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  1. - Top - End - #61

    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by jedipotter View Post
    How don't the guards know that?
    Because they're not psychic?

    Take like Thor:The Dark world as an example. The jail guards watch Kurse blast out of the cell and start to slaughter everyone. Yet they run up and do the ''for Asgard'' and die. Yet, you'd think they would know ''well ok, we are dead'', right?
    Those guards' purpose was to keep the prisoners contained and in the serious threat of a breakout, buy the Asgardian military enough time to mobilize.

    How about the thugs a bit before, the ones ''making the Nine Realms full of Chaos''. They attack Thor, as if they have a chance of even hurting him, let alone killing him. then they all give up once Thor kills that rock giant. Guess it was the first giant Thor ever killed right? The same goes for the ones that escape. They run up to Thor and attack, like they have a chance.
    Let's see, at the time they don't seem to recognize him and it isn't until he destroys the Stone Giant, that they understand how strong he really is. If you'd never seen Thor before, but had heard of him, would you be able to point him out in a crowd before he starts wrecking stuff?

    During the finale, all the low level mooks attacking Thor are doing so to prevent him from stopping their leader from winning. The whole point to anything any of the villains do at that point is to keep the heroes away from the main bad guy.

    It's like the Ye Old Superman Tv show. The bad guys would always shoot Superman, even though everyone knew he was bullet proof. So the bullets just bounced off him. And then they would throw the gun at Superman, and he would duck.
    Yeah, the people who shoot Superman usually suffer from one of three things.

    1: Fear, people and animals who are afraid of something may sometimes violently lash out, even when they know it'll have no effect. Many of these people are afraid of Superman.

    2: Desperation, people who are desperate are prone to doing some pretty crazy things, like shooting the guy they know is invincible in the vain hope that it'll give them an escape route.

    3: Stupidity, some people are just stupid and will believe that what has never, ever worked before will somehow work now because... Well, because they're too thick to understand that the reason Superman cannot be harmed by bullets, is because he's immune to bullets.

    Quote Originally Posted by jedipotter View Post
    Sounds fair to me. I make most of my guards tough. Now, does this make every guard an epic level threat? No. But it does make roughly half of the guards in the world a challenge for the PCs.
    What level are the guards of a hamlet, when the PCs are 20th level and have just defeated an Ancient White Dragon by collapsing it's lair and luring it into a confined area before smashing it?
    Y'know, to challenge the PCs.

    So the best thing to do: throw all the ''weak NPC'' rules out the window and ignore them.
    Level 5 is calculated to be the peak of Human ability, anything rated at CR5 is (assuming a nonbroken CR system) a serious threat to most games' villages. Anything below that is more manageable, but still a threat.

    I don't know about you, but there are a lot of creatures at CR5 and below. Many of which are far more powerful than your average house fly, or mouse.

    A 5 Headed Hydra is a CR6 creature and not only is it obviously stronger than a Mouse or a fly, but it appears to be able to trivially take on a pack of wolves. Yeah, one single creature that can do the job of a dozen men with sticks.
    If one of these creatures attacked somewhere in the real world, eventually the armed forces would be called in to use anti-armour weaponry. I challenge you to find someone in the real world who can punch a hole in a tank with their bare fists, like a 10th level character.


    Your game sounds very videogamey.
    Last edited by Threadnaught; 2014-08-02 at 12:33 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #62
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Anachronity View Post
    In real life guards actually don't lead very active lives for the most part. You could live your whole life as a police officer and never experience a single shootout, and yet it takes (very roughly) 15 to 20 encounters to gain a level in the D&D world.
    Well, just take some ''real world'' examples from the Forgotten Realms. Most guards in a big city like Waterdeep or countries like Thay don't have very active lives. This is true. But then there are other places. Most guards anywhere on the Moonsea sure have active lives, even more so the guards that are in caravans in and around Thar. And the guards on caravans on the Long Road, from Waterdeep going south, sure have active lives as they go past hundreds of miles of monster filled wilderness.

    The Realms is a very dangerous place and guards are needed everywhere. No place is 100% safe. ''Law and Order'' does not extend very far past the city limits. And there are bandits, monsters and monster bandits everywhere. To get trade goods from anywhere in the North to say Waterdeep or Luskan is a big chore.

    Even a small town, like Daggerford, is more like a 'wild west town' then a 'folks sit around and watch the grass grow town'. Everyone is armed. The law, unless they have ready access to magic, have no way to do CSI stuff. So if a halfling is found dead by the pond, they can't do more then guess and try a little simple investigation. This makes a lot more lawlessness, as people know they won't get caught. And remember, everyone is armed.

