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I've looked though some books and found many cities with 9th level spellcasting available to the public. This list is surely not complete: ... Alkenstar ...Wait, the city in the middle of a dead-magic desert has 9th level spellcasting? What?I also find it strange, but that's what the city stats given in Pathfinder Module: Wardens of the Reborn Forge say. It gains 9th level spelcasting due to being a metropolis with a holy site of Brigh. I agree it should also get a significant penalty, but alas it does not.
By the way, not all Mana Wastes is a dead magic zone; some of it are primal magic zones. And some areas change unpredictably between dead magic, primal magic and normal magic.
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Says what?
The basic difference between PCs and NPCs. NPCs level at the speed of plot, and the AP PCs story is over in some sense the second the AP is done.
This assumes that a large portion of the adventurers goes on to retire. I cannot see that being the case for most of them.
Why not? They've sort of reached the pinnacle of their 'career' and have more money than they can ever spend, and no longer have a looming threat keeping them from doing so. Not all will retire, but a lot will.
It has been, what, a few years since the end of Reign of Winter? If the high-level PCs are serious about Anastasia, I cannot see them having failed to secure Irrisen under Anastasia. That is my issue with the Irrisen section of the Lost Omens World Guide, at least.
Well, per the Irrisen book, there are a wide variety of remaining threats in the region, including half a dozen 15th to 18th level remaining Jadwiga rulers. Then there's building the necessary infrastructure to feed people and administer laws in a fairer manner, all without upsetting the Fey or Winter Wolves too much. Really, trying to reform Irrisen is the work of a generation more than a few years.
From a "balance between good and evil" perspective, it has definitely shifted away from the evil side.
Sure, but as a percentage that was actually really tilted away from Good to start with. High level Good NPCs have historically been shown in very low numbers in Golarion. There's also little reason to believe most of them are Good in the canon setting. Neutral people would readily have opposed most of the things the main villains of APs were doing. I'd be shocked if the 'canonical' Skull and Shackles PCs were Good, for example.
It's still a shift away from Evil, but maybe not as much as you're imagining.
Mostly evil people. Again, the balance between good and evil has shifted considerably.
Again, sure...but not as much as you're implying.
1 in 100,000 is a fairly big deal when the largest cities in the setting, Absalom and Goka, have populations of ~100,000. I am doubtful of the methodology in that thread to begin with; it is reliant on the 1e settlement rules, when we do not know how the 2e settlement rules at all. There is no reason to believe that the assumptions from the 1e settlement rules are suddenly ported over to 2e. Breachill (population 1,300) would be considered a small town by 1e settlement rules, yet it has only up to 3rd-level spellcasting, and it does not seem to have anything stymying spellcasting development (the town's idolized founder is a wizardly figure).
Well, per statted NPCs Sandpoint is in exactly the same boat despite being larger. A list of NPCs does not always account for the most powerful caster in the region, going by this and other examples.
But more importantly, the fact that my guidelines are based on the settlement rules is almost irrelevant. They predict, with fair accuracy, the number of high level individuals found in Paizo products. Unless you think their design philosophy has radically changed in this regard (which seems unlikely and we have no evidence for), the guidelines will continue to be just as useful.
If, let us say, ~20 adventure path parties decide to stick around the Inner Sea, that is ~80 new very high-level heroes now in the playing field, after having eliminated a large swath of high-level evil threats.
Per my AP by AP analysis above, it's actually about 64 who are 17th level or so. There are 96 total from all APs, but if you assume one party died, and one AP got done by the party from another one that's 88 left. Of those, 8 are not in the Inner Sea region any more, the WotR party pretty much has to be gone, and three APs cap at 13th-15th level.
But the number who are added to high level characters is, as mentioned, much lower.
And bear in mind that those very high-level heroes arose over the course of the past 10 years alone, which is a crazy anomaly.
It's certainly a bit unusual, yes. But not super unusual for Golarion from what we know about Golarion.
Going by this document, Avistan has a population of hat is the single biggest surge of roughly 2.8 million. By your logic, that divided by 100,000 gives us 28 very high-level personalities. And again, I am still doubtful of your methodology in your own thread, seeing how it is reliant on the 1e settlement rules, which do not seem to carry over into 2e.
