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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5534537" data-attributes="member: 2067">How do you figure? The DC's for basic things presented in the PHB didn't magically shoot up later in 3e's life. Climbing a rough wall or earning a wage as a sailor are still the same DC as they were on Day 1. That problem was introduced in 4e, as far as I can tell. 3e gives you some pretty explicit demographic instructions, a very clear baseline, an obvious role for a "normal person" in the world. 4e has this whole "everything is party appropriate always!" balance concept. Does it? I think he's a pretty great pirate captain. I think any creature that has made it to 9th level in 3e would be a pretty great anything, simply because such characters are already rare in the extreme. Being a "great pirate captain" (the fantasy hero archetype) is relative to what a "normal pirate captain" looks like, and a "normal pirate captain" in 3e is pretty explicitly a 3rd level NPC classed sailor of some fashion, so that any player who cares to be can be a "great pirate captain" without fitting one particular class or ability score spread.Well, they are, in that you aren't expected to encounter normal pirate captains (except at low level). You're expected to encounter Krakens and Sea Monsters and Water Elementals and demons and undead and various other monsters.You can also encounter other NPC pirate captains -- the basic demographics imply that they could certainly exist. Just that they are very rare. A 20th level pirate captain is one of only a handful of 20th level characters in the world. As you get lower levels, you get slightly more NPC pirate captains for you to encounter. By the time you're 20th level, though, you're not just killing Blackbeard, you're battling a mythical Pirate King, the greatest Pirate that has ever lived, perhaps a Githyanki Astral Pirate, or a half-fiend captain aboard a skiff that sails the River Styx and waylays Balors to demand tribute. Unique -- and very powerful -- individuals. The default assumptions seem to be, "If you want to fight pirates, they're good low-level enemies, and if you want to be a good pirate, you can do this without a lot of effort, and if you want to make a piratical theme for your entire campaign, you're going to need to fight awesome, epic, supernatural, wahoo, gonzo-style pirates when you gain that level of power, too, because some dude on a boat with his cannons isn't going to be able to hurt your epic level badass, since you are beyond the impossible when you reach that level."3e doesn't serve the purposes of battling Blackbeard for 20 levels all that well (E6 does this in spades, though!). It gives you a clear baseline for "normal folks," and then rockets you past that baseline from the very moment you roll 4d6-and-drop for ability scores, since 3e is concerned with heroic fantasy, which means your protagonist is better than a militia member.</blockquote>

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