What does Veeky Forums think about adventurer guilds like in animes?

Fuck adventurer guilds. They make no fucking sense in any fucking game.

>there's almost certainly a better method for dealing with local monster incursions.
I imagine minor monster problems dealt with by soldiers tends to lead to a few casualties even if they win while sending a group of experienced adventurers might lead to no casualties.

Similarly, if there's a monstrous dragon and you send an army at it, the army may win but you've lost dozens, if not hundreds of soldiers. Then you have daemonic royalty which you're not even sure if your army can beat even with cannons. Plus vampires and other such beings that can infiltrate your society that no small investigation team can handle.

So it might actually be best to send a group of highly skilled and powerful professionals to deal with it.

Why doesn't the army have "highly skilled and powerful professionals"? And why is a place capable of organizing adventurers of this level of power allowing other powerful people who have no alleigance to anyone or anything to roam around freely?

They're a staple of any Japanese made RPG games. virtual or pen and paper ones.

A trillion times better than running around the entire town looking for people with exclamation marks over their heads.

>Why didn't the nations of the Middle Earth develop nuclear weapons and blast Mordor into smithereens?
>Talk about a STUPID setting.

...

I can see a situation where draconian restrictions on standing military force were enforced by some higher power. And the only way to have enough professionals to fight off stuff behind the walls, while avoiding getting your domain lightingbolted for excess military build up, after bi-yearly supervisor report - is outsourcing it to mercenaries affiliated with said higher power, or some other entity.

Adventurer guilds makes no sense as they are pictured by contemporary games and books. IIRC 'adventurer guild' was one of the terms for mercenary band.

In anime they seem to typically operate as a national level organization, which is dumb in most fantasy settings.

They should be run locally.

Because the army trains at the barracks while the adventurers train at the barracks then go get real combat experience against monsters. Soldiers are trained to fight in formations, relying on the rest of the soldiers to back them up, taking casualties often so not gaining much individual experience while adventurers gain more experience winning battles with no casualties and they have to contribute to every fight instead of just being lucky by not being the soldier on the front line who died at the start of the battle.

You can't send an army to get rid of a goblin infestation. The goblins will just leave and attack your farmers and traders on the other side of your city. Adventurers can actually get in and kill them all. You can't use your armies number to fight through a dungeon to get the 'mcguffin of save the world' inside because the corridors are too small so a pair of minotaur could rip apart a battalion of soldiers even as they try to flee but are blocked by their companions in the corridors.

The guild provides the benefit of sending adventurers onto tasks that they can handle so they can become a force to be reckoned with. Worth a few squads of soldiers each. So many adventurers develop a sense of loyalty bond to the guild that helped them get to where they were. There may be bad eggs but the good outweigh the bad, at least in a setting where getting enough to eat isn't a struggle.

The army can train professionals, of course. They're just not going to be dragon slayers of any sort. There's only so far you can go with practice, at least as far as leveling up is concerned.

Are you completely retarded? Literally NONE of that makes sens, unless you take your own impractical bag of assumptions and then run with it.

Are you saying an actual dedicated national (or whatever else your political unit is based around) can't send out small units? They can't figure out what their people can and can't take without losses? They can't get combat experience? That they ALWAYS deploy in hundreds or more?

I really, really hope you're trolling, because if your post was serious, the implications are horrifying.

I think they're dumb. I don't like what it implies about the setting.
>That your character isn't special, they're just over of many in their profession.
>The setting is fucked enough to have an effectively endless supply of dungeons and threats that require a constant stream of adventurers to deal with.

The second one is the big one for me. It doesn't make for coherent settings or anything more than the most light hearted games. There needs to be contact threats to civilization, like ancient liches and dragons and rampaging orcs to require an adventurers guild, but they need to be constantly defeated without major harm for the setting to keep ticking.

It's too Saturday morning cartoon for me.

the one I'm planning on is closer to a bounty board and post-apoc stopgap measure.

You have a request board for oddjobs because refugees keep pouring in and nobody knows who has what or is good at what task. The ruling body is too busy keeping the whole place from falling apart while still accepting refugees.

As for military and bounty boards, the government has some real legal trouble ordering troops to kill the monsters, since many of them are, well, technically still citizens.

it can be a post apocaliptic setting where evil is everywhere

>The guild provides the benefit of sending adventurers onto tasks that they can handle so they can become a force to be reckoned with. Worth a few squads of soldiers each.
D&D-think maximum

I think it's just a quick of the Japanese to have everything be catalogued and regulated by some kind of system because not having it that way means chaos, and chaos is bad.

I love em. They add a level of whimsy that I really like and make more sense to me than random tavern quest-givers.

