Challenges are interesting. I genuinly considered throwing myself a courveball by having the fake slave-marking become smudged in my next post and see where that one got us among the genuine guards, but I concur, let the characters talk. I mean, if literally Taris exploded half the guardhouse and ran away I could deal with that too, albeit disappointedly, plus Harriet is currently testing out what happens when you kill a bunch of the lawful authority. *chuckles*<br/><br/>The way I most like to run my campaigns is to have the players on the upper end of the strength level, you can trick or kill any commoner and even the lower rank and file, from village-cleric to Guard-captains of a big city, but at the same time, that's where you hit a challenging brick wall, as folks like legendary heroes, Grand-masters of the inquisition or Elite warriors of the king are usually build with the same class levels as players, but access to more resources. I like to start players out at level 5ish and have Npc's consider ~lvl 10 to be the limit of mortal power, that way, leveling feels genuinle worth it. But still, power is relative; For example:<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide</div><div class="spoiler_body">If you make an enemy of the Baroness Raven you'd find that battling a 10th level caster is quite possible, but battling a lvl 10 caster with the resources to gain any enchtantment and item necessary to make up for her 6 base constitution 'build' is a problem.</div></div><br/>*chuckles* That of course doesn't address monster-encounters... why am I ranting about this when I barely have time left to respond this year? good question!1!