As you might already be aware, full-casters are generally much more powerful than non-casters and druids are pretty solidly powerful, even among full-casters.  Pathfinder has done well (in my opinion) of powering down druids, but one-on-one, a druid is still more powerful than an evenly leveled fighter.  The animal companion plus summoning spells make them a more than formidable adversary.  So why bother with fighters when you can just raise armies of druids (and clerics and wizards)?

Our first problem when answering this question is that, in Pathfinder, your basic NPCs are given the stat array 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 with no mention of how those stats should be best arranged.  With this we concluded that it is more-or-less evenly distributed, with one in six people having any particular stat be that 13.   Since a 13 wisdom will let you cast 3rd level spells as a druid or cleric, wouldn’t 16% of the population be prime candidates for militarized divine spellcasting? And another 16% primed to be wizards?

The second problem we run into is that we have no built in controls on how common the various heroic PC classes are.  The rules make vague statements that most people fall into one of the NPC classes (commoner, warrior, expert, aristocrat and adept) but there is no hard and fast rule saying that they can’t be of heroic PC classes.  Gone are the 1e days of stat requirements to play classes (17 charisma to be a paladin, anyone?) so why not take a level in ranger or barbarian or fighter instead of warrior?  Why not take cleric levels instead of  adept?  What makes the NPCs take NPC classes?

This kind of thinking leads toward an end that we, as our gaming group, do not desire: the Tippyverse.  If you frequent the Giant in the Playground message boards, you may have heard of the DnD universe created by the poster Emperor Tippy.  For those of you who haven’t heard, this thread explains it relatively well.  Basically it is a world were RAW is Law and the logical extensions of a world wherein magic exists and costs nothing but time and coin are explored.  It’s a magocracy to the Nth degree.  Our group does not want this.  So how do we fix it?

My first solution to this conundrum was to decide that the stat arrays were not evenly distributed.  In a pseudo-medieval society, your basic person is going to be best served by a high constitution.  Yes in a magical setting, clerics, bards, druids and adepts exist and can cast curative spells, but they aren’t around all the time and not every midwife has levels in them.  People die from injury and disease.  Those who have that 8 in constitution are much more likely to die than the ones with their 13 there.  Secondly, because every street corner doesn’t have a wizard on it offering to solve your problems with a few arcane spells, manual labor still needs to be done.  Fields need to be plowed; tools need to be made; things need to be lifted and carried; a decent strength score is probably well prized among the common folk.  Essentially, natural selection has made it such that the stat arras are skewed towards the physical stats rather than the mental ones.

The second solution that I arrived on (which still is contended by Wolfgod) is that the PC classes are just less common.  My reasoning is that, even though as players we think, “I want to be a cleric” or “I’d like to play a barbarian this time”, the people in the world don’t make that conscious decision.  They simply do stuff and then their actions are translated into classes, feats, skills and such as best modeled by the rules.  The rules of the game, as I see them, are like the laws of physics in our world.  Physics does not force an object to fall when I drop it.  Physics describes how the object fell and can help me predict what other falling objects will do based on centuries of data.  In the same way, being a fighter or cleric or druid was not a conscious decision by the character, but rather a reflection of the decisions that he made in his life.  With this outlook in mind, the NPC classes are just easier to fall into.  It’s easier for your average soldier to have made decisions that made him a warrior instead of a fighter or for your skillful NPC to be an expert rather than a rogue.  My basic viewpoint is that not all priests are clerics and not all soldiers are fighters.  Most are NPCs and a select few are specialized PC classes.

With these two constraints in mind, we have gone to building the various armies.  We are still hammering out the finer points and balance issues, but our basic conclusion was that the vast majority of an army needs to be made up of rank-and-file guys with spears (or swords or whatever) and that spell slingers are a small minority.  We are setting a fluid limit of no more than 5-10% of your force can be casters and I would eventually like to see a rule that states how many of your infantry need to be warriors instead of fighters/rangers/barbarians/paladins.

If you have any comments or advice on how best to achieve our desired low-medium magic world, I’d love to hear them.  We are always looking to make our world fit our vision for it and would like to have reasons why it has developed and remained that way.

I’m not sure this letter will make it through the lines to you, but I owe you a fuller explanation of where I’ve been and what we’ve been doing since last I was in Tir Castellan.

Alder and I were traveling in Tantathia when we were caught in a blizzard.  We weathered the storm at Fort Rodez, and had to go out into the storm to rescue a stranded party of travelers.  It was well we did, for one of those in danger by the storm was the Aruthien Ambassador to Barloz.  We saved him from the icy storm and starving Dire Wolves – but we couldn’t save him from the summoned hellhounds of two assassins.

To my surprise, the assassins proved to be women – young, pretty women posing as barmaids.  They said their names were Tara and Isola, though naturally those names would be false.

It was too late to save the ambassador – and probably relationships between the Kingdoms – but we could chase down the murderers.  Or so we thought.  The assassins proved far more resourceful than we would’ve expected.

I found myself part of a group of companions.  You have heard of some of them no doubt – Alder of course.  A Spaarthan street rogue called Brenin.  A learned Mishyan scholar called Mauril.  Edelbrock, the prince of far-off Mastillan.  Athelas, an Ehrenlander who follows Athor the sungod.  Braden, a nimble fighter from Rothgorod or some far-off place, and Holly, a Flen from Woodsheart, and a skilled Wizard.  Together we set out after the killers, though we had no idea how far the journey would take us.

They fled north into the Tantathian March, paying local ruffians to kill us.  We dealt with them and harried them as far as Kylon, where the assassins purchased teleports to Queen’s Landing.  Scraping up our meager funds, we followed.

