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So assuming the King isn't an idiot, that boils down to requiring four /thousand/ guys for ever CR 14 anything that props up somewhere. Every iron golem, roper, lich, froghemoth or so on, requires a kingdom to potentially dispatch upwards of 3,000 dudes to deal with it (and that's assuming a standing battlefield engagement.
For one thing - how many of those do you expect there to be in your world? I expect them to be extremely few and far between. And the ones that do exist aren't going to come out into the open where they're likely to be killed by a dogpile of 3000 troopers.
For another - so what? Going by standard wealth guidelines - that CR 14 encounter would net them 15-20k gold. That'd more than pay their wages for the week or so it takes. Sure - you'd lose some troopers - but I'm not sure how many when you overwhelm them that much.
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High level people do NOT need to be good in combat. Most are very poor in combat. Having a low BAB progression and no spells can mean that 9th level NPC merchant makes a fine snack for a Bear. Where that same bear is a yawn fest to a standard 9th level adventurer.
This! Very much. That is especially true if the NPC's attribute and feat choices were not combat focused to begin with (Skill Focus: Sense Motive and Skill Focus: Appraise make more sense for the 9th level merchant than Power Attack). Add in age penalties for middle age, old age, or venerable categories and the 9th level merchant may not even be a match for a first level warrior with youth and a good strength score on his side. (On the other hand, if he still is a match for a 2nd or 3rd level warrior, that's fine too. History and fiction are replete with examples of older characters who turn out to still have some grit. Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Turino is a good modern example though he is more of a retired fighter or warrior than an expert).
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Well that's my point. You need to throw like the population of a town at one of those guys to bring them down unless you've got some higher level people available.
I expect dragons to be reasonably common, for the sole reason that adventurers routinely run into the bastards. That means they're out there.
And again, dragons might not be common, but the other big scary stuff shows up semi regular.
Fire giants are CR 10, and come in tribe of up to 30 members (not all combatants, but some of whom themselves are leveled 7th or 8th level for a magicy type and 9-10 for the fire giant king (CR 19)), along with 12-22 trolls, hellhounds, and red dragons.
They're actually tougher then the dragon for a kingdom to deal with (that being said they have dragons) as going to war with the fire giants means you're going to be fighting diminutive armies of fire giants, small armies of trolls, hellhounds, and fine armies of dragons.
And these jerks might just wander down from the hills. Even one CR 10 fire giant is going to be trouble unless your local militia is like 500 or so men. If the king comes down to play, all by his lonesome, he's going to ruin your day. And that's just /a/ fire giant king. Since you encounter a lot of fire giants in a campaign setting, I doubt they only have one king.
Hell a raiding party of 12 nitwit tier giants like Hill Giants is still /12/ CR 7 giants and assorted little gribblies, and hill giants are as common as grass and apparently wander around all over the damn place spreading misery.
Again, like on the past page. I agree PCs should be the stars of the story, but the setting needs to allow for several stories, and also shouldn't immediately collapse into a nightmare hellhole of death, slavery or capitulation just because there aren't 'PCs' around at a given time.
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In large part I suppose it depends upon whether you think of the bestiaries as encyclopedias of everything that DOES exist in your world, or options for everything that COULD exist in your world.
I just feel that if the former, you end up with crazy worlds like Forgotten Realms where you need groups of mid to high level adventurers around every bend for the world to function.
I prefer the latter version.
*shrug*
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Yeah it comes down to world design. It also depends on if you plan to re-use your setting or not.
That's really the primary method for figuring out the demographics. A world where the creatures from the bestiary exist enough to 'feed' various adventuring groups results in a world where people need to be intrinsically badass to deal with it (or else an unlivable crap-shack like the Points of Light setting).
An alternative which might be tough to do though is to limit the monster populations, and then have them just get like..eliminated.
Like that young green dragon is the only one left, period. Or that tribe of inbred ogres is inbred because they're the last twenty on the planet. But that'd result in a somewhat odder campaign.
In your grandfathers time they didn't have cure light wounds.6 billion is almost the population of the modern world, with the level of health care and food production. When my grandfather was born (Sometime in the 40s)the world population was around 2.2 billion. World population around the year 1000 was estimated to be somewhere around 300 million.
