Should PCs be able to become so powerful that common wildlife and untrained opponents no longer pose even the slighest...

See, but then Forgotten Realms DOES do what you described - have high-level characters because the setting's been around for awhile, is very large, and other people do stuff - and people bitch that there's no point in them adventuring because Drizzt or Elminster or so on can solve all problems. Ignoring that Drizzt and Elminster and so on are usually busy dealing with their own shit.

but they would definitely kill one with an m16

In some versions it was, it some versions it wasn't. To the Greek way of thinking there literally isn't a difference between "guided by the gods" and "bad luck" in any event, save the name of the god involved.

They're common wildlife because they resemble real life at least a little. Just treat them realistically; generally harmless until a champion emerges to lead them.

True, but in a world with M16s there wouldn't be a medieval knight to shoot at in the first place.

Driizt is an adventurer and doesn't solve everyday problems, and Elminster doesn't solve everyday problems.
I probably should've been more clear what I meant. What I meant was there aren't characters who are powerful but also mundane.
You don't have clerics in every city that revive you if you've been stabbed on the condition of observing their religion, you don't have necromancers in an otherwise mostly normal kingdom using undead for manual labour, you don't have people with the strength of 10-men who use that strength to make homes and canals.
The player can get these things as abilities without too much trouble, and there's villains and side-character with these abilities, but they all don't use it to it's logical potential.

That's the main reason I always make wizard magic super rare in my settings. The more common it gets, the more questions it raises as to why it isn't used for more things, and it also trivializes a lot of things that could otherwise challenge the players.

>you don't have necromancers in an otherwise mostly normal kingdom using undead for manual labour

Well, there's a good reason for that. A skeleton or zombie bereft of orders will kill the nearest living thing, then the next-nearest, then the next-nearest, etc. Undead are, by their very nature, antithetical to life and want to destroy it. They're way to dangerous if they get out of control to use as a source of labor.

At least that's the standard in 5e.

Why would it provide more immunity to wildlife than plate armor, compound bows, or swords?

Armored cavalry actually lasted long after the only people using muskets were backwards colonies. Don't underestimate the power of tradition, finally falling out of favour in WWI where cavalry spent more time fighting on foot and the armor did fuck all to stop anything more dangerous than a knife.

I wish there were more concrete figures on the effective armor penetration of renaissance-era firearms.

It seems reasonable that a well made cuirass would stop a musket ball at short range or a smaller shot from a pistol at point blank.

But you still have necromancers who can control their undead enough for them to not attack? That seems contradictory.

I feel like a fantasy setting doesn't even need to be original to be interesting. If it just seriously consdiers how the existence of one of the pieces of generic fantasy actually effects everything else it can be interesting.
the webcomic unsounded pretty much nails this. you have zombie slaves, almost no line existing between clerics and mages, stores that use illusions to attract customers, governments using spells and magical monsters for their armies and to mantain a dystopia-esque state, a religion that was basically founded by an adventurer who went to the afterlife to kill the gods and then went crazy, not!kobold ghettos and servants since they got flushed out of their underground caves, a more well thought out explanation for why some things are immune to magic and why some things are susceptible to magic, the sources of magics often having spots on the map and being almost as important to a major city as a fresh-water river, magic terrorism, etc.

So... No PC's above 5th lvl?

Yes, but they can only control one of their minions at a time due to action economy.

>magic in my setting works such that a sapient entity's will has a tangible effect on the world
>the ability of one humanoid to do this is miniscule but a great many minds can warp reality of keep it stable
>players advance quickly in power as they gain fame and many people believe them to be highly capable of improbable deeds
>this power creep slows down as the odds they go up against are things the world understands to be nigh insurmountable
>wizards are collected and organized but high ranking ones realize the nature of magic, some losing their powers due to it. Others suppress the knowledge out of fear that magic would disappear or become a danger to the world were it known large enough groups could warp reality
>space entities with powerful wills shaped the world and created humanoids, but when outnumbered greatly by sapient weaklings their ability to effect the world through their willpower was overcome
>some convinced humanoids to worship them, gaining power from their beliefs
>others resent humanoids negating their ability to shape the world and try to find ways to destroy them, often by creating cults to power themselves up via obtaining worship
>thus highly capable pcs exist in a world with readily available threats to existence and wizards who don't fix everything

Problem solved

>Should PCs be able to become so powerful that common wildlife and untrained opponents no longer pose even the slighest possible threat to them in combat?

