Assumed Competence
You may not realize it, but your NPC minions are stone cold badasses. Bear with me on this one.
So you know how we talked way back in Watch the Horses about assigning your hirelings to guard duty? Well we hand’t checked in with Warrior in a while, so I thought it might be a good idea to make sure Fighter hadn’t finished beating him to death. And sure enough, there he is at his post, guarding his masters’ campsite like a good mook should. How long has he been there, do you suppose? How many random encounters has he faced? And most importantly, how has he managed to survived?
You begin to see where this line of reasoning goes. I got to thinking about all the times my NPC buddies loyally stood sentinel, waiting and hoping for me and my merry band of murderhobos to return from our latest adventure. Maybe I happen to have nice GMs, but I can’t think of a single time that we wandered back to base, weeks or months later, to find our supposedly underleveled schwag haulers dead. Because let me tell ya folks: I’ve stood watch. I’ve been attacked by giant boars and leucrotta and chimeras (chimerae? chimersen?). You don’t run across those kinds of beasties every night of the week, but when they do decide to drop by for an after hours visit, I’ve been happy to have the rest of the party in shouting distance. If you happen to be a single man-at-arms however, then even the mildest form of wilderness encounter table begins to look intimidating. So again I ask: How is Warrior still alive?
I have a theory here. Call me crazy, but I think that all those guard-the-camp NPCs are secretly uber-competent. I mean, they’ve got to be scary powerful if they constantly report “nothing interesting happened” in a dangerous campaign world. Maybe there’s some kind of secret order… Some kind of “Mook’s Watch” set up to escort adventurers through dangerous places. Maybe… Maybe I’ve been the escort quest all along?
Or maybe they’re just so inconsequential to the plot that random encounters ignore them. Either or.
What do the rest of you guys think? Have you ever seen your NPC hirelings put to the test? Did they emerge victorious from their off-screen combats, or did you stumble back into camp only to find a bloodbath? Let’s hear all about the daring exploits of your loyal retainers down in the comments!
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Spoopy Division (my undead minions) were just recently attacked while we were inside of a temple. Sadly only 3 of the 5 members ‘survived.’ Though luckily the npc they were guarding was able to join as a new 4th member.
Ah man… Undead are so great for this. The only thing better than a minion that won’t die is a minion that can die without consequences. That’s how your get a well-guarded campsite and schadenfreude!
My group has never really had npcs be part of the adventuring group, instead staying in the various towns and outposts out there. I have to say though, this concept reminds me a lot of watchdog-man from One Punch man. He’s an incredibly strong hero who acts like and is dressed as a dog in the story’s world, who only ever guards his city, which he considers his territory. It’s supposed to be the most dangerous city there is when it comes to monster attacks, however he only ever reports that theres nothing happening, because he already destroyed anything that tried to hurt his city. God I love One Punch man, its such a good webcomic/manga/anime, even if the art in the original webcomic is some of the worst you’ll ever see.
What is a town or outpost if not an oversize camp for the PCs?
If you’ve never stuck them within you actual party though, I suggest giving it a try. A couple of hired mooks are great for the early game, especially when you’re dealing with loot-hauling logistics. Often times your mule will pay for itself!
This is true, unless the DM kills your pack animals whenever he can because you didn’t have someone guarding it while you investigated that thieves hideout or something.
This has been a longstanding problem for the buddy cop pair, but now that we have an NPC tagalong finally, maybe we can buy an animal who’s name isn’t Meatloaf or Tasty Carrion.
If all else fails, you can always spring for a pair of mulrs and name them “Rope Trick” and “Floating Disk.”
This is true, unless the DM kills your pack animals whenever he can because you didn’t have someone guarding it while you investigated that thieves hideout or something.
This has been a longstanding problem for the buddy cop pair, but now that we have an NPC tagalong finally, maybe we can buy an animal who’s name isn’t Meatloaf or Tasty Carrion.
Pack mules are useful, and given the chance, can be so much more. The paladin’s horse in an old 3.5 game really earned it’s keep a while ago. The party paladin had gone up against the necromancer who had destroyed his village. It looked to be one-on-one, as the entire rest of the party was holding of the necromancers minions. And so, the paladin kept atop his steed and charged the necromancer. It was a long battle, but eventually, after many blows, a bolt of lightning brought the paladin to -10 exactly. The DM was preparing the necromancer’s next actions against the party, when the paladin’s player asked if his horse could continue the fight in his steed. The DM agreed, the dice were rolled, and only one hit, with a natural twenty. While even a critical hit from a horse was not much, no more than twelve, the DM revealed that the necromancer had but twelve hit points left. And so, once that paladin was raised, neither he nor the rest of the party saw the horse as a mere pack mule again.