As others mention, that document covers only statted settlements, which are, pretty definitionally, a fraction of those that exist. An analysis of the Kingdom Building rules reveals something like 1.6 million in Cheliax alone.
But also, there are vastly more than that already statted up, so the 28 figure is definitionally incorrect.
I am doubtful that this is the case. Golarion has printing presses, sending, teleportation, and other methods of rapidly transporting news, up to and including those high-level heroes themselves.
This is true, but as others note...how relevant is it to their lives?
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What? The Reign of Winter PCs are foreigners to Irrisen, and don't spend more than a few weeks there in the AP. They are 7th-level when they leave it. They are not assumed to have any long-term Irriseni allies. Why in the world would they commit themselves to its defense?And another nation secured by its high-level heroes.
If any are Good aligned there's the fundamental needs of the people and ability to do something to help them. It's likely at least one of them is Good. And from a selfish perspective you get the opportunity to be one of the ruling cabal of a country you can shape in your own image.
Plus the AP actually does assume some possible connections there (or reasons to care about it) in several of its campaign traits.
The only people you really need to get rid of somehow are the WotR PCs, who are just an order of magnitude more powerful than all the rest.While they are by far the most powerful, that power is itself a way of putting them "on a leash." I treat Mythic as being a low grade of divine power and thus something that can generate active divine responses to proactive activities.
This is a totally valid House Rule but canonically specifically untrue. Baba Yaga (who has 10 Mythic Tiers) has explicitly avoided becoming a deity specifically to avoid this kind of restriction, and does whatever she feels like.
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The PCs are heroes, yes. Heroes in a setting that is designed to produce heroes.
It's almost as if Aroden had planned it.
Considering there are millions of people (or maybe billions, depending on how a "person" is defined). I don't think fewer than 100 high-level people is going "break" the world. Yes they will be world-famous and probably change a lot but they are still only a small number of people (and probably don't all get along anyway). Also, this assumes it's canon that the heroes won in Every AP. Do we know if this is true or not?
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The World Guide pretty much confirms that no APs were failed, and all were completed.
Let's examine this (spoilers follow):
{. . .}
I have a take on this too. Plenty of things to keep most of the previous PCs busy.
In addition, think about how many Evil (and sometimes Neutral) high-level characters that Neutral and Good PCs kill in many of the APs. Now, consider Hell's Vengeance, where Evil PCs kill Neutral and Good high-level characters. Now, consider that Hell's Vengeance is probably just the tip of the iceberg of Evil Campaigns, of which perhaps even more exist than Good and Neutral Campaigns, but of which only 1 (2 if you count Skull and Shackles) has been published so far. That is going to keep trimming down the number of Good and Neutral high-level characters, so you actually NEED successful Good and Neutral PCs just to break even.
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The success of the PCs who defeated the AP villains demonstrates the futility of high level characters trying to take over the setting, every time some fool tries to take over some backwater on Golarion or introduce some new plan for world conquest that miraculously comes along every 6 months like clockwork, some group of randos quickly go from 1st to 17th+ level and defeat them. Why haven't the PCs overturned the world? If they try, some new group of randos will do the same to them.
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Hasn't it been stated that this is specifically done so we can seed our own stories in there more easily? The more Detail is added, the more difficult it will be to put my own parties in the Background for those AP's we did play.
And stating that there are all those high-Level parties would run into the good old Vampire: The Masquerade Problem. Why are we doing anything if there are so many, much more powerful People around?
This is also a Forgotten Realms problem.
Actually, it would become a problem in any long running campaign setting.
The success of the PCs who defeated the AP villains demonstrates the futility of high level characters trying to take over the setting, every time some fool tries to take over some backwater on Golarion or introduce some new plan for world conquest that miraculously comes along every 6 months like clockwork, some group of randos quickly go from 1st to 17th+ level and defeat them. Why haven't the PCs overturned the world? If they try, some new group of randos will do the same to them.
The Glorious Revolution found out that this even happens on the other side.
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On complete side note, lots of APs actually DO take more than six months or year when downtime is included :p
Sure, but a new one still starts every 6 months, so that just makes for a time delay on when the additions start, not a total of less high level characters.
Which, as I've said, aren't that big a deal because there are already so many in-universe.