Most powerful NPCs - the really old!

Because we have so much respect for anything that lives to be centuries old, we don’t let our dwarves or elves live “forever”.  As you read this, you’re going to see why we have this opinion and feel that a standard soldier who is centuries old should be the most powerful NPC your PCs have ever faced.

What does age bring?  Well, wisdom, but in a more game related word:  experience.  And we all know what experience brings - more power!  Diverting just for a moment, this is why we don’t take the Tolkien way of letting elves live 1,000 years.  (Let’s be clear, that old game didn’t follow Tolkien, they sort of bastardized him.)  If a longbowman were to practice three hours a week for his whole life, and his whole life was 900+ years, how incredibly fantastic an archer would he be?  And yet that other game would tell you that a 300 year old “adult” was only a single hit die.  That’s stupid!

So what are we saying here?  Let’s look at vampires and liches.  Assume they live to be 200-300 years old.  What will they have learned?  Well, a human typically learns most of what they know in about 25 years, but then they hone that knowledge over the next 25-50 years before they collapse in a chair from all that work.  How much different would their skill level be if they didn’t feel the fatigue of old age?  How different if they could keep going at roughly that “young adult” level for four to ten times longer than a human?  Maybe they aren’t four to ten times better (because we use a geometric progression like so many others), but they would be significantly better!

In LEGEND QUEST, we typically say that you earn about 10 character points a year by just living life.  Survival has a way of teaching you things!  For this reason, we also suggest that an adventurer would likely be about 25 years old when they start adventuring, unless something special has happened in their lives that would have taught them more in a shorter span of time.

This is exactly what we’re talking about.  Simply by living for 200 years, an intelligent undead should be phenomenally powerful.  But as a GM, you have to decide what they’ve been doing for those years.  They might be the most knowledgeable gardener on the planet, but that won’t make them much of a threat to a party of adventurers.  Well, it won’t unless they are gardening man eating plants.

But that’s the point!  An ageless vampire is going to #1 - think in a much longer term than a short lived human and #2 - defending against those types of things that can end your immortality become incredibly important.  Think about Bruce Lee (or whatever martial artist you respect).  Think about what he was able to accomplish in his short life.  Think about what a similar person would be able to accomplish over centuries of training.

This alone is the real reason we will be presenting “lesser vampires” for LEGEND QUEST.  Yes, there are times when as a GM you just need some mindless blood-suckers who will fight adventurers.  But if you are going to introduce a vampire or lich over the age of 100, they deserve a lot more time and respect from you.  What have they been doing over the many decades, and how does that factor into what a dangerous opponent they are now?

Especially because of that previously mentioned geometric progression, we think that most immortals would pursue at least two different disciplines.  Maybe you don’t want a vampire fighter mage - that’s fine.  Try a sorcerer alchemist.  Not only can he cast incredibly powerful spells, but unlike his more mortal foes, he can then use alchemy to vastly enhance the number of spells he can cast or the way that he protects himself while doing it.  After all, he has had decades more experience to tell him where the vulnerabilities are and then use some other discipline (alchemy, enchantment, conjuring, whatever!) to make himself better.

And you don’t necessarily need to follow the rules.  After all, the rules were written for mortals - this is something beyond that.  Maybe he has developed his own spells, recipes or formulas?  Maybe he’s found a way to tap into the magic of the core of the planet and not just use the magic contained within his limited body.  If the players really think they can simply show up and defeat a centuries old undead lord, you must teach them the error of their ways!