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I am reading the game mastery guide and enjoying it. Does the Game mastery guide have either tables or a disucssion about the percentage of PC classes and levels in relation to the population as a whole? a discussion of say, how many 20 level, 15, level, 10 level characters you possibly could find in a realm? a contintent. I seem to remember back in the Curse of the Crimson throne pathfinder issues, there was a side bar relating to how many leved PCs were in the city of Korvosa capable of casting Cure Disease. Thannks.
How did they get those numbers, and where can i find such materiel in the GMG? thanks.
I am reading the game mastery guide and enjoying it. Does the Game mastery guide have either tables or a disucssion about the percentage of PC classes and levels in relation to the population as a whole? a discussion of say, how many 20 level, 15, level, 10 level characters you possibly could find in a realm? a contintent. I seem to remember back in the Curse of the Crimson throne pathfinder issues, there was a side bar relating to how many leved PCs were in the city of Korvosa capable of casting Cure Disease. Thannks.
How did they get those numbers, and where can i find such materiel in the GMG? thanks.
D&D 3.5 had such numbers in the Dungeon Master's Guide, all based on the population number.
The text in the GMG, on the other hand, states that tying game rules to the population is not what Paizo wants to do with Pathfinder. Therefore, the 3.5 tables of highest level NPC by class in a city/town are gone. The Pathfinder answer is "as many or as few as the GM/designer wants or needs there to be".
While it is nice to have the freedom, I am sure newer GMs who do not have copies of the old DMG would appreciate some guidelines. There are always on-line resources for research, but not everyone knows to look for those, or has time.
My recommendation is to look at the spellcasting rating for the city. As that is the normal highest level spellcasting available, the Cleric level needed to cast a spell of that level tells you the highest normally avaialable Cleric. The leader is probably 2-4 levels higher than that. From there, if you assume there is 1 leader, you can assume there are 2x as many 2 levels lower (so 1 leader at level X, 2 at level X-2. 4 at level X-4, 8 at level X-6, 16 at level X-8, etc.) as Expeditious Retreat does in their A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe supplement (highly recommended), or use the D&D 3.5 method of 2x as many at 1/2 the level (1 at level X, 2 at level X/2, 4 at level X/4, etc.).
I wish they had provided such guidelines too. The DMG's guidelines weren't perfect but they were helpful to give you a starting point and/or give you ideas for what kinds of important (and unimportant) NPCs might be in your town.
Urath DM, your idea to start at caster level is a good idea.
Also, there are town generators online that make use of the guidelines provided by the 3.5 DMG that can still of course be used for Pathfinder if you wish. My favorite is at Myth Weavers:
http://www.myth-weavers.com/generate_town.php?
In addition to generating the stats, it also generates some random NPCs of each level. While they're in 3.5 form they may still come in handy.
How many clerics in a city can cast cure disease? That depends on how important the cure is to the story. If it's just the PCs needing to be cured of incidental damage, then, sure, you can find one. OTOH, if the disease is key part of the current adventure's drama, then getting an NPC to handle the problem is a cop-out.
:)
How many clerics in a city can cast cure disease? That depends on how important the cure is to the story. If it's just the PCs needing to be cured of incidental damage, then, sure, you can find one. OTOH, if the disease is key part of the current adventure's drama, then getting an NPC to handle the problem is a cop-out.
:)
Well, yes, and that's key to why Pathfinder removed them. If you want, or need, 50 different religions with attendant working staff, fine. IF you want or need for it to be that there is only one such hierarchy, also fine. Too many people using the table in the 3.5 DMG probably overlooked the "these are just the normal inhabitants, not counting any the DM adds" part of the rules.
However, a guideline for what level is the local "cap" normally would be good to have. That's probably more of a setting-specific number, but advice to GM world-builders on how to decide where to set that number (note: not what number to choose, but how to choose a number) would have been good.
One problem with publishing a table like that is that it becomes outdated when new classes are added. The original DMG tables are good until you need to have Samurai and Shugenja (for the Oriental lands) or Faris and Barbers (for more Arabian Knights flavored settings) or Warmages and Marshals (for core settings with new books).
There's probably room for a good, short, PDF treatment of city populating rules. Something that guides a DM in customizing the maximum levels a bit, and helps determine how many of each class might be found in the town.
