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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7696769" data-attributes="member: 177">You do know that NPCs can, you know, move around, right?  That the 1st level ones won't just sit there to be killed, and the higher level ones won't wait for the monster to come to them?Yes, so the leader *himself* will give it a run for its money.  But, clearly he's not alone.  Any leader of a nation (the dwarves considered it so) would have a personal guard who were quite capable.  And the dwarves are a militant race, so certainly they have security forces that are well above 1st level.  There's going to be a whole bunch of combat capable characters in that city.  If we accept Durin the top at 9th, then there's going to be enough 5th level characters to fill a mead hall.  As soon as the Balrog comes a-callin', they're going to come out, and in aggregate they will take it down handily.This scenario works just fine is the Balrog is significantly more powerful than the dwarves, but not if he's only marginally more powerful.  So having a very high CR compared to the dwarves makes more sense.It is not clear that the axe disappeared with Durin.  All we know is that Balin's people found it - it could have been lost with Nain, Durin's son.You don't need "the average" to be 6th.  You need, maybe, a dozen such in the entire city, who would be called on when such a monster reared his ugly head.In essence, this argument assumes the conclusion - Gandalf is only a 5th level wizard because we assume the demographics to be not just "most" NPCs are first level, but that characters of notable level in the population are nigh non-existent.  I suggest that this is backwards.  We should look at what happens in the books, and track back to what that means in D&Disms.  Smaug is as big and old as dragons get.  Balrogs are not far short of such a dragon (by description of combats in which they are featured).  Work down from there.</blockquote>

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