Fantasy settings have more medieval technology levels, so should have more medieval population levels. Still, magic can pump that up, so about 1 billion is probably the highest you should figure. And even that may be pushing it.
Cure light wounds is irrelevant here. It might save some number of people but that is relatively unimportant to facts we can know about Golarion.
The largest populaiton center (in Avistan at least and probably the planet) has a population of 300,000. Which is relatively small by modern standards. On Earth cities achieved that size somewhere around 500 to 300 BC. Rome wouldn't reach a million people until roughly 1 AD. Population growth is exponential, with an apparent change in the populaiton growth factor around 1000 AD.
Edit: To further clarify why cure light wounds is irrelevant we need to look at birth and death rates over a large enough scale. If were considering human that scale should be approximately 120 years (the maximum possible length of a human life span). While you might save an individual from a horrible death using CLW, unless he actually has more children or becomes immortal he doesn't contribute further to the change in globabl populaiton.
Now, in truth it is reasonable that some people saved by CLW might go on to have children they wouldn't have otherwise, but estimating this effect is near impossible. In my opinion it's probably small enough to be negligble.
This is a world building exercise, the current population level in adventure publishing Golarion has literally zero bearing on the conversation. The current tech level in Golarion has zero bearing on the conversation. The point was made the people die of injuries without modern medical tech, I pointed out that solutions far better than modern medical tech are already available in the game system.
That is all.
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Also PF is not generally a Points of Light setting but it is a "the wilderness is dangerous" setting. Also depending on where you are there are varying degrees of governing authority with the ability to respond to situations. I mean the River Kingdoms pretty much are a Point of Light situation and when you get there the "light" is held by murderous bandits. Large sections of Varisia are wild, almost all the southern continent, are we calling the shackles government. Certainly Andoran, Nidal, Taldor, Cheliax, Osiri, Absoam and other places will have different resources and responses. However in all of these places you run into squirrely humanoid tribes running amok from time to time. Part of the fun of Gol is that it incorporates from multiple genres. You can play a pirate game in a few places, Points of Light game in the River Kingdoms, nation-state level intrigue around the inner sea oh and high science fantasy in Numeria.
If you want to talk about a world building aspect that breaks down its that all these places co-exist cohesively and separately at the same time.
If you really want to make these numbers work out you probably need to seriously consider factoring in mortality rates for each level. The higher your level the more likely you are to die before reaching the next level.
As far as my code goes, it is already factored in. One 20th level character among 25 millions people is rare enough, I think, to show how rare, and thus how hard it is to survive up to that point. Actually, there aren't even that many 25 million people communities... Absalom, with its 310,000 people, is one of the largest cities on Golarion, dunno if the largest, and it gives me that the highest level NPC is a 14th level, which for my games is perfectly fine, and if I need to add someone unusually higher than that for story purposes, nothing prevents that.
Also, it's not implicit that those high-level NPCs are alive. They might be dead. The Lich or Vampire kind of dead.
By your logic - a 75ish year old granpa (level 9ish) could beat the snot out of a 20 year old (level 2-3)! Sorry - but that's just dumb.You never met my grandfather.
In my experience most old men that aren't in terrible health, and some that are, are actually very good at kicking around the younger generations. They tend to learn a thing or two in life.
The way I like to do this is:
Postulate: For every given person at any given level theres a 50% chance they survived long enough to level again
its like counting in binary...
if the question is about a random dude you meet on the street...
simply roll any even numbered die you like..
odds he rolls again, evens he stays at that level
so if you can manage to roll 19 'odds' in a row you just met a 20th level character... you just flipped a coin 19 times and got 19 'heads' or 19 'tails' in a row...
binary breakdown of the odds then looks like this:
chance of 1st level or 1 in 2.
chance of 2nd level or 1 in 4
chance of 3rd level or 1 in 8
chance of 4th level or 1 in 16
chance of a 5th level or 1 in 32
chance of a 6th level or 1 in 64
chance of a 7th level or 1 in 128 (less than 1% of the people you randomly run into are level 7 or above...)