A-ha! It's a brain-teaser. Here's the ansswer: you surreptitiously infect ALL clerics in the city with a heinous and virulent disease. Those that manage to live have access to the spell. You then beat them mercilessly for the information.
Creative Director
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First of all... why would you ever need to know this number? The only reason I can think of is to determine how well a city can combat a plague, and if that's the case, Pathfinder #8's numbers are already pretty solid.
But as for providing tables and formulas to generate population totals... that's a LOT more complex of a problem than it sounds like, and it's honestly not all that important a number, rules-wise, to be able to run most campaigns. At some point, I'd LOVE to do about that's all about kingdoms and cities and the like, building off of the Kingmaker rules and expanding into a super detailed investigation of fantasy nation and city building, and that's a PERFECT place for tables and numbers about how many clerics or wizards or commoners might be in a city. The GameMastery Guide would have been a less perfect place to put that info, so we didn't.
The more valid reasons folks come up with for needing to know exact subtotals of a region's population, though, the more likely I will be to fast track these guidelines, of course! :)
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The more valid reasons folks come up with for needing to know exact subtotals of a region's population, though, the more likely I will be to fast track these guidelines, of course! :)
How does, "because 'The Campaign Mastery Guide' sounds cool and fits with our product naming" rank on the validity scale?
Seriously though, I'd buy a nice guide on handling everything from continent scale diplomacy and warfare down to merchant guilds and trade routes. A mixture of Civilisation and Diplomacy in RPG form.
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In my campaign, this is what ritual magic is for. Communities need to have some way to combat menaces like disease that is beyond the ability of their leaders to easily access. A very specific, long duration ritual that can only be used in a temple would fit the bill nicely.
Spells are nice and quick. They can be cast in seconds & expected to work. Rituals allow more powerful magic than normal to be accessed, but severely limits the scope or utility of the power in question. I started with the 3.5 rules on the topic and ported them to my PFRPG game.
The other nice thing is that since most rituals I have in circulation are place dependent and non-combat, my players have no incentive to try to learn them to game the system.
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Creative Director
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First of all... why would you ever need to know this number? The only reason I can think of is to determine how well a city can combat a plague, and if that's the case, Pathfinder #8's numbers are already pretty solid.I actually had one problem with the alarming numbers in Pathfinder #8 -- they neglected one potential source of remove disease... the number of 6th level clerics who might have Craft Wand as a feat.
Of course, the problem with that, in turn, is economic: churning out dozens of wands of remove disease becomes almost absurdly expensive. But it becomes an interesting dynamic, if one wants to have it, where the wealthiest retired adventurers and nobles of the city have the wealth sufficient to cure the entire population... if they cared to (or were forced to).
One wand of remove disease costs 375x15=5625gp and six days to make, and cures 50 people. (The cleric making the wand has to cast remove disease into the wand once per day, but can still use her other slots to cast the spell for other ill people "after hours".)
But that expense -- more than 100gp base cost per life saved -- is likely to be prohibitive. Like I said, a fascinating dynamic.
Neglecting the Craft Wand variable was a purposeful choice during design, because as you point out, churning out so many wands becomes quite expensive. It also takes clerics out of the day-to-day availability for service. Furthermore, we don't assume there are "magic item factories" in Golarion. Especially as regards clerics, who have a lot more to do in their days than sit at home and make magic items—they have public duties and prayers and all sorts of other things taking up their days.
The more valid reasons folks come up with for needing to know exact subtotals of a region's population, though, the more likely I will be to fast track these guidelines, of course! :)
How "valid" you or anyone may consider this, I have no idea, but I can say this:
I use the DMG guidelines (usually via Myth-Weaver's generator, which also factors in additional variables) for the following reasons:
- Generally speaking: if I am designing a city that I know the PCs are going to spend a lot of time in (or I am just writing up in detail for my campaign world notes), I like having a somewhat random factor helping determine what the town's population is generally like, and what the people there are capable of. While I don't NEED exact totals, per se, the numbers of who's in what class at what level can really help give me ideas and a sense of what the PCs might expect when they show up there. I can of course just decide on numbers, but I like the random factor to help keep it fresh. If I design three towns and I decide that all three towns have a 5th level fighter as the town's constabulary, that can get boring and predictable. The randomness gives me ideas (just as all random generation does). Now, specifically...
