How many casters are there in the world?

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

Looking back over some previous articles I found this: Medieval Warfare and Magic - A Discussion (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2n2qv&page=1?Medieval-Warfare-and-Magic-A- Discussion). The article is an excellent discussion about various comparisons, tactics, etc in dealing with larger conflicts in a PF universe.

As I looked into it deeper, some of the demographics involved started to unfold for me, here is what I came to understand.

1) Disclaimer: my campaign is hard capped at level 13 (vs the level 20 of PF RAW), which means it's spell levels are capped at 7th level spells. It is a low magic environment with few magic items. It is based on that statement these figures were generated.

2) RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners), and only the remaining 5% as possessing a PC class.

3) Of the 5% with PC classes, 4% are Non-spellcasters (Fighter, Rogue, etc) & the remaining 1% are the spell casters (combined arcane and divine).

4) This amounts to about 10,000 casters, across all classes and levels, out of a 1 million population. It also means that martial characters (non-casters) are 400 times more likely to appear than a caster of any class.

For my campaign I determined that 70% of the total world wide casters are Divine, while the other 30% are Arcane.

For Divine Casters I broke it down as 1/3 partial casters (Ranger, Paladin, etc) make up 50% of the total number of divine casters. 2/3 partials (WarPriest, Inquisitor, Hunter) account for 30% and the remaining 20% are composed of Full caster classes such as the Cleric or Druid.

For Arcane classes 73% are 2/3 classes (Bard, Magus, etc), 2% are 1/3 (the Bloodrager specifically)*, and the remaining 25% are full casters such as a Wizard or Sorcerer. NOTE: in the event the Bloodrager (or other 1/3 class) isn't being used, the Arcane caster 2/3 class would be calculated at 75%.

Levels for the casters were broken down across spell levels as such:

1st Level - L1 Spells - 40% of the total caster population world wide
3rd Level - L2 Spells - 20%
5th Level - L3 Spells - 15%
7th Level - L4 Spells - 10%
9th Level - L5 Spells - 8%
11th Level - L6 Spells - 5%
13th Level - L7 Spells - 2%

These figures are an estimate I created for a more or less linear progress across the levels. By my figures those who could cast a level 7 spell account for only 2% of the total world wide casters. Which is to say in our Ancient Roman city, with 10,000 total casters, only 200 of them ever reach level 13 (max level).

Let's take a closer look at how the numbers break down if we stay with Ancient Rome as our model.

Divine Casters (.7% of a 1 million population)

Level...1/3...2/3...Full
L1.....1400...840...560
L3......700...420...280
L5......525...315...210
L7......350...210...140
L9......280...168...112
L11.....175...105....70
L13......70....42....28

Arcane Casters (.3% of a 1 million population)

Level...1/3...2/3...Full
L1......24....876...300
L3......12....438...150
L5.......9....329...113
L7.......6....219....75
L9.......5....175....60
L11......3....110....38
L13......1.....44....15

Non-PC casters / Martial classes (4% of a 1 million population)

Level..How many at that level
L1.....16,000
L3......8,000
L5......6,000
L7......4,000
L9......3,200
L11.....2,000
L13.......800

This final part of the chart covers non-casting classes such as the Fighter or Rogue, but also covers archetypes which convert casting classes into a non-casting class variant (EX: Paladin - Temple Champion). Also notice the difference between the number of 13th level Fighters (800) vs the number of 13th level mages (15).

[Wolfsnap]

In my campaign: there are the PCs, and their potential adversaries, and maybe a few NPC clerics and hedge wizards scattered about levels 1-3. That's about it.

[MeanMutton]

The Adept is an NPC spellcaster so some of those NPCs you're talking about are spellcasters.

I know of no rule that says that 95% of all characters in a setting must have only NPC classes.

The settlements rules demonstrate that there is a spellcaster in every single settlement, no matter how small. It also demonstrates that there are magic items for sale in every single settlement, no matter how small. Thus magic would be incredibly common, particularly among certain races - nearly every gnome, for instance, can cast spells.

[Zhangar]

I'm not sure if "incredibly common" would be the right way to describe it.

I'm thinking of the write-up for Helden, the starting town of Reign of Winter, which has about 171 souls and maybe 3 spellcasters in it (a cleric, an adept, and an alchemist).

7 spellcasters if you feel the town's gnomes with SLAs count. (I wouldn't count them, though. I guess they're spellcaster enough for Nethys, but they're still only about as spellcaster as a rogue with minor magic trick.)

Perhaps think of 'em like doctors or nurses - you can pretty easily have a few in any town, but you pretty much have to go to a city to see them in concentration - and even there, they're going to represent only a tiny fragment of the actual population.

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

Feel free to take a look at d20 canon demographics, which is what all this was based on. Admittedly I adjusted some of it to fit my own campaign, but the numbers are surprisingly not that far off.

Has anyone else done a similar write up for what they are using in other campaigns? How was it similar / different from the one here?

[thejeff]

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

Feel free to take a look at d20 canon demographics, which is what all this was based on. Admittedly I adjusted some of it to fit my own campaign, but the numbers are surprisingly not that far off.

Has anyone else done a similar write up for what they are using in other campaigns? How was it similar / different from the one here?

Where are these "d20 canon demographics"?

How do they match up to the various settlement and casting services rules that put at least some casting in every tiny hamlet?
Often those will be NPC classed adepts in the smallest towns, but still.

I'm unaware of any official Pathfinder "Percentage of casters" or "Percentage of NPC classes" for that matter.

[QuidEst]

What about psychic casters? Where do Alchemists and Investigators fall?

[Jiggy]

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

As I looked into it deeper, some of the demographics involved started to unfold for me, here is what I came to understand.

1) Disclaimer: my campaign is hard capped at level 13 (vs the level 20 of PF RAW), which means it's spell levels are capped at 7th level spells. It is a low magic environment with few magic items. It is based on that statement these figures were generated.

Noted.

Quote:

2) RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners), and only the remaining 5% as possessing a PC class.

First, I can't seem to find where any published Pathfinder material says that 95% of of the population is limited to non-PC classes. Where did you get that number?

Second, why have you combined all the non-PC-classed population into just commoners, with no adepts, experts, aristocrats, or warriors? Even if we take your word that 95% of the population is NPC-classed, that doesn't mean they're all commoners. Theoretically, they might be evenly distributed between the NPC classes, which would put 19% of the world population as being adepts. Combined with the PC-classed population, that means that 1 in 5 people in the world are spellcasters.

So where are you getting these ideas about "the world is 95% commoners"? You need to back that up. I mean, sure, maybe that's how YOUR campaign world is set up (you did say it's low magic), but you're claiming that this is the written default, not your campaign. What gives?

Quote:

3) Of the 5% with PC classes, 4% are Non-spellcasters (Fighter, Rogue, etc) & the remaining 1% are the spell casters (combined arcane and divine).

Putting aside the population percentage issue that I've already mentioned, there are 11 classes just in the Core Rulebook. Seven of them are spellcasters. That's more than half.

So when more than half of the Core PC classes are spellcasters, why are you saying they comprise only a fifth of the PC-classed population? How are you getting to that conclusion?

