Murder Hobo Defence Force

[walfulninja]

As we know, once the players start to raise in levels, standard town guards become push over? So I came up with this idea of the town creating a special squad specifically trained to deal with rouge adventurers. I need some idea on how to stat them.

[noob]

This is extremely dependent of the overpower and optimization of your murder hobo and also of how many people they get under their control(domination and command undead are the perfect tools for ruling a kingdom before anyone even heard of your name).
You could try some class levels for your anti murder hobo force also magic items like staff of disjunction(players hate that) can discourage them(like try having 30 guards will all their 50 charge staff who use 50 charge per spell) and will overall make them loose money making them feel that murdering villagers is not the good choice.

[Extra Anchovies]

The only way to defeat murderhobos is with stronger murderhobos. It's a vicious cycle.

[Telonius]

This is actually taken care of by a special group of high-level Changelings with max ranks in Bluff and Disguise. They hire themselves out as "Adventurers' Insurance" to towns throughout the land. If a group of murderhobos is on the way, they're contacted as soon as possible. When the alarm goes out, they quickly disguise (in a mundane way) the village. The real bar is moved to a building marked "Library." The (temporary) bar is designed to burn down quickly. The real jail is located in the "theater" or "art gallery." The town treasury is stocked with a bunch of lead coins painted gold (by an Expert Changeling with max ranks in Forgery). For the Red Light District, the Escorts' Guild has a special Message/Teleport system set up so they can send their trainees on short notice. (In an emergency, one of the Changelings takes charge of it).

The Changelings make most of their money on concessions (i.e. what the adventurers buy), bribes (what the adventurers pay), and subscription fees from the villages.

[grarrrg]

Spend all the towns spare cash on a mass market advertising campaign touting the benefits of sacking the village(s) nearby instead.

[Inevitability]

It might not be apparent, but every town has a MHDF. Not hidden either. You can find them if you know where to look.

In every tavern (the place all murderhobos are naturally drawn to), there's a dark corner, all nearby torches removed on purpose. In the corner stands a single table with enough chairs for all the murderhobos, plus one for the MHDF employee (most often an old human male).

When the murderhobos enter, they are lured to the table with promises of free food and booze. There, the employee tells them a tale of a dungeon, den, or dragon hoard where great treasures can be found, albeit guarded by strong monsters. And because this specific location happens to belong to no one, all treasure taken from there belongs to its finders alone, and all crimes committed there are not illegal.

Most parties leave even before finishing their drinks.

[I3igAl]

As we know, once the players start to raise in levels, standard town guards become push over? So I came up with this idea of the town creating a special squad specifically trained to deal with rouge adventurers. I need some idea on how to stat them.

Hard to answer this without knowing the level of your group and the powerlevel of your setting.

I wouldn't make them that powerful personally, maybe lvl 3-4 if the adventurers are lvl 6.
I would use underhanded tactics to capture the heroes. Tanglefoot bags work well against enemies stronger than you. I would also have them use ranged weapons(special arrows) combined with hit and run tactics to kite the heroes into a prepared pit.

If all goes wrong their leader could have a Neclace of fireballs to be laid out as a trap and a wand of Scorching Ray, which he uses with readied action to threaten nuking the heroes.

[Vhaidara]

Make sure you can counter this guy

[Jowgen]

My standard MHDF generally takes on the shape of a large (N < 10) swat team that spams a range of debilitating attacks. The swat team is almost entirely equipment-dependent for NPC flexibility, and I will generally aim for them to get a surprise round and have decent Init modifiers. The most common pieces of equipment I use (roughly in level-scaling order) are:

Nets to Entangle and thus hinder escape
Torch Bug-paste to counter sneaky types
Lassos and Entangling Poles (BoED) for low grapple characters
Atramen Oil (PlH) to soften saves
Sleep Smoke (Waterdeep) to target low fort characters.
Sudden Stunning (DMG2) on the Entangling Poles for low ref characters
Rusting reach weapons to target bothersome equipment and function as a most serious deterrent

If the Murderhobos are known in advance, the team may show up with one or two party-specific counters, such as dimensional anchor spells/items, a cleric to rebuke/destory, and/or a will-save targeting disabler.