Who is this semen demon?

They're fun, but rarely realistic. Usually if something is fun enough you can ignore the lack of realism, and in this case a proper GM should be able to do it with little trouble.

Why real life?

And yet most of the time, the good guys live in the least organized one where structure and bureaucracy only pops up when absolutely necessary, the system is cheated to keep things running, and the RULES AND ORDER hardliner is a minor recurring villain you can't beat by just stomping because they're not evil, just mega-rigid.

It's like the basic human desire for freedom is trying to worm its way out.

I like them. Armies and military are made and trained for attacking and defending against other civilizations. Adventurers are made to fight monsters and other singular creatures. Also adventurers tend to be rarer than army men. Anyone can be in the army but adventurers are always a cut above the normal army populace.

In what anime does this happen on a national level?

Yeah, I forgot that many JRPGs have the elite boss lieutenants and such, like Gwyn's 4 Knights. Plus Knightly Guilds and Orders of Paladins.

But the army is needed to defend the kingdom from other armies. So so many settings simply say "we've told the king but he hasn't sent any men" which generally happens when the country is threatened by armies/hoards of Lv1 enemies. Or "we need you to clear out those bandits, we can't spare enough men from town defense to do it safely". They can't send their best soldiers out to slay a dragon when a daemon baron could appear in the city at any time.

Adventurers are more flexible and are often readily available, you know, just like mercenaries. They can be used as need and the guild will send the right people for the job as adventures come in all stripes. Plus you don't have to pay as much money since it's a one off thing.

Adventurer's guilds are dumb, but the dumb comes from the "adventurer" part and not the "guild" part. If you're already suspending enough disbelief to allow murderhoboes to murder and hobo rather than be executed for taking the king's dire stag, you may as well have some sort of centralized register and booking agency.

>Combat experience
The average person still caps out even with experience. You've made the assumption that the average pissant is the same as an adventurer and that is simply not true. You can't train any soldier to be an adventurer. Only certain people are even capable of it.

What went wrong in your life that you need every single imaginary friend you've ever had to be an untouchable ubermensch?

It's not that it's simple adventurers (or people capable of being one) simply have a higher exp cap (if you will) then a the average person. Exceptional individuals aren't exceptional just because of their training. They're also born exceptional.

Not that guy, but I believe they can be raised to be exceptional. They just won't be a min-maxed efficient adventurer.

I think a lot of it is in the head as well. A recruit who is content with a meager existence that comes with a soldier's pay might never get to level 3, not because of death, just that they don't perform much better than the bare minimum that is required of them.

This is all fantasy land guessing, of course.

Like I said. What went so impossibly wrong in your life that you can't even stand a single one of your imaginary friends having earned their specialness rather than be born to it? Who are you so convinced took what was yours by birth that every game you play has to cater to the idea of a literal master race?

Plus, Dragons are a vengeful bunch. You don't want attempts at their lives coming back to where you live. So you send some outsider Murderhobos that nobody knows. They kill the dragon, great. Have some treasure lads, then fuck off.
The dragon kills them, oh well, get on the cloak and hit the taverns with that nice shadowy spot you can sit in and be all mysterious.

not even i know just found on my pics folder

>Why doesn't the army have "highly skilled and powerful professionals"?
Warfare and clearing out dungeons require different sets of skills. Standing Army is trained to fight other armies and opress and slaughter peasants. Not to Slay Dragons or unearth secret Cults.

well
in overlord the countries dont put heroes on their armies because if they do other countries will also
so a battle which 20% of the army dies then retreat or surrender will be a battle where everyone dies very quickly cause heroes are heroes

Why do you believe everyone is so equal that a soldier can become the equivalent of a high level mage just by 'working hard'?

Empirical evidence?

Why do you believe that a level 11 ~adventurer~ mage is more suited to become a level 11 fighter than a level 10 soldier is?

I think a lot of the people who shit on adventuring guilds forget that "Dungeon as a self replenishing ecosystem where monsters and what they produce is loot in and of itself" is a shit tone more common in Japanese media than Western Fantasy style "Dungeon as a one off space for specific purpose with little heed paid to how the ecosystem works and general acts as a singular threat".

Adventuer's help serve the interests of alchemists, wizards, industrialists, blacksmiths, etc who may need more specific resources from dangerous places that help them produce high quality goods which in turn increase the standard of living for everyone.

normal people are at max level 3 user
you know that level 10 players are already legendary things right?

No, they're not. A lot of games are really schizophrenic about what levels mean.

