gutted a few goblins with his trusty old farming sickle or his carving knife. He's struggled to save his crops from the occasional drought or flood, crop-blight or high-taxation period, hungry moles or rats or whatnot, and perhaps even an occasional wildfire or whatnot.

7th-level commoners might also be younger men or women who are just very talented at their trade, and have worked hard through adversity and hardship to be successful farmers/smiths/coopers/tailors/whatever. They may not be good at much, but they have a knack for their profession and they're very dedicated to making the most of it. They might've turned a rugged frontier field into productive cropsoil, fighting tooth and nail to ward off wild animals, bandits, amoral frontiersmen, and a greedy landbaron who taxes far too much for frontier acreage. It might be because they're enterprising or prideful, but it's just as likely or moreso that they had no choice and simply did what was necessary to make a living, regardless of the obstacles, because it was either that or die. They might not have what it takes to be a ranger or rogue or fighter, but they've got spirit and at least one significant talent. They're rugged by necessity and overcoming hardships, even though it all may seem pathetic to the likes of adventurers what with their risk-our-lives-daily-but-never-really-work-ourselves-bloody routine.

Etc.

The difference between a fighter and a warrior is that fighters get more formal training, and from better sources, and fighters are more dedicated as well as more talented. They practice harder and more often. They get real battle experience more frequently. They may spar a lot. The fighter devotes themselves to mastering various combat techniques, whereas the warrior just learns how to hit things until they die or give up, though the warrior may actually bother to spend a little time here and there learning an actual technique. The warrior spends less time in battle and trains less, practicing even less still, and relaxing much more often, or does menial tasks that let their combat skills degrade rather than putting them to the test. Warriors don't test their prowess as frequently against such difficult opponents or odds. They're probably more lazy and more cowardly, or they're militiamen who only practice occasionally in combat skills alongside working their farm or their smithy. Or they're just undisciplined and untalented. Warriors probably don't eat as well or exercise as well as fighters do, so their physique is likely to be less optimal. The warrior might be nothing more than a common street thug working a protection racket or serving the thieves' guild, or going around mugging folks, or partaking of highway banditry or pirating at sea, fighting only when necessary to secure the goods before making their escape.
 

My great grand-father was a high level commoner.
He immigrated with very little started working as a laborer on other peoples farms, started his own, and took over the work on others, manging them, making them profitable and buying them out.

He was very good at farming, ambious and motivated.

We had a great time disccusing the Commoner on this archieved thread:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=97601

In Game- I give RP exp and solving difficulties exp (where life or property is on the line)
Older people who continually face new challanges, have occasional brushes with monsters of milita duties can reach 5th-8th level. As this is the level I set for master craftsmen (experts) as well. People that challange themselves less and live peacefully top out at 3rd.
 

Arkhandus pretty much covered my opinion on Commoner 1 vs. Commoner 7.

As for fighter vs. warrior, I see a warrior as a combatant by vocation and a fighter as a combatant by life. Think of the difference between a guy who went into the National Guard to earn money for college compared to the guy who becomes a Navy S.E.A.L.
 

I agree with EvilHalfing’s take on this one: I don’t think it is at all reasonable to say that higher level commoners are older, and more experienced at the ordinary aspects of “commoner” life. They might be, but what they definitely must be is more experienced at, and better at, combat. The level system is primarily a combat one, not one for peaceful characters building up their knowledge over time. There is, in fact, no mechanic for that whatsoever. Try and advance a character without their defeating if not killing opponents.
So I think that higher level commoners (or Warriors for that matter) could be of any age, which is more interesting, and they would be those people in a community who had run across more violence in the course of ordinary life.
An older commoner who has never lifted a weapon but knows the land, and is very wise and informed, can be role-played as such without any problem. But mechanically, he would still be a 1st level commoner, as there is no reason his BAB and HPs would go up as a result of that life- and no way to have obtained the relevant XP. Those NPC classes are still combat oriented- I don’t think they should be confused with role-playing older, more knowledgeable NPCs. I don’t think there is a way, or need, to quantify in D&D all the ways people can be accomplished over a lifetime.
 