Quote:

4) This amounts to about 10,000 casters, across all classes and levels, out of a 1 million population. It also means that martial characters (non-casters) are 400 times more likely to appear than a caster of any class.

I wonder what the statistics would look like based on valid published information.

[Zhangar]

thejeff wrote:

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

Feel free to ake a look at d20 canon demographics, which is what all this was based on. Admittedly I adjusted some of it to fit my own campaign, but the numbers are surprisingly not that far off.

Has anyone else done a similar write up for what they are using in other campaigns? How was it similar / different from the one here?

Where are these "d20 canon demographics"?

How do they match up to the various settlement and casting services rules that put at least some casting in every tiny hamlet?
Often those will be NPC classed adepts in the smallest towns, but still.

I'm unaware of any official Pathfinder "Percentage of casters" or "Percentage of NPC classes" for that matter.

The 3.X DMG actually had rules for generating a class break down for a settlement. Seven Days to the Grave even references the rules for this, in a sidebar explaining that less than 0.1% of Korvosa's population is capable to magically curing disease. (Or to be more precise, out of a population of 18,486 people, only about a dozen of them can remove disease.)

Huh.

And those rules apparently aren't available under the OGL. I'd always wondered why they weren't ported over to Pathfinder, and the answer is "they couldn't be."

Okay then.

[wraithstrike]

Zhangar wrote:

The 3.X DMG actually had rules for generating a class break down for a settlement.

I was about to mention that, and that is what I use for new towns or towns that don't say how many town/city guards are in a place.

[Jiggy]

Zhangar wrote:

...explaining that less than 0.1% of Korvosa's population is capable to magically curing disease. (Or to be more precise, out of a population of 18,486 people, only about a dozen of them can remove disease.)

I would imagine this has more to do with demographics of levels than with demographics of casters/non-casters.

[Zhangar]

Jiggy wrote:

Zhangar wrote:

...explaining that less than 0.1% of Korvosa's population is capable to magically curing disease. (Or to be more precise, out of a population of 18,486 people, only about a dozen of them can remove disease.)

I would imagine this has more to do with demographics of levels than with demographics of casters/non-casters.

Sort of a combination of the two. The size of the settlement determines the upper limit of the higher leveled NPCs.

Only handful of people in the town are high level, and only so many of those are spellcasters.

Basically, you look at the size class of the town (thorp, small town, etc.), which determines your modifier and additional rolls. And then the "rarity" of the class determines the base die for determined the highest level person of that class in the settlement. So fighters and rogues are 1d8 + modifier, clerics and bards are 1d6 + modifier, sorcerers or wizards are 1d4+modifiers, and paladins and rangers actually 1d3 + modifier.

So 3.X considered some of the martial classes to be rarer than casters.

So a thorp would have a single wizard of 1d4-3 levels (so 1 1st level wizard), while a metropolis would have 4 wizards of 1d4+12 levels, and determine the rest of its wizards from there, as your lower level PCs classed npcs were determined by the top end.

For example, so if the metropolis rolled perfect and has 4 18th level clerics (1d6+12), then it would have 8 9th level clerics, then 16 4th level, 32 2nd level, and 64 1st level.

A perfect roll on fighters (4 L20s) and wizards (L16) would result in about the same number of fighters and wizards than clerics, but the fighters would be higher level than the wizards and clerics until you reached the bottom ranks.

Also, the DMG rules for the civilian population was determine PCs classes first, then high level NPC class characters, and then the remaining populace split up 1st level characters as 91% commoners, 5% warriors, 3% experts, 0.5% aristocrats, 0.5% adepts.

So I think the real bottom line is that PCs classes, whether caster or not, are really damn rare. Probably less than 1% of the total population.

[thejeff]

Are those rules in the 3.0 DMG? I didn't see them and don't have the 3.5 one.

Per PF's settlement rules, you can get 3rd level spellcasting services in the average village (61-200 people). That gets you your Remove Disease. I'm not sure how that lines up with 0.1% being able use it.
Of course, it's never been quite clear what 3rd level spells those spellcasting rules get you access to.

[Zhangar]

@ thejeff - look on pages 139-140 of the 3.0 DMG.

Pathfinder's actually a bit more generous with the available spellcasting then 3.X would be.

Though 3rd level spellcasting available for purchase may mean there's only 1 5th level caster in the entire village.

PRD on Settlements wrote:

Spellcasting: Unlike magic items, spellcasting for hire is listed separately from the town's base value, since spellcasting is limited by the level of the available spellcasters in town. This line lists the highest-level spell available for purchase from spellcasters in town. A town's base spellcasting level depends on its type.

Since the rules are vague, that functionally means that what's actually available is up to the GM.

I'm well aware that there are people who would argue with a straight face that since 3rd level spells are available, the town must have infinite 3rd level or lower spells of all types and going with anything less than that is somehow being unfair to the players. (Mainly because I've seen people seriously arguing that settlements should have functionally infinite magic items within their base values, and the same arguments would carry over.)

But essentially, the settlement rules are giving a suggested cap for how strong the the strongest caster in the settlement is.

Just how many actual casters are around beyond that is up to you.

Heldren has 171 people with 3 identified spellcasters, one of whom is the 6th level cleric who provides the town's 3rd level spells. So the 3rd level spells are available, but there's a hell of a bottleneck because only one guy can cast them.

Sandpoint has 1,240 people, has 4th level spells, and has 16 or so spellcasters identified in its write up, none of whom can actually provide the 4th level spells. Most of the identified spellcasters are only 1st to 3rd level, with the highest level one I saw actually being a mystic theurge (who would still only have 3rd level spells).

But that's 16 to 20 spellcasters, most of whom are minor (1st-3rd level and often multiclassed into something without spellcasting), out of about 1,240 people.

Of course, some places, like Quantium, Nantambu, or Whitethrone, may have unusually high numbers of spellcasters, too.

Though I'd still expect most of those spellcasters to be low level.

Hmmm. So probably looking more at some number between 1 and 5% for PCs class NPCs, since Pathfinder may skew a little higher than 3.X does.

But with only a fraction of the fraction actually being strong.

Also to amusing to think of just how hard most monsters with frightful presence can stomp a settlement through throwing 90%+ of the population into a panic.

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

Thank you for those who have addressed the question about the source document for where the level / class material came from. I was looking for it earlier today an could not find it for the life of me. The 3.0 DM's Guide is apparently where the chart was last printed.

As for the assumption that everyone other than PC's were 1 - 3 commoners, that is not what I said. I said "most of the world" which is true according to both historical records of earth, as well as the 3.0 material I was referring to earlier. Honestly I didn't realize that chart went all the way back to 3.0, and to be equally honest have not yet had the time to read up on the Ultimate Rulership / Kingdom building material recently released by Paizo / Pathfinder.

For the record, if you take a look at the chart I was offering (but not suggesting it as "canon") it only addresses the classes which are PC classes. If you are using the older charts as a point of reference then my doc is alot more relevant. If you are not using the older docs, or just don't like the direction I was going with it, that is cool too.

At some point I'll probably go back and address the question of if a 1 million population gives you X number of class Y at level Z for PC classes, how many XYZ are the for the NPC's?

For me I find such reference material VERY helpful when fleshing out a city, or military, etc because it gives a good feel for just how significant is it to meets a level 10 mage for example?

