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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Medic" data-source="post: 8708411" data-attributes="member: 7035835">Overcoming this hurdle was my first step to unlocking the secrets of prosperity. The first DM I ever played with kept putting our group into sweaty situations where the lives of innocents were at stake, a fairly typical staple of any heroic fantasy. That's not to say they pulled their punches; jumping into the fray to save peasant townies was usually a suitably arduous task for us bold paragons of righteousness that left us burned and bruised and in dire need of healing. The pay was not spectacular either - it turns out that the impoverished, the young, and the ailing, those small folk who have no choice but to rely on the compassion and bravery of others, don't have much to give besides their gratitude.It wasn't until the sorceress that I was playing got particularly beat up protecting a family of amiable albeit cryptoracist halfling yokels from the local vampire lord that I had a sort of epiphany: every round that a bad guy spends killing these soulless husks meant to approximate the behaviors of sapient beings (or "NPCs," as some call them) is a round they don't spend dealing damage to me.Now, this may sound like a given, but it's the sort of knowledge that can be used for practical purposes when properly applied. It took some convincing to get the rest of her party to come around to her way of thinking, but when Orc Warlord Ironfist Killgore and his band of merry murderers arrived to raze the town we were squatting in, we liberated everything we wanted from the best shops (usually violently) and skipped town, aware that few would live to tell of our misdeeds and fewer still could do anything about it. Not our adventuring party's finest hour, but money is money, and we didn't have to lose a single hit point between ourselves to get it.And that's a real teaching moment, I think. As the old adage goes, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.</blockquote>

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