D&D 5E adventurers in your world: common or rare?

Saelorn said:

There's one line of progression, with eight side specialties that don't really interact much with the main line. Within the game world, there is only one true way that wizardly magic works, so it makes sense that anyone attempting to uncover that one truth will have similarities in what they can do with it.

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And they do. They all get the same spell list and progression of spell slots. That's the main line of progression, and it's shared between PC "wizards" and NPC "mages". The fact that the eight side specialties don't really interact much with the main line is precisely my point. Because they don't interact much with the main line, it's easy to imagine other wizards learning a different specialty, or no specialty, as they progress up the main line.

Saelorn said:

I wasn't talking about rogues or fighters, specifically because those two are intended to be broad archetypes. You can't make many blanket statements that are wide enough to cover all rogues, or all fighters, because there are simply too many of them. When you're talking about a group as small as wizards or druids, it's not nearly so obvious that there should be any difference in how they do what they do.

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But why should we assume there isn't a difference? That seems like we'd be shooting our imagination in the foot. I think you're conflating the size of a group with its breadth. They're not necessarily the same thing. If some angry god smote 99% of all "rogues" at random, that wouldn't reduce the diversity of the remaining 1%: they would be just as likely to display the same breadth of abilities. Or, to look at it another way, imagine they're as rare as, oh, music stars in real life. Would you say that there is little difference in how music stars do what they do? That profession is hugely diverse. So even if there are only a dozen wizards in the whole world, I see very little reason to think they all do things the same way. Heck, if there are only a dozen wizards, that might be all the more reason for them to have picked up different tricks -- they probably don't communicate much, and may want to deliberately keep secrets from each other. I'd only expect uniformity to arise when there are enough wizards to create academies.

tl;dr: Wizard is a broad archetype, irrespective of its population.

MechaTarrasque said:

In a world of bounded accuracy, there is no need for the boss to be able to physically beat any of his/her flunkies as long as he/she has enough loyal flunkies to that the boss + loyal flunkies can beat any disloyal flunky (or group of disloyal flunkies). That is like saying the President of the United States needs to be able to beat up every member of the military.

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I feel like there are at least three reasons why we cannot make such a direct analogy with our world. In a D&D world there are individual people with the power of an Abram tank or Apache helicopter. Our closest equivalence is probably something like wealth = XP. A poor person will never be President. Most D&D worlds are also mythic-medieval. Roughly feudal. In the age of feudalism, a lord's personal strength - his force on the field of combat - contributed to his ability to hold onto and extend his position. Finally, when it comes to our PCs interacting with the boss, it is far more effective if the boss can ultimately take a punch, and deliver one back. There's a reason many games use the concept of "end boss". It's one of the few things players respect. Once or twice it probably works fine to go the Wizard of Oz route. But not as the baseline narrative.

vonklaude said:

I feel like there are at least three reasons why we cannot make such a direct analogy with our world. In a D&D world there are individual people with the power of an Abram tank or Apache helicopter. Our closest equivalence is probably something like wealth = XP. A poor person will never be President. Most D&D worlds are also mythic-medieval. Roughly feudal. In the age of feudalism, a lord's personal strength - his force on the field of combat - contributed to his ability to hold onto and extend his position. Finally, when it comes to our PCs interacting with the boss, it is far more effective if the boss can ultimately take a punch, and deliver one back. There's a reason many games use the concept of "end boss". It's one of the few things players respect. Once or twice it probably works fine to go the Wizard of Oz route. But not as the baseline narrative.

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That may have been true in 3.x, but thanks to bounded accuracy a PC is hardly the equivalent of a tank (which requires specialized weaponry to even damage). A high level fighter might be a match for dozens of mooks or even a handful of well trained combatants, but he is ultimately mortal.

Outside of perhaps a barbarian king, or former adventurers who founded their own domain, I would find it odd if the rulers of an area were high level. They are glorified administrators; when did they find the time to accrue the xp needed to become high level? Also, if this were the case, the attrition rate of potential rulers would be comically obscene, given that adventuring is a very dangerous profession.