>he doesn't know about Gygaxian naturalism
Dungeon ecologies have been around for very long and are not a Japanese idea

Who said I believed that? The fighter adventurer and mage adventurer are both exceptional in their respected crafts. Being exceptional in magic does not translate to being exceptional in fighting and vice versa.

But a normal soldier could only ever attain MAYBE a few levels in fighter. Normal peasants can't just pick up a sword one day and work hard to be a level 11 fighter. They just aren't capable of it. Equality like what you are describing doesn't exist in the game world or in real life.

assuming that they are ordinary people they REALLY shouldnt be level 10

>Gygaxian naturalism
It's not really something that carried over in the west and even then it doesn't mean what you think it means.

There's an ecology but not an ecosystem, like in Japanese media. Nor does it portray societies that are RELIANT on these ecosystems, unless you care to enlighten me.

Gygaxian naturalism usually extends to "the kobolds worship the dragon, the hobgoblins fight the kobolds, the lone displace beasts eats anything it can catch".

Interests and personal goals.
The same way a hippie won't be a workaholic or the same way a simple farmer wouldn't become a businessman.
People are born and raised completely different from each other and that is what makes them achieve different things. If you stimulate a little kid into being a scientists, he will be capable of growing up and becoming a distinguished scientists. If you stimulate that same kid to like being a farmer, he will choose to stay in the farm and take care of his cows.
The brain is trainable just like muscles are. The thing that differentiates a body builder from a skinny nerd is the same thing that differentiates a dumb farm hand from a NASA engineer.
There is no such thing as being special, instead it's normal people achieving special things.

>my-my-my special master race hero HAS to be better than anyone else automatically! just like mommy always told me i was!

I can't think of a system which works like you think it does other than maybe FATAL. Definitely not any edition of D&D. And D&D is easily provable as far more restrictive than real life; you can easily go from 6 to 18 STR, in a couple years.

Guilds always make sense. Who else is gonna beat the shit out of competing adventurer groups who offer the same services for less money?

And the iron proof that this guy is right is that from-infancy adoptees, by and large, turn out exactly how you'd expect blood children to.

dude what are genius, amirite?
Adventurers are genuises of their own
a fighter has talent for it
a mage has talent for it
its because of this they can someday summon a angel or smite a demon
ordinary people are just this, ordinary people

It's cliche

But sometimes cliche is fun. Sometimes it isn't. Depends on what mood you're in and how long it's been since you had an old fashioned romp in the genre classics.

Agreed. If your setting has a concept of adventurers as a distinct class of people it's poetically fucked beyond salvaging.

I completely disagree with that on a fundamental level. A retard will never be a scientist. A normal person is not so malleable. Your environment does not decide as much of you as you think. Differences are never just skin deep.
Behaviors, temperament, personality all are within your genes.
I would love to see you try and turn a group of children into physicists. The most you will be able to to do is spark an interest in science within them, but the majority of them are simple not capable of going the whole way with it.

It's actually quite easy in D&D. The majority of people are not above level three and never will be.

>Unless it's some hyper-rich and low population area

You mean like a setting where orcs, goblins and dragons roam the countryside killing off most of the population?

Places like that usually don't have a lot of wealth or social organization. They're just shitholes.

You are both fags, in general it's an interaction of nature and nature that determines most traits and abilities in children - yes, an interaction, so not just an additive but a multiplicative relationship, meaning it's usually better to have average genes and an average upbringing than to be great in one but shit in the other.

oops wrong quote

>you can't turn mass amounts of children into physicists
user, literally every child in the United States who doesn't go runaway or have a sub-3 INT gets a physics education that would stump Goddard or von Braun until they had some time to work their way through.
Your assumptions about genetic supremacy are easily disproven by observing anyone who was adopted in infancy or early childhood.

You're arguing against yourself here - your position is that an INT 18 genius commoner (actually INT 25-26, because D&D's stat scaling only supports two standard deviations in any direction, but I'll be charitable) is less suited to be a level 4 wizard than an int 8 level 3 fighter.

D&D? You mean the game where you can largely only be a sorcerer because of your bloodline?
Are you all retarded or something? Games that would have adventurers are built on the idea that adventurers are rare in a society.

An adventurer's guild is basically a very disorganized mercenary company.

If the focus was dungeon-delving, in a medievalesque setting and assuming a feudal system, the effect would be that nobles are just telling the peasants "hey, see that tomb that's in my land and which should be technically mine? Well, I hear it has a bunch of gold and you can all go steal it RIGHT NOW!".

It comes from American, rather than European, cultural memory. It only makes sense in settings that are the Wild West with a coat of paint

user... The majority of kids barely understand forces. You really overestimate the intelligence of the young.

>I have never read the DMG.

