Author Topic: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D  (Read 17427 times)

Offline Halinn

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #20 on: December 14, 2011, 02:10:19 PM »
I agree with Mnemnosyne. You could handwave that some adventurers owe everything to a kingdom, and thus function as national security (four guys, stopping all hostile monsters, monster attacks, invading armies, opposing adventuring groups etc.), but if you're actually paying for them, you'd have to pay them more than your 200k budget.
Also remember that for an army, the 150 gold or however much you're paying for their equipment is a one-time expense, while the continuous expenses of level 10 characters would be quite large.

Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #21 on: December 14, 2011, 02:19:04 PM »
I agree with Mnemnosyne. You could handwave that some adventurers owe everything to a kingdom, and thus function as national security (four guys, stopping all hostile monsters, monster attacks, invading armies, opposing adventuring groups etc.), but if you're actually paying for them, you'd have to pay them more than your 200k budget.
Also remember that for an army, the 150 gold or however much you're paying for their equipment is a one-time expense, while the continuous expenses of level 10 characters would be quite large.

Thereby demonstrating that you aren't reading the thread either.

We are comparing the following:

Cost of equipping and funding a thousand poorly trained, poorly motivated troops.
Cost of training and equipping an elite force of four.

The former dies in one hit from anything, so expect to lose their stuff a lot.
The latter would require a major assault to kill off, if that would even work.

The former is getting paid two silver a day to throw their lives away.
The latter is working in an honorable, prestigious position for their country.

The former is swept by a single Shadow, that turns into a thousand and one shadows and darkens your lands forever.
The latter quickly puts down the Shadow. And the enemy Necromancer that sent it. And the nation that sent him.

Offline zook1shoe

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #22 on: December 14, 2011, 04:06:14 PM »
To keep the elites on your side... Hold their families hostage in a demiplane only you can get to :P

I would consider the Secret Service a form of elite guards for the president. That's in many ways, better than a crap-ton of poorly trained soldier grunts
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Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #23 on: December 14, 2011, 04:12:47 PM »
No need for that, besides it would backfire anyways. It's simply a matter of training your team.

Offline Solo

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #24 on: December 14, 2011, 08:26:32 PM »
If someone wanted to run a game where you put four level 10 PCs against challenges that would normally be intended for a thousand first level Warriors (or whatever the equivalent in cost of four level 10 PCs is) I would be happy to participate.
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Offline littha

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #25 on: December 14, 2011, 09:15:41 PM »
Salary for a higher level character is significantly higher than that of npcs, arms and equipment guide lists it as 2 sp* level  per day for npc classes and 1gp+2gp per level for PC classes. Assuming your level 10 characters have PC classes that works out at 19 gp a day which is rather low but adds up quickly over a year to 6935 gp or 27,740gp for 4.

Personally, i think chainmail is a bit too expensive for standard mooks. I would have them in at absolute best scale mail, most of them should be in leather or padded armor if you are going for quantity over quality.

Assuming you equip 50% with glaives and scale mail (58 gp each) and 50% with Longbows and padded armor (80gp) hirelings then cost:
(((Number*0.3)*365)+((Number/2)*58)+(Number/2*80)

On a 227,240 gp budget you could get 1273 guys for a year and it would cost you 139,393 gp for each additional year you want to keep them. The same budget gets you 4 level 10 characters for a year but it only costs you 27,740gp to pay them for each additional year.


EDIT: Working on more maths, apparently the DMG II has another source for hirelings with PC levels
EDIT 2: Character Level^2 plus a share of all the treasure. This leaves us at 100gp a day or 36,500gp a year. Thus 4 costs you 146,000gp a year which is a more reasonable sum compared with the npc army's cost.

