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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5002246" data-attributes="member: 54707">I've asked and I've had the question asked of me as DM.Usually I just let the NPCs offer help, or the NPCs sometimes join in.Of course we almost never play the "end of the world scenario." More like, Empire to be invaded, or Emperor deposed, or big disaster, or plague, or so forth.And it also depends on if the NPC has a personal stake in the outcome of the venture, is acting as an agent for someone else, etc.As to how much help and support they offer, and what kind of support and help they offer.Secret or covert aid works too, as does aid from a distance.This is something else I find hard to understand (not directed at you but at fantasy gaming in general). The desire to fight all of the time just because you are supposedly more powerful than someone else. Real fights are exhausting. Real wars are exhausting and draining. Of men, materiel, money, support, power. Conflicts consume, usually at least as much as they produce. Nobody in their right mind really wants to get into a "straight-up fight" you can avoid. Even when you win it usually costs you, and if you have more than one enemy, then the enemy who is not spent and exhausted usually knows you are. Because enemies observe that kinda thing. Straight up fights only invite more and more danger, for increasingly less and less reward.Wise men, wise leaders, maneuver others into constant strings of straight up fights (assuming this needs to be done), they don't engage in them unless really necessary, or unavoidable. (Sometiems stright up fights are necessary and unavoidable, but most of the time they arise from a lack of proepr imagination on the part of one party or another about how to conduct a winning conflict.) Any character or NPC I heard saying something like, "Well I don't need your help, I'm level 40 and my opponent is only level 32. I can easily take them man to man," I would think is a blooming idiot. If I'm supposedly the best knife fighter in the world about to get into a knife fight with somebody I've never met before if I'm wise then I take that other fella seriously. Even if he's only ninety pounds and looks like he's sixteen years old. Anyone can die under the right circumstances. And almost everyone who thought they couldn't possibly, has.If I'm level 100 then I didn't get that way being stupid about underestimating the other fella.  I also didn't get that way fighting every fight stupid, or fighting every fight just to be fighting.</blockquote>

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