Settlement Stats - NPCs

[Lanathar]

Hi All

I don't have the Gamemastery guide (just access to the OGL stuff)

I was wondering if there is something that indicates how many NPCs of certain levels there should be for a given settlement side (approximately) - e.g. the highest level NPC for a Hamlet should be level X and there can also be up to x number of level x (etc)

I know this existed for 3.5 but cannot seem to find it for Pathfinder

Thanks for any help

[CrystalSeas]

On the left side of this page, look for the "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game" section.

Click on "Rules Archive (PRD)"

That will take you to links for 15 different Pathfinder rule books, including Gamemastery Guide.

Click "Gamemastery Guide"
Click "Settlements"

That will take you to the settlement rules
Gamemastery Guide: Settlements

[Lanathar]

I have seen the rules you link to
They don't contain what i was asking about - as in the number of NPCs for each level (and max suggested level)

Is this not a paizo thing ?

[VRMH]

Lanathar wrote:

Is this not a paizo thing?

It's not. There's a table for the total number of inhabitants, but that's all there is.

[Dasrak]

There are no official rules for what kind of distribution of character levels exist in a typical settlement.

I have the same issue in that I want a quick way to estimate how many characters of a given level are in a settlement. I eventually came up with a guideline that I call the "rule of halves". About half of the population is 1st level. About half that many (1/4 of the total population) are 2nd level. About half that many (1/8th of the total population) are 3rd level. And so on and so forth. So suppose you have a village with 150 people. On average 75 will be 1st level, 38 will be 2nd level, about 19 will be 3rd level, 10 will be 4th level, 5 will be 5th level, 2 will be 6th level, and 1 will be 7th level. This is sort of an "on average" sort of thing, so you can always tweak this to meet whatever specific needs you have for the settlement you're creating. It's not perfect, but if you're just looking for a rough guideline it consistently gives sane results and is really easy to apply.

[Coidzor]

Third party or going back to D&D 3.5 are the only way you'll find rules to cover those sorts of demographics as I recall.

I believe there are generators based upon those rules still floating around online, like at d20srd.org or possibly over at ENworld.

Whatever sort of rules you did find would be heavily slanted towards a specific type of setting, though, and demographics suitable for generic Fantasyland, Krynn, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Golarion are going to differ sometimes wildly.