Either way, are you guys using a different reference doc for building settlements? If so what have you found that works well for you?

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

QuidEst wrote:

What about psychic casters? Where do Alchemists and Investigators fall?

This is going to refer to my disclaimer in #1 about it being focused on a custom environment I am using for my campaign, which does not include any form of psionics, or the investigator class. That said however, the source document I pulled the base numbers form address 3 types of classes: the Non-PC classes like Warriors or the Aristocrat (which I didn't include in the numbers of my original chart), Non-Spell Casting PC classes, an PC Classes (of any kind) which cast spells. This later group of PC Classed spell casters only makes up a total of 1% of the population.

Based on those (admittedly loose definitions) I would look at the class in question and ask if it is an Arcane or Divine caster. Does it get spells up to level 4, 6 or 9? This will tell you if it is a 1/3, 2/3 or full caster. From there just look at your population and do the math. The beauty of my chart is it is not stuck with only calculating the numbers within a 1 million population, but is based on percentages so if you have a population of 12,374 just follow the formula in order to get your population break down.

Don't forget, my scenario here is capped to only create levels / classes up to level 13. This is not an oversight but the threshold of my campaign.

[QuidEst]

Psychic classes aren't psionic- Pathfinder introduced them in Occult Adventures. But if they're not in the setting, sure.

As for how I handle ratios, I generally have small communities form around certain types of divine casters (Clerics, plus the friendlier Druids, Witches, and occasional Shaman). Churches are the least expensive place to learn any kind of magic, so Clerics are the most common caster. Anybody who fights professionally as anything but a mook probably has levels in a martial class. A large enough city will have some sort of arcane or alchemical learning arrangement, whether a guild, a school, or less formal apprenticeship. From there, arcane and alchemical practitioners may decide to retire from city life to the pleasant monopoly of a more rural location. Psychic classes are found in greater concentrations near major ley lines, areas with historical and spiritual import, and so on, while bloodline classes are found scattered across the world. Rather than set a global ratio (which tempts fitting local conditions to it), I give interesting people PC class levels. Most people in a setting are background filler, so most people have mostly NPC levels.

[Arcane Addict]

Personally, I just go by what feels right rather than calculate the odds, but I do find these sorts of things fun every once in a while. One thing that seems oddly common to overlook is multi-classed characters and how to incorporate them into such a system. How do you (intend to) do it?

[Mark Carlson 255]

I calculated the info you did above when using a couple of other game systems and I seem to remember a program that did all the math for you after you entered in some simple numbers and other info (But after looking on my PC I could not find the program or a link to one).

For another system most non-PC's are 4-8th level and if I designed my own world to use pathfinder I think I would keep it about that power level also. But I can also see a case being made for 2nd to 8th level range applying also.

Your numbers for a low magic setting fit perfectly from what I remember other systems provide as a good range for low magic, with IIRC the percent being in the 1% to 5% range of total population.
I have found in the past it is a good idea to to do some basic math and see just how many casters and other there are as it can have a big impact on juts how the game is perceived. Especially when you go to an area that has more casters as a % of the population. For example in many game elves have a higher % of magic users then humans so going to an elven realm there might be 15% to 30% of the total population using magic in a low magic setting.

As to your chart, yes using a spreed sheet with some random factors thrown in so the 5% can vary a bit allows you generate some numbers very quickly. For example maybe you vary the % of casters by minus 1% up to a positive 1.7% for a range of 4% to 6.7% for a given area. This simple idea can also add a lot more flavor to your game world.

Also it is important to remember some of the rules of statistics and if you have numbers that relate to a large area there are chances that you have places in that area where you have no casters and other areas that have higher concentrations of casters.
For example you would expect a higher concentration of casters in a location that taught arcane magic and or in a temple that taught/believed in divine magic (vs a temple that just believed in worship for worship sake). Dose that make sense?

MDC

[Jiggy]

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

As for the assumption that everyone other than PC's were 1 - 3 commoners, that is not what I said.

What you said:

"RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners)..."
A mid-sentence parenthetical statement is a clarification of what came right before it. So when you said "most of the world are level 1-3 commoners" as a parenthetical explanation, you were defining your previous statement. That is, you stated that 95% of the population was non-PC-classed, and then explicitly defined that statement to be a reference to level 1-3 commoners.

So that's why people took you to mean that: because that's what you actually said. If you don't want the two statements to be connected so closely, then don't use functions like parentheses to explicitly connect them. If they're separate, state them separately.

Now I'm afraid you've got a bit of de-confusion work to do.

Quote:

...and to be equally honest have not yet had the time to read up on the Ultimate Rulership / Kingdom building material recently released by Paizo / Pathfinder.

I can't speak for everyone else in the thread, but I've only been referencing the Core Rulebook and the Gamemastery Guide, not anything "recently released" that you wouldn't have had time to look at. Core Rulebook says there are five NPC classes (one of them a spellcaster) and eleven core PC classes (seven of them spellcasters). The GMG is what contains the settlement rules being discussed (regarding maximum spellcasting level in a given town size, etc).

That's what forms the baseline of how common magic is in Pathfinder. Sounds like it differs significantly from 3.0, then? I wouldn't know, as I haven't played 3.0.

Quote:

Either way, are you guys using a different reference doc for building settlements? If so what have you found that works well for you?

I think most people either use a published town, use the settlement rules from the GMG (or a modified version of them), or just free-hand it.

[cuatroespada]

Jiggy wrote:

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

As for the assumption that everyone other than PC's were 1 - 3 commoners, that is not what I said.

What you said:

"RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners)..."
A mid-sentence parenthetical statement is a clarification of what came right before it. So when you said "most of the world are level 1-3 commoners" as a parenthetical explanation, you were defining your previous statement. That is, you stated that 95% of the population was non-PC-classed, and then explicitly defined that statement to be a reference to level 1-3 commoners.

Jiggy, that's not necessarily true. a parenthetical statement isn't necessarily an appositive. it's just more information. that might be to specify or it might just be extra. i read it to mean that most of that 95% were 1-3 commoners not that the entire 95% were.

[Jiggy]

cuatroespada wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

As for the assumption that everyone other than PC's were 1 - 3 commoners, that is not what I said.

What you said:

"RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners)..."
A mid-sentence parenthetical statement is a clarification of what came right before it. So when you said "most of the world are level 1-3 commoners" as a parenthetical explanation, you were defining your previous statement. That is, you stated that 95% of the population was non-PC-classed, and then explicitly defined that statement to be a reference to level 1-3 commoners.

Jiggy, that's not necessarily true. a parenthetical statement isn't necessarily an appositive. it's just more information. that might be to specify or it might just be extra. i read it to mean that most of that 95% were 1-3 commoners not that the entire 95% were.

Spoiler'd for derailing:

The phrase inside the parentheses was "most of the world", not "most of them" or "most of said group" or "most of that 95%" or even just the vague and interpretable "most".

Alternatively, if we had been in a discussion of a population that extended beyond "the world" (such as a sci-fi universe where people lived on the world, the moon, and in a space station), then the original "95% of the population" could have been all-encompassing while the "most of the world" was only the subgroup living on the planet. However, this was clearly not the context of the discussion.

