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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agemegos" data-source="post: 1542946" data-attributes="member: 18377">I'm sure that what you say was an important design criterion. But perhaps a world-building consideration drove the design in the same direction (ie. towards having more high-level NPCs).Given the gross differences in power between D&D characters a few levels apart, a D&D society with no NPCs above 7th level has no way to impose social norms on high-level PCs. Which means that those player problems that turn up on ENworld occasionally and that are best settled by the GM enforcing the social and political consequences of psychopathic behaviour would not be resolvable without harsher and more plot-devicey methods.In a kingdom of twenty million souls (very big) where nine people in ten are 0-level and each level has 10% as many members as the level below, no NPC is above about 6th or seventh level. A tenth-level PC is therefore a startling anomaly, a party of four or five of them is mind-boggling, and a fourteen-level PC is a rare and as socially uncontrollable at Superman. Or NAZI Germany.Back in 1st ed days I always got the feeling that the campaign was supposed to change in tone and focus when the PCs hit 'name level'. They were supposed to become powers in the land, buying chickens in thousand lots, employing households of henchmen and retainers, building keeps and carving out estates. In 3rd ed not so much. Which means that the magnatesand institutions that keep 10th-level itinerant dungeon-bashers in their place have to be correspondingly stronger.</blockquote>

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