Simulationist Question on PoL

[Ydars]

Also caravans could travel on rivers in boats and gain some protection that way.

 

[Kazuka]

While reading this thread an idea came to me.
What if a Point of Light is being supported by the same monsters preying on it. Not the typical orcs/hobgoblins/gnolls but the monsters who use the village as sustainace and comfort. Several monsters in 3.5 strive in urban settings, for example mindflayers, lichs, vampires, doppelgangers...
Some PoL can be protected from outside dangers by these creatures, who are effectively protecting an asset (a city full of potential thralls in a PoL setting surely is going to be cherrished in the mindflayer community...)
So a campaign world could include a mix of traditional small villages who try to make a living each day with the few resources they have available nearby and some villages who just happen to be "lucky" and everything appears just perfect (while a monstrous mastermind controls everything behind the scenes)

I see lot of potential in a world like this where the PC would have to choose between killing this monster/parasite and possibly destroying the village due to that action or leaving the townsfolk at the mercy of whatever rules there...

 

[Derren]

Derren, part of the tax they exact from the settlements they visit is their food and fodder for the animals; they don't carry much food as it is wasted space.

Which is quite dangerous. if the village they come to is destroyed or does not have any spare food left the caravan has some huge problems.

Caravans might present a nice target but the power curve for monsters is pretty flat in 4E so even quite a powerful monster is going to have problems taking on 50 guards because I am envisaging a caravan of 30-50 covered carts pulled by horses. Of course a band of monsters will manage to overpower a caravan every now and then but this is part of the setting and what makes it so dangerous (and fun).

Considering how much it costs to create such a caravan (soldiers, weapons&armor, carts + spare parts, horses, supply, trade goods ) loosing one of those would be a huge blow to the entire area. And 20 monsters should not have too much trouble with 50 guards. After all they don't have to kill them. They only need to kill some draft animals which forces the caravan to abandon some goods.

Also caravans could travel on rivers in boats and gain some protection that way.

From previous Monster Manuals you should know that water doesn't protect you from many monsters.

You also seem to assume that monsters will not form civilizations of their own and thus compete with humans on a large scale. Especially humanoid monsters are problematic, for example Hobgoblins. They are monsters, which means strong enough to challenge PCs which means they are stronger than NPCs and their phisiology is very similar to those of humans (or other player races) which means they also want those fertile spot to build cities there.
Add the traditional militaristic focus of Hobgoblins and that they are likely not nice so that the PCs can fight them it doesn't look good for human villages.

This situation reminds me a bit of Ruanda or Dafur where the monsters are death squads, the defenseless villages are still being defenseless villages and the PCs are the only merceneries willing to protect those villages in a 100 mile radius.
And because there are different races involved the monsters would not hesitate to perform genocide on humans.

 

[med stud]

While reading this thread an idea came to me.
What if a Point of Light is being supported by the same monsters preying on it. Not the typical orcs/hobgoblins/gnolls but the monsters who use the village as sustainace and comfort. Several monsters in 3.5 strive in urban settings, for example mindflayers, lichs, vampires, doppelgangers...
Some PoL can be protected from outside dangers by these creatures, who are effectively protecting an asset (a city full of potential thralls in a PoL setting surely is going to be cherrished in the mindflayer community...)
So a campaign world could include a mix of traditional small villages who try to make a living each day with the few resources they have available nearby and some villages who just happen to be "lucky" and everything appears just perfect (while a monstrous mastermind controls everything behind the scenes)

I see lot of potential in a world like this where the PC would have to choose between killing this monster/parasite and possibly destroying the village due to that action or leaving the townsfolk at the mercy of whatever rules there...

It's an interesting idea for a setting. You have large cities/kingdoms, but they are ruled by powerful creatures. Your mindflayer example is a good one; the citizens are protected from humanoids and brigands and have the freedom to do essentially what they want as long as they provide the mindflayers with thralls. After a couple of generations and propaganda, they may even have competitions for the honour to become thralls for the masters. This city in turn is locked in a feud with the neighbouring town which is ruled by an old dragon that protects her city in exchange for food, taxes and a virgin every month.

Thanks for the ideas! I will implement this myself

 

[Ydars]

Derren; Monsters that can take out 50 armed men don't have to wait for a caravan as they could probably attack a small PoL. Plus I suspect that everyone on the caravan would be able to use a crossbow.

I have argued the same points as you earlier in this thread with regards to PoLs themselves and ritual magic to repel monsters was mentioned as a possible way around these kind of conundrums. Unfortunately, we don't know how it works yet or whether WoTC have adopted this as the default way that PoLs and caravans could get around monsters most of the time.