Remember how the average city of 25,000 has a more than 50-50 chance of having multiple characters of level over 15?

Yes, but what does that make the rest? All of those level 15 individuals are the exceptional group that I am describing. How is this difficult to understand?
For fucks sake guards are shitters in D&D. These are people who fight and guard for a fucking living.

Are you telling me that all fighters will inevitably become demigods one day?
No?
What is the fucking difference between a lvl 15 ftr from one who is only lvl 3?

I'm not talking about retards or rainmen, I'm talking about normal, average people. I too doubt I would be able to turn small children into future doctors, since that is not something that anyone can change. They're molded from birth, by their family, by the ambient they grew up with, by the culture they live in, by their friends and the people that surround them, and by their experiences.

>For fucks sake guards are shitters in D&D.
But this is wrong, at least if you go by the suggestions that come with the DMGs. Maybe you run it that way, but they are not supposed to be shitters that get effortlessly blown away. They are supposed to have multiple high level characters, and most of those "random" high level dudes in a city are supposed to be integrated into its power structure.

What if you could change all that? Do you believe they'd be capable of it?
I personally do not. I don't know why you believe in a tabula rasa.

>What is the fucking difference between a lvl 15 ftr from one who is only lvl 3?
the Lv15 fighter had a lot more exciting adventures

because not every human has the potential to go from lvl3 to lvl 15 as not every lvl 15 has the potential to become demigod

Just to clear it up, are you talking 3.5?

Anyone can go from any level to anything. They only need enough experience.

But they totally are. Even guard captains aren't that strong.

is right, but I'd like to imagine adventuring leagues in a different way.

In all actuality, who is an adventurer? If you were living in a pseudo-medieval setting, who would be the adventurers? The desperate, the dishonest, the zealous and so on. People who can't or won't make a living by regular means, who turn to grave robbing and pillaging to make their money.

Think of oD&D, what we're the classes? Fighter's, dudes who's only marketable skill is to kill other beings. Magic Users, seekers of unholy knowledge and users of unnatural magics. And, of course Thief's, 'nuff said there.

The only legitimate sounding class is the cleric, until you realize their class concept is "holy man who's preferable form of worship is slaying the enemies of the divine".

Later editions lost this thematic approach somewhat, but I think the core idea remains: adventurers are those living on the margins of society.

An adventurer's guild, therefore, would be not unlike a thief's guild: illegitimate, scorned, and hired only for unsavory tasks like 'clean out that dragon's nest'. I do believe that settlements nearby larger sources of pillagable treasure read:a megadungeon would have a form of adventurer's guild based on the large amount of treasure seekers drawn by rumours of quick riches.

But it would probably be treated like a criminal organization by guards, and forced to meet in secret to plan expeditions.

Who fed you this shit? Your mother? 'yes dear you can be an Olympian gold winning wrestler and create a unifying theory of physics is you just try hard enough'

this is mechanics wise, its the same to say that anyone can be a einstein in life, it's a lie and plain stupid as well

>user, literally every child in the United States who doesn't go runaway or have a sub-3 INT gets a physics education that would stump Goddard or von Braun until they had some time to work their way through.
This is bait, right? Please tell me it's bait.

You can have adventurers rare in a society without having them be a (((chosen people))). I'm arguing that the level 10 adventurer is special because he's level 10, other guy is arguing that the level 10 adventurer is always level 10 because he has a ~magical destiny~.

"Barely understanding" modern physics is still a greater understanding of the laws of nature than the ancient or not-so-ancient greats could muster, and we somehow choke it out of every single person not in a protective helmet.
Can we force everyone to WANT to go do the hard work of research? Of course not, but it's certainly a trainable task for large portions of the populace.

But that's my point - they're molded by their experiences, not by very much inborn (and especially not by inborn things not accounted for in stat rolls).

There's no destiny involved. The level 10 adventurer simply has the capability to be one. He could be level 1 for life, but he has the capability of being level 10.

They don't understand modern physics though. Not even a little bit. Regurgitating facts is NOT understanding.

I'm not saying that. You're missing the whole point.
What I'm saying is that the brain from a fetus is a blank slate that can become anything depending on what you feed it. Genetics can change small things here and there but it's all about the baggage.
Einstein wasn't a super human.
There is no "super human gene" that differentiates underachievers from geniuses.

