Sepulchrave II said:The populations of characters above 1st level is not addressed in the 1E DMG, but the White Dwarf article to which I refer assumed a survival rate of 50% from each level to the next – after all, adventuring is a hazardous business. This seemed reasonable to me; Skip Williams assumes the same incidence of higher-level characters in the 2E supplement Dungeon Master's Option: High-Level Campaigns, possibly from the same source.
Wow, long post (didn't read all of it). I did work on 1E demographics in the past (spreadsheet attached below). Obviously you found the important 1E DMG rule that only 1% of humans have the capacity to gain levels.
What I don't subscribe to is the half-advance-each level rule. Although widely accepted and easy to remember, it does not match up with other details in the 1E AD&D rules. If you compare to things like: (1) mercenary leader levels (vs. number of troops), (2) leader-types for men (as in bandits, buccaneers, nomads, etc.), (3) rulers listed in Greyhawk (vs. population figures), then the 50% rule fails to produce enough high-level NPCs.
What works more accurately is a 50% every two levels rule -- or in other words, about 70% for each single level boost. To get more detailed, what I do is adjust that a bit per class: e.g., 65% for wizards, 62% clerics, 60% fighters and thieves, as the class functions get more physically dangerous. (This also winds up resolving about the same maximum level over all the character classes, since the latter are more common by the rules.)
That's what I find gives the right number of officers (per number of mercenary troops in DMG), the right number of high-level rulers (per percentage table in Greyhawk boxed set), a fair number of high-level wizards on the Greyhawk continent (about 30 Mages, a bit fewer 20 Archmages), and so forth. So that's what I always use for demographics in all my campaigns since 1E. (Spreadsheet attached below.)
In other regards, I'm really struck by how much I agree with what I've read of your thinking -- I completely agree with the importance of the exercise (who the hell is the most powerful person on this continent, or this kingdom or city?), with the sources that you're looking at, etc. I completely agree that the 3E NPC classes were a really bad idea -- what I would recommend in 3E is using simply "unclassed humanoids" (see MM creature types) for the majority of peasant NPCs.
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