-- I know how many guards (roughly) are in town, and what they might be comprised of (do they have 10 fighters leading them, or are they a bunch of low level warriors and commoners?) This particularly can be helpful considering the parties I'VE run at least... somehow knowing who's in the constabulary and how many has been a number I've needed to pull more than once. This may say more about my players than the needs of gamers at large. :)
-- As in the original post, who is the highest level divine caster/character who can provide healing (and are they willing to)? Who else runs the shrines and churches? The "highest spell level" guidelines in the GMG is useful but still leaves a lot to decide on on your own. The churches in my world are very important places, so figuring on who is really led by a powerful emissary of the gods, and who has a shrine run by someone who can maybe squeeze out an orison on a good day can be good to know.
-- How good is the best craftsman? Are there a lot of arcanists or a few (and then I can work on stuff from there like--does that mean there's an outpost of Mages from the Army Magic Corps or what?)?
-- Who are the most important people in town, and about what level would they be?
It should go without saying that if the random generation produces a result that makes no sense, I discard it, and I always adjust for what suits my world and my game's needs. But doing the randomness first, again, helps give me ideas I didn't think of and keeps my towns from becoming predictable.
I'm also aware that the DMG guidelines are far from perfect, and sometimes you roll dice and get 80 monks in a town you have no need for monks for. And you can decide there's a monastery there, reroll, adjust, or move on. But it's still a great starting point. I love to flesh out cities in great detail--and doing so has come to be very useful to me, usually. Some of the coolest NPCs I've come up with have been from this random gen cycle. One little village I rolled up randomly gave me a 20th level commoner with largely low stats but helluva con and skill in profession: fishing; the old man who tells tales of his endless quest to catch the Great Dire Catfish of the Gar River was born. Had I done this with just deciding on a few major characters that I thought "made sense," my NPCs would have been far more boring than this guy.
I am very well aware that "Because DeathQuaker Loves Her Random Generation Tables" is not a good rationale for publishing a whole book (although I do like to believe The Ultimate Toolbox was made just for me ;) ), but I figured I'd note at least where I was coming from. Things like this can be very useful tool for world builders. I'd say the big caveat is that they need to be a source of ideas, not something someone would take as hard and fast rules they must abide by to the letter.
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Creative Director
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The most realistic reason I can give as to why PCs don't retire from being adventurers to take up lives as merchants is that that's not as fun a game to play. I'm not trying to be TOTALLY snarky here... there's a reason why folks in the real world might want to work as a crab fisherman or a lumberjack or be a missionary in a war-torn country or become an astronaut or any number of other jobs that are dangerous, rather than perhaps seek better pay in a more sedentary job in the middle of a safe city.
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Creative Director
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We do talk quite a bit about how to design cities and game worlds in the GameMastery Guide, but that's an enormous topic. The GameMastery Guide should be enough to get folks rolling, though—and it's worth remembering that that book also has to serve Pathfinder as an introduction to the idea of building a campaign world as well.
Something like a "Campaign Creation Guide" would be a GREAT topic for a book that could have the luxury of going into super detail about how to build a campaign world. We just didn't have the room to focus solely on that subject in the Gamemastery Guide.
If/when such a book appears, I'd like it to include some discussions on the commonality of NPCs with PC classes instead of NPC classes, possibly with some NPC-class-only "fudges" to use in place of PC-classed NPCs, for those of us who tend to prefer PC classes as being limited solely to those folks with serious "dramatic impact," rather than no-name thugs (no matter their level).
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One thing i ever thought about magic item construction is that it not done by adding actual gold coins. You must go shopping for ingredients or something that should be a own mercantilistic nightmare (we only skip that for simplicity, but in-game-world it´s shouldn´t be that easilly to mass product).
It would even need entire "gartherer guilds" only to suply a society of magic item constructors.
We do talk quite a bit about how to design cities and game worlds in the GameMastery Guide, but that's an enormous topic. The GameMastery Guide should be enough to get folks rolling, though—and it's worth remembering that that book also has to serve Pathfinder as an introduction to the idea of building a campaign world as well.
