Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 4144217" data-attributes="member: 2518">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.</blockquote>

Verification