chance of an 8th level or 1 in 256
chance of a 9th level or 1 in 512
chance of a 10th level or 1 in 1024
chance of an 11th level or 1 in 2048
chance of a 12th level or 1 in 4096
chance of a 13th level or 1 in 8192
chance of a 14th level or 1 in 16384 (worse odds than rolling a 1 on percentile twice in a row)
chance of a 15th level or 1 in 32768
chance of a 16th level or 1 in 65536
chance of a 17th level or 1 in 131072
chance of a 18th level or 1 in 262144
chance of a 19th level or 1 in 524288
chance of a 20th level or 1 in 1048576 (one in a million baby! more rare than rolling 1 on percentile 3 times in a row)
I used this rule to roll up a few pirate ships, presuming 20 people on board
I got a ship with levels 7 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
and a ship with levels 7 6 5 5 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
so despite the odds of a level 7 character being one in 128, with 20 people on board I managed to get 2 ships with 7th level characters right off the bat.
seems to work out pretty good for me
so in absalom we have, at any given moment...
155000 first levels
77500 second levels
38750 third levels
19375 fourth levels
9687 fifth levels
4843 sixth levels
2421 seventh levels
1210 eighth levels
605 ninth levels
302 tenth levels
151 eleventh levels
75 twelfth levels
37 thirtheenth levels
18 fourteenth levels (I hear one of them has been identified as a resident?)
9 fiftteenth levels
4 sixteenth levels
2 seventeenth levels
1 eighteenth levels
that only leaves 10 people unaccounted for and half of those are in the party... and the likelihood that anyone you run into randomly on the street being above level 9 is less than 1 percent. the 33 people that are 14th level or a above are probably non resident adventuring groups... 6 or 7 high level party and a 3 guys level 17 and above that had to 'pop by town' for some reason? Sounds reasonable to me.
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In my experience most old men that aren't in terrible health, and some that are, are actually very good at kicking around the younger generations. They tend to learn a thing or two in life.By your logic - a 75ish year old granpa (level 9ish) could beat the snot out of a 20 year old (level 2-3)! Sorry - but that's just dumb.You never met my grandfather.
Sorry - but by 75 you've started to go downhill too much physically. I'm not saying that an extrememly tough 75 year old couldn't take out an average 20 year old. But an average 75 year old wouldn't stand a chance, nor would the most badass 75 year old ever have a chance against a top tier 20 yr old. By 75 - you have a decent shot of major health issues as well.
Sorry - but by 75 you've started to go downhill too much physically. I'm not saying that an extrememly tough 75 year old couldn't take out an average 20 year old. But an average 75 year old wouldn't stand a chance, nor would the most badass 75 year old ever have a chance against a top tier 20 yr old. By 75 - you have a decent shot of major health issues as well.In my experience most old men that aren't in terrible health, and some that are, are actually very good at kicking around the younger generations. They tend to learn a thing or two in life.By your logic - a 75ish year old granpa (level 9ish) could beat the snot out of a 20 year old (level 2-3)! Sorry - but that's just dumb.You never met my grandfather.
Wow, age discrimination much?
The actual aging process stops long before 75 and any other loss of ability is because of failure to take care of ones self or health related issues. A reasonably active 75 year old in good health is just as good as a 65 year old, is probably not much worse off than a 55 year old.
Since you've brought up top tier, the trope of the ancient kung fu master kicking ass is very much accurate. I've personally seen it in action, that experience really does count for a lot. In hand to hand combat, skill always trumps physical ability unless your physical ability is so bad as to restrict how much of that skill you use.
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Trying to make a statistical model will incur more problems than it is worth. Define your main areas of influence populate theae from the top down, add in unaligned medium to high level npcs and your world will work out more smoothly.
1 king lv 18
the kings direct servants see ldrship
The kings companions and allies lv 15-20
Their servants if any.
The guilds and unaligned leadership/nobility lv 5-20
The general populace mostly lv 1-5
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Wow, age discrimination much?
Nope - just logic.
Tell me - where are all of the 75 yr old successful boxers & MMA fighters?
And the ancient kung fu master will take on an average 20 yr old. I already admitted as much. But as they say - a good big man will always beat a good little man. The same is true for age.