Something like a "Campaign Creation Guide" would be a GREAT topic for a book that could have the luxury of going into super detail about how to build a campaign world. We just didn't have the room to focus solely on that subject in the Gamemastery Guide.
Yup.. I love what the GMG has done with cities. The Qualities and Modifiers are very cool. I expect to see more Qualities added in futue products, and look forward to seeing where that leads.
The more valid reasons folks come up with for needing to know exact subtotals of a region's population, though, the more likely I will be to fast track these guidelines, of course! :)How "valid" you or anyone may consider this, I have no idea, but I can say this:
-- snip --
Yes.. I use the tables for same kinds of things, so I agree wholeheartedly.
I'd love to see some future product look into customizing the tables, to represent cultural variations. Some folks don't like Monks in their 'European' lands; maybe rural communities should have more Barbarisna, Druids, and Rangers but fewer Clerics, Fighters, and Mages... etc.
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Something like a "Campaign Creation Guide" would be a GREAT topic for a book that could have the luxury of going into super detail about how to build a campaign world. We just didn't have the room to focus solely on that subject in the Gamemastery Guide.
Time to wield the (+)2B pencil of product schedule annotation!
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Thank you all for taking the time to post thoughts and comments
I suppose all I am looking for is a rule of thumb, which Urath Dm provided me with.
His suggestion was to look at the spell casting rating for a city, His suggestion was to put the highest level caster 2-4 levels above that, and then work down from there. In otherwords one cardinal, two archbishops, four bishops etc. I am merely using these religious titles to illustrate hierarchy, not class level. Or one arch mage at 16 level, two grand mages at 14 level four registered mages at 12 level so on and so forth.
From what I understand, in general, in a society in the late middle ages, early renaissance, the nobility would be around 5% of the population.
Now I know that the percentage of “adventurers” as part of the larger society would probably vary from game world to game world.
I am guessing as a rule of thumb, perhaps, 5% of the population might be adventurers.
I seem to remember in Ebberon, the PCs were the exception, and the majority of the population were 1st level.
I think Greyhawk had higher population of leveled individual higher, and I assume the Pre 4.0 Forgotten realms the population of leveled PCs, including what to me was a large population of “epic “ level NPCs.
I guess I am just curious to know what some rules of thumb are, so when I work on creating my own home brew world, I have some guidelines I can choose to follow, or disregard.
When I have made Home brew worlds in the past, with one, I started with a creation mythology, and the geography. I first set up the plate tectonics to determine where the continents would be and the mountain ranges and coastlines. Next I put in the rivers, making sure they flowed from the mountain ranges to the sea. Next I put in the lines of Latitude. After that I placed the rain forests on the equator, the deserts to the north and south of the equatorial regions, and to either side of that a Mediterranean climate, then a Temperate, then Taiga, then artic.
After that I put down layers if civilizations and where they were. Some of the players notice the level of detail, but most players don’t care. I did it mostly for my own satisfaction.
So I guess I was just looking for a rule of thumb, for adventurers, their levels, and the distribution of leveled casters. Finding a high level wizard under every bush might stretch credulity but my having an idea, that there is one 20 level wizard in an empire that might be similar in size to the roman empire or five wizards are good things to keep in the back of my mind.
Of course the PCs, because they are the “heroes” of the story, would be the exception to all of these trends. I am merely trying to put a background tapestry together and I’m looking for some guidelines.
So for my purposes it is a good idea to know the number of level of casters in my background notes, because then I can do quite a few things, like for example reasonably estimate the effects of a large scale calamities such as a plague, or perhaps the effects of a war, and how much magic will affect things. Will both parties have a single wizard? Or will the warfare be like the “great war” that took place in Ebberon?
If there are only a few wizards, for example, I can for shadow them earlier in the campaign. When I played in an age of worms game, it was a great deal of fun to meet Mordenkainen, and Tenser.
The prevalence of airborne means of transportation, will certainly affect the architecture of military structures etc.
I understand figuring out all of these ideas and questions is half the fun of creating your own world. I’m just looking for a few guidelines. With guidelines, it makes it easer to decide when to stick with them or to abandon them.
James, a campaign creation guide sounds like a an excellent idea. I would pounce on one put out by Paizo.
