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Suspension of disbelief is how.
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I'm sure there have been a great number of fantasy creatures that have been driven to extinction over time. It's just there's always wizards/gods out there trying to make a better Owlbear.
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I'm sure there have been a great number of fantasy creatures that have been driven to extinction over time. It's just there's always wizards/gods out there trying to make a better Owlbear.
Like my prolls™. Part pig, part troll, we can feed a village for the price of a single magically hybridized animal. Prolls. The food of the future... today!
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I'm sure there have been a great number of fantasy creatures that have been driven to extinction over time. It's just there's always wizards/gods out there trying to make a better Owlbear.
WHY?!?
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HA! That comment's funnier than mine! Gisher built a better alias.
*offers props*
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Funny, I worry about the reverse. How does civilization get off the ground if there are 1d4 wraiths on the wandering monster table?
Seriously. The first time I played in the classic Hommlet village, I couldn't believe they maintained a stable society under those ecological circumstances. How does anyone farm, when you get killed by giant frogs literally every time you walk an hour outside the town limits?
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Hell, with the wraiths (or shadows or wrymwraiths) you need to ask how the entire world isn't largely an undead infested wasteland of gloom and despair.
Maybe it is.
Maybe all adventures are just the hallucinations of the few remaining living survivors, as they huddle in the darkness, waiting for the inevitable. The bravery of heroes, the power of the gods, the astounding arcana of wizards... all of it, merely the last ditch effort of destroyed minds to find some madman's measure of victory in a lost cosmos...
Well, how many mid tier heroes capable of taking on these monsters are there? The population of any setting is not equally divided by level. And those higher level characters probably have other stuff to do than eradicate owlbears or bulettes around the world.
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Funny, I worry about the reverse. How does civilization get off the ground if there are 1d4 wraiths on the wandering monster table?Seriously. The first time I played in the classic Hommlet village, I couldn't believe they maintained a stable society under those ecological circumstances. How does anyone farm, when you get killed by giant frogs literally every time you walk an hour outside the town limits?
All farms are within a half-hour walk of town limits. If the giant frogs move closer, then the farmers evacuate to town and hire adventurers to drive the frogs away. It is not that different from bandit raids in real medieval times, except that the peasants petitioned the local lord and his knights rather than hiring freelance adventurers.
I am annoyed at how the random encounter tables in the Paizo modules don't cover these details, because my players do care about them. For example, the 5th module of Iron Gods, Palace of Fallen Stars, has a single encounter table that mixes together the hoodlums of Starfall's slums, the elitist patrols of Starfall's high-class neighborhoods, the monsters of the countryside, and the spine dragons of nearby Silver Mount. I had to sort them out to make plausible encounters. The countryside remained too dangerous for normal farming, since the table started at CR 12 encounters. Fortunately, the module made clear that most of the food was imported. I guess the food caravans hired 10th-level guards.
In the long run, sometimes the civilized people do die out, leaving behind abandoned villages and castle ruins. Sometimes the local monsters are killed off, leaving a safe province for people. And sometimes both are eliminated by something else moving in. But an entire species never goes extinct, because their extermination is local and their population will eventually be restocked from elsewhere.
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Frankly like people say I'm more worried for normal people than the monsters in general.
Adventurers are actually pretty rare contrary to most popular beliefs. Most people have npc class levels...like 99% of the world population in fantasy worlds. And most aren't willing to risk their lives.
But anyway with the inner sea world guide at least for golarion we have a brief idea of what's going on:
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.
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I've liked using the leadership followers table as a guide to demographics.
If you look at the followers, you get a bunch of 1st level followers, a tenth as many 2nd, and half as many for each level beyond that.
On that scheme a 5th level character is about one in 96 people (80 will be level one, 8 level two, 4 level three, 2 level four, and 1 level five).
If a CR 5 troll wanders into a village of 300 people they can probably come up with a party of a couple level 4,5, or 6 locals to drive it off.
You can adjust the divisor to taste, but it's not a bad starting point for level demographics. A divisor of 10 for 1st --> 2nd, and a divisor of 2 after that gives a 5th level person per 100 people, a 10th level person per 3,200 and an 18th level character is about one in a million.
I prefer a divisor of about 2.5, but the principle is the same.
2e actually did demographies and this is close to what they did
though from what I remember the divisor was like1st - 2nd was like 3 instead of ten
but 18th level was a little over 1 in a million
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Hell, with the wraiths (or shadows or wrymwraiths) you need to ask how the entire world isn't largely an undead infested wasteland of gloom and despair.Maybe it is.
Maybe all adventures are just the hallucinations of the few remaining living survivors, as they huddle in the darkness, waiting for the inevitable. The bravery of heroes, the power of the gods, the astounding arcana of wizards... all of it, merely the last ditch effort of destroyed minds to find some madman's measure of victory in a lost cosmos...
