What if the BBEG was a peasant farmer?

>GM describes NPC as a "villein" in voice
>paladin tries to arrest him
>paladin falls

Jacquerie go home, you're sober.

We sort of had one, she used to be a warrior and settled down to work her own farm. We were ruffians who kept trying to steal stuff from her.

>peasants lead by a man who would bring about the equivalent of a modern bill of rights
>Would you fight against him?

Doesn't have to be a rights movement.
The peasant could've had some "divine inspiration" that was from some powerful demon.
Maybe he, through some fucked up series of events, got a reasonable claim to the throne, despite the current ruler being good at what he does
Maybe it's a peasant finally done with those Not!Jews and he's leading a nationwide Not!Pogrom.

>one man would bring about modern bill of rights
>not the combined governments of 13 countries plus a rebellious general

But what if the peasants were led by someone who had a genuine moral and right purpose? Like undeniably morally good.

I'm sorry for failing you Hank senpai.

Unless the PCs are trying to create/maintain some version of an Evil empire/nation/realm/whatever and thus "BBEG" means "the good guys", having someone undeniably morally good in charge means he can't really be BBEG right?

What if you are playing a evil campaign?

Or your DM is polish and likes grey on grey morality?

>What if you are playing a evil campaign?
That still wouldn't make a undeniably morally good guy the "Big Bad Evil Guy". If anything, it makes the player the BBEGs.

>Or your DM is polish and likes grey on grey morality?
Then he wouldn't be undeniably morally good anymore.

You've done good reason on me user.

>having someone undeniably morally good in charge means he can't really be BBEG right?
I don't think so - what if they're undeniably morally good, but their followers aren't?

Or they lack the means to act out their goodness, instead having to use lesser, less good methods, to try and achieve something that's almost unattainable?

...

>>Or they may join the peasants and which will lead to a Richard Stallman utopia
>Richard Stallman
>utopia

"Was" past tense?
Reminds me of Runnng Away From The Hero.

>adventurers ruin farmer's crops fighting some monster and they accidently kill his only son. Wife dies of grief.
>he wants revenge

>He learns magic and enchants his crops to come to life as minions. >Weapons are all farm tools.
>He's a charismatic guy that starts making deals with shady folk and endups rising up to be a mob-boss of sorts
>dips his hand into every town making prices stupid high for adventurers or doesn't sell to them at all.
>convinces common people of the towns to hate the adventurers, making it harder for them to gain information about anything without being ran out

A peasant became king of somewhere in Romania and beat back the Mongols at the height of their power.

Make it like that guy

>Chicken Infested
>Cluckmageddon

to determine the highest level of each class in a community you roll for the class (commoner is 4d4) then add the community modifier (metropolis is +12)
using this you can get a 28th level commoner in a metropolis

hehehe

Sure.

What would epic level commoners do?

the only time i ever used it was for a gravekeeper. that one man was the reason the capital never had a problem with undead despite the massive cemetary

I'm stealing this for my next campaign.

Oh god I'm just imagining the gif of Luffy pushing the zombie back into the grave

That's how my parties nemesis came about. They were purging a dungeon of orcs when they came across a farmers daughter. They said she would be safer in the prison than setting her free or taking her with them. They forgot about her and she died of dehydration.

They happened to mention a damsel in distress when bragging about it at a bar when one of the characters exclaimed they forgot to let her out of her cage.

Someone in the bar told her pappy. He drew them into his barn, them failing their wisdom check to notice the very similarities between them. He locked them in his barn and set it in fire.

When they broke out he charged them with a pitchfork bit they dispatched his easily but didnt chexk to see if he was dead and they pilliaged his house.

He ended up making his stability check and regained consciousness two days later.

They live like common people, do all the things that common people do, they just speak like common people, raise a fowl army of giant cocks to ravage the countryside.

Commoners have the ability to summon chickens at will, at the offset that if the common housecat looks at them, they die. A level 28 commoner would be able to fill a valley with nothing but chickens, causing a chickenularity causing the universe to collapse into chicken and make your GM rage with chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken.

Chicken chicken, chicken CHICKEN chicken. Chicken.

Chicken.

youtu.be/yL_-1d9OSdk

>a peasant farmer
>A PEASANT FARMER
>A FARMER OF PEASANTS
HOLY SHIT OP THAT'S EVIL AS HELL

>paladins having authority to arrest people

Do yours not? I mean they don't have total legal authority, but if your towns guard don't accept the local paladins of [well known Lawful god] as deputies then they're just being silly.
The guard are obviously responsible for detaining criminals for their trial, but if you're telling me the oath bearer of justice and balance can't do a citizen's arrest and bring him to the guard to face the courts.. your setting is weird, that's all I'll say .