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When I have made Home brew worlds in the past, with one, I started with a creation mythology, and the geography. I first set up the plate tectonics to determine where the continents would be and the mountain ranges and coastlines. Next I put in the rivers, making sure they flowed from the mountain ranges to the sea. Next I put in the lines of Latitude. After that I placed the rain forests on the equator, the deserts to the north and south of the equatorial regions, and to either side of that a Mediterranean climate, then a Temperate, then Taiga, then artic.
There's something I don't really understand. You are the master and shaper of your world, you place the mountain ranges and rivers, you decide where cities and countries are, and you need somebody to tell you how many lvl 12 Clerics are there per capita ?
If you want a high magic world, do it more like FR. If you want a less magical place, do it like Greyhawk did. When your players ask if somebody with heal is, consider if you want them to have access to that spell right away, force them to sweat it in order to find the right caster or just deny it to them. And make up your answer according to that.
Perhaps there is one Cleric who can cast it, but he's a half-crazy Cleric of Death Goddess and it will be a hard talk to get him to help. Use this opportunity to let your imagination fly, instead of looking for some kind of straitjacket which can blow in your face, if by some chance the guidelines will make something far too easy or far too hard for your players.
Gorbacz, I'd say there's less NEED for it, and more that sometimes, it's NICE to get ideas from somewhere else to jog the creative juices.
If you absolutely, positively, want the only high level divine caster in town to be the crazy old Death Goddess Priest who wanders the streets muttering, "No! I don't want any bacon!" then you can just decide that.
But if you're designing a whole town and you're trying to figure out what is a reasonable number of certain kinds of people to have in the area, it doesn't hurt to have a means of coming up with that number beyond your own best guess--especially remembering that some people are better at coming up with reasonable statistics on their own than others, some people can really use that crutch to help them out.
I absolutely agree that the first place you should go in world design is your own brain. But having tools to assist you when you're undecided or short on ideas is a good thing, IMO. As I said earlier, the important thing is to accept such things as a tool or guideline, not as the hard and fast rule you go to first.
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If/when such a book appears, I'd like it to include some discussions on the commonality of NPCs with PC classes instead of NPC classes, possibly with some NPC-class-only "fudges" to use in place of PC-classed NPCs, for those of us who tend to prefer PC classes as being limited solely to those folks with serious "dramatic impact," rather than no-name thugs (no matter their level).
Totally.
One the one hand, I would like to see more NPC classes in various city write ups. Adepts and Experts are decent classes, and an Adept / Expert can make a halfway decent 'Cloistered Cleric' NPC, to run the church while the adventurers are out there smiting and whatnot. (I'd even be a fan of stealing an Eberron rule and allowing an Adept to choose a single Domain, instead of a Familiar, at 2nd level, if they want.)
A few other NPC classes might be worthwhile additions as well, such as the Arcane Adept variant from The Temple Quarter (by the Game Mechanics), which I would name the Journeyman, just to avoid the clumsiness of 'Divine Adept / Arcane Adept' or the Magewright (from the Eberron Campaign Setting) or the Gleaner (also by Keith Baker, and available on the Giants in the Playground website).
On the other hand, I'm occasionally surprised by how often the Adept is completely overlooked in setting design. Rahadoum and Razmiran should be crawling with Adepts (relatively speaking), providing the services that Clerics cannot provide in those lands. A 'failed priest' who couldn't hack it in the harsh discipline and backstabbing of the temple of Asmodeus and is 'only an Adept,' could cross the Arch of Aroden and make good coin in the Kingdom of Man. Ditto a former Cleric of Aroden, who has lost his clerical ability and retrained to become 'merely an Adept' as he was unwilling to transfer his allegience to Iomedae (although, as a deist, he'd be distinctly unwelcome in Rahadoum, cleric or no cleric!). He gets to retain his faith in his fallen god, and still cast some divine spells, albeit at a slower rate or progression than he had as a Cleric, and without the fun Channel Energy and Domain powers. Adepts probably are popular in the Kalistocracy of Druma as well, as the Kalistocrats seem less-than-fond of philosophical belief-systems other than their own.
But hey, it took Razmir and Rahadoum quite a while to remember that Bards could cast cure wounds spells, so I guess the Adept was even further down on their list... :)
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Whenever I have the "caster availability" problem, I go like this:
Player: What's the highest level Wizard in the area ?