So you could have something like, the roads are lined with huge boundary stones, as are the walls of PoLs themselves. There is a ritual that has to be said at each stone around every new moon and then the stones radiate power to repel monsters; sort of like sending out an annoying and distracting signal that reduces their combat ability and makes things on the road hard to see. Thus the PoLs and the roads have a measure of protection, but one that is not fullproof. There could even be times of the year when the protection doesn't work.

As for villages disappearing, the same protection could be applied to them (heck they need some kind of protection and I prefer passive magical protection instead of an armed camp) so this would make this less likely they would disappear but such a caravan would include hunters (who double as guards) who could feed the caravan if such a thing came to pass.

 

[Derren]

Derren; Monsters that can take out 50 armed men don't have to wait for a caravan as they could probably attack a small PoL. Plus I suspect that everyone on the caravan would be able to use a crossbow.
.

As I said, they don't have to kill them all. Its actually a better choice to kill as few guards as possible and instead kill the draft animals or damage the wagons. Because then the caravan is forced to leave goods behind in favor of food. And they need quite a lot of food depending on how long the tracks are. 50+ persons do eat and drink quite a lot.

 

[Ydars]

Monsterous civilisations are obviously possible but, given the fact that even the humanoid races are very savage and are based on essentially evil and self serving concepts, I cannot see many monsters adopting agriculture because it requires a degree of co-operation that I suspect is beyond them (at least if they are played to sterotype). Therefore, fertile land will be of no use them (note that ancient peoples with bronze, copper, wood or stone ploughs could not farm valley bottoms because the soil was too thick; they could only use the thins soils on the sides of a valley). So at first, primitive agriculture would not compete with humans.

Anyway, if we are to assume that monsterous humanoids are hunter-gatherers e.g. following migrating elk or other herds) why would they adopt agriculture when the PoL setting means there are vast areas of wilderness?

Humans would do so because they are on the back end of a fallen Empire (at least if you follow the WoTC default) but there is no mention of monsterous civilisations (yet if you like them then why not).

I have always envisaged monsterous humanoids as extended family sized grouping except when compelled by some outside power. Orcs remind me of the Mongols, who were terrible when combined but it took a VERY strong leader to unite them and once he died, they fell to bickering and warring.

Evil defeats itself more often than good I think sometimes.

 

[Ydars]

I guess that if monsters adopted this tactic of picking off the last few caravans then humans would soon learn to poison the food in the last few vans. No more monsters to worry about then.

Or the last few vans would be armoured.

The key thing is, monsterous humanoids are not as clever as humans nor can they co-operate as well as humans. Hence the reasons that Humans, elves, Teiflings etc once ruled the world.

 

[DandD]

Or perhaps they did rule once the world with their own empire, and these orcs and goblins and whatever are now all only degenerated remnants of another ancient empire that existed many many thousand years ago.

 

[Derren]

I guess that if monsters adopted this tactic of picking off the last few caravans then humans would soon learn to poison the food in the last few vans. No more monsters to worry about then.

Or the last few vans would be armoured.

The key thing is, monsterous humanoids are not as clever as humans nor can they co-operate as well as humans. Hence the reasons that Humans, elves, Teiflings etc once ruled the world.

Which means they need extra wagons + draft animals + supply for those animals. Even more, those animals and wagons are certain to be lost on the trip putting a huge dent on the profit of the caravan. They might even be unable to replace those losses for a long time.

Armoring wagons doesn't help much. The wheels and draft animals are the vulnerable parts and those are hard to protect with armor. Armor is also expensive and the increased load also increases the risk of getting stuck during bad weather on unpaved roads.

Poisoning food is a huge waste of resources (food, poison and wagons + animals to carry it) and would only deter attackers who are after the food and not goods. Those attackers would attack from the sides, shoot the draft animals with bows and spears and flee again. Now the caravan is forced to abandon wagons and with them trade goods which te enemy simply picks up when they left. Destroying everything they have to leave behind might deter them, but it could also make them more aggressive.

Imo such "huge protected convoys" don't work, especially when the enemy is as strong or stronger than you and you don't have a huge economy to replace lost caravans. The only way for this caravans to work is either by making the area safe or by bribing the monsters (if they let themselves be bribed).

Others might see it differently but "everyone else is stupid and doesn't cooperate with each other" is bad world design and very unlikely. In that case the monsters wouldn't even be able to get a strong enough economy running to create weapons used for raiding. Also many monsters in D&D have a history of being smart (or at least not dumber than humans) and cooperation. See Hobgoblins for example.