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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 6071562" data-attributes="member: 58416">I thought I had responded to this already, but my post seems to have vanished.I understand the idea that a town guard might not have a skill set suited for dungeon crawling.  However, that assumes most adventures take place in dungeons.  While many do, that is certainly not always the case.  Even if it were, then I'd have to question how you answer that when considering the town guards of dwarven settlements.Anyway... as I said, I agree that the two skills sets may not overlap.  However, what gives me pause is when I consider that the higher level town guards can quite obviously take more damage (by virtue of how HP scales with level) than the lower level PCs can.  Likewise, the higher level town guards can quite obvious dish out more damage (by virtue of how powers and other things scale with level.)  So -even considering that a guard may have no experience at all at dungeon crawling- it still seems odd to me for a king/mayor/whomever to hire lower level PCs (who probably don't have much experience dungeon crawling either) and pay them large sums of money (which are more than what he's paying the guards) to perform a task when they are more poorly suited to it.  I agree with the idea, but I don't think the idea is really portrayed in the way D&D levels tend to work.  If I can use a video game example, I think Skyrim does a fairly good job of having the guards level, but not seem overpowered compared to the rest of the world; however, it's quite jarring when you realize that the children in the game cannot die.  There I am, a heroic legend struggling to undertake this quest which is wracking the world.  Meanwhile, I look over and see one of the kids in town punching a dragon to death, and he's not fazed at all by the dragon's breath weapon.  Overall, I love the game, but that minor detail bothers me.On the other end of the spectrum, I also agree with the idea that NPCs don't necessarily need stats.  Town guard #4 doesn't need a full character sheet.  In some instances, I even agree with the idea that a faceless NPC should probably just lie down and die when attacked by a PC (or other important character of the story.)  However, that can run into the opposite problem.  I've been involved in more than a few games where the PCs ran roughshod over the rest of the world because they were higher level than the kings and other important characters; thus they could simply impose their will through violence and mow down NPCs with relative impunity.  This feeds back into what the OP mentioned about PCs so easily killing gods.I do my best not to think about it.  If I do think about it, I find that I'm lead toward viewing the game as game first and story second.  I can certainly have fun with that approach, but it's not what I prefer out of a rpg experience.edit: and now my other post is back... weird; some of the thread was invisible to me for a moment.The impact of common undead and such.... well, to some extent I can ignore things.  Personally, I don't like undead and magic and wizards to be so common that they are everywhere.  I'm not a fan of the approach where PCs are assumed to be magic item Christmas trees.  I accept it simply because that's just the way the game works, but I prefer games in which those things being all over the place isn't the default assumption. Still, I can ignore some things.  However, level is one of those things that I have a hard time ignoring because it impacts the world overall -regardless of whether I'm a fighter, a wizard; regardless of whether I have a ton of magic items or few; regardless of whether I'm living, dead, undead, or something else.  I preferred the less steep power curve of 4th Edition to that of 3rd for that very reason (as well as a few others.)I do my best to ignore the things that bother me because rpgs are a group game, and -as such- I compromise my preferences so as to better match those of the people I game with.  All things being equal in a vacuum, I'd vastly prefer a world without D&D style levels; without D&D style magic item shops, and without powerful wizards and undead being all over the place.  I'm not opposed to wizards, undead, or any of that stuff being there; I just don't like it being everywhere.Earlier today, I watched the movie Dragonslayer.  In the beginning of the movie, the characters portrayed needed to travel "300 leagues" to find the old wizard in the tower.  Through conversation, it is implied that magicians and witches exist elsewhere in the setting, but they sought him out in particular because he was viewed as being powerful enough to help with a dragon problem.  That is the style I would prefer; I'm not against magic, I just prefer that overwhelmingly powerful magic (and some of the other D&D tropes) be place a little more sparingly.  I don't think it's too much to ask for a little bit more consistency in how the world is portrayed.  I don't need it to be perfect; I'd just like it to be better than it has been portrayed to me over the past two editions of the game.</blockquote>

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