I see what you did there.
If killing their NPCs or stealing the PCs hard won loot doesn’t advance your plot or provide an interesting roleplay in any way I don’t entirely see a reason to do it. Thus why I don’t assault PC guard NPCs when they’re on their own very often. Though the party better not just leave an unattended wagon full of looted chainmail and magical baubles sitting at the dungeon entrance more than once because you can be sure that’s going to get looted, stolen, and/or set on fire by the time they’re back.
I had a DM once you hated the concept of not having something happen to anyone you left outside, leave your horse outside? mauled by bears. Every. Single. Time. leave an NPC on watch? attacked whether you’re there or not and if you’re not there they lose and are probably dead, etc. Suffice it to say we didn’t keep him DMing for very long.
This is a spot where the simulation breaks down. If PCs sit in one place long enough, they’re going to get attacked by monsters. Why shouldn’t the same happen to the much-weaker NPC followers? As you saw with your “always bears” DM, there happens to be a very good reason. That fixation of “realism” can get in the way of a good time.
steals ideas
I got a 14 on my Notice. What was your Sleight of Hand?
I know it is not my story, but this is a part of gaming history I found in an old Dragon magazine and fits this prompt to a tee. https://i.imgur.com/DTv4QuS.png
This story is like the sole reason I want to play an orc hero, just for this one character.
I’ve used hirelings in the past once or twice, the best story I’ve got is the nighttime ambush where the hireling nat 20’d his Will save on a Phantasmal Killer, and he was on watch. He woke us up and they lost their surprise round.
All hail Quij!
Goddamn I love those old war stories. 😀
Did you own faithful hireling go on to fortune and glory, or was that Phantasmal Killer the one and only highlight of his career?
Protagonists have an aura that attracts danger, and makes everyone around them less competent. You really think merchants are fighting Cr appropriate random encounters whenever they make a journey? Nope, those only happen to people in a protagonists aura.
You ever notice how nobody can solve basic riddles whenever Bateman goes up against the Riddler? We can’t have the authorities solve the problem or we wouldn’t have a plot, so the protagonist aura saps everyone’s competence and transfers it to Jason Bateman.
There goes my ta’veren, acting up again….
?
Wheel of Time. Ta’veren are basically PCs, who literally warp the world around themselves, completely unconsciously. It was a fantastic mechanism early in the series when the protagonists, who all suffer from this, first couldn’t understand why stuff kept happening to them and then kept trying to escape it.
Anima: Beyond Fantasy has this as a core mechanic. Every character has a Gnosis score, basically how important you are to reality itself. The GM is encouraged to give PCs a gnosis of 10 or 15 whereas the normal human has a 5. This ensures that it is indeed your heroes causing the local volcanos to erupt, the local demon lords to get antsy, and various other plot contrivances.
If they interact with PCs, they will fight encounters CR appropriate to the protagonist party instead of their own NPC levels.
Not party NPC’s, but had a DM who explained to us how, using NPC templates no greater than a CR 2, how the city runs safely without getting overwhelmed by the veritable army of thieves, thugs, and cultist that seem to stalk every alleyway and ghetto.
Numbers play a big part. Patrols are never smaller than four men, often led by a captain (I.e. he has multiattack and a longsword). This alone means that if a pickpocket or tough guy tries to start something with a player, the guards will be there and typically outnumber or have a fair chance against most gangs. Combined armed tactics is another thing. Guards are armed with one primary melee weapon, a back up melee, and a dedicated range weapon. Often there will be at least one designated marksman, often the captain, who is better at range than the others. His job is to look for and shot down mages or other long range threats.
These two things is why the streets are so clean and why the thieves guild has to operate behind proxies and out of the sewers. The gangs aren’t unified and the cult’s are quickly ID’s and arrived down. Thieves don’t want to test their luck against an armed and armored gang. And even outside of the city walls there’s another hidden advantage oft overlooked; mixed races. Someone thinks they’re clever and slumbers the guards? Guess what, underneath those face obscuring helmets is an elf who just noticed his gang dozing. Better blare the alarm horn meant solely for waking people up and rallying the guards. Guard just landed a crit? Turns out this big guy is a half-orc. Why is that guard not on fire? Tiefling.
It can be a bit tedious to keep tracks of all of these minor details but it’s those same minor details that can make NPC’s feel more alive and competent than their CR would indicate.
When they call him a Dutch Master, I’m thinking they mean “Dutch Dungeon Master.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch#/media/File%3AThe_Nightwatch_by_Rembrandt.jpg
Rembrandt knows what’s up when it comes to staffing a Night Watch.