Therefore, there is no valid reading in which the group referenced in parentheses is a smaller sub-grouping within the original 95%. Had they been two separate sentences, then that would have been sufficient separation to allow a distinction between the "95%" and the "most"; however, the use of parentheses connects them closely.

[thejeff]

Jiggy wrote:

cuatroespada wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

As for the assumption that everyone other than PC's were 1 - 3 commoners, that is not what I said.

What you said:

"RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners)..."
A mid-sentence parenthetical statement is a clarification of what came right before it. So when you said "most of the world are level 1-3 commoners" as a parenthetical explanation, you were defining your previous statement. That is, you stated that 95% of the population was non-PC-classed, and then explicitly defined that statement to be a reference to level 1-3 commoners.

Jiggy, that's not necessarily true. a parenthetical statement isn't necessarily an appositive. it's just more information. that might be to specify or it might just be extra. i read it to mean that most of that 95% were 1-3 commoners not that the entire 95% were.

** spoiler omitted **

derail continued:

And yet it remains true. Both most of the 95% are 1-3 level commmoners and most of the world are 1-3 level commoners. If the first part is true, the second likely is as well.

Even if most is only 53% of the 95%, it's still most of the world.

[Jiggy]

thejeff wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

cuatroespada wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

As for the assumption that everyone other than PC's were 1 - 3 commoners, that is not what I said.

What you said:

"RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners)..."
A mid-sentence parenthetical statement is a clarification of what came right before it. So when you said "most of the world are level 1-3 commoners" as a parenthetical explanation, you were defining your previous statement. That is, you stated that 95% of the population was non-PC-classed, and then explicitly defined that statement to be a reference to level 1-3 commoners.

Jiggy, that's not necessarily true. a parenthetical statement isn't necessarily an appositive. it's just more information. that might be to specify or it might just be extra. i read it to mean that most of that 95% were 1-3 commoners not that the entire 95% were.

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

I promise I'm done now:

What's that got to do with anything? I was talking about the meaning of what he said, not whether or not one or both statements were accurate.

[cuatroespada]

Derail Train to Linguisticsville:

And I was only refuting your erroneous claim that "a mid-sentence parenthetical statement is a clarification of what came right before it". A mid-sentence parenthetical statement can be that, (and in that case it even was, though, the one you're reading right now is not) but that isn't the only use of a parenthetical statement.

[Zhangar]

Oddly enough, 1E and 2E had some stuff that at least implied the caster vs. non-caster demographics.

Which is that at 8th to 10th level (depending on class), a character with a stronghold may automatically attract followers. (I.e., In earlier editions, leadership was a class ability, though of wildly varying strengths.)

Looking through my 2E PHB -

The fighter gets a 5th to 7th fighter as a 2nd in command, 60 to 120 0th level warriors (translates to 1st level warriors under 3E/Pathfinder), and 10 to 30 1st-2nd level fighters, rangers, or even fighter/mages.

The paladin and the ranger draw no automatic followers.

The wizard gets no automatic followers. (Which surprised me, I'd misremembered them as getting 1d3 1st level apprentices.)

Clerics draw 20d10 0th level soldiers but no clerics.

Druids are incredibly wonky because 2E had a strict druid hierarchy with limited spots for levels 12 to 16, and holders of those spots got 3 to 9 druid attendants of varying levels. The attendants are actually lost after reaching 17th level (when the druid graduates out of the hierarchy altogether).

The thief who establishes a guild can draw 4d6 followers of radically varying levels and possibly multi-classes (though always thief + something), though most are human thieves of level 1 to 8.

The bard attracts 10d6 fans (0th level warriors).

I suspect that if you were doing PC-class demographics demographics 2E-style, you'd wind up with cities having a handful of people of varying casting classes - and then quite possibly more fighters and/or thieves then all of the "casters" (including even dabblers like paladins) put together. (Also, holy crap, default 2E had only two classes without magic.)

[MeanMutton]

Zhangar wrote:

The 3.X DMG actually had rules for generating a class break down for a settlement. Seven Days to the Grave even references the rules for this, in a sidebar explaining that less than 0.1% of Korvosa's population is capable to magically curing disease. (Or to be more precise, out of a population of 18,486 people, only about a dozen of them can remove disease.)

Huh.

And those rules apparently aren't available under the OGL. I'd always wondered why they weren't ported over to Pathfinder, and the answer is "they couldn't be."

Okay then.

Pathfinder has done quite a few things to make magic more readily available than it was in D&D 3.5 - all wizards get Scribe Scroll, DCs for creating magic items are now trivial, settlement rules show that every settlement has a wide range of available spellcasters and magic items. It's as high-magic a system as any RPG I've seen.

[Alzrius]

MeanMutton wrote:

Pathfinder has done quite a few things to make magic more readily available than it was in D&D 3.5 - all wizards get Scribe Scroll

That was in 3.5.

[Kudaku]

Interesting topic. I wrote a post in a similar thread a while back, it may be of value here:

I did some digging for the relevant rules on the D20SRD, but all I found was this under Spellcasting Services:

Quote:

D20SRD: In addition, not every town or village has a spellcaster of sufficient level to cast any spell. In general, you must travel to a small town (or larger settlement) to be reasonably assured of finding a spellcaster capable of casting 1st-level spells, a large town for 2nd-level spells, a small city for 3rd- or 4th-level spells, a large city for 5th- or 6th-level spells, and a metropolis for 7th- or 8th-level spells. Even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells.

Now, Pathfinder states that you can expect to find a level 1 spellcaster in any given thorp (ie a settlement with fewer than 20 inhabitants), whereas 3.5 states that you need "a small town" in order to find a level 1 spellcaster. To put that into perspective you can expect to find spellcasters capable of providing 4th level spells in a small town if you were playing pathfinder. Clearly 3.5 and Pathfinder sets dramatically different bars for how common spellcasters are.

In fact, based on those numbers (a town of 200 people* to find a level 1 spellcaster in 3.5, a thorp of 20 to find a level 1 spellcaster in Pathfinder) we can extrapolate that that level 1 spellcasters are roughly ten times more common in Pathfinder than in 3.5. This gap gradually closes as you go up the spellcasting levels, until the different rules systems eventually agree that spellcasters capable of providing level 8 spells are only found in metropolises.

Finally, it's worth noting that Pathfinder has a variety of settlement modifiers that make spellcasters more common. A good example of this is the "Capital City" sample settlement, a Large City with a holy site. Despite having "Notable NPCs" in the level 4-10 range, it houses spellcasters capable of providing 9th level spellcasting services. I believe the DMG may have similar rules text, but I haven't read the book in a very long time so I don't feel comfortable saying so with confidence.

*:

I had a hard time tracking down the settlement population numbers for 3.5, so I used the Pathfinder definition of small town: 200-2000 inhabitants.

[Cevah]

In 3.X, the DMG2 had a table that went like this:
normal people = X
Level 1 people = X / 10
Level 2 people = Level 1 people / 2
Level 3 people = Level 2 people / 2
Level 4 people = Level 3 people / 2
Level 5 people = Level 4 people / 2
and so on.

So basically they had 5 of 6 people were normal people. [=83.33%]
Of the rest, 1 in 6, more than half can cast spells in some manner.
Of those that cannot cast, many may have racial SLAs for spells.

