Sutek: It seems that the basic source of our disagreement is so fundamental we've each taken it for granted. Which means, whatever it actually is, we've been unable to positively identify it. I'm sorry we haven't been able to manage a particularly useful dialogue, but thanks for your efforts.
AZZA: Poor wording from me.
I've got no problems with him being a long way beyond a typical soldier. Not, however, 15+ d20 levels.
According to the core book, elite troops are given levels of 3 or 4. Even if you consider elite to be in the 7-10 range, that's still a massive discrepency.
Personally, I can't see Conan, without allies nearby, taking out 50+ elite soldiers while barely breaking a sweat. At the default setting, with 3rd level elites vs level 20 King Conan, that's certainly what would happen.
With the levels of elite troops raised to 7-10, it becomes less likely, but doesn't deal with the all the issues I have.
When my PCs are 18th level, what adversaries will they be fighting? One can add in a few more supernatural beasties, but it is still, IMO, important to keep them relatively rare and mysterious. Most encounters will still be with human adversaries. Under the rules as they stand, unless I'm just throwing hordes of mooks against the group until they get a run of bad luck, these opponents will need to be in the 12-15 level range to pose a real challenge. But this begs the question, where are these regularly appearing high level opponents coming from? In any level breakdown I've seen, 12-15 is far above elite.
If we assume these fairly common high level NPCs were already around, then they should have been already changing the face of Hyboria. And if the PCs have done great things and gained reputation, they should already be interacting with these folk. Probably to their detriment. At the very least, the PCs should probably have heard of many of these people long before they become directly relevant to them. By which point, we're now creating a Forgotten Realms style atmosphere of adventuring parties wandering the landscape like small armies.
It's possible that I could run this campaign without that occuring, using the default rules. But, I feel strongly that that is what will occur, and I don't want to be playing for 12 months and then suddenly realise all the atmospher I originally wanted to create has been replaced by a vanilla fantasy romp.
The bottom line is, what I want to do is say that characters above 10th level are very rare. In order to say this and consitently maintain the ethos even as the players reach dizzying heights, I want the more common 10th-level-and-under NPCs to be able to remain the bulk of the threat faced by the group.