Trying to make a statistical model will incur more problems than it is worth. Define your main areas of influence populate theae from the top down, add in unaligned medium to high level npcs and your world will work out more smoothly.
1 king lv 18
the kings direct servants see ldrship
The kings companions and allies lv 15-20
Their servants if any.
The guilds and unaligned leadership/nobility lv 5-20
The general populace mostly lv 1-5
Why is the king level 18? What's so special about royalty that they get umpteen extra levels? Outside of nations where monarchy is expected to slay dragons as a coming of age ritual, I'd expect kings and queens to be low-level aristocrats.
The issue with the army of level 1 guys fighting a CR 14 dragon is not a perfect model for several reasons. (However, I recognize that it may have been oversimplified to better illustrate the point, rather than being proposed as an example of what an actual army would look like).
First, what about Elite soldiers? The Paratroopers or Army Rangers of the world? In an army of 3,000 soldiers, isn't it likely that there is at least a company (approx. 100+) of level 5 Fighters? That seems reasonable. Even an entire battalion (say, approx 400+) of elite soldiers doesn't seem like an unreasonable resource for a moderately affluent kingdom.
Then what about highly specialized covert units like the Golarion (or whatever fantasy world) equivalent of Special Forces? It doesn't seem hard to believe that a decent sized kingdom would have maybe a dozen level 8 or 9 troops of various classes who handle a wide range of duties, from espionage/counter-espionage to providing security for dignitaries (and protecting the king's treasury) to serving as a super-elite strike force in times of war.
What level is the average Sable Company Marine?
What about the use of specialized creatures themselves, like hippogriffs? Is it unreasonable to think that the kingdom might (on rare occasions) be able to call on a friendly Gold Dragon to prevent thousands of people from being slaughtered?
What about magic items? A mere two squads (say 20 people) of first level Wizards armed with wands of Fireball (or Lightning Bolt, etc.), can make a big difference, I would think. Not to mention just having a single 4th level Rogue/Ranger for every 100 soldiers to do some scouting and to harass the enemy. They could have potions of Invisibility and a variety of weapons or magic items to make them more effective.
I don't know. Even small groups of slightly higher level soldiers with moderately decent magic items can make a big difference.
All of these things would contribute to making a world with a lower average NPC level seem more plausible.
I should clarify this isn't to determine opposition to the party it's for the world setting. How much of the population are level x affects all sorts of things. For the opposition sure it's whatever necessary but if you walk into a village there's rules for highest level caster and the like but if 90 of the 100 people are less than 6th level it allows quick setting up of power balances.Purely as a world-building exercise, I like to configure the population along a binary logarithmic scale. That is, I presume that one-half (e.g. 50%) of the population is first-level, and then halve that percentage for each successive level.
So 25% of the population is 2nd-level, 12.5% of the population is 3rd-level, etc. I think that nicely makes the higher-level characters (including the PCs) feel like they're major movers and shakers as they gain more and more power.
with a population of 6 billion, this makes at least 5,500 people level 20.
not saying this is a problem or anything, I just feel like giving numbers clarity.
Erh...that's only 9.53674E-05 % of the population.
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The issue with the army of level 1 guys fighting a CR 14 dragon is not a perfect model for several reasons. (However, I recognize that it may have been oversimplified to better illustrate the point, rather than being proposed as an example of what an actual army would look like).
Yep - I built a group a level 1 guys designed to deal with bigger things as an extreme example of how low level NPCs can deal with middling tier threats. Spook then took a single dragon as the opposite extreme.
And when it comes to wand users - I still say that they should probably have acid arrow wand backup to deal with anything that has SR. (and isn't immune to acid)
If 20 cast acid arrow from wands at a dragon that wasn't green, assuming they could hit it's crappy touch AC (having the crit be canceled out by the chance of rolling a 1) then that'd be 200 damage over 2 rounds with no chance of SR and a range of 520ft. (there may be a better spell choice for this - but it's what I thought of off the top of my head)
How I design it is based on this system:
1. Does the NPC have a name?
No: They have no levels in any class and 1HP.