Given your 10,000 population, ~1,666 are PCs, and ~833 can cast spells.

/cevah

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

Cevah wrote:

In 3.X, the DMG2 had a table that went like this:

normal people = X
Level 1 people = X / 10
Level 2 people = Level 1 people / 2
Level 3 people = Level 2 people / 2
Level 4 people = Level 3 people / 2
Level 5 people = Level 4 people / 2
and so on.

So basically they had 5 of 6 people were normal people. [=83.33%]
Of the rest, 1 in 6, more than half can cast spells in some manner.
Of those that cannot cast, many may have racial SLAs for spells.

Given your 10,000 population, ~1,666 are PCs, and ~833 can cast spells.

/cevah

I'd point out that the theoretical population I'm working with was 1,000,000 (1 Million) not 10,000. The 10,000 are the 1% of the population which are spell casters (of any class).

Using the method you describe above (which I agree is essentially how the DMG broke it down) I'd point out you will be dealing with a very different power arc than the one my numbers were generated against.

Are you sure about your numbers? I know from previous editions the "gold standard" was always 5% PC classes vs everyone else. Your numbers are set at about 20% PC classes vs everyone else, which admittedly seems to be how most groups actually play these days.

Pressing on: According to the DMG 3.x, once the total number of PC's were generated (typically accounting for only a couple of dozen above 1st level) everything which was left of the population became NPC classes, which was broken down by percentages.

DMG 3.5 pg 139 -

Quote:

take the remaining population after all other [PC Classed] characters are generated and divide it up so that 91% are commoners, 5% are warriors, 3% are experts, and the remaining 1% is equally divided between aristocrats and adepts (0.5% each).

It is from this that my NPC's are generated, using my original percentage chart for levels. Now it should be noted that in my case when dealing with NPC's I simply was never a fan for how D20 (any version) handled the levels for NPC's.

For starters I never use commoners or warriors above 3rd level. Past that point and they are no longer "common" nor are they just some mook on the battlefield who is there to take one hit and die. As such:

Warriors above 3rd level are retrained as a 2 level fighter and assumed to join a "special forces" team or take on an officer role.

Commoners above 3rd level typically get retrained as a 1st level expert. This assumes they are no longer simply a farmer, but have become successful enough at it that they now understand weather / seasonal patterns, sales techniques, and perhaps know: local or know: nobility.

Adepts: I HATE this class and never use it. A caster is a caster in my book. Don't want them to be as powerful as a PC caster? Multi-class them. 2 druid / 1 warrior as a Kobold shaman for example. An admittedly personal bias here, but it is what it is.

Aristocrats - this is a class I have always felt was severely underdeveloped and should have had significant "influence" style class abilities. I seem to recall D20 Star Wars did something similar. It is my opinion that the Aristocrats should be nearly as powerful as a PC class, but do so in non-combat ways. If anyone has a good class variant for this I'd be happy to take a look at it.

So if we apply those percentages to our Ancient Roman city of 1 million you would get: 50k PC Classes, 864.5k commoners, 47.5k warriors, 28.5k experts, 4,750 aristocrats, and 4,750 Adepts.

If I stayed with my original level percentages I first presented for PC classes the numbers would look like this:
Disclaimer: keep in mind what I said in the first post about my campaign level caps, etc when reading these numbers.

Level...Commoner...Warrior...Expert...Ari / Adept
1.........345.8k...19k.......11.4k....1900
3.........173k.....9.5k......5.7k.....800
5.........130k.....7.1k......4.3k.....715
7.........86.5k....4.8k......3k.......475
9.........70k......3.8k......2.3k.....380
11........43k......2.4k......1.5k.....237
13........17.2k....950.......570......95

One word of caution: don't make the mistake of comparing the Warrior column with the "marital / non-spellcaster" column from the original chart. The original charts were all forms of non-spell casting pc classes (fighter, monks, rogues, etc etc) vs the Warrior column is specific to only warriors. In other words, there are a lot more warriors running around.

Just for comparison sake the chart I would more typically use in my campaign however would look more like this:

Level...Commoner...Warrior...Expert...Ari
1.........345.8k...19k.......15K......1900
3.........173k.....9.5k......7.5......800
5.........xxx......xxx.......5k.......715
7.........xxx......xxx.......3k.......475
9.........xxx......xxx.......1.5k.....380
11........xxx......xxx.......250......237
13........xxx......xxx.......20........95

Under my system experts remain strong through out, partially because of the influx of commoners who retrain (around middle age) and partially to represent the proverbial "master smith" occasionally seen.

You will also notice that around 5th level there is not an enormous influx of experts coming over from commoners, this is because most dont make the conversion (or don't live that long) and is typically reserved only for Commoners mentioned by name in an AP for example.

Looking over the Warrior / Fighter conversion I noticed something that I'd previously missed in the original chart. If a warrior would normally convert around 4th level, only 60% of the Warriors have been allocated, thus 40% are left or about 20K. For every 10,000 you have 1% of a 1 million population. In other words, instead of there being at 95 / 5% split it would actually change the "gold standard" to 93 / 7% and the Non-Caster PC classes would go from 4% to 6%, and thus need recalculating.

In a closing thought, I'll briefly touch on racial demographics. Canon d20 states there is a chart which tells you what the statistical split is based on size of the area in question. That chart looks like this:

Racial Mix of Communities
Isolated........Mixed.................Integrated
96% human...79% human.......37% human
2% halfling.....9% halfling.........20% halfling
1% elf............5% elf..............18% elf
1% other........3% dwarf...........10% dwarf
x...................2% gnome........7% gnome
x...................1% half-elf........5% half-elf
x...................1% half-orc........3% half-orc

Within my campaign I use the following chart instead:
72%......human
12%......dwarf
9%.......halfling
4%.......1/2 elf
1%.......other
1%.......1/2 orc
1%.......gnome
.0003%...elf (there are only a few hundred elves in non-elven cities)

Anyway. Perhaps I'm overthinking it, but those are my thoughts on the matter.

[Cevah]

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

Cevah wrote:

In 3.X, the DMG2 had a table that went like this:

normal people = X
Level 1 people = X / 10
Level 2 people = Level 1 people / 2
Level 3 people = Level 2 people / 2
Level 4 people = Level 3 people / 2
Level 5 people = Level 4 people / 2
and so on.

So basically they had 5 of 6 people were normal people. [=83.33%]
Of the rest, 1 in 6, more than half can cast spells in some manner.
Of those that cannot cast, many may have racial SLAs for spells.

Given your 10,000 population, ~1,666 are PCs, and ~833 can cast spells.

/cevah

I'd point out that the theoretical population I'm working with was 1,000,000 (1 Million) not 10,000. The 10,000 are the 1% of the population which are spell casters (of any class).

Using the method you describe above (which I agree is essentially how the DMG broke it down) I'd point out you will be dealing with a very different power arc than the one my numbers were generated against.

Are you sure about your numbers? I know from previous editions the "gold standard" was always 5% PC classes vs everyone else. Your numbers are set at about 20% PC classes vs everyone else, which admittedly seems to be how most groups actually play these days.

