Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 9596225" data-attributes="member: 9254">I see a lot of people who feel like tier 4 must be all plane-hopping.A goblin army proved to be a proper threat at 17th level.  And it is a total shame this isn't covered in any WotC book.  Many people use wars as hooks to start low level games but it's equally effective to start a higher level game.  Assuming there was guidance on how to do such a thing.And while I mean a proper 10-30,000 goblin army capable of threatening a major city, even a 2,000 goblin army broke up into 100 war bands of 20 roaming across a countryside can befuddle and infuriate a party of tier 3/4 adventurers, much as Romans and Persians were infuriated by gaul, hun, vandal, mongol and arab raiders.The spells that cover large areas can only be used once or twice a day.  You can't just let goblins scatter and run.  You have to hunt them down and chasing down 20 goblins who scatter takes time.  There are only so many places with hundreds of feet of unbroken sight lines.  <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Antipathy? Only covers one acre. Go ahead and protect Westminster, we'll burn the rest of London.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mirage Arcane?  Okay, a square mile covers Buckingham Palace, we'll burn the rest.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Meteor swarm?  Yeah, it could kill 800 goblins, if you could find 4 groups of 200 tightly packed goblins that weren't in contact with your own troops.  You don't think goblins march or line up in nice clean ranks do you?</li> </ul>Conversely, where there are hundreds of feet of unbroken sight lines, PCs will discover they are exposed to dozens or even hundreds of goblin archers, 1/20th will roll a nat-20 each round.  Death by a thousand cuts.Divinations are much less de-railing when the answers are "they cover 100 square miles*, advance 20 miles a day and are within 20 miles of your position" and "they want destruction in the name of their gods, treasure and food, in that order"*100 scattered war bands, each about a mile apart,  in a 10x10 grid cover 100 square miles.  Welcome to raiders.  Give them mounts that can move at higher speed, covering even larger areas, and you have the huns and mongols.  You could cover 10x as much in an utterly plausible army.Sprinkle in some goblin champions and such who are intentionally avoiding higher level heroes to wipe out low level troops guarding 2nd and 3rd tier communities to maximize the bloodshed, devastation and looting in the wider periphery.  And this is just the beginning.  Once a goblin army rips up a kingdom, other opportunistic predators will arrive.  Frenemies claiming nearby territory to "protect the peaceful citizens whose leaders are too weak",  banditry in areas where the troops were killed or recalled, various forces of monsters drawn by copious corpses, and quite plausibly undead raised by necromancers or undying emotion at the time of death or dying curses (if your setting supports those things).Don't forget the internal politics.  There's the initial shock of which nobles were killed in battle, who shamed themselves in the face of the enemy, and which nobles were impoverished.  Add in complications from the new heroes who arose and are introducing new viewpoints and ideas (or old ones that failed or fell out of favor).  There will be internal opportunists and idealists, with a whole myriad of motivations taking advantage of power vacuums.Refer back to the external threats, some of which will deploy less militaristic, but no less impactful, forces on the kingdom.  Economic warfare (closing borders, predatory pricing), diplomatic combat (cutting off allies), funding internal strife, etc. The aftermath can take years to unfold and decades to reach a stable "new normal."</blockquote>

Verification