  3. - Top - End - #63
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by jedipotter View Post
    Even a small town, like Daggerford, is more like a 'wild west town' then a 'folks sit around and watch the grass grow town'. Everyone is armed. The law, unless they have ready access to magic, have no way to do CSI stuff. So if a halfling is found dead by the pond, they can't do more then guess and try a little simple investigation. This makes a lot more lawlessness, as people know they won't get caught. And remember, everyone is armed.
    The actual "wild west" had way, way fewer weapons than the typical medieval city. Most people weren't armed, and it was generally accepted that travelers hand their weapons over to the local sheriff once they got to town. Sure, there was the occasional shoot out, but westerns and the like drastically exaggerate the rates of that sort of thing.

    Just getting to level 6 involves about 65 fights to the death - more, if they aren't close to even fights. A society in which the typical guard is involved in 65 fights to the death is ridiculously violent, not to mention too unstable to realistically survive. Lets say the average guard has been doing guard work for 10 years - some are higher, more are lower, etc. That works out to a fight to the death more than once every two months. It's ludicrous.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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  4. - Top - End - #64
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    The actual "wild west" had way, way fewer weapons than the typical medieval city. Most people weren't armed, and it was generally accepted that travelers hand their weapons over to the local sheriff once they got to town. Sure, there was the occasional shoot out, but westerns and the like drastically exaggerate the rates of that sort of thing.

    .
    Remember we are not talking about reality. We are talking about the fictional wild west. Or the fictional anything. Starfleet has thousands of ships, but only the Enterprise (and Voyager) runs into truly amazing, bizarre and fascinating adventures every couple of weeks. Think what a Enterprise reunion would be like: "Hey remember when we all deaged to like 12? Or the time we all became animals? Or that time we traveled back in time to 19th century? Then you have the USS Starlight: ''Well, remember that time we mapped them stars in sector 17564?''

    The same way ''cop shows'', like any CSI or Bones encounter crimes and bad guys every week. But not every ''cop'' in Miami has awesome encounters like the CSI Miami ones, most of them ''don't do much.'' Or the way the Sons of Anarchy lead amazing active, violent lives...but real bikers just...well...you know...ride their bikes.

    It's not ''real'', it's fiction. It is made that way. Reality is very boring. No one would watch the 100th StarTrek episode where ''nothing at all happens''. The same way no one would play a D&D game where ''nothing happens''.

  5. - Top - End - #65
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by jedipotter View Post
    Remember we are not talking about reality. We are talking about the fictional wild west. Or the fictional anything. Starfleet has thousands of ships, but only the Enterprise (and Voyager) runs into truly amazing, bizarre and fascinating adventures every couple of weeks. Think what a Enterprise reunion would be like: "Hey remember when we all deaged to like 12? Or the time we all became animals? Or that time we traveled back in time to 19th century? Then you have the USS Starlight: ''Well, remember that time we mapped them stars in sector 17564?''
    Exactly. The Enterprise (and Voyager, and Defiant, and the runabouts on DS9) is an exception in it's own setting. It's basically the PCs. The typical guards are more like the USS Starlight, with largely uneventful careers. It's not completely uneventful, much as the other ships don't have completely uneventful careers (there was the one that had the experimental cloaking device developed on it and ended up embedded in an asteroid, there was the one that was disabled by the Maquis, so on and so forth), but it's nothing like what the PCs encounter.

    Even in the fictional wild west, it's usually along the lines of "this one town is a violent place" or "the handful of towns that have the misfortune of dealing with these particular characters see a lot of violence" rather than "everyone is armed all the time and gunfights are routine".
    Last edited by Knaight; 2014-08-02 at 03:08 PM.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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  6. - Top - End - #66
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Stella View Post
    I think you have this fairly wrong. The CR system is designed to determine which encounters a party of 4 consisting of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Rogue, and a Wizard of a certain level should be able to beat 3 of per day. Not which single party member should be able to beat which single encounter half of the time. If you reduce it to a single person vs. encounter fight you have broken the system beyond any recognition of the intent for its use. It isn't a perfect system by any means, but it works far better if used as intended than if used well outside of the scope of the intent.
    I know how the CR system works. And actually, what the book says is that an encounter of CR = Average Party Level should be routinely defeatable with no major losses, but should consume roughly 1/4 of the parties daily resources.

    A human rogue 6 is a CR 6 enemy for a party of 4 to face.
    A bearded devil is a CR 5 enemy for a party of 4 to face.

    Therefore, a bearded devil should be able to consume 1/4 the resources of a party of 4 5th level characters daily resources, and a single sixth level human rogue should be able to consume roughly 1/4 of a sixth level parties daily resources. It is reasonable to assume that with their various skillsets that the rogue should have a more robust set of abilities than the bearded devil, simply based on their ability to consume another entities resources.

    Regardless, that is not the original point of the comment and isn't particularly relevant. The point is that the rogue and his buddies, even at level 6, are pretty hardcore dudes. Sneaking past castle guards shouldn't be a big deal for him.
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Zanos View Post
    The point is that the rogue and his buddies, even at level 6, are pretty hardcore dudes. Sneaking past castle guards shouldn't be a big deal for him.
    It isn't. The guards are probably warriors or maybe fighters who don't get listen/spot as class skills and only minimal skill points. On the other hand, if the rogue engages the supposedly pretty well trained guards in direct combat he should get his ass kicked, so a level of 4-6 for professional guards is hardly out of the question.