Are you sure about your numbers? Yes. Edition, No. :-)

Found it in 2nd ED Dungeon Master Option: High Level Campaign, page 22

DMO:HLC p21-22 wrote:

4. Be Aware of Demographics

High level characters don't just spring into existence overnight. It takes an exceptional person just to survive the rigors of an adventuring life, and characters who make it to the top should be both rare and famous.
Just how rare are high-level characters? Let's assume, for purposes of this example, that the minimum requirement for an adventurer is having an ability score of 15 or better in a prime requisite in one of the four character classes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom), a Constitution score of at least 9, and no other score lower than an 8. About one person in 10 meets these requirements if ability scores are rolled using the standard method of rolling 3d6 once for each ability score. (If your campaign uses an alternate method for rolling ability scores, what you're really doing is making sure your PCs fall into the top 10%, non-adventurers are still assumed to use the standard method). Now, let's assume that out of every group of adventures only half actually make it to the next level (the remainder either die, retire, or just haven't yet accumulated enough experience to advance). This last assumption is an oversimplification, of course, but a little arithmetic produces some instructive results:

Table 1: Demographics wrote:

General Population .. Character Level .. Approx. No. in 1,000,000

10 .. 1 1st .. 133,120
20 .. 1 2nd .. 66,560
40 .. 1 3rd .. 33,280
80 .. 1 4th .. 16,640
160 .. 1 5th .. 8,320
320 .. 1 6th .. 4,160
640 .. 1 7th .. 2,080
1,380 .. 1 8th .. 1,040
2,560 .. 1 9th .. 512
5,120 .. 1 10th .. 256
10,240 .. 1 11th .. 128
20,480 .. 1 12th .. 64
40,960 .. 1 13th .. 32
81,920 .. 1 14th .. 16
163,840 .. 1 15th .. 8
326,680 .. 1 16th .. 4
655,360 .. 1 17th .. 2
1,310,720 .. 1 18th .. 1

/cevah

[thejeff]

Cevah wrote:

Found it in 2nd ED Dungeon Master Options: High Level Campaign, page 22

DMO:HLC p21-22 wrote:

4. Be Aware of Demographics

High level characters don't just spring into existence overnight. It takes an exceptional person just to survive the rigors of an adventuring life, and characters who make it to the top should be both rare and famous.
Just how rare are high-level characters? Let's assume, for purposes of this example, that the minimum requirement for an adventurer is having an ability score of 15 or better in a prime requisite in one of the four character classes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom), a Constitution score of at least 9, and no other score lower than an 8.

...

That's a really silly argument. The DMG's not yours.

Only 1 in 10 rolled PCs meets the minimum requirements for an adventurer? What do the other PCs do?

It's basically "Hi. We made some completely arbitrary numbers up and performed math on them. Observe our highly instructive results. You can tell they're meaningful because we used math."

[Cevah]

thejeff wrote:

Cevah wrote:

Found it in 2nd ED Dungeon Master Options: High Level Campaign, page 22

DMO:HLC p21-22 wrote:

4. Be Aware of Demographics

High level characters don't just spring into existence overnight. It takes an exceptional person just to survive the rigors of an adventuring life, and characters who make it to the top should be both rare and famous.
Just how rare are high-level characters? Let's assume, for purposes of this example, that the minimum requirement for an adventurer is having an ability score of 15 or better in a prime requisite in one of the four character classes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom), a Constitution score of at least 9, and no other score lower than an 8.

...

That's a really silly argument. The DMG's not yours.

Only 1 in 10 rolled PCs meets the minimum requirements for an adventurer? What do the other PCs do?

It's basically "Hi. We made some completely arbitrary numbers up and performed math on them. Observe our highly instructive results. You can tell they're meaningful because we used math."

1) The DMG is not referenced. This is the DMO for 2nd edition.

2) Just verified the math. That selection generates "adventurer" quality characters at 11.59% of the population, not 10%.
3) Since when are arbitrary numbers bad? Since these populations do not exist in reality, you cannot have any number except an arbitrary one.

/cevah

[thejeff]

Cevah wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Cevah wrote:

Found it in 2nd ED Dungeon Master Options: High Level Campaign, page 22

DMO:HLC p21-22 wrote:

4. Be Aware of Demographics

High level characters don't just spring into existence overnight. It takes an exceptional person just to survive the rigors of an adventuring life, and characters who make it to the top should be both rare and famous.
Just how rare are high-level characters? Let's assume, for purposes of this example, that the minimum requirement for an adventurer is having an ability score of 15 or better in a prime requisite in one of the four character classes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom), a Constitution score of at least 9, and no other score lower than an 8.

...

That's a really silly argument. The DMG's not yours.

Only 1 in 10 rolled PCs meets the minimum requirements for an adventurer? What do the other PCs do?

It's basically "Hi. We made some completely arbitrary numbers up and performed math on them. Observe our highly instructive results. You can tell they're meaningful because we used math."

1) The DMG is not referenced. This is the DMO for 2nd edition.

2) Just verified the math. That selection generates "adventurer" quality characters at 11.59% of the population, not 10%.
3) Since when are arbitrary numbers bad? Since these populations do not exist in reality, you cannot have any number except an arbitrary one.

/cevah

1) Missed that.

2/3) If you're just going to make up the starting assumptions, why not just make up the final results you want rather than get them from running the made up numbers through a made up formula?

[Cevah]

thejeff wrote:

Cevah wrote:

...

1) Missed that.

2/3) If you're just going to make up the starting assumptions, why not just make up the final results you want rather than get them from running the made up numbers through a made up formula?

Lazlo.Arcadia was asking about what was in previous editions.

These were the assumptions of the DMO:HLC, which came before 3.X, not my assumptions. We all have to have a common reference for play, or there is chaos. This was the assumption for that time. Other editions have their own assumptions. This particular set of assumptions is easy to remember and work with.

In 3.X, the PHB2 and DMG2 gave more detailed distributions of local populations, but not so much worldwide populations.

DMO:HLC gave assumptions and backed them up with reasons. If you don't like what they used, then give better assumptions, and back them up with your reasoning. Don't say they are bad and not to use them, and then fail to give something else to use instead.

/cevah

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Making up the final numbers seems like the only sane option. You have to make up the starting assumptions.

a) How many people live in your world?
b) What proportion of people end up becoming wizards?
c) What proportion of wizards end up getting to 9th level?

None of those questions have right answers that you can go out and research, they're all pure creative invention and they are the only questions relevant to determining how many people can potentially cast teleport in your world.

If you want there to be only ten casters who can bop about and influence events hundreds of miles apart in your continent of 10 million people, then b & c need to multiple out to 1,000,000, but within that you might still be interested in the precise numbers.

A world where everyone is a wizard, but high levels are extraordinarily rare (i.e. b=1 but c=1,000,000) looks very different from one where wizards and levels are both rare (i.e. b=1,000 and c=1,000) and one where wizards are almost unheard of but high level is common (b=500,000 and c=2).

[thejeff]

Ring_of_Gyges wrote:

Making up the final numbers seems like the only sane option. You have to make up the starting assumptions.

a) How many people live in your world?
b) What proportion of people end up becoming wizards?
c) What proportion of wizards end up getting to 9th level?

None of those questions have right answers that you can go out and research, they're all pure creative invention and they are the only questions relevant to determining how many people can potentially cast teleport in your world.