500 archers probably will kill a PC, assuming they hit 5% of the time (level 10 PCs should have an AC high enough or something) they land 25 shots and average 125 damage which will turn most anyone into cheese.
An average barbarian would have 9*(6.5+3)+12+3 hp with 16 Con or 100.5. With a +4 item that's 120 hp. (A barbarian 10 would actually survive because of his DR 2/- knocking 50 damage off of the total but nobody takes 10 levels of barbarian)


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« Last Edit: December 14, 2011, 09:49:40 PM by littha »

Offline veekie

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #26 on: December 14, 2011, 11:18:25 PM »
^^
Probably would be a better ideas to keep the thousand pikemen and archers for regular kingdom defense, and keep a higher level court wizard/high priest around for the special stuff. Preferably family or something so they're willing to work for room, board and babes.

Larger kingdoms would have proportionately bigger and better armed/trained ground armies(don't forget secondary militia, most peasants can still use a spear or work a crossbow, and should be drafted if need be) and adventurers on retainer. Smaller kingdoms won't be able to afford the passive upkeep for many of these, so they're stuck with hiring whoever happens to be town.
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Offline Solo

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #27 on: December 14, 2011, 11:26:40 PM »
Quote
500 archers probably will kill a PC, assuming they hit 5% of the time (level 10 PCs should have an AC high enough or something) they land 25 shots and average 125 damage which will turn most anyone into cheese.
I assume that this assumes there is no long distance fireballing, invisible shenanagans, or orbital bombardment?
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Offline littha

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #28 on: December 14, 2011, 11:38:45 PM »
Quote
500 archers probably will kill a PC, assuming they hit 5% of the time (level 10 PCs should have an AC high enough or something) they land 25 shots and average 125 damage which will turn most anyone into cheese.
I assume that this assumes there is no long distance fireballing, invisible shenanagans, or orbital bombardment?

As to fireball, at level 10 the range is 800', a longbow fired at max range is 1000' (with a -20 to the attack roll but then you were only hitting on 20s to begin with).

The others less so, Greater Invisibility really screws with low level mundane characters
« Last Edit: December 14, 2011, 11:40:16 PM by littha »

Offline Solo

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #29 on: December 14, 2011, 11:49:01 PM »
As to fireball, at level 10 the range is 800', a longbow fired at max range is 1000' (with a -20 to the attack roll but then you were only hitting on 20s to begin with).
You'd also have to Spot the enemy.
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Offline Kajhera

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #30 on: December 14, 2011, 11:55:46 PM »
As to fireball, at level 10 the range is 800', a longbow fired at max range is 1000' (with a -20 to the attack roll but then you were only hitting on 20s to begin with).
You'd also have to Spot the enemy.
What is the hide check of a 5' square?

Offline veekie

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #31 on: December 15, 2011, 12:02:54 AM »
Well comparing straight on is misleading as to the actual functionality. Its like setting your whole army to find and deal with commandos, in general you wouldn't find them and you'd lose a few guys in the process.

A more practical idea is simply to consider the size of a nation's land and borders.
Even small nations could take days to cross barring magically fast cavalry. Within this entire area, dozens of bandit groups could be threatening caravans and travelers, and possibly three to six nomadic orc tribes at different sides of the nation launching raids.
As a solution, you'd take the thousand soldiers and divide them up. Squads of twenty soldiers patrolling major roads for signs of bandits(20 armed men should be enough overkill for most bandit groups that they can be safely overkilled, especially if you contain an adept or some other low level caster on the squad somewhere), larger groups of eighty or so occupying watchtowers and fortified border settlements to give advance warning of and fending off raids from neighbours. Leave a third of the whole force in reserve as a big hammer to move against larger threats and also as capital defense force.

Contrast the group of elite trouble shooters. They can't be everywhere at once, and are massively overkill for most of the problems, so your empire shrinks, as they massively crush each threat, but leave the rest unattended, or arrive after the problem already left on its own. Adventurers are good at high profile problems by nature. Dozens of scattered sporadic hazards are annoying and tiring to deal with.
Everything is edible. Just that there are things only edible once per lifetime.
It's a god-eat-god world.

Procrastination is the thief of time; Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves; The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

Offline Nachofan99

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #32 on: December 15, 2011, 02:02:34 AM »
There's a lot to digest in this thread and I think it is very telling.