Me: Fidniggot Bunzaboozle is living on a rather high hill in the northern part of the town, as far as level goes.
Player: ...
Me: Yes ?
Player: OK, I need somebody to cast legend lore. Where can I find someone ?
Me: Are you sure you want to ask that ? (Classic GM retort, usually followed by "Yes" and "Roll initiative", in that order)
Player: Uhmmmm ... it can't be any risky to go out and look for a caster, surely ?
Me: No, it isn't. (grabs the Bestiary)
I can think of one time when there would be a 'need' to know how many clerics can cast cure disease based on town size.
And that is if the PC's are planning a siege of a castle or city. It was not uncommon during sieges for rotting animals (horses, cows, etc) to be hurled over the city wall. Especially if that animal died of a disease that was bad for people. Even just a normal rotting cow when it splatters over a city block leaves a lot of rotting flesh around, and that's a big disease draw right there.
So, if you knew the city had enough clerics to shut it down in it's tracks, it's not worth the danger of dealing with them yourself. On the other hand, if you know they have limited clerical backup, a dozen sick mangy horses or cows hurled over the city wall can really stretch those resources very very thin.
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Cure Disease Wands an interesting idea for fighting plagues. Never going to happen though, of course. First is the cost. 100gp per life is way too much. No government or group of nobles or anyone else will pay that much. They may have some made for themselves or an elite group of people and charge double the cost during the plague though. Afterall, no one wants to distribute medicine in quantity in Africa and South America. The world has the capability, but those lives just are not worth the cost to do it. So if the real world is unlikely to make a bit of effort I doubt a fantasy world where people are tangibly evil will do so.
On to the topic of population and NPCs vs PCs. In the NPC section of the GMG book there are 81 NPCs listed. Of those 81 there are 58 with PC classes... so about 71% of them have PC classes. Finally PC classes are beginning to look like they are represented in actual games. It always struck me odd that PC classes were supposed to be about 5% or 10% of the population but in every supplement or adventure published you just NEVER find any... funny how that happened.
[begin humorous rant]
What is the highest level of the cleric in town? You're GM why do you need a freaking book to tell you? If you can't grab something out of the air and run with it, maybe World of Warcraft is better suited to your gaming style... seriously, we aren't playing a game that is controlled by a COMPUTER, we play a game controlled by a PERSON at the table who can make up stuff on his own. THAT is why we play pen & paper RPGs vs computer RPGs.
DOWN with tables that do EVERYTHING... DOWN with books that take the CREATIVITY out of the GMs hands ("You have a level 8 cleric here in town and the book says he can only be level 5, dude. What gives can't ya ever read the rules on how to do anything?") There is a level 8 cleric because this story needs a level 8 cleric. The population in town is composed of 88% PC classes because the story needs that many. The sheriff in this backwoods hole in the wall thorp is a 20th level Fighter because the story needs him there. Don't like it? Go play WOW...
[/end rant] :)
The numbers from the old DMG were off for PC class population anyway. They had pretty numbers that "made sense" and I am pretty sure not one published book EVER used them.
Really who buys "an urban adventure for levels 7-10 featuring one adversary of PC levels but only level 5! and all others are NPC classes levels 1-3! Fun and Adventure and BOREDOM await you!" Not a tagline that gets me to part with my cash! lol
lol NOW that all said... I really like this site cause it gives you all kinds of cool numbers for your town! and this one for kingdoms! lol
sometimes I love the hypocrite in me! lol seriously take the rants with a grain of salt... intended more as humor than anything!
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I think Deathquaker has echoed my sentiments very well. and she has put things better then I have.
All I am saying is that it would be nice to have either a baseline to start from, or some guide lines which I can choose to either follow or ignore. That’s all.
Perhaps the place for this would be a campaign building guide as James Jacobs suggested. It seems that a campaign building guide would be allot of fun and it would be a product I would happily buy.
Cure Disease Wands an interesting idea for fighting plagues. Never going to happen though, of course. First is the cost. 100gp per life is way too much.
If the society understands contagion and has any concept of disease vectors, they'll realize that each cure spell has the potential to save many lives. At that point the problem becomes logistical, not solely economic.