You know back a while ago my group used to use hirelings, they just died and died. Maybe my party should have used them and tramp triggers, slaves, scabbards or the occasional example to put in line the other wretched survivors of some town we just saved. In time we were more powerful and hirelings cost money, mainly because even unpaid slaves need to eat, cry babies. So through all this my group have learned to not use hirelings. I think the last time we use them was back in a Rogue Trader all dark eldar party, they were the survivors of a imperial planet attacked by orks, we help them get a new home.. In the slaves pits of Commorragh. Ah Commorragh, now it is summer i really would like to go there 🙂
Do you at least offer dental?
Me, yes, if for dental you accept the bare minimum approach made for someone who may or may not be a dentist. The rest of the group also yes, if for dental you accept a mace into your mouth. At least this what we do if we give the sla… i mean hirelings some dental benefice, which we don’t because health priorities come from other problems here where we are. Slavery is one of the things in which i dissent from the group, i support a pragmatic approach, give the slaves some bunks, some food and some health commodities. The rest of the group are more of the “I am an EXALTED and i will do with you as i please, woman” line of thinking.
As a group we try to stay away from hireling, or we work them to death or our DM kills them to death. We are that kind of merry party that shouts “Problems, death, woe” to anyone who crosses our path, or is just standing nearby or is the the same town.
The rules throw away spell component prices for the cheaper components. It should be spell level × caster level × 5 gp as a baseline to cast a spell.
My party has managed to get three knights from the deck of many things, and they also have several bounty hunters hired with normal money. Oh, and a half-dragon baby that they kidnapped. They were exploring an enemy fortress, and found the entrance to a massive dungeon complex. They decided that a dungeon is no place for a baby, so they left two knights and a bounty hunter with the baby, and told them to hide in a recently cleared room; specifically, a prison room. They had not cleared out the entire complex, so through the voice of one of the npc bounty hunters, I explained that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to leave three people in a prison room in an enemy fortress. It took them a little while to realise that npc do still do stuff while they’re not around, but eventually it was decided that the npc would wait outside the fortress.
In their defence, they had thought that they’d cleared the fortress of enemies. Not sure why they thought that when they had only explored one-third of the paths that they’d seen, but I assumed that they assumed that those unexplored paths just lead to the kitchens and mundane storage or something.
I love NPCs for this. Having an in-game reason to give the PCs some common sense advice can be a godsend. Of course, if the party don’t want to take the advice, then a member of the Mook’s Watch is duty-bound to shrug and let the PCs do their thing.
Well, discounting the veritable empire of undead one player built, things tend to be pretty quite for my players NPCs with three exceptions. The first is war because they never seem to tire of hearing of major upheaval in neighboring nations or territories and their allies always seem to stick their nose in it. The second, other player action. I’m not always nice and will at times throw my players at each other for kicks and giggles (especially when I’m stressed out, figure let them have the fun of kicking each others butts). The third, the npcs stick out like sore thumbs (IE an angel, a sahugin, and a hell hound traveling together or a freshly appointed High Paladin Protector). Then peace and quite is rare for them because I like to keep things ‘realistic’ when the world is slowly being invaded by Cthulu.
This isn’t a campaign. It’s the setup for a “walk into a bar” joke.
I swear upon my life, my parties only enters taverns if the quest specifically demands they enter one. Otherwise, the most I’m getting is hotels.
Meanwhile, the Angel, Sahugin, and Hell Hound walk into a bar. 15 minutes later, the Angel flies out a window, the Sahugin makes a mad dash for the nearest river, and the Hell Hound takes it’s rightful spot, at the center of an inferno.
When I DM’ed my sister’s first game of Dungeons and Dragons (it also happened to be the first game of Dungeons and Dragons I DM’ed for IRL), I had an NPC fighter overhear the job that the PCs were offered and asked to join them to get a cut of the payment they were promised. In retrospect, it doesn’t seem like the best way to get an NPC to join the party. But much to my surprise, my sister and her friend were okay with having him joining the party (since the party of PCs consisted of a Gnome Rogue and an Eladrin Wizard/Sorceress. Can’t remember which class it was).
However, a few rounds into the first combat encounter the kobolds the party was fighting brought the NPC Goliath Fighter down to around 0 hit points. The NPC fighter was ganged up on, the luck of the dice was not on his side, and I forgot about a couple of powers he had that could’ve helped him stay alive. What made it ridiculous was that I made the NPC Goliath Fighter Level 3 while the kobolds were Level 1.
Though I still remember the look on the faces of my sister and her friend when I revealed that last bit of information to them.
I don’t suppose this goliath was wearing a red shirt?