    Make it 2-4 for the grunts and 3-6 for a generic guard squadleader NPC. Any rogue worth his salt can sneak past those unless they specifically get items to counter it. Engaging them in combat isn't a good idea though without some support, preferably one or more competent spellcasters.

    For elite guards you can add a spellcaster as squadleader and switch to levels of warblade for one or more fighters to significantly increase their threat rating without overpopulating your world with high level NPCs.

  8. - Top - End - #68

    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by sleepyphoenixx View Post
    Smart stuff.
    Way to not make a settlement's guards too strong for verisimilitude.

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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Threadnaught View Post
    Level 5 is calculated to be the peak of Human ability, anything rated at CR5 is (assuming a nonbroken CR system) a serious threat to most games' villages. Anything below that is more manageable, but still a threat.
    I kinda want to quibble on the meaning of "threat," but not really. Any CR5 that doesn't have a solid DR10 or serious fast healing/regeneration should drop to a big enough gang of anyone with weapons, but the fact that they had to send the whole guard or form a mob means that it was clearly a threat by any definition of the word. So it depends more on the size of the population for what fraction of the total amount of guards is required to subdue the threat. If it's a Thorp of 50 people then they'd need the whole town fighting instead of running, but you'd need a Large Town to sortie 20 full time guards without relying on militia. By that measure yeah, I guess a CR5 really does make a serious threat to a town, even a city if it's good at escaping (though once you hit Large Town the community modifier means there are easily high enough level NPCs to group and bring it down if they feel like it).
    Quote Originally Posted by Anachronity View Post
    I would personally represent caravan guards as an exception to the wealth by level: Their experience puts them at a higher level than, say, temple guards who are just there to look intimidating and scare off the riff-raff. However, their lack of association with a wealthy noble would mean that they probably have less expensive equipment (unless the merchant is doing particularly well and really wants well-outfitted guards).
    This is perfectly good reasoning, the only problem is that NPC classes really do need the gear to do anything (I compared warriors with NPC gear to summon monster at NPC level=CL for a different project and it was still impossible to keep damage up, only redeeming factor was AC via full plate+shield). If they use PC classes they'll need to be gear independant, fighters would need a strong damage focus or rely on rogues, and without a minimum full plate+shields they'll be basically defenseless against higher level PCs. But going back to the good idea, Arms and Equipment Guide once again agrees: mercenaries with better gear charge as if they're good enough to deserve it, and presumably you could force a guy desperate for work to take lower pay if his gear wasn't up to snuff.
    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    The actual "wild west" had way, way fewer weapons than the typical medieval city. Most people weren't armed, and it was generally accepted that travelers hand their weapons over to the local sheriff once they got to town. Sure, there was the occasional shoot out, but westerns and the like drastically exaggerate the rates of that sort of thing.

    Just getting to level 6 involves about 65 fights to the death - more, if they aren't close to even fights. A society in which the typical guard is involved in 65 fights to the death is ridiculously violent, not to mention too unstable to realistically survive. Lets say the average guard has been doing guard work for 10 years - some are higher, more are lower, etc. That works out to a fight to the death more than once every two months. It's ludicrous.
    Woah, that's some solid perspective. I'm always aware of the seemingly cheap 13ish fights till next level (usually in terms of 4 chump fights per day for only 3-4 days per level), but that's ignoring how you reached your "starting" level and the fact that they are indeed usually fights to the death. Only they're not close to even fights: that's 65 fights where you outnumber them 4 on 1 or massively outclass them due to the CR system and the intentional skewing of danger to favor PCs*. It's still ridiculously violent for a town guard of course, but if the guards are trained to work together and they're never fighting more than once a day (and thus full heal between fights) they should survive plenty well barring an axe crit.

    You could double it to 130 fights to the. . lose? Complete Warrior awards 1/2 xp if you defeat a proper non-lethal challenge where something's at stake in their tournament rules, which would be a make or break battle every month (and probably the maximum speed at which you'd want to allow such non-lethal xp). You'd either need a lot of prize money or some serious penalty for failure like dangerously hard labor, it'd work great for slave gladiators if those weren't to the death to begin with.

    *As we know, supposedly PCs have CR=level, so a fair fight for a four person party would be four foes of equal CR rather than 1. To reduce PC mortality that's usually broken up into 4 separate fights in one day where the party attacks 4 on 1 or equivalent (and then monsters get skewed far tougher to compensate for this so an "even" fight is actually weighted for the monsters). Either way you'd get xp for 4 encounters of equal level, almost a third of a level in one day. If a group of four guards is fighting one encounter of appropriate level every 2 months then it'll take 10 years to reach level 6, but if they're actually fair fights it should take 1/4 of the time (but with a significantly higher mortality and failure rate). Huh: x4 1v1, /2 non-lethal, x50% chance of failure= x1 overall xp gain. If the guard is say, apprehending a suspect of equal level who has no intent of murdering him back. That would put him back on the original 10 year schedule.
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  10. - Top - End - #70
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    It depends on the setting/settlement they are guards for.

