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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2319896" data-attributes="member: 4937">Sure, but you didn't state that you and I disagreed.  You stated that I agreed with someone else, which you had no clear evidence for, and were in fact in error to claim.   As should be obvious by now, S'mons demographics are intended to address a completely different issue than the problems that I have.   If I would be so bold as to provide a summary, it seems like S'mon is very much interested in the question, "If the campaign goes for a sufficient length, how can I keep the PC's from being able to take over the world on a whim?"   As such, his army has to not just be able to protect the kingdom from a maruading horde of Frost Giants, but also from a maruading band of 20th level characters.   He states, "No 20th level group in their right mind would assume they could destroy this force single-handed..."  That's well and good, but note that I stated one of my assumptions was:  "...groups of 15th level characters simply don't exist..."   So you can be pretty sure that when he rolls out a list that contains a 16th level character, 2 15th level characters, and 4 14th level characters that we've got some pretty strong differences in our conceptual preferences.Nonetheless even though I don't agree on the details of the solution, I immediately recognize S'mon is trying to create demographics that deal with very concrete issues that are raised by the rules and trying to create a society that believably functions within those rules, and not trying to explain away very real disonances between what the rules themselves say and what the meta-rules about how you are supposed to apply those rules say. You'll note please that I quoted one of your written statements rather than one of your thoughts.  If I'd wanted to comment on one of your actual thoughts directly, I would have quoted one of those.   Nonetheless, I think I'm somewhat justified in saying that your actual written statements may at some level have a relationship to what is going on in your head, and if you yourself don't know what is going on in your head may I suggest that you read your written statements and see what they seem to indicate is going on in your head.   What you said is...Stop there for a moment.  I've already talked about the fact that you had no right to speak for me, but if you were going to try to relate to someone what it was that I said, you could at least be accurate in your reporting.  In fact, I have many times during this thread refered to the fact that I had used mass combat rules before.   So, in fact you have no basis of asserting that I have no other tools to work with, or that I made my choices because they represented 'less work'.  Anyway continuing on...Here we reach your explanation to S'mon for why I disagree with you and with him.  As you may note, you are wrong in this assertion.  And not just a little wrong, but completely wrong.   I in fact agree with you on these particulars, and so your mental process that leads you to say "that probably explains some of the differences" is also wrong.   Please reevaluate that mental process.Average 1st level PC's fighter's are 28 or 32 point buy in my campaign and have say 11-13 h.p. because they start with maximum hit points at first level.   Average NPC professional soldiers are 15 point buy and have say 13 h.p. because they are average.  They are also likely to have substandard intelligence, charisma, and wisdom because they were recruited principally for other fine and useful qualities, and as player's have long known - intelligence, charisma, and wisdom are not all that necessary in a guy whose main job it is to close with something and bash it with something sharp and shiny.  To put the problem in modern anachronistic terms, the PC's of the world are like special forces - they are expected to be able to read a book in the dark, hike 20 miles, and compose a book report in a foreign langauge in between coordinating mortar fire.   They can do all sorts of things that ordinary armies can't and need not be expected to do because ultimately the problems they solve are of a non-mundane nature.   Pound for pound, special forces kick butt.   But the ordinary soldiers of the world make up the greater portion of the martial prowess of any nation, because ordinary soldiers are still pretty darn good at facing threats of a more mundane nature.   What S'mon seems acutely aware of is that if you run a campaign long enough and use demographics centered at low levels, the fact that capability increases exponentially as level increases linearly means that the PC party itself (or any other similar group of high level characters) would eventually become the greater portion of the martial prowess of any nation capable of single handedly defeating armies in a fashion he apparantly doesn't feel fits the way his world works.   What I am acutely aware of is that in D&D, the 'mundane' threats include such things as lions, tigers, dire bears, small dragons, bands of giants, and small mercenary companies with armed with supernatural powers and virtual immunity to anyone whose attack bonus is only +3 or so.   I'm very much trying to solve the problem of "How does society defend itself from these things in a way that doesn't require the world to be filled of small mercenary companies of exceptional potential that are armed with supernatural powers."  What you seem acutely aware of is that if 'mundane' fantasy societies have solutions to said problems that don't involve needing a small band of mercenaries with supernatural powers, perhaps the PC's aren't so 'special' afterall.  My partial answer to that is that it depends greatly on what you mean by special.  My demographics allow the PC's to be virtually unique, in that there probably aren't more than a handful of actual 'adventuring companies' anywhere in the world.   I don't know how you can get more special than that.For the record, I solve the problem S'mon is trying to solve in a method which doesn't involve demographics at all.  In the unlikely event that the PC's did get to 15th level under my slower (more 1st edition like) progression, they would find that their main problems were more in common with the main problems faced by the heroes of the Illiad and the Oddessey, and hense the fact that they could single handedly face armies would sort of become insignificant.</blockquote>

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