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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Morris" data-source="post: 4405554" data-attributes="member: 87">What level should NPC's be?  Answer - whatever level the DM needs them to be to fairly challenge the party.  NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's.  The PC's created this particular pair of villains even if they don't know it yet. That will make their defeat all the more enjoyable when the party does finally accomplish it.Why? Because the world can take care of itself and the world doesn't really need heroes?  Bollocks. The PC's are heroes, a cut above Joe Farmer and John Dirt that run this township. They aren't able to deal with kobold minions effectively, let alone two that by inexplicable twist of fate are a cut above the average kobold (just as the party members are a cut above the average members of their race).Must be a boring campaign you play or run, where the party doesn't *need* to handle anything because the NPC's can handle themselves and the messes the players create.Who said they won't be noticed? And even if they are, can the party keep up and track them down?  I'll leave that to the dice.The party could certainly succeed at that. Osmon is small and has no particularly notable NPC's other than the Duke and his men. If they do word will spread - eventually they'll run into something that they can't handle and either be killed by it or hide from it.Again, this is a superstitious collection of lakefolk. Until the party arrived they'd never seen a dragonborn - they've only rarely seen elves and eldarin. They've never seen a tiefling but halflings are common enough. They don't owe the party anything and if they think that tossing the group outside of the walls of the town will protect their children, they will.Right... As I noted earlier - your campaigns must be extremely boring since the world has no need of heroes and everything can take care of itself.Again refer to my first point - NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's - they exist to challenge the party and to make the story interesting. The town throwing the group out is perfectly plausible - because of the dragonborn in their number it took the group a long time to build up enough trust in the group to even let this strange creature through the gates. If children start showing up dead that trust is going to break.Long term the way this gets offset is you let NPC's do things wrong - sometimes disasterously wrong. I've had NPC groups stumble into PC ambushes exactly like the players planned out before. I don't spend too much time worrying about the flaws in their plan or how the NPC's might weasle out of the attack. The reason they were there is because a lair is a home.  Kobolds don't come out of monster spawning pots in my world like say, in Gauntlet. And no, kobolds don't make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. That's part of the reason they are *evil*. By failing to make that distinction the party acted in an evil manner.  I don't use the alignment system itself to deal with questions of good or evil, but those questions arise all the same.I'm not annoyed at them though.  This should be fun to play out - they've inadvertedly created a couple of memorable NPC's to throw at them, and I'm going to enjoy doing just that.They were there because they are supposed to be there. How the party dealt with them is a moral quandry.That it is. What I presented above is a draft of what will occur. It isn't set in stone.  I've been DM'ing a long time now and I know that getting attached to one plotline is how you annoy and railroad players.  What I've sketched out is what the kobolds intend. Will they succeed?  If the **players** do nothing, yes.  The onus is on the PC's to stop them. The duty of the DM is to make sure they have a reasonable chance of succeeding, and if they fail that the consquence of failure isn't so disasterous that everyone's fun is ruined.Again, what level should NPC's be?  Whatever level the DM needs them to be for the role they are to fulfill. Osmon is on the mouth of the river Ciondras as it changes from Lake Mystal to Lake Telcasi.  As recently as 300 years ago there where numerous villages like it all along the shores of the rivers and lakes. That was before the beginning of the 5th Orgstagal war.The whole region, Losineris, is pretty much devoid of roads because the quickest way to get anywhere important is by boat. Whatever lies inland has become lost to all but the wisest of sages.NPC's don't ever level up though. The most lasting damage 3e has done to the D&D game was instilling this notion that NPC's somehow are obligated to be handled like PC's. That simply isn't the case.</blockquote>

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