But yeah dude, NPC survivability changes dramatically when they’re doing stuff on-screen, as it were.
Sadly I’ve never been in the kind of games where you’d have hirelings. Either the game didn’t really set itself up for that or… nobody had the kind of money to blow on hirelings.
The closest I’ve had are Leadership granted minions… and I guess they could count. But it didn’t matter at that point because we had an airship. And everyone in the party had leadership so the only options for random encounter while we were away would have been “a thing happened, it was quickly overwhelmed by the action economy” or “a thing happened, 80% of the minions are dead…. but you just magically attracted replacements for all of them while you were gone because that’s how this feat works?”
You mean your airship and loyal crew were never overwhelmed and taken prisoner by goblin sky pirates? Tell me your secrets! I can’t get those little shits to leave us alone!
Actually ran one game where the PCs hired a hireling. So I statted up a Copper Dragon who could shapeshift, used Misdirection and various other spells to appear normal, and he was actually just tagging along for the lols. They weren’t at the level for world shattering plot yet, and it actually turned out to be a funny thing when occasionally they would come back and there would be a few hastily hidden corpses around, but the hireling reported “Nothing interesting gove’ner”. (Because of course he had a british accent.)
Secret dragons are the best dragons. Even if you see it coming, it’s still a fun reveal.
Bill Posters, ran dome city guard, did some investigating with us for a while. He was quite dedicated to his job, but lacked any idea of the element of surprise. Often he’d leap out and yell “STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!” before firing away with his heavy crossbow.
Incidentally, this is how a warrior 4 became a Warrior 4/Fighter 1 after he dealt the final blow and killed an ogre.
Good thing he stayed in his urban setting. The mines are no place for a warrior, even one so brave as Bill.
Is this Bill Posters as in the old joke:
Sign: Bill posters will be prosecuted
Graffiti: Bill Posters is innocent!
Soooo, something like this: https://youtu.be/0_4nmW5GZhQ?t=1161
The only NPC I’ve ever served alongside as a player was Shelelu from RotRL Book 3, and she mostly hung in the back and shot arrows from the other side of the trap door pit. (Though the party Inquisitor, low on health, hung out there and gave her Guidance since he had nothing better to do.) We did once leave her alone with a blind, 2 HP PC while we secured the upper floor of an enemy house, which led to the amusing but ultimately irrelevant “SHE STOLE THE BOWS!” incident.
As a GM, the main instance of NPC allies has been from the shipwreck campaign, where the PCs ended up surviving along with three random sailors (Steve, Steven and Stephan). The first night, the party set their watch rotation and there ended up being one shift with two Steves on it. The ghoul attack did not happen during that watch, but rather the next one (with one PC and the third Steve), in part because all of the players were convinced that something would go wrong during the all-Steve watch. That PC on duty with Stephan heard a noise in the woods, told Stephan to check it out and rolled a 20 on Diplomacy to convince him. Stephan walks over to the dark woods, looks around, and is like “Yeah, nothing here.” Then the ghouls attacked the PC who had ordered Stephan to investigate (the ghouls had split into two groups to attack from two directions, so I didn’t do that just to punk the PC). Stephan again made a name for himself by throwing a torch at a ghoul and actually hitting. Unfortunately, he ghoul fever now. Will he recover? Will the PCs save him? Or is this going to end up in “Old Yeller” territory? Only time and player choices will tell.
(There was, in fact, a time that the PCs left the Steves alone to guard camp while the PCs went out, but the PC whose player couldn’t be there was with them as well, so that was a pretty good guarantee of safety. That PC, the Alchemist reflavored as a chef, seems to be spending the most time with the Steves (and they like him the most), so it’s good to see attachments being made. Now to exploit them…)
There is also the Suicide Squad campaign, where the PCs captured and interrogated a mugger (Phil) and now keep dragging him around the campaign, keeping him in line with Intimidate checks in the 50s. I haven’t been able to do anything with him off-screen, though, since the PCs will not let him out of their sight. There is also the Notginyu Force, the mercenaries the party bribed/diplo’d their way out of fighting, who are around somewhere. Though honestly, the Notginyus are 5 Level 9 PC builds led by a guy with an effective AC of 34 and a damage output of 1d6+15 to 1d6+33 depending on how mad he is, so they can probably handle themselves better than the actual PCs can.
I’d be willing to bet that, after being told to “go check it out” like the good red shirt he is, Stephan still got yelled at for “not warning us.” There ain’t no justice I tells ya. The life of the Mook’s Watch is a hard one.
Well, Stephan DID roll a 1 for his “on watch” Perception (which may have been alcohol-related), so he might be asking for it.
GODDAMMIT STEPHAN!