Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6800248" data-attributes="member: 6787503">Gygax didn't write 2e, but they appear to have used his original text with very little alteration. Of course I was talking about the 1e AD&D Monster Manual, the text you quote above. I missed the word "respectively", so, as Hemlock pointed out, Gygax is talking about the largest hobgoblin settlements being comprised of 200 combatants and 900 noncombatants for a total population of 1100. I forget what your estimate was, but Gygax's 18% doesn't seem too far off. That Gygax doesn't show you his work doesn't prove that he didn't consider the functionality of hobgoblin society, or that he was just pulling numbers out of thin air, especially when those numbers are very close to the numbers you came up with after such careful consideration.  Where you and Gygax seem to differ is his hobgoblin society features universal adult male conscription whereas you are imagining more equal populations of males and females. These seem like minor details, and I agree that, in 5e, such distinctions between the sexes are unimportant. Suffice it to say that Gygax presents a hobgoblin society in which 18% of the population comprises a fighting force that is supported by the other 72% of the population. It's important to note that the entry for any humanoid in the Monster Manual, and this goes back to the beginning of D&D, does not represent a typical member of that race, but rather represents that race's typical foot soldier. This is because of D&D's roots as a wargame in which the figures represented have their proper place on the battlefield. Personally, as to the OP's question, I'd use the Hobgoblin Captain stats for the leader of every 20 hobgoblins and his assistants. For chiefs and subchiefs, I'd use the Warlord stats.</blockquote>

Verification