Justifying high level 'guards', 'pirates', 'soldiers', 'assassins', etc.

[Mallus]

Of course, you've picked on a particularly broken detail in 3E.

Well, I was trying to emphasize a point...

If you fix giants and dragons in particular, there's not really another standout example you can point to with quite as extreme a problem.

The problem I was illustrating remains, even if you take giants and dragons off the table. Without something that boosts AC, melee character rapidly become unable to face competent melee opponents (in part thanks to the joys of two-handed weapon Power Attack). I didn't need to use giants in my example, a competently-built half-orc with a great axe would have sufficed.

 

[Delta]

The problem I was illustrating remains, even if you take giants and dragons off the table. Without something that boosts AC, melee character rapidly become unable to face competent melee opponents (in part thanks to the joys of two-handed weapon Power Attack). I didn't need to use giants in my example, a competently-built half-orc with a great axe would have sufficed.

Obviously you're playing 3.5 with its even-more-broken Power Attack rule. There's part of your problem right there.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Obviously you're playing 3.5 with its even-more-broken Power Attack rule. There's part of your problem right there.

Maybe we should just stop ignoring the "broken" parts of the various games and editions?
Otherwise we're sitting here all day...




Okay, I suppose that means I'll see you all here again tomorrow?

 

[Prism]

It's true that kobolds don't last too long as respectable enemies, but I will point out that a level 3 solo (750 XP) is worth more XP than a level 20 minion (700 XP). So if the DM is willing to restat monsters, the same legion devil legionnaire that almost took out your entire party on their first adventure could still be a component of a challenging encounter in the early epic tier. It's more likely that a monster might go from being a normal monster (level 3 brute) to a minion (level 11 minion), but that still provides a +8 boost to its level, greatly increasing the longevity of that monster type in the campaign.

You are right and this is exactly the way to deal with it for me. The first page of this discussion focused on the level of the human opponents yet in 4e the way of representing toughness is by xp - since level is such an abstract number for monsters. So rather than saying that in general city guards are 5th level or lower (as I would have in 3e and earlier), saying that a guard is up to 200xp gives much more flexibility at upper levels when using minions. In fact, as a player I could accept a mix group of 5th level soldiers and 13th level minions without worrying about the numbers

However to add to an argument some others have already used. The A beats B which beats C analogy is too simplified I would say. In a typical adventure at low level its more consistent than that. By the time you have waded through a kobold adventure for example its more like:-

enc 1 adventurers struggle to beat the kobolds
enc 2 adventurers struggle to beat the kobolds
enc 3 adventurers beat the kobolds
enc 4 adventurers easily beat the kobolds
enc 5 adventurers easily beat the kobolds

So by this point the PCs have set an expectation that they have overcome the general threat of kobolds, elites and bosses being exceptions. Now you could argue that in another part of the world kobolds are harder but that to me would stretch it. It would be like saying wolves in Canada are harder than those in Russia. So, at high levels I would use the minion rules to bring back kobolds but never to create a challenging encounter. As an easy encounter or maybe a filler to something much harder but not as a challenger, again solo and elite excepted. To do so would be to change the proven expectation that the players are harder than average kobolds

Until this thread I was struggling still with the use of minions and I now have some good ideas. I never bought the whole how to have a bigger fight argument since in 3e many of the fights were mass brawls with multiple opponents anyway. However minions providing a way of using lower 'level' creatures as fodder in higher levels fights (and occasionally lower level fights too) is a good use

 

[Spatula]

I was in favour of that, because I thought what Monte & co meant was that they wanted to get away from the 1990's plot/story-on-rails model of adventure design (I own an appalling example of this, Rogue Mistress for Stormbringer) and re-establish the dungeon crawl as a legitimate mode of play. I didn't realise it meant 20 levels of nothing but dungeon crawls - which is a regression back to something that never existed.

