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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clark411" data-source="post: 1188190" data-attributes="member: 4768">Although it is tempting to get into a cut-n-paste quote discussion, I'll pass in the interest of not getting solidly off topic.  Instead, I'll opt to address what I'm reading as a whole, in the interests of professing my opinion rather than nipping at what I disagree with in the hopes of clarifying my position AND addressing what I would in the process of cutting and pasting.The core problem that I addressed was allowing players to design their followers for battle.  It hit upon several things that I dislike coming into a campaign, the first being a decline of realism (both as 120 identical people show up, identically equipped, with the same skillsets and absolute devotion to die for their PC leaders vs even the strangest of things) and second a degree of munchiness that can theoretically ruin a good number of otherwise challenging encounters.  Despite the fact that many challenges, if not most of the challenges of higher level play can wipe out a follower horde, that does not change the fact that random ones properly ranged in grasslands / aerial combat may very likely perish to upwards of 60 damage dice in the first round of initiative (from followers alone) if that encounter fails to eliminate all hundred of minions.Later, I brought up issue with addressing this problem with an opponent crafted with the primary purpose of wiping it out.  This time, my problems lied in the fact that it did not solve the issue adequately, and it also destroyed the realism of the game.  It did not solve the issue because the followers would return, and did not solve the issue adequately because repeated "lessons" by the DM would result in the PCss' feats becoming weaker over time.  Although it's hard to make Point Blank Shot weaker, I think its a sign of poor DM adjudication if the solution to a player using PBS well to alter the world to make PBS only do +1 to Damage.  This is, in some ways, what is happening with Leadership if a DM is going out of his way with some agenda to slam the warrior follower horde.I also thought realism was lessened through countering the horde with encounters designed specifically around decimating it with area effect spells etc.  The realism isn't lessened by the presense of such powerful foes in the campaign setting, but rather their sudden appearance when the warrior horde makes it's debut (or shortly after).  As a player with some semblance of awareness to the trends that my DM tends to throw at me, I can usually put the pieces together as to why we are encountering a specific beasty.  If we're in a dungeon, the kid gloves are off, if that dungeon has an ecology which supports fungus and duergar- then I know what to expect or it makes some sense in hindsight.What does not make sense however, are encounters that shift from handling 4-5 PCs right over to handling 4-5 PCs + 100 Mooks.  By handling, I mean "presenting a proper challenge for" and also "are designed to give opportunities for PCs to see their strengths and weaknesses."  The Undead show the Rogue he needs to bring more than SA's to the table, while the mounted encounter may give the Paladin an opportunity to lay the smack down.  However, when an invisible wizard ports in overhead without any sort of reasoning and decimates troops by the dozens, it is not done to show any weakness or strength in the PCs but say, rather explicitly, you should not have the mook horde.If the reasoning is there, then fine.  If a party has the audacity to attack Flamestrikeland with their 100 strong army, then they should find their army ruined.  If they encounter a beast that simply is able to wade through the warrior 1's, and would have been encountered in any case due to it's CR, that's fine as well.  I have no issue with that.  Any sort of encounter designed solely around depriving the PCs of something that they have, with almost no opportunity for either retaliation or prevention of deprivation... that I have a problem with.  When the cleric ports in, instantly kills half your camp of followers, makes them undead,  has those undead kill the second half of your camp and teleports away... the PCs have not been challenged so much as victimized.  The heroic element shifts from being able to prevent the problem from heightening to scraping up the pieces and simply trying to get by... all due to the DM wanting them to not have their toy or learn a lesson.  Unless this is a common theme in the campaign, it shatters the realism.  If it is part of the campaign, if anyone with half a brain can tell you, as a character (not as a player) to not bring 100 soldiers into "the wild-where-there-be-necromancers" then fine... but I cannot see this being the case in this specific instance.That's why I have a big beef with addressing this kind of problem in game.  Except for the most saintly DM's, the paragons of our 3.5 edition era, I cannot see giving advice to just smash the problem with a encounter designed solely around doing just that.  It opens up so many problems that a simple address out of game would handle.  The adjudication that happens in a campaign should not threaten the verisimilitude of the campaign, as the radically unexpected occurs to challenge the unlikely.  Moreover, proper adjudication cannot occur when a DM has an agenda which specifically allows players to choose to fail so long as they know that the possibility of failure is there... and the possibility is in fact an inevitability made so by a specifically designed encounter or suite of encounters that pound the warrior horde again and again until the PCs give up.</blockquote>

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