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Message: <blockquote data-quote="knightofround" data-source="post: 4500714" data-attributes="member: 27884">I'm surprised that so many people have objections to there being high-level humanoids in campaigns. It's never come up as an issue in any of the campaigns I've been in.My rationale is this. If there are truly epic threats in the world, there has to be forces that can take care of them when the PCs aren't around for the world to make sense. If all guards are level 3 mooks there's literally nothing stopping a level 12 dragon from destroying entire villages, castles, etc -- nobody can hit its AC. So there has to be guards that actually hit this thing, even though individually they're useless. So I see guards as paragon-level minions, or heroic standard-level creatures.Another point is that I like PCs who are essentially normal people who are put in extraordinary circumstances. If by level 8 you're already Conan, then by level 16 you would be....well, more superhero-y than I would like D&D to be. I want the PCs to have figures that they can look up to, so when they gain levels and go back to their home village and size up the local guard they can realize how much they've improved.For my style of humanoid level progression, 4E is perfect. A basic commoner is a level 1 minion. A commoner that might have some battle experience (like a tavern bouncer, or a new PC) is a level 1 character. Traditional guards/pirates/soldiers/assassins are level 5-10 characters. This is perfect, because all I have to do when the PCs come back to the same guards/pirates/etc, is change the from "standard" to "minion". So these mooks continue to be useful in paragon tier.It's when the PCs make it into epic tier that they truly get that "Conan" experience, where they are so freakin awesome normal people can no longer touch them. So I would say characters like Conan/Achilles/Gandalf would be epic, Chuck Norris/Drizzt(early in series)/Boromir would be paragon, and Tanis/Jack Sparrow/Hobbits would be heroic.IMHO, if you allow the PCs to morph into Conan-esque characters by such a low level, it takes alot of the motivation out of the game. I get more enjoyment from taking a small fry and turning him into conan than starting with conan and making him even more superhero-y.</blockquote>

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