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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2318851" data-attributes="member: 4937">Under that very narrow definition, I agree with Gizmo too.  After all, I'm also appealing to demographics, I've just got a slightly different demographic answer.  First, I recognize that the only purposes of the 'Warrior' class is to a) be backwards compatible with previous editions, and b) to ensure that 1st level PC's are still exceptional members of the population.  To me, even though I've been playing since 1981, 'a' is not a very important goal, and 'b' while its important can be achieved in other ways.  Based on this and some flavor involved, I postulate that fighters are at least as common as warriors.  Afterall, if you had the choice, you'd always choose to be a fighter.  Warriors only show up where their society can't afford to (or doesn't have the skills to) devote years to training a professional soldier class.So the first thing that gizmo and me seem to really disagree on, is that armies should principally be made of fighters and not warriors.  In my opinion, any properous civilized nation can and did produce a professional soldier class.  And the ones that didn't, disappeared.  Fantasy cultures should be no different, and if anything more likely to produce such a professional class because they tend to be more prosperous than thier real world equivalents. Fighter vs. Warrior doesn't sound like much, but the extra hit points and feats really add up.  Fighters might well be 20% more efficient than warriors, and by 4th level than can just do things that Warriors can't.I partially agree, but not with the way you've expressed it.  If you want a world in which mass armies are useful (and I do), then those armies have to have the skills, equipment, and training to be useful against most threats that the society would expect to encounter.  In my world, that means monsters in the CR 2-10 range, and 'high level characters' from 5th up to about 9th level.  Well, yes, but we don't disagree on that.  I'm just decreasing the distance in levels from the low levels of the army and its commander.  I disagree over the spread that exists in most game worlds between the low level masses and the high level characters.  Gizmo's example postulates a 10th level commander leading a force of 80%+ 1st level characters.  My example postulates a 6th level commander leading a force that averages just over 2nd level.  I think this better models the way armies actually operate.  And there is absolutely no danger of 'baby sitting' problems assuming that forces scale upwards similarly.  My demographics really top out at about 7th levels, by which time most human commanders would be past middle age and thier fighting prime anyway.  Anything higher than 7th level is an exception, and like the PC's must have lived a very interesting life and yet managed to survive to have gotten where they are.  Agreed.  And that's exactly my point.  Equip them how you like.  I've been DMing for about 20 years now, and if there is any trick which can be played, I can play it.  I'm also very familiar with the composition of real world armies from antiquity on to modern times.  But in D&D, small strike teams of high levels would still make up the bulk of the fighting force if most members of the army where 1st level warriors.  A small team of 8th-10th level characters can wreck havoc in any number of ways.  Just as some examples, virtually any sort of magic, far shot + better mobility, hide +15, AC 25+.  Even just having the cover of darkness and any sort of terrain to take cover amongst and isolate small groups in (even just the tents of an encampment) can let a small force move with impunity, slaughtering, and sowing confusion amongst a large force of War1's.  Great cleave is a beast.  Any PC that lets high level characters suffer more than a couple dozen attacks per round either doesn't have much of an imagination or has a DM that metagames.  Sure, if all opponents are instantly alert and aware of the PC's location immediately, never have to put on armor or light torches, are able to act without orders, never break morale, and can see in the darkness then the high level PC's may have to be a little more creative, but war1's just don't have a chance in my experience.  High level characters don't have to fight to the finish.  They can slaughter a few dozen characters usually in just a few rounds, retreat to a prepared defensive position, and rince and repeat.  Healing is alot easier than raising the dead.Heck, even my assumptions about army composition is based on the assumption that groups of 15th level characters simply don't exist, or at least exist so rarely that they are famous throughout large portions of the world and thier deeds are sung in song for centuries.  If you want to go to a Forgotten Realms type experience scale, then you have to start composing armies like the Purple Dragons or the Sembian Lancers before mass armies make even a lick of sense (but then you have to wonder how 1st level characters survive much less thrive in such a situation).Which is an average level of 1.89, not that far under the level of 2.1 that I estimated for my games.  Now that you are going to have nearly half the army over 1st level, and the bulk of its fighting force in non-1st level characters, what disagreement do you actually have with me?  Shift 50 of those War1's into War2's, and turn the whole group into fighters and you have something not that far from what I just suggested.Very much agreed.  But then, your common army is almost half over 1st level, and the characters in that world seem to get not much higher than 7th or so.  That's very different than an army which is 90% 1st level in a world with 10th level characters.The more you stretch the number of levels between the low level masses and the highest level characters in the society, the more you strain that assumption.  If society is producing 8th-10th level characters, or if the countryside contains say a tribe or two of Frost Giants, then 1st level warriors get squashed by those crack combat units and the high level characters just can't afford to baby sit them.</blockquote>

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