Creating guards

[TheOrangeOne]

I need to make guards and the DMG are unrealistic. I need general information on how strong guards should be based on position.

Small town:
town guard
town jail guard

City:
City gates and entrance guards
Police
Mansion gaurds
Wall guards

Embassary gaurds
escorts

royal guards
kings guards
vip guards

I am probably asking for to much. I just need general class and levels, maybe point buy as well.

[karkon]

They should be as strong as you need them to be.

Generally the strength should increase with responsibility and location and wealth.

Use the NPC warrior and adept for levels and such. Give exceptional persons PC class levels.

Now chop chop, make all the people you listed and post their stats up because I "need" them right away.

[Evil Lincoln]

What do you find unrealistic about the guards in the GMG? That will help narrow down what you're looking for.

[vuron]

I actually tend to go with the more elevated numbers suggested in materials like the GMG.

IMHO

Village/Small Towns
4th level Leader of the Guard/Militia (typically a Fighter)
3rd level Lieutenant (typically a Fighter but sometimes a Cleric)
4-6 2nd level Sergeants/Deputies (Typically Warriors) These guys operate in pair during peace time and lead small units of militia during conflicts
x number of Militia trained Commoners (typically Commoner or Expert x/Warrior 1) These guys are typically only armed during conflicts.

City Guards
Typically units of 10 soldiers composed of

1 Lieutenant (Fighter 3-4)
1 Sergeant (Fighter/Warrior 3)
1 Combat Cleric (Cleric 2)
7 Soldiers (Warrior 2)

Watch Units
2-4 Warrior 2

Elite Place Guards are typically Fighter 4+

Arcane Casters pretty much don't serve with regular units but are seconded to a unit on an ad hoc basis. Higher level Clerics are pretty much the same.

Unless I'm going to go to the trouble of naming the character it's going to be a 15 PB (or more commonly an Elite Array) for anything with PC class levels. Militiamen might get that slightly enhanced array but are more commonly given a bunch of 10s and 11s.

[Brian Bachman]

TheOrangeOne wrote:

I need to make guards and the DMG are unrealistic. I need general information on how strong guards should be based on position.

Small town:
town guard
town jail guard

City:
City gates and entrance guards
Police
Mansion gaurds
Wall guards

Embassary gaurds
escorts

royal guards
kings guards
vip guards

I am probably asking for to much. I just need general class and levels, maybe point buy as well.

A lot of this is pretty variable, depending on whether your campaign world is high-powereed or low-powered. Many designers and writers also scale up the power of the guards to match the power of the PCs, resulting in some logic-bending things like tenth level castle guardsmen, which makes no sense except as game-balancing.

I prefer a more static world in which village guards are always low-level, no matter how powerful the PCs are.

A also don't use Point Buy and generally don't build NPCs in great detail, but rather just determine a few key stats, equipment and facts.

With all those caveats, here goes:

Small town:
town guard: 1st level warrior, leather & shield, spear, LCB, average stats - maybe a couple of leader types with a few levels of fighter and the resulting feats and equipment, depending on the size of the town
town jail guard: 1st level commoners, leather, club, average stats - led by head jailer with a few levels of rogue or fighter.

City:
City gates, wall guards and entrance guards: 1st-3rd level warriors, CM, halberd, LCB, average stats, sergeants with 3-5 levels of warrior and a little better equipment, officers with anything from 1-10 levels of fighter, and perhaps a high-level leader or two, supported by on-call battle mages and clerics with 1-6 levels
Police: 1-3 level rogues and warriors, CM&S mace, maybe mancatcher or bolos
Mansion guards: depends on how rich the resident is and how worried about his security, anything from a couple of scantily-equipped 1st level warriors to a team of highly trained mercenary guards outifitted like PCs with multiple levels.

Embassy guards: 1st-3rd level warriors led by a mid-level fighter
escorts: same, but with better equipment

royal guards: should be an elite, either high-level warriors or mid-level fighters, supported by mid-level wizards and clerics, and possibly a rogue or two to counter the sneaky stuff
kings guards: I'm assuming you mean personal bodyguards here. These guys should be impressive mid to high-level fighters with PC-type builds and equipment.
vip guards: like mansion guards, as good as the VIP can afford.

[TheOrangeOne]

I guess I would go with these for each guard position.

Small town:
town guard: Warrior 2 (they are not militia so they've got to have some expierence)
town jail guard: Warrior 2-3

City:
City gates and entrance guards: Warrior 2-5 (range is because you'd put the gaurds in training mixed in with some vets)
Police: Warrior 3-5/expert1 (these are the people making descision they are not constant hack and slash. the expert for profession reason in law)
Mansion gaurds Fighters (chances are they are going to be better paid than your town guard so the employer would hire a high caliber guard)
Wall guards: warrior 1-3 (standard archers, they shoot what they are told to.)

[CoDzilla]

For random nobody guards, I like using NPC classes, like Fighter (not a typo).

The greater the position of authority, the more likely they are to have a real class, like Warblade. And while the random nobodies will only have 1 or 2 class levels, the people in charge will have 3, 4, or more than that. Not too many (anything higher than six is probably too far) but more than those below them to reflect why they're in charge.

Elite guards are also liable to have more levels. Fighter 4 is a decent enough base for throwaway encounters you don't expect to survive half a turn. If you want the elite guards to be taken seriously by a not level 1 or 2 party, try Warblade 5.

Oh and they don't level with the party. That's absurd. So if the party comes back 5 levels from now, they could take the whole garrison at once and win if they wanted to. But they have better things to do then.

[Kthulhu]

CoDzilla wrote:

For random nobody guards, I like using NPC classes, like Fighter (not a typo).

Dude, we get it. You think the martial classes are underpowered. That doesn't mean you have to start that discussion/argument with EVERY SINGLE POST you make here. It was never all that entertaining to begin with, and it's just become old and annoying.

Back on track...

Generic guards: warriors.
Elite guards: fighters or some other martial PC class.

Level might have something to do with authority, or it might not. There might be a low-level grunt with no real authority, but he's an amazing fighter...maybe he has no desire to be a leader, maybe he's too dumb, etc. Likewise, as you move up the ranks you might find someone who's ambitious but cowardly, or someone who's much more of a tactician than a actual warrior, or someone who was appointed to that position more for who he knows than for any accomplishment.

[Phneri]

Levels of NPC really depends on the flavor of game you're playing.

If the party begins at level one, where a good hit can ruin anyone's day, it makes sense for most of the world to be level 1 commoners with a few experts or warriors thrown in.

For a higher-powered game characters with class levels make more sense. This will give you more of an anime/action movie style, where everyone can take an arrow shot or a sword blow and not immediately die.

Regardless of what you pick, remember that NPCs aren't idiots. Just because they aren't player character doesn't mean they won't be aware of the world around them and what an enemy (person or monster) could do.

For example, a village of three-dozen clearly can't have a standing army. But they can have a small wooden palisade the people can hide in, with longspears and bows for the people who know how to use them.

It wouldn't be unusual for a trained military unit to form ranks with a shield wall (warriors with tower shields and short blades fighting defensively/full defensive) with pikemen in the rear line, and archers behind that. That third-level cleric sergeant keeps silence readied in response to spellcasting, and you have a force that could give a moderate threat some pause.

The more fragile your NPCs are the dirtier they'll be able to fight. Because monsters eat the ones who can't. NPCs also have access to resources PCs don't. They can take weeks, months, even years to build the right tool, make a specialized toxin, create a specific spell, etc. They're going to do that.