[KingSmitty]

i would assume it is comprised mostly of warforged juggernauts, given their vulnerabilities to essentially nothing.

[Story]

Or Shadesteel Golems.

[Endarire]

It's called "GM Fiat."

[Silva Stormrage]

Taking them by surprise is probably the best bet, ambush with either excessive lethal force or immobilization, really the big deal is wether you want to kill them or jail them. Killing is substantially easier than subduing for trial. Even a level 10 party will probably die to 20 level 5 wizards with a lesser rod of empower each surprising them with 20 empowered fireballs (or scintillating sphere). While fire resistance is common most PC's don't walk around with fire immunity all the time and mid levels being flat footed still is an issue.

Changing those fireballs to deal non lethal damage (Subdual metamagic I think?) would be a decent option as well.

If level 5 characters are rare in your setting, level 3 or level 1 wizards spamming magic missile with fell drain on it can also be really really devastating unless the PC's walk around with immunity to negative levels (Lower levels not that common but mid levels thats pretty common).

[ExLibrisMortis]

Well, a dispeller (which I totally haven't mentioned before) would be nice, to strip buffs, surpress items, and counter new spells.

Spoiler: Counterspelling Cleric

Show

Cloistered Cleric 4/Church Inquisitor 1/Paragnostic Apostle 1
Spontaneous domain casting (Magic domain)
Abilities: 13+ wisdom (to cast dispel magic), 14+ charisma (to have 5 turn attempts)
Domains: Inquisition (bonus, from Church Inquisitor), Knowledge, Magic, Purification
Feats: Divine Defiance, Domain Focus (Magic), Versatile Spellcaster
Items: dispelling cord (1000 gp)
Caster level 6, +1 for abjurations (Purification domain), +1 for Magic domain spells (Domain Focus)
+5 on dispel checks (+4 Inquisition domain, +1 Penetrating Insight, from Paragnostic Apostle)
+2 on dispel checks 5/day from dispelling cord

With one turn undead use, you can counterspell as an immediate action, burning any prepared spell(s) to spontaneously cast dispel magic. With Versatile Spellcaster, you have at least 5 third-level spells per day. Your bonus on dispel checks is +15, 5/day, and +13 after that (but you're out of spells anyway). At level 6, nothing magical is going to get past you for a long time.

You can use a specialized (nonmagical!) grappler build to take out spellcasters and squishies, anything with low strength/bab. Then deal with the fighters by targeting their will saves, perhaps hold person cast by the cleric above.

Überchargers teamed with White Raven Tactics + Song of the White Raven buffers, disposable summons and benign transposition could be pretty annoying. Every time you want to swing at a low-level barbarian, there's a horse (mount spell) in the way. Those are only first-level spells, too.

[ShaneMRoth]

I don't give out XP awards for Murderhobo behavior.

"That guard is worth zero XP if you kill him, but if you use non-lethal force? I'll give out XP for that. Deal with him without using force? I'll give you double the non-lethal force XP for that."

Only the Daniel Day-Lewis of Murderhoboes is going to do something that costs him XP.

Murderhobos are not born. They are made.

[daremetoidareyo]

Summon monster IV with fiendish rust monsters and celestial disenchanters?

[walfulninja]

Hard to answer this without knowing the level of your group and the powerlevel of your setting.

I wouldn't make them that powerful personally, maybe lvl 3-4 if the adventurers are lvl 6.
I would use underhanded tactics to capture the heroes. Tanglefoot bags work well against enemies stronger than you. I would also have them use ranged weapons(special arrows) combined with hit and run tactics to kite the heroes into a prepared pit.

If all goes wrong their leader could have a Neclace of fireballs to be laid out as a trap and a wand of Scorching Ray, which he uses with readied action to threaten nuking the heroes.

I was just talking in general, not a specific case.

[noob]

If players loose gold and xp fighting the guards they will want to avoid it.