Well, maybe not in your experience, but I've never played in a game that ever moved away from monster killing, and I've been playing since the early 80's. Sure in 1e my high level illusionist / thief had a "thieves guild" but only because the rules said so. I didn't do anything to earn it (aside from gaining levels) and never made use of it aside from drawing up maps and adding it to my massive list of possessions. 3e (and 4e) have the right idea, because that's how the game is played IME. And it's easier to ditch their assumptions and move into the political realm (for which you don't need rules) than it is to spin appropriately challenging encounters out of a dearth of high-level creatures. So it is, in effect, the best of both worlds, and it doesn't force the group into a different game at higher levels if they don't want it to.

 

[Mallus]

Obviously you're playing 3.5 with its even-more-broken Power Attack rule.

Guilty as charged.

 

[Kishin]

I’m going to guess what you do professionally and hope that you're professional attempts at analysis show better results than you've shown here so far. Otherwise I fear for the safety of Australia.

For someone who railed against arrogant and condescending statements, you sure had no trouble making one yourself.

All this is is yet another argument over how 4th edition doesn't prioritize simulationism (A fact which Mike Mearls himself has admitted in that podcast interview that really is becoming more like a mantra than anything else). Some people are totally OK with this (Snoweel and others). Some are not (Irda Ranger and others). For what it's worth, I believe you can still have a deep, engaging world without being overly concerned about simulationistic elements. Novelists do it all the time. YMMV, though.

Having an epic thread on this every two weeks isn't really going to change anyone's stake, though.

 

[Fenes]

Well, maybe not in your experience, but I've never played in a game that ever moved away from monster killing, and I've been playing since the early 80's. Sure in 1e my high level illusionist / thief had a "thieves guild" but only because the rules said so. I didn't do anything to earn it (aside from gaining levels) and never made use of it aside from drawing up maps and adding it to my massive list of possessions. 3e (and 4e) have the right idea, because that's how the game is played IME. And it's easier to ditch their assumptions and move into the political realm (for which you don't need rules) than it is to spin appropriately challenging encounters out of a dearth of high-level creatures. So it is, in effect, the best of both worlds, and it doesn't force the group into a different game at higher levels if they don't want it to.

I'd say in the age of MMOGs, there are more guidelines and examples needed for non.dungeon crawls than for hack&slash encounters. Just about everyone knows how to run dungeon crawl adventures, but I doubt many have experiences with political adventures.

 

[Dausuul]

All this is is yet another argument over how 4th edition doesn't prioritize simulationism (A fact which Mike Mearls himself has admitted in that podcast interview that really is becoming more like a mantra than anything else). Some people are totally OK with this (Snoweel and others). Some are not (Irda Ranger and others). For what it's worth, I believe you can still have a deep, engaging world without being overly concerned about simulationistic elements. Novelists do it all the time. YMMV, though.

Having an epic thread on this every two weeks isn't really going to change anyone's stake, though.

Except that 4E says nothing either way on the subject of whether to level-up random city guardsmen to keep pace with (or partly keep pace with) the PCs. The question is not a new one and has nothing to do with the 4E rules.

 

[Kishin]

Except that 4E says nothing either way on the subject of whether to level-up random city guardsmen to keep pace with (or partly keep pace with) the PCs. The question is not a new one and has nothing to do with the 4E rules.

Well, for starters, the thread was actually about high level humanoid NPCs in adventures as threats to the party, not levelling up the town watch so that they can always incarcerate the players. It has nothing mechanically (directly speaking) to do with the 4E rules (again, mechanically) but everything to do with how 4E's design philosophy of 'Whatever is good for the story'. It is 100% Straczynski 'Traveling at the Speed of Plot' (Traveling At The Speed Of Plot - Television Tropes & Idioms). If a good story calls for it, go for it. I happen to think the adventure that prompted this Thread is the best written for 4E yet, and thus I wholeheartedly approve.

Also, some folks prefer humanoid threads in our campaigns, but that's neither here or nor there.