in 4e a 20th level character who is naked and unconscious still has a 20 AC (effectively 15 because of unconsciousness). If the unconscious character is in his plate +4, he has a 32 AC. So even if he’s completely, slack-jawed surprised and completely surrounded with a cumulative -1 for each flanking creature he still has at least a 24 AC, and probably more. low level guards are still pretty much incapable of hitting him without 20s.

For each attack directed at the character, they begin accumulating a penalty to AC. This penalty is meant to mimic a character defending themselves from multiple fronts. Sure, the first attacks is parried easily, but that has left the fighter more open. -2 to AC for all ensuing attacks. During the same round, another attack against the fighter increases the penalty to -3. The penalty increases by 1 for each subsequent attack. So, a fighter beset by a group of five enemies focused on him has a -5 penalty to AC against the last attacker. He is literally at his limit attempting to thwart that many enemies.

He’s “chaotic” in that he abandoned the laws and traditions of his people and clan to pursue the taboo of wizardry. He’s evil in that, in order to further his studies in a land/place without any wizard schools (i.e. the dwarven homeland), he consorted with evil spirits and demons for instruction in the arcane arts, which has tainted his soul. At no time has he shown that he wants to go around murdering civilians or challenging town guards. IN FACT, as I remember it, it was the life-loving, tree-hugging ELF rogue who used a goblin child as a shield, NOT the dwarven wizard.

Actually, maybe my dwarf is neutral evil.

So, #3 remains irrelevant.

You guys wouldn’t have even known he was evil at all if it weren’t for Ed forcing everyone to say their alignments in the open. What ever happened to a little privacy?

The general premise I was working from is a single character, particularly as he goes up in levels can really toe the line with another individual, but an be threatened by low-level enemies if they can swamp him. That just makes sense. as all previous editions worked the mechanical presumption was near total marginalization of low level creatures at high levels. If that’s what you want, fine, that can be fun too, but the rules shouldn’t be built on that presumption.

@Philo Pharynx, the fixes you suggested aren’t sufficient for me. #3 is currently irrelevant for me (though our dwarf turned out to be CE last night, so maybe not entirely). The examples I was giving above were extrapolations of stuff from mostly my teenaged games, and at least one of those guys was a real dick. But even if its not he players being dicks, the previous editions fall flat when dealing with high level characters and low level troopers of any sort.

For instance our last campaign spent a lot of time in Rome during a civil war between an arcane secret police and ‘godsworn’ rebels. there were relatively high level guys on each side, but most of the fighting was between legionaries from either camp. Yet the party went through them like a hot knife through butter, several times, even when fighting companies of them. by virtue of their levels and the game’s mechanics the only real way to challenge the party was with high level lieutenants all the time. In effect I was forced to script my story to the mechanics of the game, rather than the other way around. changing it too my liking took a hell of a lot of effort, and drastic house-ruling on my part. Much as I like coming up with rules, I don’t really like to reinvent a game to fit my story.

Also I really don’t have a problem with stunning and dazing being deadly. They really should be if you think about it. Mindflayers? in 1/2e? scary as hell. no problem with that really. I know other people might not agree, but again, nerfing that mechanic should be an option, not the standard IMO.

One potential idea is that you assume active defense, based on Dex. Most basic combat actions assume that you are also actively defending yourself, so you get the Dex mod to your AC (as normal). If you take certain complex combat actions, like a roundhouse kick or some kind of crazy rogue attack, you’re focusing too much on the attack. Thus you lose your Dex mod to AC for that round. This penalty would be applied in place of attacks of opportunity for actions like a bull rush or disarm or whatever other fancy combat maneuvers you want to create, which streamlines combat by eliminating all those extraneous AoO rolls.

However, I wonder if this wouldn’t fix one problem to exacerbate another problem. Combat paralysis is already caused by the numerous options in offense. If we offer just as many defenses, are we not doubling the problem? Wouldn’t slog down combat, particularly at the higher levels when there are multiple interrupt abilities, leaving a player wondering if he should spend his turn doing his acrobatic flip at a +2 and hopefully get combat advantage, or if he should do his whirling cloak dodge at +5 and just avoid the hit, or just take the hit and then use the next action to make his attack. Is there any way that this could be helped?

Next, stunning and dazing become deadly effects. Not being able to make an active defense would mean a probable hit.

This will also affect PC’s. The smart tactic in to overwhelm one creature. Smart players will change their tactics to this and the challenge goes way down. They’d pick powers that stun and daze as often as possible.

There are a lot of consequences to this change that will ripple through the game.

As for your original problem, there’s several easy solutions to your problems.
1) No town is an island. The feudal system goes both ways. If you mess with the town guards, then the local lord will send men against you. If you defeat them, his lord will come after you. Eventually you’ll get the king’s men coming after you, and he’s going to have some high level people to spank them.
2) Retired adventurers. A lot of adventurers die. But enough survive and decide that they have enough money to live comfortably. Some of them in the cities, some of them in sleepy old towns. When the players are standing there with the town guards stacked like cordwood, then old Ben Kenobi comes out and suggests that they give the peasant his heirloom back.
3) Don’t play with dicks.