Let me lay down a slightly different perspective on some of these issues and let me start with just listing several things that have not been mentioned *at all* or only somewhat in passing.

1) Taxes
2) Titles
3) Land
4) Miscellaneous Benefits (For example, lineage or marriage or prestige )
5) MONEY

Assuming a medieval feudal type system, there were a lot of additional factors to lordships and maintaining power. Let's discuss taxes.

Let's say I hire some adventurers and pay them their excessive fee; well I am the fucking LORD - I can tax whoever I want at whatever rate I want.  Don't like it?  Too fucking bad - I'm the KING OF TOWN BITCHES!  I can hire a better group of adventurers by reducing my tax rate FOR THEM. I can bribe better adventurers with land, titles and other privelages.  I control the LAW of the land; I AM RA RAW! as Dred would say.

I can tax adventurers and get wealthy off them and let them live off the scraps.  I can build my wealth on the backs of not only thousands of peasants but also hundreds of merchants, dozens of nobles and several groups of lower level adventurers.  Once I have that much wealth, I can afford to have whatever the best defense is - in D&D 3.5 that would be a mother fucking GANDALF up in this bitch - but I can afford a castle too.  I give Gandalf special privelages and he becomes the arch-mage of the land.  I give him a tower.  Sure, Gandalf could just kill me if he wanted to - but why bother?  He should, in general, be more interested in his own pursuits and see the trials and tribulations of a mundane kingdom as a welcome retreat from dealing with cosmic threats from beyond the fabric of time and space.

Since everyone is optimizing why isn't the King optimizing?  Why didn't he hire a Wizard to build him a superfortress with magic missile traps on every parapet for coppers on the gold piece?

No, only adventurers are allowed to optimize.  Everyone else in the kingdom is fucking shitty AT EVERYTHING.

So in short:

Anyone can pay someone.  But not just anyone can grant land/titles/privelages/reputation etc.

High level adventurers could destroy low level kingdoms sure. Optimization and unequal footing is always stronger than ridiculously shitty assumptions.

Can't a King call up a bounty on high level adventurers - attracting attention from HIGHER level adventurers?  Not only is there a *marginal fee* for capturing/killing the adventurers, but their possessions may be taken *duty free*!  And also the granting of lands and titles.  Doesn't the king know of other, larger kingdoms, and possibly have diplomatic ties to them through marriage or blood or alliance?  Please help my kingdom, brother, these asshole adventurers are fucking everything up!

And so on, and so on.

Prestige and recognition are not given to the PCs by each other - they are given these things only if other NPCs grant them essentially.

Adventurers =/ Complete Mercenaries - there's supposed to be an element of adventuring for notoriety in addition to other loots.

Offline LordBlades

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #33 on: December 15, 2011, 03:00:06 AM »
Well comparing straight on is misleading as to the actual functionality. Its like setting your whole army to find and deal with commandos, in general you wouldn't find them and you'd lose a few guys in the process.

A more practical idea is simply to consider the size of a nation's land and borders.
Even small nations could take days to cross barring magically fast cavalry. Within this entire area, dozens of bandit groups could be threatening caravans and travelers, and possibly three to six nomadic orc tribes at different sides of the nation launching raids.
As a solution, you'd take the thousand soldiers and divide them up. Squads of twenty soldiers patrolling major roads for signs of bandits(20 armed men should be enough overkill for most bandit groups that they can be safely overkilled, especially if you contain an adept or some other low level caster on the squad somewhere), larger groups of eighty or so occupying watchtowers and fortified border settlements to give advance warning of and fending off raids from neighbours. Leave a third of the whole force in reserve as a big hammer to move against larger threats and also as capital defense force.

Contrast the group of elite trouble shooters. They can't be everywhere at once, and are massively overkill for most of the problems, so your empire shrinks, as they massively crush each threat, but leave the rest unattended, or arrive after the problem already left on its own. Adventurers are good at high profile problems by nature. Dozens of scattered sporadic hazards are annoying and tiring to deal with.

The only obstacle for a small group of 10th level guys to handle all those threats is finding out about them. The moment they know something bad is going on in place X, between divinations and teleport, they should bet there in literally no time at all.

