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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ralts Bloodthorne" data-source="post: 2928249" data-attributes="member: 6390">Major NPCs will be no more than 3 levels/CR higher than the highest PC. Average NPC in a group will be lowest PC-3 (or 1/4 CR).Generally refers to what they will be facing at a given level, and expected to fight.I also promise that the total won't add up to more than twice their average level.This means, that the BBEG they are supposed to combat, or I expect them to try to face down, won't be 10th level surrounded by a dozen 8th level PC's when they are 4th level. That's seriously outclassed. IF that happens, they know I don't intend or expect them to attack, but rather run, listen to his bragging speech, or observe him threatening peasants.It boils down to:A group of foes total number won't add up to more than twice their average level, and each member of the group will be, at the most, lowest PC level -3.A BBEG or LBEG will be a max of Highest PC level + 3 that they would be expected to face, alone.It's kind of a balancing act.You can talk a whole lot faster than I can write.You've got it all written down already.If you expect me to write it all down too, you'd better learn how to talk reeeeal sloooow! Oh, and expect to be asked to repeat every few sentences. Or, you can just copy it and hand it out. Mostly, however, lots of good advice.Shorthand, or quickie notes.All else fails, tape recorder and labeled tapes.Wunderdood da Wyzard, bushy eyebrows, wants us to kill Baron Von Hangover, lives in tower on Market and Fishguts, Coolbreeze Port.Ta-dah!That's the kind of notes I encourage the PC's to take. It's enough to jog the memory, and can occur during the rping and descriptions.Anyway...On to something you can do if you REALLY feel like adding a difference.Sit down with the classes, your players wants and desires, and your setting idea.Look at each class, and build organizations for each. Make their sigils, denote their code of ethics/conduct/secrecy/etc, major strongholds, notable NPCs, outfits, etc.If you have the time and inclination, do one for good, one for evil, one for neutral, one for lawful, one for chaotic. It can take some time, but your players WILL notice the difference with this.Give the various benefits/drawbacks to being part of this group.Offer each player the option of having their PC start out as part of this guild/church/cabal, and give them the "Known Information" as if they had a Knowledge (XXXX) result of 10 for that group. Let them know the known benefits and drawbacks.Give them opponent groups, both opposing classes and opposing alignments.If you REALLY have the time, and want to make the effort, make additional groups for each school of magic. Make sure you add in different outfits, tattoos, etc, to differentiate between the groups at a glance.Add rivalries with other groups.Make some groups that are outlawed by kingdoms, declared heretical, or presumed to have been destroyed.On that note...Pick some Gods from mythology, or make some up.These are dead and abandoned gods. Their worshippers died out and the God abandoned, or the worshippers slain and the God destroyed.Annotate in your notes a VERY FEW that still have hidden worshippers and fanatics.Sprinkle some magic items here and there with the symbol of that dead god/eliminated group here and there.And further...Come up with the "Destroyed Kingdom"You setting's Camelot, Rome, and the like.Some are seen as utopia's destroyed by angry/jealous gods, mankind’s foolishness.Others are seen as victims of neighbors.Some were destroyed by their own pride/sins.DON'T make them "Uber-Powerful Atlantis-like Godlike Lands"Don't be afraid to have the PC's find the remains of a rude cluster of huts rotting in the jungle, with a few skeletons of fur wrapped savages armed with flint spears. However, it's whispered that the shamans of these extinct tribes were powerful and could enslave mighty demons.OOOOH! A scroll of Summon Demon IV! (Use Monster Summoning (whatever) and make it so whatever is summoned has the Fiend template)Don't explain everything, if nothing else, don't explain everything right away.According to legend, the Kingdom of Gruelly collapsed due to it's own sin, evil, and vileness. In reality, the nation collapsed when it's king was replaced by a Pit Fiend who corrupted the religion into a human sacrifice cult. While legends said the kingdom spanned the world, reality is: They spanned the known world, about 50 miles in diameter.Legend != Reality, and discovering the boundary is the stuff legends are made of.As PC's discover this stuff, entrenched professors in universities may fund them, or seek their deaths/discrediting. Bards may sing of their exploits, or children may point and laugh at the superstitious fools who are afraid of Urgalak the God of Rending Shadows.