    For example, I rarely have higher level NPC's apart from when they are needed. There are enough fantastical creatures around that you don't need to be facing humanoid enemy number 193 with class levels, neither do they exist as allies, in so much as why have the party exist, then, when the NPC can do the task.

    The king of a barbarian horde is probably a 6th-7th level barbarian, maybe even with a Prestige Class, his huscarls are 5th-6th level elites, mostly with elite array.

    The rest of his horde probably consist of 3rd to 4th level veterans, maybe multiclassed with PC classes, but not necessarily elite array. They are hardly elites. These might act as shock troops, or squad leaders to the rest of the army - standard troops who haven't yet had the full experience of war, but have possibly fought one or two battles or skirmishes, while 1st level rabble are followers or hangers on to the horde, maybe non combatants pressed into the battle by circumstances, or something like a trappers or hunters who are used to provide support.

    Meanwhile compare that to the Lawful armies - well organized and trained.

    Maybe the king however, rather than through rule of might is at best a 3rd level aristocrat if he paid attention to his basic schooling, maybe even lower if he was stereopypical 16th century french aristocracy. He will have the money above his station or level suggests to afford a possibly even a couple of magical trinkets, either as heirlooms or specifically requested from the mages guild, if not mastercrafted at the least.

    He is not the true leader of the army - that is his generals duty. A former soldier, or product of an academy who has shown a natural quality for the leadership of military, represented by a high intelligence (not necessarily a high charisma, although that may help with getting soldiers to do something they don't like) that has come from an elite array. NPC levels maybe retrained by the academy into PC, 6th level or so.

    If the king takes to battle, he may take his Praetorians or elites. They are possibly highly drilled, and obviously well equipped, but maybe not exactly the most hard bitten of troops with battlefield experience. Conversely, they might be 'by appointment only' forming a truly elite bodyguard based purely on ability. They probably have at least masterwork equipment. Going toe to toe wth the elite huscarls of the barbarians led by the barbarian king would probably see them chewed up, unless they are by appointment, where an elite array and maybe PC levels would be in order.

    The army has lots of well trained basic infantry, maybe well equipped, but no mastercrafted stuff, but things of higher protection. Whereas the barbarians might wander around in leather jerkins, maybe a few scavenged chain shirts, the lawful army might have breastplates, maybe even full plate for some of the elite guards.

    However that is not everything. The army leaves behind a guard. These are commoners given a job. They might recieve training, and low level equipment, or they might be given nothing aside from the meanest essentials to keep order.

    Depending on the populace, the guard might be reasonably respected like todays police, or it might be the old school criminals in uniform style. The thing that sets them apart is their training, giving them an NPC class, and equipment. When breaking up a bar fight, they have staves or clubs, maybe armour etc, while those they face have improvised weapons or small concealed weapons. Or they just put down the populace where they are attacking commoners.

    As you can see the armies are evenly matched, the intelligence and training of the lawful general making advantage of natural locations to beat the stronger, more numerous and more experienced forces of the barbarians.

    However, should those barbarians be found to be fleeing something (maybe they awoke a great wyrm dragon, say), then they need to ask for adventurers. Maybe elites in the palace guard say? With captured huscarls... etc. That is how one of my campaigns started recently.

    If you struggle with the verisimiltude of having a dragon not destroy everything, just think, do you go and hunt down everything you can kill just because you can? Flies etc? No, you only hurt that which annoys you in your vicinity, or that which is in the way of what you want.

  11. - Top - End - #71

    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    If you struggle with the verisimiltude of having a dragon not destroy everything, just think, do you go and hunt down everything you can kill just because you can? Flies etc? No, you only hurt that which annoys you in your vicinity, or that which is in the way of what you want.
    It is not a large enough Dragon refusing to destroy everything that hurts verisimilitude, just as people don't hunt down and exterminate every single insect on the planet.

    It is the average town guardsman being powerful enough to swat said Dragon out of the sky as if it were a fly, that hurts verisimilitude, just as most flies can't beat a human in a one on one fight to the death.


    A game in which the guards were more powerful that the PCs, no matter how many Demon Gods the PCs had defeated, is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    I don't think you properly read my post. A Great Wyrm Dragon is out of the box, an epic level encounter. This is independent of giving them a point buy/elite array, class levels, templates, feats, spells known, psychoses or alternate SLA's from Dragon Mag.