One of the assassins – Isola -  took ship from Queen’s Landing to Barloz, and we lost track of her.  We suspected them of using disguises to hide their true faces.  She could be anywhere now, looking like anyone.

Tara fled overland from Queen’s Landing, hiring mercenaries and riding out across the Toth Badlands.  We suspected she meant harm to Duke Vladir – as you know the Caspan Legion was at that time assigned to build a serviceable road between Queen’s Landing and Tir Castellan.  We arrived at the Duke’s Camp, but either he was not a target or the assassins could not get close to him.

We met the Duke and dined with him.  He remembered me of course, and seemed most pleased to meet Alder and Edelbrock.  I know our family is loyal to the King, and that Vladir is out of favor because of the Barlozian problem, but I liked him.  He seemed like a good man, not some cunning enemy of the crown.  Vladir gave us all the aid we could ask for and sent us along in our pursuit.

Abandoning the mercenaries, Tara went onward – turning north and taking shelter in the Vigabrock itself.  Outside, we were attacked by a band of strange warriors led by a fire sorceress – not anyone I could identify, even living my whole life on the frontier.  It was only much later we learned they were Jarls in service to the Redstone Spur, though what they were scouting for so far east I could not tell.

Not willing to abandon the quest for justice, we tracked Tara into the Vigabrock.  We entered the Stronghold clad as warriors, and passed beneath the very noses of the Frost Giants who rule that great fortress.  Finally our luck broke – Alder and the companions cornered the assassin and captured her – but Tara took poison and died before she could be stopped.

Now in possession of her corpse, Mauril and the other learned members of our party could see she was no human or elf of race of the Kingdoms – she was something else.  Something subtle and disguised – eventually, with much research, we were able to identify her as some minion of the Yuan-Ti, a mysterious snakefolk who dwell far to the southeast.  We can only suppose they were in the Kingdoms to create havoc and sow discord – but we cannot be sure.

From there we came to Tir Castellan – both to see you and to chase down the last lead Tara left us. We raided an innocuous shop in the south of the city – but the wizard we came to arrest and his greatsword-wielding bodyguard escaped us.  Still, we were able to alert the Kingdoms to the danger, and perhaps the machinations of these creatures will yet be exposed.

As you know we were at the Citadel when the Dragons attacked the city and the Jarl army laid siege.  The Redstone Spur may have Tir Castellan surrounded by I believe the city can be held – you and father didn’t build the city up from nothing to see it burned by a few Dragons, no matter how ancient they may be.  If there is any service I can provide our home, please call on me.

In my next letter I shall tell you of our adventures in Spaartha and beyond, and how it relates to combating the Redstone threat.

I’ve noticed, however, a certain discomfort for the late 3.5 material.  Core books, Unearthed Arcana, and the ‘Complete’ books I’m fairly comfortable with – as for the rest … not so much.

I think a lot of it has to do with my pre-imagined idea of what the game world is really like.  Our game world is huge and detailed – we’ve been playing in it for more than a decade.  There are dozens of maps, a wiki full of old characters, NPCs, Kings and Villains, and history of old campaigns.  Our world is pretty low-fantasy for D&D – there are wizards and magic swords, but not very many of the ‘exotic’ things that have come to be a part of 3.5 D&D over the years.

In this world, a Ranger or a Wizard is a pretty normal thing – everyone from common folk to a King knows what you are and what you can do … where you fit into society.  I suppose that’s why I can ‘see’ them interacting with the game world.

The exotic races don’t have a home in our game world – if you wanted to play an Aquatic Half-Giant, we’d have to figure out where in the heck you were from.  Most everyone (at least if I were running) would have a reaction to the character – because they’ve never seen anything like it before.

The same goes for the strange classes.  A Rogue or even an Assassin is a thing built into the world – there are Guilds for both in most places – but even something like a Warlock just isn’t built into the fabric of the game world.  Playing something like a Psionic or anything that turns you into a Dragon is going to seem strange at best.

That’s just my reaction, though – I think I see the game world as an unfolding story, with the ‘rules’ of the world loosely drawn from 3.5 ish D&D.  We have old Kings who are Paladins, or Wizards … not a base Bard with dips into five other classes and feats from books nobody has ever heard of.  It’s just the way the game world works.

My RPG group – a bunch of players who’ve been operating together for more well over a decade – share a really beautiful custom-built world, with each major segment built by one or more players.  We’ve been having fantasy campaigns in this world for years now, each adventure building the history of the world, or filling out an unexplored area.  Heck, it’s even got it’s own Wiki so we can attempt to keep track of it all.

A few weeks ago, we decided to kick the timeline forward twelve years, and run a Grand Campaign.  This campaign will run for a year, and will have as many different GM’s as needed – but the same characters.  So, for example, I’ll kick the campaign off, and run for 4-6 sessions, then hand off to another GM and pick up playing my character.  Nobody will have to run longer than they feel like, and there should always be somebody else ready to run their segment.  Adventures don’t have to be linked, but over time I’m sure they will be.

Because some of the guys have more time as GM than others, I’ve imposed some pretty draconian limits on the characters.  Fixed stats – 17, 15, 15, 13, 13, 11.  (You can move one point from one stat to one other stat).  Fixed gold – you can’t have more than the 3.5 DMG says you can have *as personal gear*.  (You can spend excess on a castle or a personal traveling circus, just not on a talking magic sword).  So far, everybody seems to be adapting to the restrictions fine – everybody is looking forward to playing a single character for such a long time period.

Strangely, our group has never played characters over level 16.  This campaign is designed to change that, by allowing you to play your hero from level 1 to level 20 (or maybe beyond).  I’m looking forward to that.

Further updates as we get into the Campaign.  This should be interesting.