If you want there to be only ten casters who can bop about and influence events hundreds of miles apart in your continent of 10 million people, then b & c need to multiple out to 1,000,000, but within that you might still be interested in the precise numbers.

A world where everyone is a wizard, but high levels are extraordinarily rare (i.e. b=1 but c=1,000,000) looks very different from one where wizards and levels are both rare (i.e. b=1,000 and c=1,000) and one where wizards are almost unheard of but high level is common (b=500,000 and c=2).

That's pretty much it. Figure out what you want and arrange for it.

[Greylurker]

How many do you want there to be?

Ultimately that's the real question isn't it. Having a mathimatical formula for it is as good an option as any really.

For the campaign I'm in the middle of writing, I'm trying an idea where the only people allowed to learn a PC class are the PCs themselves. Everyone else in the entire world uses NPC classes and Templates.

so when my players ask "How many Wizards in the world?" my answer is "how many of you guys are playing a wizard? Ok, there is That many Wizards in the world"

What is your fluff for wizards. Does all it take is book learning, do they need to be 7th son of a 7th son, do they have to bargain with a spirit first. It is as easy or as hard to become a wizard as you want it to be, but in the End it's; How many do you want there to be?

[Mark Carlson 255]

I think some people brought up some very good info above in that a lot of stuff depends on various things to occur, such as casters need specific stats as well as the basic idea of what you are trying to do with said info.
An example would be if you look at the population of the USA vs its total area, you could say (after the math) on average there are x people per square mile but when you look at population diagrams you see most people are clustered around areas with good resources ( fertile planes, oceans with good fishing, etc) and away from areas where it is very tough to live (ie very few people live in active volcanic craters, centers of lakes or tops of high mountains).

Also since I started gaming in the last 70's I have seen this idea used to various degrees of success (IMHO) and with various systems and products but having said that again it is an idea based on statistics and it carries all of the various problems that stats have associated with them.

MDC

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

I completely agree! The whole point behind the demographic charts is the get a feel for just how many people are around at a given level. How many clerics (or whatever) can actually raise the dead for example? Is that an ability that is so rare as to be epic / legendary? What about the infamous teleport? Can everyone do it, and thus reducing it to a commodity to be bought and sold like any service, or is it the stuff of legend?

Another consideration: the value of money. So I walk into a tavern and toss down 1 gold for my dinner. How much money did I really just give the guy? Is it worth $100 in our market? $1000? or maybe only $1. Now i'm not talking about the value of gold by ounce IRL, rather the question is what is its buying power in game?

Example: a long sword is worth 15 gold vs a short sword at 10. Just how big of a difference is that to Joe Farmer? What about to a 5th level Aristocrat?

When you understand how many people have at any given level, and the relative wealth that comes with those levels, you can begin to make sense of just how poor is poor? and how strong is a 1st, 5th, 10th level character by comparison to a normal guy.

By establishing a baseline for these questions and then sticking to it, it creates a sense of realism for the campaign world with an enormous ripple effect. If 90% of your world is dirt broke, play up on that fact! If most people have only "normal" stats ranging from 8 - 12, then the girl at the bar with 14 charisma is HOT! and the one with a 17 is attractive enough to become the wife of nobility even if she has no other traits (class levels or high stats) worth a passing glance. In fact I would likely interpret a young woman with a high charisma / low constitution as one who would be sickly, easily intoxicated (bar whore?), and likely to die in child birth without a cleric / high skill: Heal check being made.

Here a closing thought on this: Are certain weapons or magics allowed by anyone or only be certain classes, social groups, servants of the military or king, etc. Example: is the only cleric who can cast Raise Dead on permanent retainer with the king and forbidden to cast the spell for fear that the king might need it instead?

What about the laws regarding weapons? Is a long sword legal in most settlements? In Japan only the samurai were allowed to carry the katana. It was both a weapon of war, and a symbol of their authority over the common populous.

Compared to most "normal people" your typical PC walks around with enough weapons, spell power and equipment to take over a small country. This is a fact which should NOT be lost on the common folks of the communities your adventures take you to. They are quite literally a walking WMD (weapon of mass destruction), which is even more true when you consider a Mage's abilities. Flight, teleportation, hurling fireballs, etc. This is the sorta thing that would scare the CRAP out of most kings! Are these new comers friend or foe? Can they be controlled? Should I just have them killed?

These are the reasons I look so heavily at the campaign demographics. Without understanding just how powerful or wealthy the PC's are in relation to the world around them, there is no sense of continuity which allows for real growth. More importantly that how impressive are the PC's is how impressive is the rest of the world? Take one look at HBO's "Game of Thrones" and you get a feel for what I mean by all of this. There are very wealthy / powerful people, and very poor ones. Very strong warriors, and those who had best avoid fights when at all possible (Sam and Tyrion come to mind). Best of all, these standards are consistent across the entire story and adds a feeling of continuity and realism that would otherwise be both missing and glaring.

[lemeres]

I will have to disagree on the ratios of arcane vs. divine casters in the original post- just having more classes doesn't mean there are more of them.

Some divine classes have some strict entry requirements (oracle with the need for divine interference). Even compared to a similar 'natural caster' on the arcane side, the sorcerer... that seems harder to set up (since anyone can potentially seek to make sorcerers just by doing what humans do best: put on the smooth jazz and try to bring every dragon, ghoul, and elemental by the fire place; ie- bloodlines; while you can try to smooth jazz a god for oracle powers... they probably aren't interested since they can likely summon 20th level bards with 50 dex and 50 cha, and thus they aren't interest in you).

I would imagine the majority of divine casters are clerics (since they are fairly powerful and general use casters associated with large scale, highly public institutions such as organized religion) and wizards/alchemists (since they can just be taught their magic in schools/apprenticeships).

Most other casters are just too reclusive (druids, witches), have too high a requirement (paladins), or are too specialized to train too many of them (inquisitor, magus). I wouldn't imagine you would see too many of them, and they are just the special snowflakes that end up as adventurers.

Bards... a bit hard to say about their statistics. They usually don't have the large guilds/churches seen with other big casters, but they can be spread by anyone that plays lute and asks their friend for lessons on how to get more fans... They might secretly flourish in the background since they can do a lot of the simple low level casting you expect of wizards, but they also have plenty of skills, making them attractive servants. They may even have an easier entry point for early on since they have nice mnemonic spell casting (since they HAVE to have verbal components), meaning a noticeable number of the '95%' might end up with a single level in bard if they seek even basic magic training.

[Mark Carlson 255]

The main problem I a see again is that stats such as you are using and how you want to use them can cause big problems.
Stats that govern a large city such as San Francisco generally do not apply to San Diego and London and definitely not to Smalleville and can be used to provide some vague generalities but have problems providing specific details.

Now like I stated above since I have started playing (79) and being a moderator on another companies web site for a few years, I have seen the idea you are taking about used to various degrees of success but it really depends on the enactor, the group, campaign(story) and the setting to determine if it works well.