Fanaelialae said:

That may have been true in 3.x, but thanks to bounded accuracy a PC is hardly the equivalent of a tank (which requires specialized weaponry to even damage). A high level fighter might be a match for dozens of mooks or even a handful of well trained combatants, but he is ultimately mortal.

Outside of perhaps a barbarian king, or former adventurers who founded their own domain, I would find it odd if the rulers of an area were high level. They are glorified administrators; when did they find the time to accrue the xp needed to become high level? Also, if this were the case, the attrition rate of potential rulers would be comically obscene, given that adventuring is a very dangerous profession.

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For my current campaign, I've decided to take a page from Eberron and have certain NPC's be "granted" class levels. In universe, the justification is that certain positions of power elevate you when you take the oaths of office and wear the trappings of that office. You also have to remain with whatever geographic area that office has influence over.

For example, the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild is always at least 11th level, for so long as they are the guildmaster, wearing the Guildmasters Cloak and stay within territory the guild controls. Even if they were a 4th level rogue before becoming guildmaster.

The King/Queen is always at least 15th level - as long as they have been officially recognized as the rightful ruler, taken the oaths, wear the crown, and remain within the borders of the kingdom. Even if they have never adventured a day in their life.

Being officially removed from office (usually via a ritual or something similar), losing the item associated with the office, or being forcibly removed from the territory they control removes their extra levels and makes them much more vulnerable.

Caliban said:

For my current campaign, I've decided to take a page from Eberron and have certain NPC's be "granted" class levels. In universe, the justification is that certain positions of power elevate you when you take the oaths of office and wear the trappings of that office. You also have to remain with whatever geographic area that office has influence over.

For example, the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild is always at least 11th level, for so long as they are the guildmaster, wearing the Guildmasters Cloak and is within territory the guild controls. Even if they were a 4th level rogue before becoming guildmaster.

The King/Queen is always at least 15th level - as long as they have been officially recognized as the rightful ruler, taken the oaths, wear the crown, and remain within the borders of the kingdom. Even if they have never adventured a day in their life.

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Interesting. I'm not aware of that bring a thing in Eberron though.

Fanaelialae said:

Interesting. I'm not aware of that bring a thing in Eberron though.

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They have it for a couple of notable NPC's (one being a cleric that is 18th level while within their temple, but much lower level outside of it). I've decided to make it a more common thing for my campaign.

NPC's with enough personal power that the PC's need to respect them, but are limited in their reach so they need people to go do things they can't do themselves.

Derren said:

Adventurers should be fairly common. Just look at how many mercenaries there were in real life in the middle ages. A fantasy world wouldnt have any less and I would classify those mercenaries as adventurers. They have the same economic needs as "proper" adventurers and they would of course not only fight in big wars against other soldiers but also be involved in monster hunting and might also proactively plunder a lair.
And those who prove to be competent might strike out on their own as a group and become real adventurers instead of climbing the ranks.

Being an adventurer is often the only chance for most people to rise economically, so even though it is dangerous there will be enough people willing to try.

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Comparing adventurers to mercenaries sounds like a great idea. Some of the archetypical mercenaries were the free companies in Italy. They were mercenary companies and also described as "Companies of Adventure". I would not even be surprised if that is the inspiration for naming PCs adventurers. So in my world "adventurers" in the sense of characters with PC levels would be limited at any time to the actual PCs and at most one or two NPCs needing it for the story. Of course a previously classless NPC might gain class levels and a backstory once a player wants it to exist as a PC. However, in the sense of "person described as adventurer by NPCs" or "persons in similar lines of work as the PC" will probably be common (in a variety of versions).

Fanaelialae said:

That may have been true in 3.x, but thanks to bounded accuracy a PC is hardly the equivalent of a tank (which requires specialized weaponry to even damage). A high level fighter might be a match for dozens of mooks or even a handful of well trained combatants, but he is ultimately mortal.

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I feel like a mortal who can take a direct shot from a siege cannon, fly, and destroy waves of ordinary humans in seconds is the equivalent of a tank. Accepted the analogy is exaggerated, but then there are things a D&D character can do that no tank will emulate.