Literally all the Free Peoples were on the brink of extinction. The elves were going west, the dwarves had mostly got wrecked by dragons centuries prior, and Gondor reduced into a powerless vestigial empire. Minas Tirith was just a fortress, they'd got kicked out of the actual city. And they organized the Fellowship because somehow sneaking into Mordor and destroying the Ring was the only chance they had against Sauron, who had orcish armies which likely outnumbered the entirety of the rest of the population and also controlled the whole East

>"Barely understanding" modern physics is still a greater understanding of the laws of nature than the ancient or not-so-ancient greats could muster
Did you consider that itt takes FAR less cognitive ability and studying to learn something already well understood that you got taught by people who have mastered the subject and were even trained in teaching it to others then having to come up with it by yourself?
The question you have to ask is not how many kids can do algebra it's how many could invent algebra.

>Einstein was normal
No he wasn't. He was a cut much farther above.

>I can't think of a system which works like you think it does other than maybe FATAL. Definitely not any edition of D&D.

um

But both in the rules as written and in direct, measurable real life analogues, everyone not literally a vegetable has the potential to hit level 10 in a class, if not all classes. You're the one who needs inborn snowflakeness to get your rocks off.

Spoiler: literally no one has an understanding of physics other than "these regurgitations are close enough". Gravity? We don't know how or why. Light? We don't even know exactly WHAT. There's no consensus on the number of dimensions, never mind what makes the list.
I don't think you understand the point of science or the scientific method, to be honest, if you're so down on the rote manipulation of measured facts in favor of ~inspiration~.

Second full para, sixth sentence. "The captain of the company may be a 12-level fighter."

You sure are convincing me that 5e non-adventurers cap out at level 3, user. Fire citations there. :^)

We actually have quite a good grasp on many aspects of modern physics. Just because there are questions does not mean there is no understanding.
What about modern physics do children know? Please tell me I'm waiting.

>Everyone has the capability to hit level 10
Maybe in your campaign, but if you forgot the point of this thread was arguing about the purpose of an adventurer guild and I said that it makes sense to have one since the average army man is low level and will always be low level and is incapable of becoming a higher level.
Also thinking like yours leads to the domination of lesser races by beings such as elves since logically they would have many many many high level individuals since there is no cap.

Have you willfully been ignoring my arguments? I never said that ONLY adventurers could be high level. All I said is that they have the capability to be such and average Joe doesn't.

you're skirting the point, a 12th level fighter is still an exceptional *individual*, whether an adventurer or leader of an army. the point being disputed here was that "a normal soldier could only ever attain MAYBE a few levels in fighter" in D&D. as the text makes clear, no army of any significant size is going to consist of more than 2nd level troops, because there simply aren't enough fighters of higher levels to compose a sizable force.

Gravity being a wave, say, or that the universe is expanding, are both discoveries that quite literally postdate the lives of your old masters but are now high school physics and newspaper headline fodder.

And you still haven't come up with any reason that the average soldier can't achieve a higher lever other than "nuh-uh, the rules say he can but he actually can't!"

There is absolutely nothing in RAW or real-life analogy that provides that any given level 2 fighter's potential caps out at level 2 because he's a reeeeeeeenormie. You're trying your damned hardest to cram "only special people can achieve" into "people who have achieved are special for it", which is really revealing your shaky grasp on basic logic.

Did you ignore the rest of the text, which said it was a rarity for a common soldier to be even a 1st level fighter and that being one was often enough to get promoted to an officer purely off your merits? The point of the 12th level fighter example was not "yeah, all captains all 12th level", it's "if the captain is 12th level that does not necessarily mean the king is 20th level".

learning what gravity does is one thing
learning why it does, or how it does is another entirely different thing dude.
these fags with everyone is equal are truly stupid

you're a stubborn guy

>Only a few people actually attain any character level. Not every soldier who fights in a war becomes a fighter. Not every urchin who steals an apple from the marketplace becomes a thief. The characters with classes and levels have them because they are in some way special.

Should be mercenary guilds like in renaissance Italy that operate under the permission of the local ruler.

Basically what he said

Gaining levels being a rarity does not imply that a unique spark, rather than just effort, is required to gain levels. Everyone without muscular or skeletal degeneration can quite literally train themselves up to 18 STR in reality, given effort - yet 18 STR is still rare.

user, we don't know why or how gravity does what it does. All we have are the approximations - and while they're getting better year by year the improvements, of course, follow the laborious testing of observational data rather than flashes of inspiration.

Make up your mind, user. Is the bar of super mommylovesme-ness going from level 0 to 1, or 3 to 4, or what? One of your cites says that 0 to 1 is everything, but you've said before you don't mind level 1 or 2 normal people. Another of your cites says that 0 to 1 is common and all the way up to at least 12 is plausible for an accomplished non-adventurer, but you don't like the second part.

i meant understand the logic of why gravity does what does is diferent than simply knowing that it does what it does.