I’m so tired of getting punked out by commoners. (rantish)

[Larry Fitz]

The real problem is the disparity bewteen the village apparently needing your help and the locals being able to kick your butt. In different campaigns the 'common folk' will be of varying levels. Some campaigns the PC's will be considered "high Level" at say 9th, others will see that that they don't outstripe their contemporaries unless they reach the high teens. Your GM would be better served by letting the locals appreciate what you've done for them and giving you a discount or maybe even a freebie now and then, and once they feel that they have a rapport with the big tough adventurers tell them about a problem they have or that their cousin the farmer has had, or a story they heard when they were a kid about a green scaly Lizard in a cave deep in the neighboring forest that sits on a pile of treasure... the locals that the PC's aid should be hooks for further adventures and may eventually develop into cohorts, followers or allies...

 

[Snoweel]

I just thought of another point.

Suppose the combined might of the town guard can smack the PC's down quite easily. IMC, this is generally the case.

It still doesn't mean that the town guard and other combat-capable NPC's will want to enter the unknown (including dungeons) and risk their lives when they can pay (or ask) someone else to do it - especially someone who professes a willingness to undertake such potentially suicidal missions (ie. the PC's).

Remember, even though the PC's know that the DM won't arbitrarily throw encounters with horrendously high CR's at them, the NPC's don't have the luxury of such knowledge.

 

[Numion]

I just thought of another point.

Suppose the combined might of the town guard can smack the PC's down quite easily. IMC, this is generally the case.

It still doesn't mean that the town guard and other combat-capable NPC's will want to enter the unknown (including dungeons) and risk their lives when they can pay (or ask) someone else to do it - especially someone who professes a willingness to undertake such potentially suicidal missions (ie. the PC's).

It's worth remembering also that even though the guard could smack the players' characters' asses, would they even want to try that? Would any (probably) underpaid town watchman go against battlehardened adventurers of any level? Modern world analogy would be something of a normal police officer going against trained and armed soldiers.

Of course the GM knows that the party mage can't cast finger of death or disintegrate, but do the guards?

Same goes for the big-ass smith. That's just laughable. Going toe to toe with adventurers.. yeah right. In real world shopkeepers always irritate robbers who wear body armor and carry heavy weaponry.

I'd say that the DM in question isn't very mature; In my experience mostly inexperienced DMs do that whole 'All NPCs Vs. PCs stuff'.

 

[jollyninja]

all i know is that if i was training as a wussy little "warrior npc class" peon, and my job was going to be handling the city's rogues, wizards and fighters and i was human, my two feats would be improved initiative and improved unarmed combat. just for such a situation, that is how i would train my poor town guards if i were in charge of such things.

also where exactly in the rules does it say that defeating someone with subdual weapons does not get you the same ammount of xp that killing them would? crap man, it says that sneaking past the ogre gives you as much xp as killing him. therefore, every time this guy talks a drunk fighter out of killing him, every time he defeats his buddy steive in training exercises, every time he successfully guards the local tournament from the mobs of people trying to get closer to their heroes (presumably the pc's but who knows) he gets xp. otherwise where are these "eletes" coming from? on a day to day basis this guy does as much if not more then an average pc as far as living a real life goes (as boring as that is), so while he may not kill as well as the fighter and he does not have as varried a skill repitoire as a rogue, the guy is out there every single day learning the ins and outs of his city/town/keep and how to fight as well.

i give town guard and soldiers a general xp award of 5xp every day. it takes 200 days to reach level 2, 400 more days for lev 3, and so on. this does not even come close to the rate a pc (in my campaigns anyway) goes up but it means that if Jim has been in the guard for 10 years, you do not want to mess with him. in times of war or civil unrest i double or triple this advancement. this keeps players from thinking that they can kill a whole town if they see fit, there are real consequences to their actions.

also, why would the only law enforcement that exists never bother to learn and pass on successful techniques for dealing with certian situations? why would they not know that grappling cripples a wizard and you should rush him from many directions all at once and that right after he casts a spell is the best time to nail him. in a small place i can see them not having trained all that much for this kind of thing but in a major center, surely there would be texts on such things. surley reading these texts would be part of the training.

now i know someone is going to say that in reality, such things were not done and most guardsmen could not even read. in reality, adventuring wizards did not exist therefore no such steps were taken to handle them. also unlike the real world, the npc classes by derfault can in fact read and write.

i am not for refusing to let the pc's become the cream of the crop go as far as battle hardened warriors go, i just have to believe that sooner or later the npc guard either hits level 2 or he dies. in fact i fully agree that the blacksmith mentioned earlier probably would not be a level 12 fighter every time. if he was just this once and that is what started the thread, then i say good for the dm. if the dm does this all the time, then he is a poor dm.

 

[Zappo]

Usually, I treat PCs just as I would treat NPCs. When an adventure starts with "a group of madmen razed a town, killing all the local militia", clearly a party of powerful adventurers is going to be hired by someone or maybe even come on its own to deal with these madmen. That's would would happen if the madmen were NPCs: they become an adventure hook. It's the same thing for PCs. Let's face it: a high level party can wipe out a small town, regardless of its defenses, before the larger towns can send help. But they're dead after doing that. Oh, they may walk and breathe, but they are still dead - it's just a matter of time. Whatever nation the small town was in, the ruler will hire tougher adventurers and the tougher adventurers will eventually find and slaughter the PCs. If they fail, tougher ones will be sent.