    If such a cataclysmic, world ending, armageddonlike event like a great wyrm dragon awakening on the material plane (there was a thread a while back about how a dragon would fair against non magical armies - conclusively the dragon won and it wasn't even that old), considering it has a WBL roughly equivalent to the US annual debt as well, you have to consider 'why is it not already in charge and everything already in thrall to it?' - as that is tippyverse discussion as well - one logical conclusion is that the dragon doesn't care, they can't hurt me, so why bother?

    I made no mention whatsoever of having town guard equivalents, those i suggested were at best level 2, or even 1st level commoners with a bad attitude and a uniform. The most lethal individuals that were not adventurers being 6th level generals, or 7th level barbarians superhuman. To deal with an extinction level event like angels from heaven or the pits from the lower planes opening up, or as said the coming of an older dragon, you need either mcguffin/artifacts, or to be of a similar level.

    I don't like levelled games for that reason. In elder scrolls, facing a level 5 bandit cutthroat early on then facing a level level 55 one later makes you wonder why the level 55 one is hanging out in l55 areas and not killing the l5 ones and taking control of the low levelled cities.

    I much prefer leveled games that way, and mod TES games like so ASAP.

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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Threadnaught View Post
    Level 5 is calculated to be the peak of Human ability, anything rated at CR5 is (assuming a nonbroken CR system) a serious threat to most games' villages. Anything below that is more manageable, but still a threat.
    Just a nit-pick, but levels really don't correspond all that well to regular human ability. After all many boxers could land more than four hits in six seconds successfully, that would require that they be around mid-high levels. Olympic Strength folks could easily lift weights that would put them in the mid-low twenties for strength (unattainable at level 5 without items for a human).

    It's a model, just because you could theoretically model most humans conceptually at level 5, doesn't mean that level 5 is the peak of human ability. That varies completely from setting to setting. In FR it's common to see guards in small towns at level five or six, and those in big cities at as high as thirteen or fourteen. In Eberron there are very few non-PC characters over level 6 and that's actually a design choice.

    The problem is that D&D is a model, designed for fun gameplay, not designed for presenting an accurate picture of humanity, so one is remiss to say, "the highest level for normal human ability is five, since to model many human abilities you would need much higher levels than five.
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Basic human can make two punches without training. Basic boxer, with str12 and twf can likely land both of those, each one capable of doing enough damage to knock out a commoner.

    A monk being the nearest analogue gives you flurry for a third attack, and at l10 being mid-high can make 4 attacks, 5 with itwf. Many fights struggle to keep up the tempo of landing 4 hits every 6 seconds.

    Being able to lift weights is a strength check, not carrying capacity. With a strength check, the average human has a 1 in 20 chance of lifting what a strength 30 character would need to take 10. Plus, technique has more to do with i. Very few people can do an unassissted pullup, yet the rules suggest it is easy.

    Your point is valid, but those examples you chose were poor.

    If you want to consider what superhuman abilities are around, an average human commoner can shoot 1 arrow a round, that is every 6 seconds. A trained one might hit. These can do enough damage to kill. A 6th level rapidshot archer can fire 3 killshots in that same time. Said monk can drop 3 men in that same time, maybe more if he uses his Combat Reflexes. 6th level human whirling frenzy barbarians played as visaged with Cleave and TWF fighting and improved twf can drop 6 men in that time.

    That is superhuman.

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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    Basic human can make two punches without training. Basic boxer, with str12 and twf can likely land both of those, each one capable of doing enough damage to knock out a commoner.
    True, but in real life if you had a well trained boxer and put him in a fight with three guys, he'd probably lose. But in D&D that would be not correct, a level four character could probably fight many commoners. The point is that D&D is not a good model, it just doesn't work like real life, you can use it to model concepts, but modeling people is almost impossible, since people just don't function that way.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    A monk being the nearest analogue gives you flurry for a third attack, and at l10 being mid-high can make 4 attacks, 5 with itwf. Many fights struggle to keep up the tempo of landing 4 hits every 6 seconds.
    TWF does not apply to unarmed strikes, furthermore D&D fighters can fight indefinitely. It's not a good model for real life. And in real life you could theoretically have somebody hit somebody else many more times. Four hits in six seconds is certainly possible, and it could certainly be an average people could hit, D&D is not a good combat simulator again. We're looking at where the verisimilitude breaks down.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    Being able to lift weights is a strength check, not carrying capacity. With a strength check, the average human has a 1 in 20 chance of lifting what a strength 30 character would need to take 10. Plus, technique has more to do with i. Very few people can do an unassissted pullup, yet the rules suggest it is easy.
    Most people can do an unassisted Pullup. A dead-hang unassisted pullup with very little assistance. In my entire experience training people who had difficulty with the PFT (I worked in a training shop in the Marines for a very long time), I've only ever met one man who could not do three unassisted dead hang pull-ups, ever.