Yes: Continue to 2
2. Is the NPC meant to be a combat encounter?
No: They have no levels in any class and 1HP.
Yes: Continue to 3
3. Is the combat meant to be a challenge?
No: They have a few levels in NPC or PC classes.
Yes: They have an amount of levels in PC classes similar to the PCs.
The way I see it, unless you want the PCs to attack the NPC in the course of the story, you should never worry about class levels or HP. Only important characters in a story should ever have levels in a class and the rest are just background.
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Wait, it's been some time since I've done any reading on it, but what was so bad and unlivable about the Points of Lights paradigm?
How I design it is based on this system:
1. Does the NPC have a name?
No: They have no levels in any class and 1HP.
Yes: Continue to 22. Is the NPC meant to be a combat encounter?
No: They have no levels in any class and 1HP.
Yes: Continue to 33. Is the combat meant to be a challenge?
No: They have a few levels in NPC or PC classes.
Yes: They have an amount of levels in PC classes similar to the PCs.The way I see it, unless you want the PCs to attack the NPC in the course of the story, you should never worry about class levels or HP. Only important characters in a story should ever have levels in a class and the rest are just background.
Levels for NPCs and some of the NPC classes were included to create social challenges and by giving the levels you create a system where it is easy to assign an xp value to the social encounter. You may never need to fight the kings baker the 14th level baker but by befriending him you learn the vice roy has a sweet tooth bunt only when Hildegard the queens handmaid is free to deliver it. Its not a fight but you get xp.
Wow, age discrimination much?Nope - just logic.
Tell me - where are all of the 75 yr old successful boxers & MMA fighters?
And the ancient kung fu master will take on an average 20 yr old. I already admitted as much. But as they say - a good big man will always beat a good little man. The same is true for age.
I didn't say kung fu master win against the average guy. I've seen the Kung Fu master make some of the most talented martial artists I've ever encounters look like bumbling amateurs.
The 75 year old kung fu master was the 20 year old badass at one point and has spent those 55 years difference only getting better.
Wow, age discrimination much?Nope - just logic.
Tell me - where are all of the 75 yr old successful boxers & MMA fighters?
And the ancient kung fu master will take on an average 20 yr old. I already admitted as much. But as they say - a good big man will always beat a good little man. The same is true for age.
I didn't say kung fu master win against the average guy. I've seen the Kung Fu master make some of the most talented martial artists I've ever encounters look like bumbling amateurs.
The 75 year old kung fu master was the 20 year old badass at one point and has spent those 55 years difference only getting better.
Unless a significant portion of the population are kung-fu masters, this doesn't really seem all that relevant. Kung-fu masters of that caliber are exactly the type of people we'd expect to have class levels.
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Wow, age discrimination much?Nope - just logic.
Tell me - where are all of the 75 yr old successful boxers & MMA fighters?
And the ancient kung fu master will take on an average 20 yr old. I already admitted as much. But as they say - a good big man will always beat a good little man. The same is true for age.
I didn't say kung fu master win against the average guy. I've seen the Kung Fu master make some of the most talented martial artists I've ever encounters look like bumbling amateurs.
The 75 year old kung fu master was the 20 year old badass at one point and has spent those 55 years difference only getting better.
I'm going to go ahead and concede the point that 75 yr olds can be badass. I never tried to dispute it! But if they were actually better than people 50yrs younger, there'd be 75yr old boxers & MMA fighers. There aren't. It's extremely rare that they're past 40.
Whatever the case - that still means nothing to my original point, that it's silly for the AVERAGE 75 yr old to trounce the AVERAGE 20 something yr old, which is what the math I was commenting on had happen.
Edit: Semi-ninja'd.
I feel the need to link to my npcs get experience too post again which links to SKR's own Theory about Peasants article and many great NPCs and old NPC world building threads from ENWorld about how NPCs will level up. Check out those 75 year old high level NPCs to see how much they kick ass or not. Commoner vs Expert? check, Commoner Campaign log (thread lost as wizards boards suck, but let me tell you it was great).