Yes and no.
PC's should never become so powerful as to be immune to their own overconfidence.

All these depend on the setting, but I'll go through one by one and mention how they can be used without breaking the setting, because I'm an egotistical twatwaffle and I think the smell of my own gas is /amazing/
>You don't have clerics in every city that revive you if you've been stabbed on the condition of observing their religion
I actually run it as, yes, they do have access to Resurrection, assuming they're reasonably far along the path of the Priest; so usually anyone above or at the rank of Bishop, or perhaps a couple above average priests.

One of the major things keeping people from rushing the temple to revive Pop-pop after that horrible Trout Incident is the fact that one has to purchase an indulgence from the Pope, his reasoning in public being that God had a reason for them to die, and in order for him to take the time to intercede with God and convince big G to go along with the request one should donate. Obviously, the private reason depends on the Poop in power at the time and often (though not always) comes down to him wanting more money and power.

Hence the protestants being pissed that the Pope has control over whether babies come back, and then limiting it to only nobles and rich burghers. And even then only people who suck his dick.

> you don't have necromancers in an otherwise mostly normal kingdom using undead for manual labour
This would scare the shit out of the peasantry, with predictable results. And one can't run an entire kingdom on Undead - mindless Undead are empowered by the necromancer, and wise undead can, again, revolt, weakening the kingdom and eventually getting staked by blokes in shiny plate armor.

It's been tried before quite a bit, and hasn't worked thus far... Presumably, though, if one could link it to the Protestant heresies *cough* they might be able to make the country stable enough to work.

Sorry, I had a BBEG in my throat. Don't you?

>*superstrength*
Happens, just expensive.

Honestly, in my opinion, I find neutral undead to be more interesting.

I vastly prefer having something systematic in the magic that warps the mind towards evil/sociopathy, or attracts those who already have those sorts of proclivities.

For example, my Lichification ritual is clearly defined and anyone can do it so long as there's a mage present to empower the magic circle preserving their life until the ritual is finished. But how many good people would violate religious norms, vivisect themselves without painkillers, and provide a market for glass made with the potash of a tortured man?

It's also widely believed that a human sacrifice is necessary, although that's actually wrong - a sacrifice of a "important life" is necessary, but nobody's tried sacrificing their beloved pets yet and with how rarely the ritual occurs it's unlikely anyone will try. Especially since... would you want to modify the ritual that involves you being hung upside down and skinned alive over a jar, and risk fucking it up?

>I find neutral undead to be more interesting.

I really don't, for the simple fact that it then steps on the toes of Animate Object and Transmuters. People who try and justify Necromancy strike me as likely being the same people who say that Force Lightning can totes be used by good people, yo. And probably the same people who try and say that Kreia was right.

KRIEA LIES.

>killed by all things in a car crash in December of 1945
In RPG terms that would be after the end of a campaign.

Don't bring shitty fanfiction into this.

Villains do control dozens tho

>was killed by all things in a car crash in December of 1945.
Doesn't that strike you as a little bit strange? Especially when he was already in trouble for saying controversial things?

>Justify necromancy
No, I just prefer to have systems attract evil people rather than be intrinsically evil in and of themselves.

Please read the full post before responding.

Not really. Technically it actually took him 12 days to die after the car crash, and he was conscious for most of it, albeit paralyzed from the neck down a la Christopher Reeve.

False dichotomy. A power can be intrinsically evil AND still attract evil people. Or have doofuses who think they can use it for good get sucked into it.

>Force Lightning can be used by good people
But it can.

>Kreia was right
No-one was right, but she was far and away the best of a bad lot barring the destroying the Force thing which she seemed to entertain the thought of , especially when compared to the Jedi Masters.