    I'm also not sure that being able to lift weights would qualify as a strength check rather than carrying capacity. Certainly truck pulls are carrying capacity and a large sized truck can weigh many tons, and I've seen a human being (although I'm not sure how human he is) pull a 747, weighing 947,000 lbs. Even accounting for the wheels making it much easier, we'll say he had to pull the equivalent to half that's still significantly beyond strength 50. Even at 1/9th of the weight that's still beyond strength 50.

    So the point is that real life just isn't modeled well by D&D
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    Olympic Strength folks could easily lift weights that would put them in the mid-low twenties for strength (unattainable at level 5 without items for a human).
    Level 5 Barbarian, 19 Strength, Rage for +4 Strength.
    Can pick up, up to 350lb normally, 600 when exerting themselves/Raging.

    I don't know much about weightlifting, but I do know that those two are heavy.

    It's a model, just because you could theoretically model most humans conceptually at level 5, doesn't mean that level 5 is the peak of human ability.
    Most of the greatest Humans in history, at level 5. And it isn't theoretical either.

    That varies completely from setting to setting. In FR it's common to see guards in small towns at level five or six, and those in big cities at as high as thirteen or fourteen. In Eberron there are very few non-PC characters over level 6 and that's actually a design choice.
    Faerun is a more fantastic setting than Eberron, which has a gritty Industrial feel to it.

    The problem is that D&D is a model, designed for fun gameplay, not designed for presenting an accurate picture of humanity, so one is remiss to say, "the highest level for normal human ability is five, since to model many human abilities you would need much higher levels than five.
    But you see, the highest level for normal Human ability in the real world as modelled by D&D 3.5 rules, is 5th level.

    It's a much more realistic model than the "average" guard being able to survive a point blank headshot with a sawed-off shotgun (32 damage), or a direct hit from a rocket launcher (60 damage).

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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Threadnaught View Post
    Level 5 Barbarian, 19 Strength, Rage for +4 Strength.
    Can pick up, up to 350lb normally, 600 when exerting themselves/Raging.

    I don't know much about weightlifting, but I do know that those two are heavy.
    600 is close to the world record for clean and jerk. But again, it's nowhere near the pulling a 747, that Mario Pujanauski did. Again that can't be modeled sub-strength 50, so it's a bad model.

    Quote Originally Posted by Threadnaught View Post
    Most of the greatest Humans in history, at level 5. And it isn't theoretical either.
    It is completely, COMPLETELY THEORETICAL. HUMANS HAVE NO LEVELS. I don't have a character level or experience points, I could model myself in D&D at level 1 or level 20. Actually somebody like me would be very difficult to model since I have a very diverse base of skills

    Quote Originally Posted by Threadnaught View Post
    Faerun is a more fantastic setting than Eberron, which has a gritty Industrial feel to it.
    Yes, which is what we should care about. The feel you want for your setting.

    Quote Originally Posted by Threadnaught View Post
    But you see, the highest level for normal Human ability in the real world as modelled by D&D 3.5 rules, is 5th level.

    It's a much more realistic model than the "average" guard being able to survive a point blank headshot with a sawed-off shotgun (32 damage), or a direct hit from a rocket launcher (60 damage).
    That's completely mistaken, just because HP don't scale well, doesn't mean that modelling works that way. People have survived falls from airplanes. And people have survived point blank shots to the head, or direct hits from rocket launchers. HP is not a good model for anything.

    It's a model, I can model something much higher than fifth level and it will still be an accurate model. Just the inaccuracies will be in different spots. It's unreasonable to expect that a trained opponent will land less than one hit in six seconds on average. So that means that means that most trained fighters would be higher level than sixth. Or else you're modelling wrong. So you can't model that accurately at lower levels.

    You're going to have model inaccuracy in different spots, but you can model things at conceivably any level, but you are never going to have a model which is 100% accurate.

    So model a character who can pull a 747 (947,000 lbs) at level 5, if you can do that, I'll buy your fifth level argument.
    Last edited by AMFV; 2014-08-03 at 11:21 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    True, but in real life if you had a well trained boxer and put him in a fight with three guys, he'd probably lose. But in D&D that would be not correct, a level four character could probably fight many commoners. The point is that D&D is not a good model, it just doesn't work like real life, you can use it to model concepts, but modeling people is almost impossible, since people just don't function that way.



    TWF does not apply to unarmed strikes, furthermore D&D fighters can fight indefinitely. It's not a good model for real life. And in real life you could theoretically have somebody hit somebody else many more times. Four hits in six seconds is certainly possible, and it could certainly be an average people could hit, D&D is not a good combat simulator again. We're looking at where the verisimilitude breaks down.



    Most people can do an unassisted Pullup. A dead-hang unassisted pullup with very little assistance. In my entire experience training people who had difficulty with the PFT (I worked in a training shop in the Marines for a very long time), I've only ever met one man who could not do three unassisted dead hang pull-ups, ever.