As for scaling NPC levels by 50% first level, 25% 2nd, ... I like the 1xp a day method or the suriving a year/month is CR x encounter method much better as it does not scale linear and has a cutoff at about level 8 iirc. I.e. you don't get to level 20 after 20 years. Also i think any 1st level PC/NPC is an untested adolescent/beginner. Anyone over 20 should have at least two levels.
Another excellent old thread about demographics, NPC levels and worldbuilding: A village of NPCs, and Average Joe Farmer is a professional.
Dot
and with a land surface area of 5.7 million square miles, an even population distribution on earth would give you... one 20th level character for every land mass equivalent in size to.... Belgium. Removing the assumption of an even population distribution there would be... 8 of the 6000 20th level characters in new york city.
Thats 1000 'movers and shakers' of 14th level or higher in new york city's resident population of 8.337 million people at this point.
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Still less than Waterdeep.
Well you are probably right LazarX I was think more than the 8. Though the 20th level characters would be only peons to the rest of the epic level residents.
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Frankly my biggest point of reference always has been the legend lore spell, essentially anybody level 11 and above is considered legendary.
Level 6-7 people are reasonably powerful, pulling stunts like the big heroes of lord of the ring, so not to be ignored.
This of course only applies to the humanoid demographic. Monsters operate on a different levels.
A cr 9 Frost giant is a basic one, like, a frost giant without any kind of training, a runt frost giant in their society. Usually a leader of a Frost Giant tribe is 7th to 9th level of ranger or barbarian, I suppose nowadays, can add Hunter to the list of classes as well. So very strong frost giant are cr 16 to 18, that's pretty significant.
While searching older threads I stumbled. Across this from the inner sea guide. . .
Standard (1st–5th level): This is where the vast majority of people are. It's very VERY uncommon to see NPCs with NPC class levels beyond this range.
Exceptional (6th–10th level): A significant number of national leaders and movers and shakers are of this level, along with heroes and other notables.
Powerful (11th–15th): These NPCs are quite rare; normally only a handful of such powerful characters exist in most nations, and they should be leaders or specially trained troops most often designed to serve as allies or enemies for use in high-level adventures.
Legendary (16th–20th): These are EXCEPTIONALLY rare, and when they appear they should only do so as part of a specific campaign; they all should be supported with significant histories and flavor.
Which while it works well for the higher levels is a bit vague in the middle and I was wondering how much of the population should be what level?
Right now I'm leaning towards. . .
Standard = 90%
Exceptional = 10% give or take a look. 000000001 margin
Powerful = 4 to 30 depending on country size and importance.
Legendary = 1 to 6 depending on country size and importance.
If you are trying to create a campaign world the 3.5 Dungeon Master Guide helps you to determine how many PC's of each level exist.
IIRC you first find the highest level PC of a certain class, and the number increases by a certain amount for lower level PC's, but mostly it won't matter, and I would not advise limiting yourself with such numbers. I would have my plot NPC's, and the rest as needed.
Is that so bad though? You have one 20th level Belgian who may be a 20th level commoner. As for the thousand movers and shakers in new York they could also be wholly or partly Npc levels, only moving and shaking in art/finance/politics/high society and while very influential in the state of new York less so in the rest of America and only heard of by experts in their field overseas.
Commoners should never be 20th level. Maybe never more than 4th or 5th level.
Any significant commoner should either have his commoner levels retrained as another class, or be multiclassed commoner / x.
YMMV.
I tend to agree that there will be as many high-level NPCs as my needs as DM require. No special mathematical formulae required. <g>
So many level 1 mechanics in the world, at least most of them have master-work tools.
Anyone seen any (experts) above level 3?
just a couple. generally most non named npcs are between levels 2 and 5 by the material paizo has put out and the jobs given to those npcs by paizo. for example the average farmer we have seen is second level and is either commoner 1 expert 1 or commoner 2 or expert 2 or commoner 1 warrior 1 depending on the culture and immediate setting the farmer is in. barkeeps tend towards expert 2 commoner 1 or expert 3.
if the question is about the galorian setting and using what paizo has put out then the thread thanael pointed to uses the npcs provided by paizo, along with the general guidelines they have provided for settlements and settlement building, along with wage earning using skills, some rudimentry work on paizo taxes and hits on the wealth building rules for downtime.