Another thing to consider is the 'fear factor'. If a tribe of orcs raids your lands, they expect to be met by armed soldiers, people they could stab at (or be stabbed by). However, if instead of that, they get repeatedly annihilated by powerful magic they can neither defend nor retaliate against (Stuff like Evard's Black Tentacles, Cloudkill, Hallucinatory Terrain etc.) I'd expect the few survivors you'd strategically allow to escape to quickly spread the word about the unspeakable horrors that befall those that do bad things in that country.

Offline veekie

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #34 on: December 15, 2011, 04:02:27 AM »
For a single problem. How many muggings are there in a country per day? Can you find out and be there in time all the time without exhausting yourself in the process?

As for the tribal thing, possibly, except they're getting slaughtered in either case as per the common tropes.
Everything is edible. Just that there are things only edible once per lifetime.
It's a god-eat-god world.

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And to the mercies of a moment leaves; The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

Offline Halinn

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #35 on: December 15, 2011, 05:27:51 AM »
The only obstacle for a small group of 10th level guys to handle all those threats is finding out about them. The moment they know something bad is going on in place X, between divinations and teleport, they should bet there in literally no time at all.

Since we're considering 10th level characters, that means 5th level spell slots max. That's 4 slots for a conjurer for teleports. Scrying takes up a similar amount of 4th level slots. That's pretty much your limit for how many threats you can deal with. And you won't have any 5th level spells to deal with threats, and few 4th level ones.
Not to mention the fact that your teleports will be off target at times.

Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #36 on: December 15, 2011, 07:21:55 AM »
^^
Probably would be a better ideas to keep the thousand pikemen and archers for regular kingdom defense, and keep a higher level court wizard/high priest around for the special stuff. Preferably family or something so they're willing to work for room, board and babes.

Larger kingdoms would have proportionately bigger and better armed/trained ground armies(don't forget secondary militia, most peasants can still use a spear or work a crossbow, and should be drafted if need be) and adventurers on retainer. Smaller kingdoms won't be able to afford the passive upkeep for many of these, so they're stuck with hiring whoever happens to be town.

Thing is a thousand weak soldiers spread out just isn't a defense. Even a decent orc raid would likely overwhelm whatever forces put there, not to mention a Shadow or something. The elite team might only be four people, but they're a lot harder to take out and a lot better able to deal with threats. Hell, one of them could take out the army of a thousand mooks by themselves, just Improved Invisibility, Fireball to kill 40, then some more Fireballs to kill more before leaving. You're safe, 25% of them or more are dead. Then repeat. Protection from Arrows if they have bows and natural 20s bother you.

Offline veekie

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #37 on: December 15, 2011, 09:51:30 AM »
Except as pointed out, they don't have sufficient presence unless you're talking about divinations, scrying and teleporting at will. The specialist adventurers would crush the bandits they can find like a grape, but are ineffective for the reason that all the other bandits are going uncrushed.

20 Warrior 3s with bows would dismantle bandit groups, which tend to be half that number and about the same level or lower(considering someone higher level who can't find a better paying trade being somewhat unlikely unless the country's average level is somewhat higher), would slaughter them effectively.
And for orcs, again, the 20-40 orc raids would be dealing against their number of infantry in basic fortified positions, where the advantages of reach and massed missile fire(while having cover against return fire) against traditionally lightly armored raiders would put them down with lower losses.
Both of these are regenerating threats. More bandits will show up as long as you can't keep detection high.

