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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5128820" data-attributes="member: 4937">While I'm all for Gygax on most things, this ended up being one of the things we rejected most early in Gygax's demographics.  I think Gygax was thinking as a war gamer, and his interests were primarily: "I shouldn't let the PC's hire armies of high level characters, nor should I give the impression that the PC's aren't remarkable heroes."  But in practice, we noticed Gygax rejected his own demographics.  Gaurds and bandits in modules and dungeons were quite frequently not 0 level fighters.  I also noticed as a DM that the good guys generally lacked the ability to defend themselves creditably from the bad guys in the absence of the PC's.  I didn't mind so much if the PC's could turn the tide in the good guys favor (that's the point after all), but if on one side you had forces that could challenge a 10th level party and on the other side you had mostly 0-level fighters, it raised the issue of how the good guys had survived until the PC's came around.  I wanted all the various cultures where a status quo had persisted for some time to have creditable defence against all their neighbors.  This meant more than 0-level fighters.  Also, I worried as a DM that the good guys would have no means to deter players from turning their characters against the good guys as easier targets.  This was a form of derailing I didn't really want to deal with.  Also, my sense of wargamer was to want to pit Sparta vs. Persia, or Rome vs. Gaul and there was a feeling that the elite military units of history ought to be differentiated in various strong ways from the run of the mill.  All these things led to by the end of the '80's creating the idea of elite units composed of 1st or even 2nd level fighters.Then we encountered Forgotten Realms, and there we saw a DM with a published setting where he was not afraid to suggest elite units of up to 4th or 6th level.  Now, I didn't think much of the FR and considered that more of the typical power creep in the game, but it did get me to open up and think hard about my Gygaxian biases and I stopped fearing my biases and started considering what sort of upper limits I'd be willing to accept and what sort of demographics I really believed in.Then I got involved in a campaign that used alot of Battlesystem and one thing I noticed is that units of high level characters were great heroic talismans just like magic swords or magic rings.  Players got really enthused by them, especially if you kept them suitably rare and special (but not obviously, unknown).  Power gamers loved to create potent maximized armies.  Roleplayers loved to create armies of less than faceless individuals.  Keeping NPC's just 0-level went contrary to what I felt were the real needs the game.  So I pretty much abandoned the idea of abundant 0 level characters by the early 90's.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.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.And Gygaxian demographics didn't even survive into the 90's.  As I said, FR, for better or worse, killed them.</blockquote>

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