Umbral Apocalypse?
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How do those monsters survive? Pressure from higher trophic levels (e.g. adventurers) requires adaptation in order to prevent extinction. This can include (but is not limited to) kin-selection, higher fecundity, more parental care, or movement into a more isolated niche. There are a variety of traits on the r/k/s life-history strategy continuum; those CR 5-8 monsters have room to diversify to avoid extinction.
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Umbral Apocalypse?Hell, with the wraiths (or shadows or wrymwraiths) you need to ask how the entire world isn't largely an undead infested wasteland of gloom and despair.Maybe it is.
Maybe all adventures are just the hallucinations of the few remaining living survivors, as they huddle in the darkness, waiting for the inevitable. The bravery of heroes, the power of the gods, the astounding arcana of wizards... all of it, merely the last ditch effort of destroyed minds to find some madman's measure of victory in a lost cosmos...
Zygomind
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/plants/zygomind/| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The game is designed to model Hercules taking down the Nemean Lion, not real-world hunters taking down a normal lion. As a result, the game system breaks down when you apply it to real-world scenarios. In a realistic sense, animals are grotesquely overstatted. I once tried to come up with some houserules to handle just the overstatted animal issue, but concluded that it's too ingrained into the game system for a number of reasons.
The biggest problem lies in the way strength is modeled in Pathfinder. Because this is a game of fantasy, it emphasizes the strength of your character in combat while downplaying other factors. For instance, the difference between a wooden club and a masterwork longsword (ie, stone age tech versus medieval tech) is only +1 to hit and damage on average. Meanwhile, the difference between average (10) strength and superior (18) strength is +4 to hit and damage. Strength completely eclipses other factors in combat. Even skill at arms (as modeled by BAB) has a hard time closing the difference in strength between an average human and a body-builder. This is good for giving the feeling of a mighty warrior who overshadows lesser weaklings, but creates a problem when we go to stat animals. If a warrior with the strength of an ox is a terrifying force in combat, then this same combat advantage applies to an ox, which also has the strength of an ox. This inherently leads to a massive inflation of the threat presented by overwise mundane animals, and in turn pushes up the corresponding threat level of monsters.
If you want to fix this problem, you need to make manufactured weapons massively advantageous over natural weapons to properly simulate their real-world advantage. This in turn would let you drop the CR of animals that rely on natural weapons to more properly reflect how they actually stack up against properly armed humans (which is to say, they get slaughtered). These more powerful manufactured weapons would also put pause into more powerful monsters, and better explain why they'd be unwilling to attack a large human settlement. However, this would be a complete overhaul of Pathfinder's combat system, and a change at such a fundamental level would mean you're basically creating an entirely new game system at that point.
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Well, how many mid tier heroes capable of taking on these monsters are there? The population of any setting is not equally divided by level. And those higher level characters probably have other stuff to do than eradicate owlbears or bulettes around the world.
In some worlds , you could just check the census records. (In this series, everyone has their class and level tattooed on their forehead. Really.)
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OTOH, there are lot of animals that are serious threats to even armed men - at least alone and not with ranged weapons or weapons designed for that kind of hunt.
Certainly there are dangerous and threatening animals, but humans are a far bigger threat to them than the other way around.
For instance, there's a story that Hannibal made a captured Roman soldier battle against one of his war elephants for the entertainment of his men. The soldier won. This means the difference in combat power between a soldier and a trained war elephant is close enough that die rolls and chance can realistically swing the result. That puts Elephants no higher than CR 2 (and that's being generous). Another example is the Polar Bear, which is traditionally hunted by the Inuit people in the arctic. What might surprise you is the size of such a hunting party: one person. With good tactics and nothing more than a bone spear, a lone hunter can bring down a polar bear.
Now, this doesn't mean that these animals aren't dangerous. If you make a mistake and give them an opening they will kill you. However, a properly trained and outfitted human warrior is the deadliest predator this world has ever seen. Only the most dangerous animals on earth are even comparable.
MAGIC!!
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Perhaps these creatures are actually created as a side effect of spell casting, thus the same adventurers who deplete their numbers also inadvertently replenish them.
I believe those "good tactics" included a dog team to keep it at bay.
That's one way of doing it. The other way was to set up an alcove made of packed snow and antagonize the bear into charging. The hunter then braced with the spear.
Just invent a Demigod of keeping weird creatures from going extinct and explain it all as divine intervention.
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Perhaps these creatures are actually created as a side effect of spell casting, thus the same adventurers who deplete their numbers also inadvertently replenish them.A wizard did it (unknowingly, by accident). An elegant, ironic answer. I like it.
This is canonically how the Owlbear most likely came to be as far back as the 1977 Monster Manual.
The horrible owlbear is probably the result of genetic experimentation by some insane wizard.
(Gygax, 1977, page 77).
So "a wizard did it" as an honest explanation predates "a wizard did it" as an sarcastic handwave.