>the peasant calls all the other peasants to seize the means of production
>all the peasants clamber inside mills and refuse to allow anyone inside
>only one knight is brave and daring enough to risk using his lance alone to drive out the peasants

"Here, kitty, kitty."

>he has continued beating all armies sent his way... while missing both eyes.

Sounds like my PC atm

This one?

Smiting evil on every evil thing that moves is taxing user. Besides, if one isnt given a fair trial then wouldn't that make the Paladin evil?

Unwitting Patient 0 of the Black Plague.

No, I'm the peasant.

Yup. lvl 28 commoner gravedigger on patrol.

Oh fuck

That's one sick bbeg

...

>Peasant farmer
>Finds a magical artifact of amazing power
>Leads a massive peasant revolt, killing all the aristocrats and bourgeoisie.
>If that's not evil enough (because you're a soulless commie who supports mass murder) then have him making deals with the devil or whatever, and sacrificing people in secret.

DOWN WITH MONARCHY

LIBERTY NOW

You can both be the peasant

>Gee Bill, how come your wife lets you wield two pitchforks?

>cluck cluck, motherfucker

>being a BSD-cuck

Does he receive any support from foreign merchants?

>Oh yes, we have our laws and all, but we can't really argue with some random dude claiming to hear the voice of some god, right? He's totally legit.

>And then he died, Hussites splintered and got blown the fuck out
Sometimes you need something more than a brilliant leader

underrated

We're on /v/ naoh!

reminds me of the story where a guy murders a Jew for having a phylactery

>peasant farmer

Well, if he's farming peasants into some kind of soylent green substance..

cock of the walk?

I fuck with both of them and become the BBEG proper so the GM can shut up with communist nonsense and royal mega corporations.

Get inspired.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Lepper

A knighted individual of an accepted power structure/religious establisment, the Paladin (not "some random dude claiming to hear the voice of some god") would have some law-enforcement powers, unless he's outside his place of authorization -- say, in a rival lord's kingdom, or in a realm where his deity is worshiped.

If your Paladin of Wales travels to The Caliphate of Cairo, he kinda leaves much if not all, of his authority behind him.

I'm seeing it as more of an underground rebellion, with the smartest, most charismatic, and most cunning peasant runs things, organizing the peasantry in bushwhacking knights, tax collectors, hiding taxable wealth in ways that the nobles can't discern, gathering information via pimping out the peasant girls to the PCs, nobles, minions, etc. Once they have the PCs, etc, where they want them, they pull the rug out from under them, and take over...while making it look like they did no such thing.

I'm kinda thinking of the movie "Onibaba".

>Hussites splintered

That's the peasants fault for making your hussies out of wood!

if they are knighted they have authority to arrest, if they are self employed they are just misguided.

How can you fall for arresting someone? Even if the person is found out to be innocent later ; its not outright evil to detain him, if his involvment is questionable. Otherwise all of the town militia in that GM's world would be evil and the paladin could go around and smite every guard he sees and the ruler of the city; because he rules over them.

DA!

Once again we have a demonstration of someone completely unable to understand convention in the genre.

In DnD, gods are there. Not as ideas, not through faith, but very much as physical beings. He's the dude living on the mountain or chilling in his own dimension somewhere. Even if you do not follow a certain deity, they still are very much around and present.

A paladin is a person emulating that other individual. Whereas a cleric says 'listen to this glowy person they are pretty cool,' the paladin is the one trying to copy them step for step. They have a GLOWY BULLSHIT AURA OF GOODNESS about them that people can feel, right from the get go.

In your example the guard might as well be saying "Well the king is neat and all, but i'm pretty sure I know the law better than he does."

Go castrate yourself and absolve the human race of any further of your kind.

Live their lives as normal, like all the other ones. If lore demands that they need a source of experience, perhaps they used to be soldiers were mugged frequently, etc. A lot of little experiences built up over a long, eventful life for a person with a lot of natural talent

They simply could hold their own reasonably well if it came down to it.

Granted they are supposed to be a statistical anomaly in a grand metropolis of people, the idea of an "epic commoner" still sounds super weird to me too.

The leader of one of my campaigns arcs is kind of like that. He's a regular dude, level 20 COmmoner, 70 years old, incarnation of the concept of the Banality of True Evil. He's just a clerk, really, but his complete lack of interest in the atrocities he causes/indirectly commands can be frightening.

I think more primary villains should be individually helpless.