D&D (2024) No NPC Magic in PCs Homebase

[TwoSix]

This has nothing to do with the story, but instead with what your players are playing the game for.

Why would someone play a wizard if they don't know they can't cast spells for 3 levels? Talk with your players if they are even interested in playing D&D 2024 this way, because it is not a system intended for no magic.

Remember: the players are the heroes. They are the ones who are supposed to be different.

But the players are a ranger and a fighter. No one is being denied magic.

The question in the OP was about not having magic available in the home base village. No obvious sources of healing potions, lesser restoration, etc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Remember: the players are the heroes. They are the ones who are supposed to be different.

That is a playstyle choice, not a requirement of play. For one thing, the players are the players. If there are any heroes, they are the PCs. And having the "camera" trained on your PC neither makes them a hero nor somehow changes their nature to make them fundamentally different creatures from the NPCs around them. Doing that is a choice the players and the DM are making.

 

[Sulicius]

That is a playstyle choice, not a requirement of play. For one thing, the players are the players. If there are any heroes, they are the PCs. And having the "camera" trained on your PC neither makes them a hero nor somehow changes their nature to make them fundamentally different creatures from the NPCs around them. Doing that is a choice the players and the DM are making.

They are heroes. D&D 2024 sets the expectation that player characters are heroic. They are unique and go on great quests. In any case, this is not a decision the DM should make alone.

Or are you talking about a different, older version of the game?

 

[Umbran]

I just don't want everything to be solved by immediate magic

Everything being immediately solved by magic is a characteristic of mid to high level play, not low-level play. 1st level spellcasters don't have that much juice.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They are heroes. D&D 2024 sets the expectation that player characters are heroic. They are unique and go on great quests. In any case, this is not a decision the DM should make alone.

Or are you talking about a different, older version of the game?

I am talking about playing the game the way the table wants to play it, players and DM both. People have played every version of D&D and its relatives the way you prefer, even if the books suggest a different playstyle. And plenty of folks play the way I prefer.


Does the table (again, players and DM) want their PCs to be heroic special superbeings somehow just superior to the people from which they sprang? If so fine, but that is never an assumption I would make about another group's play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Everything being immediately by magic is a characteristic of mid to high level play, not low-level play. 1st level spellcasters don't have that much juice.

Depends on what you're trying to solve. 1st level PCs in modern editions very often have quite a few magical tools at their disposal.

 

[dave2008]

They are heroes. D&D 2024 sets the expectation that player characters are heroic. They are unique and go on great quests. In any case, this is not a decision the DM should make alone.

Or are you talking about a different, older version of the game?

2024 D&D (and all 5e) can be played with the PCs not being "heroes." And that is completely OK. However, I agree 100% it should be a conversation with the whole group (what style of game you want to play).

 

[kigmatzomat]

Perhaps a capt and 2 guards may be more realistic but let's consider that this is a fantasy world where PCs could walk into a village and most likely slaughter everyone.

That's not fantasy, its reality. Unless the assailants get mobbed or someone untrained gets lucky fighting back, two armed killers will carve or shoot a bloody swath through any community of non-combatants at any point in time.

My point is that threat exists everywhere. So why is this place that is little more than a tiny neighborhood sufficiently special to deserve their own armed guards?

As for supplying food, generally medieval farmers produced about 115% of their needs. Meaning a village of 66 fed themselves plus another 10 people. This is why in medieval periods the population was ~90% rural and only ~10% urban. Tweak that how you want (priest of harvest spends the year wandering the countryside casting Plant Growth), but 66 people are providing a trivial amount of Greyhawk's food.

There are are plausible reasons to have guards adjacent to a small village. Perhaps the guard post there first and the community built up around it. It is on a set of crossroads so it allows one squad of guards to patrol a host of communities. It is really more a guard rest stop where there's no convenient inn for the four or five times a year it is needed. Maybe it is a place for messengers to swap horses pony-express style. Or its located on a ridge and had a warning pyre or heliograph.

Or maybe its not plausible, other than "Captain Spell Bomb" is being exiled awsy from people anyone cares about and his "junior" troops are actually there to baby sit him and kill him if he turns out to be possessed.

Either way, saying "there's no resident cleric or herbalist so no healing potions without riding to Townsville" is perfectly reasonable.

 

[NotAYakk]

For a "village" of 66 people?

I mean, I'd have a Sheriff "Captain Spell Bomb" and a Militia. The militia are members of the community that know how to use weapons and have gear at home if called up. Not a standard guard.

Even the Sheriff isn't a full time guard. Just they are in charge of calling up the militia and leading it if needed, and enforcing the law and the like.

OTOH, as I like low population, in my current fantasy world I'm having magic massively increase economic yields. So low population villages can afford overheads like blacksmiths, the crop yields are huge allowing heavy urbanization, etc. And the wilderness (including non-urban croplands) is super dangerous, so you get a high guardopulation ratio.

 

[Mad_Jack]

If you're planning to have Sherriff "Spellbomb" Bob, Deputy Sidekick and a couple of "uncredited" redshirts (who most likely would also be responsible for one or two other neighboring villages as well), you should probably up the size of the population to at least a hundred adults, a lot of whom the pcs will likely never seriously interact with. Having only 33 adults in the village would end up making it little more than a handful of huts that probably tends a communal garden plot of no more than an acre or two.

- If the village has a public house, that's likely at least three or four people just to run that - plus the six guards, that's already ten people...

- Any sort of general store where the npcs or party could buy supplies would require another person (and probably their family) to run it. There's a couple more...

- Unless one of the farmers is just considered the unofficial leader of the community, there will be some sort of official leader or headman, possibly with an assistant or second...

- If they're providing food to the nearest city, unless each farmer is transporting their crops to the city on their own, they'll probably have at least one centralized building to store all that food until the next shipment to the city and probably will have at least one or two more people involved in that on a full-time basis.

- If any of the local farmers are growing grains, there's probably a miller (and family) as well.

That's close to half your original population figures right there.