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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7237170" data-attributes="member: 7006">What you describe with possible party interactions with the Flaming Fist is actually one of my particular bugaboos with "leveling" RPGs (and D&D in particular).  As you point out, CapnZapp, the party can "outlevel" an authority figure or group quite easily, thereby rending them "immune" to the authority-- all because of the mechanics of the game, and not because of any in-world actions that would allow for this to happen.  If we treat the Flaming Fist NPCs are just another bunch of numbers, the band of player murderhobos can eventually (after several months of playing) reach a point of game mechanic superiority that the threat of this organization is lost (at least in terms of combat.)  Which can result in the party just walking all over everybody if they so choose, because the game's mechanics allow for it to happen.  NPCs don't "level-up" usually like the PCs do, so by Level 5 like you say... every single character from the opening chapters of the game are merely speed bumps.This kind of stuff does tend to bother me from a story perspective.  The fact that police officers can virtually be just laughed at because the PCs have game rules that allow them to become superheroes in comparison.  And while there are many in-game story sanctions that can be levied at the PCs for poor action as CapnKobold pointed out... they are still able to just be ignored by PCs who don't choose to follow the obvious story response.So on the one hand... my first instinct when the party is meant to deal with the Flaming Fist is to "level up" the FF so that they always remain a game mechanics threat to the PCs.  If the PCs are Level 5, then the average CR of each FF member is like CR 9 or 10.  So that if the party tries to attack them, the FF have some mechanical weight to throw around.  But on the other hand... this also ended up being one of the things that ended up bothering me about 4E (and the ease of leveling up monsters using the Monster Builder) and which would follow a similar path here.  If a dragon is a CR 15 monster, and you can level up a Goblin to be also become a CR 15 boss monster... it throws threat level of different monsters all out of whack too, which just feels wrong to me from a story perspective.  A goblin and a dragon should not feel like the same threat... but so long as the PCs can level up because of "game mechanics" but not necessarily level-up within the story (where they gain through story-action the right to ignore authority figures or whatnot)... then there's always going to be this issue of mechanics vs narrative.So I think I'm going to end up having the same sort of problem you have, and really that's all due to the leveling mechanic of the D&D game.  A normal human over time becomes virtually a god because they are "played", while every other non-played person or monster does not.  It's been an issue all along in my various years of playing D&D... and unless your particular style of campaign is designed such that you continually "graduate" to ONLY fighting monsters applicable to your level and other NPCs like the Flaming Fist just don't show up anymore (rather than become murder victims because the party can just kill them with little to fear mechanically)... you will always have this problem of authority figures having no real game authority to affect the party.  It can really suck.For running a particular style of campaign such as ToA, I've actually started looking into (and doing my own personal playtests of) an E6-style Stamina/Wounds version of 5E in order to see if I can lessen these issues.  Smaller "stamina" HP pool for each PC, but a deeper "negative HP" pool for wounds (your standard CON score of wound points).  I did switch things up similarly for my CoS games where I replaced the 3 Death saves chart with the Exhaustion chart instead (so it took 6 failures to actually die, but each failure did grant a level of exhaustion)... and I'd like to continue to experiment to see if I can make ToA play differently as well (so that things like the FF can remain threats throughout the entire game.)Best of luck with your adaptations, and I hope they work out for you as I hope mine work out for me!</blockquote>

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