Do castles make sense in a world of dragons & spells?

[S'mon]

This; the men at arms that formed the garrison of royal castles and the core elements of household troops of the richer nobility would be professionals and pretty much mid level by the standards of the time.
0-level are essentially the peasant levies.
Now what consitutes mid level is a whole other kettle of fish.

Well, if the Lord is a 9th level Fighter - the minimum you get with the 1e DMG fortress generator - it seems reasonable to stat his 18-25 core household retainers/personal guard around half that - 4th, or say 2nd-6th. If the Castellan of the Keep on the Borderlands is 6th, then it seems reasonable to make his top dozen or so men 3rd, or ca 2nd-4th.

BECMI D&D tended more to this approach (see eg the Jarl's Personal Guard in the Northern Reaches Gazetteer), perhaps one reason why I found Mystara a more playable setting than Greyhawk.

 

[S'mon]

The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures,
In addition ... From 30 to 180 men, half crossbow armed light foot, half be heavy foot. Everyone mounted who/that can be.

It's these guys who are implausible and ineffective - though when I aid Gygaxian I was thinking specifically about castles in the 1e AD&D DMG. The vast horde of 0 level men-at-arms takes up a lot of space, eats a lot of food, and is almost totally ineffective against mid-level PC-class characters. More, they're not notably better than 0 level peasant levies, they have a couple more hit points, better equipment, and the same attacks & saves - inferior to a 1hd Orc.

 

[S'mon]

But it restores another 1e trope that I liked no better: that NPC's and PC's are simply made of different things. Just as I tossed away Gygaxian demographics, I also tossed away the trope that NPC's couldn't gain levels like PC's could. 4e brings it back.

I'm more than fine with that - it explains why the world's not full of 30th level characters! In fact with 4e I tend to avoid using PC-class NPCs wherever possible.

My 4e version of BD&D's Keep on the Borderlands has the Castellan as a MM2 level 7 Cavalier, while his soldiers are 1st-3rd level, with leaders 4th-6th. If I were restatting them for a high level game I'd keep the soldiers at the same XPV but convert them to 9th-11th level minions.

 

[S'mon]

And Gygaxian demographics didn't even survive into the 90's. As I said, FR, for better or worse, killed them.

Per the 3e DMG 'War' section and settlement creation, the vast majority of soldiers are 1st level Warriors, or 1st level Commoners if peasant levies.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

But, how did those cities develop in the first place? Sure, once you have the resources of the city, you can make unbreachable walls that suchlike. No problem. But, you have to start with a village first, which certainly doesn't have those kinds of resources.

So, who protected the village on its way through town and into its growth into a city.

And, note, even by 3e demographics, only the very largest cities should have high level (as in 15+) level characters and you should only have one or two of those in an entire nation state. The vast majority of settlements would be villages.

This is one of the places where I think D&D get it totally wrong. If you look at the real world then the hard cases are the ones that live in the toruble spots and can survive there. I doubt that many of us would last long in Darfur or places lile that. Back in the day when Scotland and England were separate kingdoms that there was more high level individuals on the border than in Edinburgh or London.

 

[Hereticus]

But, did these opponents just not exist at some point in the past, thus allowing cities to develop? Presumably, in most fantasy worlds, the different races and whatnot develop at about the same time. So, who protected the villages on their way to cities? It doesn't matter if you developed last year or ten thousand years ago. The threats are exactly the same.

If all the races developed at the same time, that eliminates on threat. Perhaps all the dragons were smaller an posed a lesser threat. Perhaps there were none where these civilizations developed.

Now, it's perfectly fine to handwave it and I think that's what the vast majority of setting do. But, unless the cities popped out full formed (not an impossibility in a world with gods), they still had to progress from hamlet on up. Which means they needed protection.

I would imagine that first there were citadels and walled cities that got larger and larger over time. They would have had underground areas for protection from attacks. As the cities grew larger, the old walls remained while newer and larger ones were built to expand the area. And as the city grew, more palaces, temples and other fortified structures were built inside the walls.

 

[Hereticus]

A small border garrison of an average nation would IMC contain 40 or so 2nd and level fighters, a handful of experts to maintain the place and provide for the troops, some gaurd dogs, some war horses, and what would in essence be an NPC party of 5th-6th level (commander, mage, cleric, scout). They'd differ from the PC's in various ways. They'd not be as well equipped. They'd have unexceptional attributes. They'd have skill and feat selections more geared to mundane affairs and a general fear of uncanny things and crawling into dark holes, but they could handle most things up to CR 8 fairly well.

I start PCs out with better stats. NPCs start with all 10s, or an average of 10. Player characters start out with 18/16/14/12/10/08, which is an average of 13.

All humanoids regardless of race become first level in something once they reach the age of maturity.

Second, most NPCs are content to remain in their lower level. Very few attain higher levels.

 

[S'mon]

This is one of the places where I think D&D get it totally wrong. If you look at the real world then the hard cases are the ones that live in the toruble spots and can survive there. I doubt that many of us would last long in Darfur or places lile that. Back in the day when Scotland and England were separate kingdoms that there was more high level individuals on the border than in Edinburgh or London.

In traditional D&D though the Bishop of Bath or Lord Chancellor would typically be statted as high level NPCs. I agree it's not very plausible. 3e is by far the worst offender - in 1e a random fortress will have high level NPCs at least comparable to those you get in the random city encounter table. In 3e it only makes sense for very high magic settings with routine teleportation and other transport magic.

I think though the most plausible approach generally is for frontier castles to have tough, mid-high level garrisons that can tripwire invading forces, while most of the country is low level, and the country ruler has a personal force of high level retainers who can act as a rapid-reaction, firefighter force and leaders of his army.

The enemy invades, the castle tripwires them, the castle's mid-level defenders hold out until the ruler's high level champions/army arrive to stomp the enemy.

 

[billd91]

In traditional D&D though the Bishop of Bath or Lord Chancellor would typically be statted as high level NPCs. I agree it's not very plausible. 3e is by far the worst offender - in 1e a random fortress will have high level NPCs at least comparable to those you get in the random city encounter table. In 3e it only makes sense for very high magic settings with routine teleportation and other transport magic.

I think this rests on the assumption that kills are virtually the only source of XPs. I've never really bought into that. The political intrigues of becoming the Lord Chancellor would certainly stand for something. People in these positions, while not necessarily great combatants, were usually highly competent individuals (at intrigue if nothing else).
What I think 3e did very well was develop non-adventuring professions that couldn't really stand up to similarly leveled adventurers (though weren't push-overs) but were formidable against their peers and subordinates. I usually level my NPCs up based on how long they've been in their professions starting with 1st level as the new adult/professional and giving them a level for every 3-5 years depending on how heated the competition would be (higher on frontiers, higher in politically charged areas, slower in peaceful interior backwaters, etc).

 

[Haltherrion]

Having 'powerful magic' in the setting is not the same as having 'powerful magic available as an economic commodity'.

I think I made it clear that there was an availability component earlier in the post.

You are correct, though, that magic would likely reduce the cost of construction as well as attack which would affect the economics. Although the older versions of D&D allowed for a ridicuously small amount of earth or stone to be effected. It always seemed the original creators where a little weak on geometry. Dig in particular, IIRC, did not move much volume.

As a related note, while I've never actually worked it out as a game mechanic, IMCs I've always assumed that dwarves and other deep delvers had ways of creating the type of underground chambers you have in the Tolkien world ('cause I like that stuff ). And such construction methods would also be quite useful for both excavating dungeons as well as mining fortifications.