    I'm also not sure that being able to lift weights would qualify as a strength check rather than carrying capacity. Certainly truck pulls are carrying capacity and a large sized truck can weigh many tons, and I've seen a human being (although I'm not sure how human he is) pull a 747, weighing 947,000 lbs. Even accounting for the wheels making it much easier, we'll say he had to pull the equivalent to half that's still significantly beyond strength 50. Even at 1/9th of the weight that's still beyond strength 50.

    So the point is that real life just isn't modeled well by D&D
    Did you just equate a recruit for the marines to being average lard-o on civi street? During my military time I've seen enough naval recruits struggle to manage a single unassisted pull up. Marines none. Because they knew where they were going and that pull ups were a thing. Most managed the minimum 6, about half the desired 12, by the end of the 2nd week at lympstone ,, and by week 32, pretty much all could do 20+ in battle order.

    I would answer to more of your post, but I think you are seriously overestimating the average human commoner suggested in d&d, and feel like I'm wasting my time.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    Did you just equate a recruit for the marines to being average lard-o on civi street? During my military time I've seen enough naval recruits struggle to manage a single unassisted pull up. Marines none. Because they knew where they were going and that pull ups were a thing. Most managed the minimum 6, about half the desired 12, by the end of the 2nd week at lympstone ,, and by week 32, pretty much all could do 20+ in battle order.
    I equated active duty Marines, recruits aren't a good example because they spend literally all of their time training. I've also seen people just into Boot, and very few of them couldn't manage 3. I imagine all of them could do at least one, or the vast majority.

    Actually I will say that, the vast majority of civilians could probably do a single pullup. I would estimate that at higher than seventy percent.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    I would answer to more of your post, but I think you are seriously overestimating the average human commoner suggested in d&d, and feel like I'm wasting my time.
    My point is that D&D is not necessarily an accurate model. Rather than say "the best human ever is level 5", which is absurd, since humans don't have levels, and certain human things cannot be modeled at level 5, and certain things fall apart. For example if Olympic Weightlifters are Barbarians, then they should be able to outfight most boxers, but they can't.

    Instead of saying: "The most powerful human is fifth level", say "The highest level people in my world are X Level" then characters more powerful than that are rewriting the world. In FR if you are 10th level you could be a nobody. In Eberron being 10th level is enough to be shaping empires.

    We should recognize that it's a model, and that having all of the guards be 60th level isn't a problem if the players are 90th level. Because the guards are still a fraction of their power. We should choose somebody's level based on their role in the narrative, not on what would be realistic, since any realism as far as levels go it falls apart when compared to real life.
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by ddude987 View Post
    In the world of DnD where wizards sling fireballs (except if you're on this board) and fighters cry in the corner slay demons and dragons, your average guardsman is quite useless. I've seen many-a-thread about the point of guards, and I always thought to myself "they kinda are useless." I finally reached a conclusion, guards aren't there to kill all foes against them, they are there to cost their foes losses.

    Let's assume foes are the players at this time. The players want to assault a merchant caravan, and the caravan has some guards. Taking into account power creep, and thus putting the PCs on a low, but above the average mook, level, probably the 5-8 range, the guards either are going to number in a small army, or aren't going to provide true protection. Would it be fair for the guards to gang up on one PC at a time specifically trying to kill them?

    The reasoning would be if the threat of one of the party members dying is very very real the party would not be so careless. From the guards perspective, they know they won't succeed in killing all the attackers, so why not seriously kill one.

    tl;dr the bolded statement
    Well, they really should be trying to avoid situations where the enemy is able to focus-fire them one-by-one without paying a terrible cost for it. Though generally I find that most combatants would care more about dropping foes than directly killing them, per se, especially casters.

    But if it's going to be an encounter then either you need to let it be the roflstomp it's going to be by the caravan guards being so out-leveled or it needs to be a legitimately difficult encounter that they couldn't breeze through anyway, even if they weren't focus-firing.
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    This "5th level = realistic, 6 & up is throw-reality-out-the-window" idea keeps popping up on this forum, and it bugs me, because the skill and attack bonus progressions make it very difficult to attain real-world degrees of proficiency at 5th level or below. You can't make a skilled but realistic fencer under that kind of philosophy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by VoxRationis View Post
    This "5th level = realistic, 6 & up is throw-reality-out-the-window" idea keeps popping up on this forum, and it bugs me, because the skill and attack bonus progressions make it very difficult to attain real-world degrees of proficiency at 5th level or below. You can't make a skilled but realistic fencer under that kind of philosophy.
    It's because one of the selling points for E6 was that it was "more gritty and realistic". Which is in my opinion poppycock, but that's where that idea comes from. E6 is fine, but it's not any more realistic than standard D&D
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    Did you just equate a recruit for the marines to being average lard-o on civi street? During my military time I've seen enough naval recruits struggle to manage a single unassisted pull up. Marines none. Because they knew where they were going and that pull ups were a thing. Most managed the minimum 6, about half the desired 12, by the end of the 2nd week at lympstone ,, and by week 32, pretty much all could do 20+ in battle order.
    The D&D commoner is based on a more medieval economy - in which a huge amount of the work done was hard manual labor. Agriculture along was a huge proportion of the population, and that was done largely with hand tools, with a side of animal assisted labor (which generally means something like a plow, which is still hard manual labor). There were a number of people doing stone work, which often involved hauling sizable blocks of stone for hours on end. Craft trades include people like smiths, which is also physically arduous.