A possible sequence of events:
Groups of 10x Warrior 3 Bandits infest a dozen routes scattered around the country. Adventurers presumably are based in the capital. Militia are presumably patrolling lightly, so lets say a 2-3 day cycle is in order.
PC-route:
PCs spend a divination(costing XP or gold) to learn about the most urgent bandits location OR wait for the days it'd take for people to realize merchants are disappearing along a particular route and submit a Request For Adventurers. The former would cost extra, given that you're spending good XP to find out out low-CR bandits to defeat, which won't get you much XP back.
PCs spend a teleport to arrive in the right area. They take a couple of hours to get their bearings(unless using a higher level teleport, they'd be likely fairly off target most of the time) and track the traces back to the bandit lair or they spring an ambush thats expecting merchants.
Ambush is defeated in a round or so, as a fireball wipe out half the bandits at one go. Two fireballs or melee wading in later, the bandits are gone. The XP gains are rather low, risk is low(at worst they might have scored some 10% health loss on one or two unlucky guys with an arrow), loot isn't even worth collecting with the non-masterwork leather armor and weapons, though I suppose their resale value might pay for a divination's material component.
Adventurers teleport home or to the next bandit site. Assuming they prepared 3 teleports and know of all the groups ahead of time(possibly with some particularly inspired use of divinations), they dealt with 2 bandit groups in one day(taking a few hours each), and spent the last one teleporting home.
They take a total of 6-13 days to clean out these groups of bandits, assuming they used divinations at least weekly to detect for threats.  Divination is fairly inefficient, since it can't answer general questions(you'd need a lot of castings to identify province and route), Commune is better but costs that 100xp..

Militia route:
Presuming 15-20 men per militia patrol, the patrol routes would probably take between 3-6 days to complete, at some point along the route, the patrols would run across the bandits in their area.
They then move to engage said bandits(since they are already there). With a 2:1 numbers advantage, they'd likely kill half the bandits outright in the opening round, with a small but present risk of the bandits wounding or killing 2-3 men in the process.
They mop up, retrieve their dead and possibly scoop the bandit gear up.
They'd have mopped up the bandits within 3-6 days including detection, and lost a number of men. New ones would need to be hired, but fortunately all the gear is still there so the cost is lower. As long as patrols are kept up, new bandit groups would be difficult to form.

So to say that a mundane army can't deal with mundane threats is false. Thats exactly what mooks and fortifications are for, to deal with all the trivial stuff so the heavies can spend their efforts more constructively. The pay scales are completely out of whack, since hiring the militia is lower costing for better coverage.
To use level 10 adventurers for this is using racecars in a traffic jam.
Everything is edible. Just that there are things only edible once per lifetime.
It's a god-eat-god world.

Procrastination is the thief of time; Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves; The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #38 on: December 15, 2011, 10:08:37 AM »
Except as pointed out, they don't have sufficient presence unless you're talking about divinations, scrying and teleporting at will. The specialist adventurers would crush the bandits they can find like a grape, but are ineffective for the reason that all the other bandits are going uncrushed.

Who know that continuing to operate in this area will likely lead to their total destruction. It's the real reason atomic weapons made such an impact.

Quote
20 Warrior 3s with bows would dismantle bandit groups, which tend to be half that number and about the same level or lower(considering someone higher level who can't find a better paying trade being somewhat unlikely unless the country's average level is somewhat higher), would slaughter them effectively.

And also be far more capable than the grunt armies being assumed, that are warrior 1s with terrible gear. Go for higher grunts and you have far fewer of them, but unlike the elite team you get nothing that makes up for it, except maybe dying in two shots instead of one. There are people here seriously suggesting you outfit your armies with leather armor. You might as well send them naked with a sign on their ass saying free XP here, just add boot.

Quote
And for orcs, again, the 20-40 orc raids would be dealing against their number of infantry in basic fortified positions, where the advantages of reach and massed missile fire(while having cover against return fire) against traditionally lightly armored raiders would put them down with lower losses.

What 20-40? The only orc raid mentioned has been tens of thousands. That means the army of a thousand weaklings get swept, and the elite team sees it coming and tells the people to evacuate.

Offline lans

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Re: Classic vs Modern - National Security in D & D
« Reply #39 on: December 15, 2011, 10:13:20 AM »
@BB How do you feel about instead of hiring 4 tenth level PC classed characters you hire 40 NPCs with crap equipment of the same level?

I think I would go with 2 PC classed heroes, 4 NPC ones, and put the savings into mooks for things like inspections, meter maids, cross walk guard, hall monitors, and that sort of thing.