(Of course, when some of these teasing children are found dead, the PC's are suddenly suspect, and a mini-arc begins!)There's something else I forgot a GM can do, if the player's have bad habits when it comes to jotting notes.On your own notes, use different color highlighters to denote different DC's to remember.For example: I use a red highlighter to denote a DC: 30+ for a memory, a yellow highlighter for a DC: 10.Doing this can make things pretty easy too.Now... on to... MONSTERS!AKA: "What's an orc doing here? They're indigenous to the Scabrous Plains!"Now, this is probably the strangest thing I do, and I haven't found too many GM's that do it besides myself.I sit down with my handy-dandy list of monsters, and add the following entries:Commoner names, Sage names, and standard names.Decide if there are any civilizations or variants. (Higher/lower intelligence, different abilities/appearance, etc)Jot down locations, whether they are common knowledge, and Knowledge DC's.Makes it VERY easy for a PC to do a Knowledge (Monster Lore) or Knowledge (Undead) and you to give them what info they find out based on DC and amount over the DC.Sketching where they lurk, a little base history on them, and deciding origins can make a big difference.Now, remember, some players, hell, even some groups, won't care about any of this. It's boring, it gets in the way, etc.But many people thrive on it once exposed to it, and you get the hang of it to the point where it doesn't slow down play.If trolls are ONLY found in the Greyscum Marshes at the feet of the Backbroke God Mountains, WTF is it doing lying inside a jungle ruin, panting in the daytime heat? Wait, it's got smooth green skin, not warty, and thick neandrathalic hair, not bumps. That means he's intelligent and from the Northern tribe that uses bows! Maybe we can talk instead of getting beat down at 2nd level!Divinations One of the things that irks me about D&D is that it misuses the term "divination". Divinations foretell the future, not detect secret doors, traps, magic, etc. (Same thing with illusions and glamours/glammers (which make things look better)).Anyway, on divinations (of the true sort), I like to give good information, becoming less useful as the variables increase."Will we win, if we go up against the troll?""Might and magic may not avail, but oil and fire should blaze a trail!""Will our attack against Lord Wilky's castle succeed?" (Many variables, castle with lots of guards, etc.)"Unlikely." (You could also say "I doubt it.")"What can we do to improve our odds against Lord Wilky?""Low roads run beneath the walls; seek for where the water falls!" (Entrance to old, forgotten, secret tunnels!)"If we use the low roads to surprise Lord Wilky, will our attacks upon his castle succeed?""Unlikely.""Why not?""Of men & magics, he has not few; many more than you can hew.""What else can we do to improve our chances?""Wilky wins wars with witchcraft. Stop the magic, or slay the witch."Etc. Of course, the infamous "I don't know." can always get thrown in, on occasion, especially if the PC caster worships some lesser godlet of (say) Nature, and is asking questions outside of their areas of expertise. The Evil ones will lie, and the Tricksters will mislead, too! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> A couple of examples:One GM I had, we were going up against some higher-level baddies, and a PC cast a divination to see if we would be successful against them... The results came back "Not if you go in the next twenty minutes."!We waited 20 minutes. When we finally rushed the room, the bad guys had vacated it! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> A trickster god, father of mongooses, and lord of a tribe of barbarians, picked an outcast member of the tribe to go on a quest, and much later on revealed to him that he would bring his people to a new home, in a city... After making a home in the city, and becoming rather famous there, because he introduced his pet mongoose to help quell a rat infestation, the barbarian learned that one of his old enemies now ruled the tribe. The people who had cast him out were now clamoring for him to return, and claim his "rightful place" as their most famous member (and, incidentally, free them from his old enemy, who had been instrumental in getting him cast out). The barbarian planned to oust his old enemy, get revenge, and lead his people back to the city...The problem was, most of his barbarian people weren't interested in moving! They weren't interested in him leading them, either, they were just desperate enough to get out from under his old enemy to use him to kill him!Y'see, the Trickster-god, Mongoose, had already used the barbarian to bring mongooses, his people, to the city, when quelling the rat-plaque! "His people" were the mongooses, not the barbarians! (Stupid humans!) <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />How do the players know what level the bbeg is here?A lot of it is description. Tattoos, equipment, amount of troops, racail, all of that can be used to give the party a basic idea of how powerful someone is.In the setting I use, campaign tattoos or medals welded to the armor is a fairly common thing for NPC warriors to have. Mages are often dressed more outlandishly the higher level they are. A fifth level NPC wizard doesn't have an ion stone orbiting his head and a skeletal snake slithering across his shoulder to whisper in his ear.It takes practice to do, but eventually, they get a rough idea on the power level of their foes based on dress, amount of henchmen, and rough gear estimate. It's not perfect, and has resulted in some rude surprises, but all in all it usually works pretty good.That's for attacks/ambushes I plan. If I tailor an orcish attack, it won't have more than 150% of the party's total levels in orcish levels.If they attack an enemy's command group, all bets are off.Maybe I should have clarified, it's when I'm designing encounters, not when they grab the riens and take off with them.</blockquote>

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