I think it's a little more complicated than that. First, you have to determine what levels mean in your game. For example, in your game if a guard spends his whole life as a guard, is he 7th level? 5th level? 10th level? IMC, the guard would only reach 3rd-4th level after an entire lifetime, and the same goes for a commoner. I personally believe that a high-level commoner is an EXPERT; therefore, the commoner would start gaining levels in expert and would become a multiclass commoner/expert (or just replace commoner levels with expert levels) instead of a high-level commoner. For the same reason, I can't imagine a high-level warrior because eventually that warrior would have learned enough (that's what experience is - learning) to be a fighter.
 

William_2 said:
I don’t think it is at all reasonable to say that higher level commoners are older, and more experienced at the ordinary aspects of “commoner” life. They might be, but what they definitely must be is more experienced at, and better at, combat.

I agree with this insofar as the rules are concerned. The primary rules-supported way of getting XP (and thus advancing in level) is by fighting and that would mean that a Level 7 Commoner got that way because he fought.

But this isn't the rules forum so I won't confine myself to talking only about the rules in the book as opposed to my philosophy on XP and what it should reflect. To me, XP should reflect becoming more adept in surviving and thriving in the world by overcoming the challenges you are presented with. PC's thrust themselves into dangerous, difficult and puzzling situations on a very regular basis and this is reflected in their rapid rate of advancement compared to many NPC's. This is one of the reasons that I don't base XP solely (or even primarily in many cases) on combat.

By the same token, Commoners gain XP in my games by virtue of the challenges they face. The man who is content to work the same, small plot of ground, year after year in exactly the same way his father did, producing enough food to feed his family with just a bit extra to barter with other local craftsmen, will be a Commoner 1 or 2 until the day he dies.

But another man who is not content with such a simple life will challenge himself to become something greater. He may work longer hours by clearing some extra woods next to his fields so that he can plant more crops. He will hire on another young farmhand to help him work this extra land and use the profits to hire a second farmhand to help him clear more land. He may buy some cattle and pigs and open up a butcher shop, continuing to increase his farmstead and hire on more workers, encouraging them to bring their families onto the farm as well.

He has more at stake within the community so when bandits become a problem then he will join the posse that rides out to try and clear them from the forest. As he grows into middle age his savvy about farming and running a business (he's bought those ranks in Profession: Farmer, Profession: Butcher and Knowledge: Agriculture) as well as the "people skills" earned by running his farmstead may translate into him seeking a position as Mayor.

As he settles into old age he may take a less active role in the manual labor on the farm but he continues to seek out better ways of growing his crops and livestock efficiently, challenging his mind when his body is growing more feeble. By the time he dies, he has become a respected elder in the village whose opinions and wisdom are sought by many a younger man.

He's become a 7th level Commoner.
 

actually I prefeer that all "common" people are considered 0 level, its really not improtant in how a 0 level commoner has a 23 in armorsmithing. Its just somantics, unless you really want to get into it then you can assign skill points based upon age, trainning, local and other factors.
 

Rel said:
I agree with this insofar as the rules are concerned. The primary rules-supported way of getting XP (and thus advancing in level) is by fighting and that would mean that a Level 7 Commoner got that way because he fought.

While I agree with the majority of your post, I don't agree that the primary rules-supported way of getting XP is by fighting. The primary way of getting XPs is by overcoming challenges and that explicitly includes overcoming traps as well as combat. It's just that combat is the most common example of challenge.
I actually think the rules do a decent job of disabusing DMs of the notion that fighting is the only way to gain XPs.
 

If your campaign doesn't allow role-playing XP, there is the justification that the D&D teeming is teeming with nasty monsters of all description. Any commoner over 10 years of age has probably seen and survived seeing numerous monsters of all CRs. If such a monster sees a commoner and attacks, and misses, and the commoner flees, I'd give him some XP simply for surviving the encounter.

As it is, I just act as if your average human commoner gains about 1 level per 8 years (starting at age 10). So a 90 year old commoner is 10th level, has more skill points than the young 'uns, but is pretty feeble (even with his extra hp, his CON has dropped significantly due to age). He'd be the old geezer in the tavern regaling small children with stories of his life, and has a reputation as a wise old man who's tough as nails.

If a commoner were to gain XP through fighting and defeating monsters, I'd expect it would be applied towards a level of warrior, personally.
 

Remove ads

Top