Fanaelialae said:

Outside of perhaps a barbarian king, or former adventurers who founded their own domain, I would find it odd if the rulers of an area were high level. They are glorified administrators; when did they find the time to accrue the xp needed to become high level? Also, if this were the case, the attrition rate of potential rulers would be comically obscene, given that adventuring is a very dangerous profession.

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I guess that partly depends on your concept for awarding XP. I give XP for resolving a situation, whether or not the other side of said situation end up dead. Under that concept, successful administrators resolve a great many situations. Of course to be worth XP a situation must contain challenge and costs of failure. As many will, for an administrator in an unruly land, with ambition or ambitious rivals.

TheCosmicKid said:

And they do. They all get the same spell list and progression of spell slots. That's the main line of progression, and it's shared between PC "wizards" and NPC "mages". The fact that the eight side specialties don't really interact much with the main line is precisely my point. Because they don't interact much with the main line, it's easy to imagine other wizards learning a different specialty, or no specialty, as they progress up the main line.

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Okay, so no single wizard is going to have all of the specialty stuff, and the PHB presents eight specialties to choose from because those are the best ones. That means we don't know what those other specialties are, which presents a failure of the system to tell us how the world works. If the MM is anything to go by, those specialties are too insignificant for us to care about; essentially, they specialized in "nothing", because they're under-achievers. That's not a terrible way to look at it, but it does essentially mean that all NPC mages are part of the wizard class, at least as I see it.

From a practical perspective, there's also very little difference from saying they specialized in something minor that we don't know about, and that the specialized in something like necromancy or conjuration that simply has no effect at the table. In terms of bookkeeping, the cost-benefit is pretty favorable on just hand-waving it.

TheCosmicKid said:

I think you're conflating the size of a group with its breadth. They're not necessarily the same thing. If some angry god smote 99% of all "rogues" at random, that wouldn't reduce the diversity of the remaining 1%: they would be just as likely to display the same breadth of abilities.

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Even from a statistical perspective, that's only true for a sufficiently large sample size. If you have 100 rogues, and you kill 99 of them, the remaining one is unlikely to be left-handed or have blue eyes.

TheCosmicKid said:

But why should we assume there isn't a difference? That seems like we'd be shooting our imagination in the foot.

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This might be the core disagreement in perspective between us. When I play an RPG, I want the rules to tell me how the world works. The imagination aspect of an RPG is all in what you do with that world, after you know how it works.

If I wanted to make up new ways for a world to work, I wouldn't use D&D to do that. As a DM, it seems kind of... cheap... to introduce NPCs or monsters that don't work in any way that the players could possibly have predicted. I would rather introduce an entirely new thing that couldn't possibly be mistaken for something that already exists, instead of new and innovative ways for an existing thing to work. At least that way the players know that they don't know what they're dealing with, rather than think they understand it when they actually don't.

vonklaude said:

I feel like a mortal who can take a direct shot from a siege cannon, fly, and destroy waves of ordinary humans in seconds is the equivalent of a tank. Accepted the analogy is exaggerated, but then there are things a D&D character can do that no tank will emulate.


I guess that partly depends on your concept for awarding XP. I give XP for resolving a situation, whether or not the other side of said situation end up dead. Under that concept, successful administrators resolve a great many situations. Of course to be worth XP a situation must contain challenge and costs of failure. As many will, for an administrator in an unruly land, with ambition or ambitious rivals.

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I realize that some people play up as meat, but that has never been RAW. A high level fighter can dodge a boulder from a catapult that would have flattened a lesser man, exhausting himself and his luck in the process (and he might also get hit by some shrapnel if you prefer to as partial meat). IMC, if a high level fighter decides to stand there and let a rocket launcher score a direct hit on him, he's dead. Admittedly, no one's been crazy enough to try.

I give xp for non-violent resolution of adventuring situations IMC. However, a ruler is unlikely to be placed in such situations. They have people to delegate those types of tasks to. It's silly to me that administrating a kingdom for several years would make you a master swordsman, but to each his own.