For example:
There was another system that gave stat numbers like you provided above but when you did the math and looked at the location is was to apply for the math and the RP aspects or real world aspects just did not mesh well. And in fact when the math was done and compared to published material it was way off

Establish a baseline:
IMHO some things can have a base line and others cannot and should not.
For example if you say X% of people are low level arcane casters but most/majority of them are located in a school or set of schools around a volcano. Yes the volcano erupts and wipes out the school's and quite a few of the higher level arcane casters as well. So now your statistic data is all out of wack. To make the math work do some people spontaneously become arcane casters or since the number of arcane casters suddenly dropped do the number of other casters drop in relation to the new number of arcane casters? (ie 2% of pop are arcane and 2% of pop are divine, so the number of one decrease's does the number of the other?)

But having said that for world building it is good to have some guidelines so basic things do not get out of wack or allow you the GM/creator to lose sight of common RP and real world things.

In the end I would also have to say "if it seems to work for you and you and you group are having fun then continue to use it the tools you are using" But also remember that there are many other types of game groups and your tools/aids may not work for them.
For example: I know quite a few GM's that do not feel the need to flesh out NPC's and can just work things on the fly but I also know a few GM's that feel the need to have almost every thing about a NPC fully fleshed out as they would a PC. One takes almost no prep time and the other takes a lot of prep time
If your group is having fun and it works then both methods of NPC detail are fine but I also know that the GM's who need to fully flesh out the NPC's would struggle mightily if they did not have such info to draw upon.

Again your standard question can vary from town to town, region to region and county to county. So in one location you might be able to carry a sword but go across the river and it is illegal to carry such a weapon and you can only carry axes.
Look to some real world laws, social norms and basic edicate and how they can varry from location to location (ie house to hosue, neighborhood to neighborhood, town to town, etc) and in such cases vary broad standards can be inferred but specific's that apply to the whole world are hard to come by.

MDC

[Goddity]

Nice Fermi question.

[Bruunwald]

Probably all of this could have been bypassed with an acknowledgment that, for most of us, it is a given that the PCs are exceptional, and because of that, and in line with standard fantasy tropes/mythological tales/fairy tales/legends, their colleagues, opponents, foes, rivals, and mentors and special tools are equally rare, especially magical tools and spellcasters.

The exception would be higher magic campaigns, which can range widely.

That isn't to say that I don't enjoy reading through post after post of increasingly angry pedantry, bordering on a flamewar. Because I do, in a sad, sick way. But it is a long way around to go, to point out something that has been an instinctive go-to default for most GMs' campaigns for more than forty years.

[KestrelZ]

Careful of statistics. It's good to have a base idea of how the world is shaped, yet it can backfire. An example of backfire is when a group of players in the game "Twilight 2000" ran a very long running campaign. They did a tally of all the opponents they had killed, then read a game book detailing the population statistics. Since they kept tracked, they found they had killed nearly the entire remaining adult population of the game world.

Lesson learned - statistics can paint the base assumption of how the world works, yet adventuring PCs always work as the exception and run into the exception to how the world works. In other words, there are as many casters of whatever level as the plot requires for the PCs. Otherwise I can't see how human-like races ever survived in a world as full of dangerous alpha predators or plot-heavy apocalyptic events as any long running campaign would require. And without those plot convenient hazards, the game would become somewhat dull for those seeking adventure through such conflicts.

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

lemeres wrote:

I will have to disagree on the ratios of arcane vs. divine casters in the original post- just having more classes doesn't mean there are more of them.

My original argument for the 70 /30% split between divine & arcane had little to do with how many published classes there are, and more to do with addressing the question of how many would appear in the campaign as "normal". This was largely a judgement call made for my own campaign (which is hard capped at level 13, and features very few magic items). On the other hand, others feel that having a PC class showing up 1 out of every 6 characters (with casters being at least 1/2 of that) is the way to go. All I will tell such a DM is to simply keep it consistent and you will have a believable campaign world.

lemeres wrote:

I would imagine the majority of divine casters are clerics (since they are fairly powerful and general use casters associated with large scale, highly public institutions such as organized religion) and wizards/alchemists (since they can just be taught their magic in schools/apprenticeships).

I agree with your logic, however would point out that for most people entry into a class like the ranger would generally be easier than a cleric. Why? Well a character with a Wisdom of 13 can still make for a decent ranger (especially with level caps in place) but a Cleric with a 13 Wisdom is likely to never be more than someones apprentice. This is why my original chart is balanced towards 1/3 & 2/3 partial casters. Their entry requirements are simply lower.

The other thing to consider from an RP perspective is the Core Caster classes are very demanding on their members. These are fraternal orders with high expectations ranging from strict alignment considerations, and in some cases commitments in time or tithing. Semi casters typically don't have such restrictions, or at least fewer of them.

lemeres wrote:

Most other casters are just too reclusive (druids, witches), have too high a requirement (paladins), or are too specialized to train too many of them (inquisitor, magus). I wouldn't imagine you would see too many of them, and they are just the special snowflakes that end up as adventurers.

I definitely agree with your point about the Druids and Witches...unless you are playing in a wilderness / barbarian culture. In which case they suddenly became the normal. In that culture arcane spontaneous casters take the forefront of as well with Sorcerers being much more common than Wizards (even if they are still very rare).

[Mark Carlson 255]

Also if you work with %'s it would be better to provide a range instead of a set number IMHO. ie the % casters of various types number you provided above could be listed as 50-70% divine and the rest arcane, that way in specific areas or racial communities you account for the differences.

MDC

[Lazlo.Arcadia]

I think a point should be clarified with demographics, these are not a straight jacket, but rather are in place to establish baselines of normalcy. Much like taking a photograph of a given point in time.

Yes if the volcano explodes and wipes out an entire group of mages / clerics / etc then the numbers will be dramatically thrown off. No this does not suddenly mean 1/2 the remaining population applies for admission to the mages college (or whatever). It does however mean that the demographics for that area might take time (perhaps decades) to rebalance and return to "normal", but eventually they will do exactly that...more or less.

Demographics are much like taking a census and are only done once every few years to get a feel for the growth of a civilization. I sometimes think some DM's take such things a little too literally and thus loose sight of the point behind such things.

[thejeff]

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

I agree with your logic, however would point out that for most people entry into a class like the ranger would generally be easier than a cleric. Why? Well a character with a Wisdom of 13 can still make for a decent ranger (especially with level caps in place) but a Cleric with a 13 Wisdom is likely to never be more than someones apprentice. This is why my original chart is balanced towards 1/3 & 2/3 partial casters. Their entry requirements are simply lower.

The other thing to consider from an RP perspective is the Core Caster classes are very demanding on their members. These are fraternal orders with high expectations ranging from strict alignment considerations, and in some cases commitments in time or tithing. Semi casters typically don't have such restrictions, or at least fewer of them.

I'm not sure why you're making these assumptions. Are these specific to your game world?

Why would a 13 Wisdom Cleric be restricted to "apprentice"? Why would a ranger with a 13 wisdom (especially if that's his high stat and if not it's hardly a lower entry requirement) do just fine?

I can see Clerics as "fraternal orders" - churches really, but there's lots of different ones and they're everywhere. Wizards can belong to guilds or something, but there's no such requirement. You could have learned from some crazy old man in a tower. Druids can also go either way - hermits or religious organizations. Sorcerers are likely be basically solo.
Bards can run the gamut. It's common to see paladins as very demanding orders or attached to particular churches. Rangers could go either way.

I'm really not seeing the "full casters have more RP limits".