    Honestly, I'd expect the medieval commoner to be way closer to a modern marine in strength than the typical civilian in rich nations. Famine conditions and similar undermine that, but even in agriculture there were plenty of well fed peasants. It's hardly the modern service industry, let alone an office job.
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    People have survived falls from airplanes.
    Natural 20.

    And people have survived point blank shots to the head
    From a sawed-off shotgun?

    or direct hits from rocket launchers.
    Do note, I wasn't referring to the rocket launcher being thrown or swung at people. I'm referring to a rocket being shot and exploding with an unarmoured person being as close to the epicentre as possible

    HP is not a good model for anything.
    It is, it's just not complex enough in D&D to replicate durability as accurately as it could if there were multiple types of HP for each thing. It isn't entirely possible to break someone's arm without killing them in D&D is it?
    With multiple sources of HP, it would be possible to break or even remove limbs completely without too much risk to the character having their hand cut off.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Threadnaught View Post
    Natural 20.



    From a sawed-off shotgun?



    Do note, I wasn't referring to the rocket launcher being thrown or swung at people. I'm referring to a rocket being shot and exploding with an unarmoured person being as close to the epicentre as possible



    It is, it's just not complex enough in D&D to replicate durability as accurately as it could if there were multiple types of HP for each thing. It isn't entirely possible to break someone's arm without killing them in D&D is it?
    With multiple sources of HP, it would be possible to break or even remove limbs completely without too much risk to the character having their hand cut off.
    I've known people who survived IED hits from close range, just cause they got lucky. It happens. People have died from getting splinters if they get an infection and don't notice it. Health is already a complex subject in real life.

    Furthermore you still can't model all that people are capable of, as we've pointed out, the 747 pull is probably not modelable without magical assistance at all. So the model is going to be inaccurate the question is which inaccuracies you'll tolerate.
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Bellcurve outliers.

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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    Bellcurve outliers.
    The point is that you cannot create a model that accurately represents real life using D&D rules, you can say: 'I want to model how survivable people are', but then you can't model how strong and skilled people are. You're going to have some issues with the model in either direction, because it's at best a fitted model, and which things matter are issues of preference. Now somebody could say: "Here is the lowest level you could model something at", and that works, but you can't say: "This is the upper bound"
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Honestly we are getting off track here.

    The gaming system accurately enough represents the stereotypical human in a fantasy setting of whichever d20 based game setting the DM decides to play, until of course, some smartypants decides to prove a point because they absolutely must prove that someone is wrong.

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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaz View Post
    Honestly we are getting off track here.

    The gaming system accurately enough represents the stereotypical human in a fantasy setting of whichever d20 based game setting the DM decides to play, until of course, some smartypants decides to prove a point because they absolutely must prove that someone is wrong.
    Yes, it does quite adequately model an average human... As I said. But what an average human is, can vary completely from setting to setting without the model itself breaking down. In FR again, fourth level is not uncommon for completely average people. In Eberron at fourth level, you're pretty much a mover and a shaker.

    The point is that fifth level is not adequate to model a human for the same reason that 20th level isn't. Humans do not transcribe effectively over to D&D without it being a model, and at that point we're looking at design decisions on the part of the modeler. So it's not that humans are fifth level, it'd be: "I want fifth level characters to be significant in my campaign world" or "I want fifth level characters to potentially still be relative nobodies". Neither model is more inaccurate, but both models are equally inaccurate in different ways, as far as real life is concerned. We should remember that we are not trying to replicate real life, but rather literary and fictional works.
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    Default Re: DM perspective is this fair? I've been enlightened about guards

    Quote Originally Posted by VoxRationis View Post
    This "5th level = realistic, 6 & up is throw-reality-out-the-window" idea keeps popping up on this forum, and it bugs me, because the skill and attack bonus progressions make it very difficult to attain real-world degrees of proficiency at 5th level or below. You can't make a skilled but realistic fencer under that kind of philosophy.
    It is a useful idea for illustration purposes, because we every so often hear the complaint "Gee, this Skill system sucks because a 13th level Rogue can do X, and that is completely unrealistic without magic." And the answer, of course, is "Good! Because once you get into the middling levels, the difference between very skilled and magic starts to become ambiguous, in our mundane lowish level eyes."

    When it comes to detailed specific combat examples, D&D is designed to be unrealistic. So your suggestion that there may be a problem with how the system models fencers may not be a problem, but a feature.

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