No of course not, but people aren't stupid. I imagine people who live in isolated towns/villages on the border of a kingdom live in a state of heightened awareness of danger. You don't just sit in your village waiting for people to attack you. They will have scouts, rangers or patrols ranging for signs of raiders or other threats. Unless the invading force is supernatural
ing ninjas, the villagers will have plenty of warning of an enemy advance.
And sure, people can be lazy. If an attack has never happened before, then maybe a village wouldn't see a need to have these defenses. But if they have been attacked before and they still don't have any way to detect a possible attack, I would seriously question the logic of the game world.
Scouts help you if we are talking about a slow-moving, organized army that is very obvious about its approach by traveling along the well-mapped roads. After all, in such cases you know exactly what path the army is going to take so you can be sure exactly where to place your scouts and the scouts are going to be much faster at getting back before the army.
Scouts do not help at all against roving bandits and marauders that emerge from the wilds, attack in the middle of the night and then disappear back into the wild. Maybe if a town had clear cut all plant matter for miles around it, you can have a watch tower that can give a few minutes warning. But scouts? No. You wouldn't know where to have your scouts patrol, you can't very well send half your town out as scouts to try to patrol every single acre of land for a dozen miles to come. Even if you did, the scouts aren't going to be much faster than the marauders at running back to town so they won't be able to give much warning at all.
Your scenario is accurate, if the orcs are a raiding party striking deep into well settled territory, akin to vikings raiding far up a river perhaps.
That's not the OPs question however. He asked about the monster infested frontier.
If the Orcs attack at night the farmers are inside a fortified compound. Like this one perhaps:
View attachment 64249
The orcs probably will be able to carry off anything outside the compound if they want, this makes the orcs exactly as threatening as a fox going after the chickens and ducks. The good stuff is inside the walls however and the dogs and geese will wake the house before they can get over the walls. And the farmers will not be "0 level commoners", I would stat them at very least as guards. Again, frontier folk = English Yeomen, not french villains.
During the day the orcs are at a disadvantage but the farmers and animals will be outside the compound. Again dogs will probably give warning, but there is a good chance the orcs can bring down a few men before the alarm goes off. But once the alarm is raised the bell summons all the men and they arm with bows and drive off the orcs. If the orcs did kill some people the farmers will gather the neighbors and form a warparty, just like American frontiersmen after an Indian raid. And like frontier warparties the odds are they'll butcher a random group of unconnected orcs thereby keeping the cycle going. Unless they have a ranger of course, they they'll probably track down the right group.
Also I question what the orcs are after. If it's a farm then they can only get a few sacks of grain or a bushel of vegetables or fruit. Grain is valuable but it's not terribly portable unless the orcs manage to make off with a wagon or they literally do attack by longship and can just load up. If they are attacking herders then sheep or cattle are both valuable and portable, but in that case the humans and orcs are basically rival clans of Scottish highlanders. I suggest watching Rob Roy for ideas.
No... they would be as threatening as a pack of wolves that could take away any and all lifestock outside your main compound, they would be able to take away all the grain they could carry. It is literally impossible for farms to keep everything of value within a central compound. If that were possible, then there would be no such thing as farms- no one would need them if having large amounts of land wasn't necessary to produce food.
Furthermore.... my god adventurers are worthless and don't make sense at all in your world. You are positing every single random person in the world is a trained adventurer with a class level and the ideal equipment for their class and no one is level 1? That sure as hell seems to be what you are claiming-- no, that is PRECISELY what you are claiming in saying that a group of commoners is going to go out and deal with an Orc tribe on their own.
So there are no adventurers in your world. No hooks for level 1 adventures make any sense in your world because PCs are the crappiest of the crappiest combatants in the world. Not only is everyone else in the world better at combat, they also have actual professions and jobs which apparently the PCs don't have. And all the PC backgrounds need to be torn out of the game, because none of them make sense in the world as you have posited it. Any person with any of those backgrounds would be higher than level 1, after all your random every day humans are NOT the commoners are presented in the Monster Manual but all optimized level 1 PCs.
Because if you are going after a tribe of Orcs with 4 HP guys armed only with clubs with no special abilities and 10s in attributes across the board, they are not going to take out a tribe of Orcs. Not even remotely close.
This.
You generally can see the raiders coming. Plus, after the raiders attack the first farmstead, every other farmstead knows they are coming.
Oh, and just so we're clear, I'm saying that you'd need about 60 orcs to attack a farmstead of 20 adults (although that's a huge farmstead) to win without taking serious casualties. Remember, the orcs have no way of healing so, a small group of orcs, say 10 orcs, who take wounds to half their numbers has to retreat after a single raid. Also note that most humanoids would stop attacking after being wounded once since they are certainly not going to fight to the death.
This is one place where the 1e Morale rules really works.
Also, I'm thinking that farmers and whatnot on a border area where there are large numbers of enemy humanoids are likely not going to be panicked at the first sight of attackers. They are likely going to be far better organised and much less likely to panic since this won't be the first time they've seen armed enemies.
Think about it this way, 6 orcs attack 20 peasant farmers, those farmers can each potentially kill one orc in a single round of combat in 1-3e D&D. How big is a 5e orc?
Again, what the hell. Do you even D&D?
Have you read the monster manual?
Have you any clue what you are talking about at all?
Tell you what. Set up the scenario for yourself.
You get 20 commoners. 4 HPs, 10s in all attributes, speed 30, no armor and only a club in hand. They have normal vision. Maybe there is a 1 level 1 Fighter as the boss for this raid.
Each PC engaging in this raid has AC 13, 15 hit points, a +5 to hit with both their axe and their javelin and their minimum damage with either is enough to take out a commoner and it would take probably 1 great axe hit or 2 javelins to kill the boss. The PCs also have Dark Vision and can triple move instead of double move when charging at a target. Athletic checks are made at a +3 and Intimidation checks at a +2.
Run that scenario and you tell me how many PCs can you reasonably hold off. Because I am damn certain the number is considerably less than 60.