Interesting discussion... on the point of cost and using wands to battle a plague, a large factor also to keep in mind is that the PF Remove Disease spell is no longer an automatic success. There is a caster level check involved now meaning that simple l CL 5 wand will have a hard time dealing with many diseases out there.
And lets not even get into the potential of reinfections... I'd hate to think just how much it would cost to keep a metropolis of 250k people healthy... O,o?
The most realistic reason I can give as to why PCs don't retire from being adventurers to take up lives as merchants is that that's not as fun a game to play. I'm not trying to be TOTALLY snarky here... there's a reason why folks in the real world might want to work as a crab fisherman or a lumberjack or be a missionary in a war-torn country or become an astronaut or any number of other jobs that are dangerous, rather than perhaps seek better pay in a more sedentary job in the middle of a safe city.
I played a game back int the 1st edition days where I played Thief who became a merchant. We all decided to pool our money together and instead of buying magic items we bought a ship around the time we reached 7th level. We then became merchants and gave up our dungeon delving ways.
This actually turned out to be one of the most fun games. We spend hours role playing out getting cargo to ship for sale in foreign markets. My rogue would work with the thieves guild smuggling illegal item in and out of port. There were still fights with thugs trying to high jack our cargo. On the seas there were always interesting adventures dealing with pirates, monsters, storms. Sometime we had to go a shore to find something to fix the ship. We had to deal with mutiny and moral of the crew. Sometimes war would break out and we would pressed in to service of the crown. I can tell you being merchant in a fantasy world is no end of adventure.
It all started out pretty sedentary and we made good money being merchants. Then the DM really spiced things up over time.
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On the other hand, I'm occasionally surprised by how often the Adept is completely overlooked in setting design. Rahadoum and Razmiran should be crawling with Adepts (relatively speaking), providing the services that Clerics cannot provide in those lands. A 'failed priest' who couldn't hack it in the harsh discipline and backstabbing of the temple of Asmodeus and is 'only an Adept,' could cross the Arch of Aroden and make good coin in the Kingdom of Man. Ditto a former Cleric of Aroden, who has lost his clerical ability and retrained to become 'merely an Adept' as he was unwilling to transfer his allegience to Iomedae...
As an aside, I'd love to see the designers views on retraining classes, for precisely these reasons.
A Warrior, promoted from the ranks to officer, could he improve some (or all?) of his Warrior levels to Fighter?
And a Commoner who comes into money, and buys a business; rather than add new Expert levels on top, why not let him swap out some of those dead levels?
Make it so improving a level in a crappy class is cheaper in xp than buying a new level, since some of it you already know?
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Ditto a former Cleric of Aroden, who has lost his clerical ability and retrained to become 'merely an Adept' as he was unwilling to transfer his allegience to Iomedae...As an aside, I'd love to see the designers views on retraining classes, for precisely these reasons.
A Warrior, promoted from the ranks to officer, could he improve some (or all?) of his Warrior levels to Fighter?
And a Commoner who comes into money, and buys a business; rather than add new Expert levels on top, why not let him swap out some of those dead levels?
Make it so improving a level in a crappy class is cheaper in xp than buying a new level, since some of it you already know?
My choice would be to have NPC classes use a faster exp track, and if they upgrade to a 'real boy,' they use the normal chart for the campaign and have to 'pay the difference,' although they can't gain levels in this trade if they downgrade from Cleric to Adept (for example), and they'd almost always be one level lower in their new class than they were in the class being 'traded away.' The process takes time, and might not even be possible, depending on the GM's whim. (Cleric of Aroden -> Adept seems like a no-brainer 'though. Fallen Paladin -> Fighter could be an option as well, since a Fallen Paladins is pretty darn close to a Warrior.)
The 'always one level lower' thing wouldn't count for someone trading away a single level of Expert to become a Rogue or a single level of Adept to become a Druid or something, 'though. That sort of thing would be commonplace, IMO, since any character who started past the age of 12 probably had a level in Expert or Commoner or Aristocrat anyway, and it's not like they paid any XP to become a 1st level Expert...
As long as there are no official rules for this sort of 'class retraining,' it's in my power to do as I please. Mwa-ha-ha! I kinda dread some sort of official rules to come in, since they'll probably require feats to be expended or involve negative levels or a journey to some mystical re-training site or the use of some powerful 'psychic reincarnation' spell that I don't care to deal with.