Well, yeah. The satcastic explanation came around as an intentional mockery of the real explanation.
Suspension of disbelief is how.
Pretty much this imo. Otherwise if one injects realism into D&D many species of animals and humanoids would be extinct. The default setting is that the creatures keep respawning imo. Unless the DM houserules that to be otherwise.
Well, yeah. The satcastic explanation came around as an intentional mockery of the real explanation.
It's not really that different from "mad science" or "divine/ancient/evil curses" as an explanation for the existence of monsters in pre-20th century fiction (e.g. Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, the Mummy, Werewolves, etc.)
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I like your table, but Paizo isn't terribly consistent about what level they peg NPCs at. Take ** spoiler omitted ** or the Children of Steel who are a mercenary band of four 20th level evil characters who (AFAIK) have no political or historical importance whatsoever...
For myself I like a table like the following:
Level 1-3: 95% of the population, typical peasants, soldiers, and craftspeople. The wise old farmer everyone turns to for advice? He's a 3rd level commoner.
Level 4-6: The best in small towns. In cannon Sandpoint has a 7th level mayor. Villages of a few hundred people might have a single 5th level aristocrat running the place.
Level 7-9: The best is a county or middling city of thousands. The powers that be should really put you in charge of something important if you can be made to work for them. A county could easily just not contain a Cleric capable of casting raise dead. A 9th level wizard is someone the King has heard of personally and the intelligence agencies keep an eye on.
Level 10-12: The best in large regions, the power class of a nation, Dukes, Archbishops, Crime Lords, Generals. 12th level puts you at the top of major cities and one of a handful of the nations key players.
Level 13-15: The best in nations. In cannon the Empress of Cheliax is 16th level (if you ignore her 2 aristocrat levels, the power is the 16 sorcerer levels), the Emperor of Taldor is 12th, the Supreme Elect of Andoran is 14th level. A large, powerful, nation might only contain a couple people of this level. The highest level cleric of Abadar might be 14th level.
Level 16-18: Best in the world. Many nations will not contain characters this high level, there are only a handful of them and they're personally responsible for big chunks of geopolitics. If Krune (lvl 17) wakes up he conquers Varissia and there isn't really anyone...
Quick tap in - I'm only a few groups into adventurer's guide, and the first group has a level 18 cleric of Sarenrae living in a Qadiran tent city.
While tables are neat and all, I am not sure that principle is likely to apply. See:
* Once someone is powerful enough to manage themselves pretty much anywhere, there really is very little to stop them from advancing. I don't see 10th level as a probable endpoint of a career. Why would it be? It's not THAT much more risk getting to 11th and the rewards are so worth it.
* It's probably not going to be a huge cutoff between 17th and 18th level. If you are "best anywhere" already, and need some tens of thousands of xp to get to "best in history", you likely would fight on for a few more months.
* In general, advancing in levels is the best thing you can do WHATEVER your goal is, if you want to reach there.
Thus, there would likely be MORE very high level characters than upper-mid-level ones. The graph would have a very high start at 1, then lower and lower until 8-10 or so, then rising numbers all the way to 20.
^Unless we take into account the idea that people progress up to (and only up to) their level of incompetence.
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Just invent a Demigod of keeping weird creatures from going extinct and explain it all as divine intervention.
It's that kinda part of Lamashtu's schtick?
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Pretty much take the gaming aspect out and there are too many risky factors when you go adventuring. The random encounter tables should usually be good enough example on how quickly hunting low cr monsters can become a nightmare in the wrong circumstances.
Or like stated above...need conflict all the time and sometimes...it just doesn't happen.
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Much like many other things in the game, it's an adventure game, not an ecology simulator. It likely all breaks long before you introduce humans and other humanoid types. Far too many apex predators for any sane ecology to support.
But who cares? We want a game that's fun to play with a broad variety of interesting challenges. As long as the ecology isn't glaringly obviously broken in a single campaign, suspend your disbelief and play.
Short answer beastiary sales
thejeff and Cavall come to the same issue from two sides. The Bestiaries publish the monsters that adventueres fight. The other creatures in the ecology are left out.
In The Hungry Storm, the third module in the Jade Regent adventure path, the PCs cross the northern ice cap of planet Golarion to travel to the continent of Tien Xia.
The party was traveling with a supply caravan, but even that could not feed them for a month on the ice. However, they were traveling near the Alabastrine Mountains, a place where the rock reached above the ice. I invented an ecology. Cold-immune grasses grew among the rocks, cold-immune goats ate the grasses, winter wolves (variant worg from Bestiary I) ate the goats, and the monsters from the random encounter table ate goats or wolves. The party supplemented their food supply by hunting. Magical Golarion could have a robust ecology in an environment where non-magical Earth could support only penguins.
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I always assumed that encounters were the result of bored gods with adventurers being their muses