Hey everyone. After reading the 12 orcs vs. 17th level party thread, it got me thinking. Has anyone here run a "network" or "cellular" style threat from many small, low-level enemies against a high-level party, or is it always the singular BBEG and his minions holed up at their castle/cave? It seems that if you had an orc warchief and his 80 bandits hanging around in a fort staging raids, a high level party could wipe them out in a snap with the time to plan an attack. However, if you had those orcs split up into 16 five orc teams skirmishing the local populace and harrasing the player's associates, it would be hard to pin down the threat even for severely powerful characters.
I'm just examining the modern war on terror, where you can draw parallels. The terrorists recognize they can't win in a toe-to-toe fight, so they play a war of attrition and erode support. I could picture a DnD foe where if a mid-high level party fought on an actual battlefield, they'd win hands down. So instead, the low-level enemies erode public support for the players ("Stable their horses, and we'll slaughter your livestock. Sell them food, and your town market will be burnt to a crisp"). If they were intelligent enough (hard for orcs, but not necessarily for other, smarter evil races), then they would start working as small evil NPC parties, not as one big army massing in the field.
To draw further inspiration from events around us, let's look at religion. If Islam is at it's face not a violent religion, as most muslims would posit, then the radical aspects cause an increase in martyrdom and Jihad. What can you imagine a religion based on the deities Erythnul, Gruumsh, or Hextor would cause in terms of Jihad and Martyrdom? I can imagine worshippers walking into a market square just to toss a portable hole into a bag of holding and eject the common shoppers into the astral plane, or to crack a staff of fire in half (a la 2e rules) to blow all the charges at once. Perhaps they'd out of nowhere drive a tun barrel full of alchemist fire right into the Temple of Pelor.
I just wanted to throw that out there and see what DMs have done along these lines. It seems to me I've mainly seen the ECL mechanic used as face value. Got 4 15th level PCs? Then use one CR 15 monster, or a 15th level BBEG wizard, etc. For characters of that renown in a campaign world, and as despised by the evil creatures they're smiting, I can't see why fundamentalist networks wouldn't spring up to counter them off the battlefield rather than on it. What is everyone's opinion and experience in this matter?
I'm just examining the modern war on terror, where you can draw parallels. The terrorists recognize they can't win in a toe-to-toe fight, so they play a war of attrition and erode support. I could picture a DnD foe where if a mid-high level party fought on an actual battlefield, they'd win hands down. So instead, the low-level enemies erode public support for the players ("Stable their horses, and we'll slaughter your livestock. Sell them food, and your town market will be burnt to a crisp"). If they were intelligent enough (hard for orcs, but not necessarily for other, smarter evil races), then they would start working as small evil NPC parties, not as one big army massing in the field.
To draw further inspiration from events around us, let's look at religion. If Islam is at it's face not a violent religion, as most muslims would posit, then the radical aspects cause an increase in martyrdom and Jihad. What can you imagine a religion based on the deities Erythnul, Gruumsh, or Hextor would cause in terms of Jihad and Martyrdom? I can imagine worshippers walking into a market square just to toss a portable hole into a bag of holding and eject the common shoppers into the astral plane, or to crack a staff of fire in half (a la 2e rules) to blow all the charges at once. Perhaps they'd out of nowhere drive a tun barrel full of alchemist fire right into the Temple of Pelor.
I just wanted to throw that out there and see what DMs have done along these lines. It seems to me I've mainly seen the ECL mechanic used as face value. Got 4 15th level PCs? Then use one CR 15 monster, or a 15th level BBEG wizard, etc. For characters of that renown in a campaign world, and as despised by the evil creatures they're smiting, I can't see why fundamentalist networks wouldn't spring up to counter them off the battlefield rather than on it. What is everyone's opinion and experience in this matter?
