D&D 5E What proportion of the population are adventurers?

jgsugden · May 27, 2019

I added a mechanic to my game called "God touched". Those that are God touched have the capacity to gain levels like adventurers at a reasonable pace, to follow the death save mechanics of 5E, and to stand out in the divine order.

If you're not God touched, you will not not advance in class levels quickly. A non-God touched person that studied magic their entire life might reach 5th level as a wizard.

The frequency of being God tocuhed differs amongst the races and species of the world, but it is extremel uncommon. Less than 1 in a few hundred humans are God-touched, and they are the humanoid race with the highest frequency of being God touched.

So, a family might save their money to sent their (non God-touched) child to wizardry school for several years so that the child could return to them as a first level wizard. Such a child, with cantrips and rituals such as mold earth, prestidigitation, mage hand, message, light, shape water, alarm, comprehend languages, find familiar, floating disk, unseen servant... might be able to run a medium sized farm or business by themself. They might further extend their studies for 20 more years and advance to third level to gain access to magics that could really change their lives.

However, you won't find fabricate or other 'economy ruining' spells in the hands of non-God touched. The God-touched tend to find themselves caught up in troubles that keep them from sitting around casting spells.

Hussar · May 27, 2019

This is the problem when you try to apply game elements (class, level) to world building. It just doesn't really work. I know that's a crappy answer, but, there it is. Given the massive increase in personal capability that comes with even a small handful of levels, plus the plethora of economy breaking spells, a world built from D&D rules would be nonsensical.

Of course, never minding the percentage of classed individuals, what's the percentage of monsters? Even relatively low level monsters like dopplegangers could very quickly overwhelm a country. Illithids? In any significant numbers would be virtually unstoppable. And that's ignoring how undead spawn. Vampires would decimate an entire continent in a matter of weeks.

77IM · May 27, 2019

Hussar said:
Of course, never minding the percentage of classed individuals, what's the percentage of monsters? Even relatively low level monsters like dopplegangers could very quickly overwhelm a country. Illithids? In any significant numbers would be virtually unstoppable. And that's ignoring how undead spawn. Vampires would decimate an entire continent in a matter of weeks.

The monster population maintains an equilibrium with the adventurer population.

Kurotowa · May 27, 2019

MechaPilot said:
It really depends on the kind of world you want to create, and the nature of that world. People will attempt dangerous things for wealth. I see adventurers much like people heading west as part of the gold rush.

And if you want to get really detailed with your world, consider actual historical forces having an impact instead of it being stuck in an eternal pseudo-medieval stasis for thousands of years. Like the gold rush and the wild west? That wasn't just a result of having an open frontier, it was because you had a massive number of unemployed war veterans looking for new prospects after the Civil War ended. All those cowboy gunfights were because everyone had wartime experience and many were on a hair trigger from the usual PTSD such wars inflict.

This all is one of the reasons I really like Eberron. It doesn't pretend that adventurers are a constant, but makes their numbers explicitly at an all time high due to so many veterans of the Last War being forced to find new lines of work for their skills.

Parmandur · May 27, 2019

Giltonio_Santos said:
If we consider that bail bondsman is a similar real-life occupation, Google tells us that there are about 15,500 of them in the US, for a population of less than 330 million. That would mean not a lot of adventurers running around, which is fine for my own standards.

Sounds like a good rule of thumb, so about 1 in 20,000. That would give a huge city like Waterdeep with 2 million people about 100 adventurers total. With the major factions headquartered there, like the Harper's and Force Grey, that sounds about right for traditional D&D Sword & Sorcery shenanigans.

Immortal Sun · May 27, 2019

Parmandur said:
Sounds like a good rule of thumb, so about 1 in 20,000. That would give a huge city like Waterdeep with 2 million people about 100 adventurers total. With the major factions headquartered there, like the Harper's and Force Grey, that sounds about right for traditional D&D Sword & Sorcery shenanigans.

I think there's some error in his math considering that a number of things we now call "jobs" are things that were, even IRL, part of the stuff "adventurers" did. I mean, think about locating ancient ruins of lost civilizations. We did that IRL. There were hired mercenaries yes, but there were also anthropologists, botanists, archaeologists, IRL professions that might translate into the "wizard" or "cleric" members of the fantasy party.

There's still a fairly sizable market for mercenaries in the modern world, especially outside stable Western nations as well.

Consider also the people who went off after the gold rush, or the oil rush, or the land rush.

A stable, industrious, modern society with plenty of bread and circuses is probably not a good comparison to a near-feudal society where there was a much lower ability to become educated, a much lower bar for safety, especially if you live in the fringes of a nation and a high chance of death from simple disease and malnutrition.

People who go home to the comfort of four walls, indoor plumbing and heating, a nice sofa in front of a TV or a comfy computer chair are not inclined to venture out on their own and risk life and limb to gain great wealth in some dank dungeon.

Hussar · May 27, 2019

Also, just as a point, Waterdeep's population isn't 2 million. It's about 200 000. I think the 2 million inflation number came out of some 3e book or other, but, in current canon, Waterdeep is nowhere near that large. Makes sense, after all. To support a city of 2 million with that level of technology, you need entire empires. The Sword Coast couldn't come even close to supporting that sort of population.

Parmandur · May 27, 2019

Hussar said:
Also, just as a point, Waterdeep's population isn't 2 million. It's about 200 000. I think the 2 million inflation number came out of some 3e book or other, but, in current canon, Waterdeep is nowhere near that large. Makes sense, after all. To support a city of 2 million with that level of technology, you need entire empires. The Sword Coast couldn't come even close to supporting that sort of population.

At the risk of taking the topic entirely too seriously, from the WotC website:

"The City of Splendors is certainly the greatest of the Sword Coast cities and perhaps the greatest cities on the face of the world. It’s home to as many as two million people, though an accurate census is all but impossible since so many come and go, visiting the open city to trade and otherwise seek fame and fortune."

https://dnd.wizards.com/dungeons-and-dragons/what-is-dnd/locations/waterdeep

Feeding people in Waterdeep is done through magic: big, honking Druidic magic.

Celebrim · May 27, 2019

Greenstone.Walker said:
The greater territory of Waterdeep has around 2 million people. How many of them are adventurers?

Do you mean 'adventurers' or do you mean 'PC classed individuals'.

If you mean 'PC classed individuals', in my game, PC classed individuals are probably 20% or more of the total population.

If you mean 'people who professionally fight monsters and recover treasure', then that's probably like 1 in 5000 persons though the vast majority - indeed nearly all of them - would not identify as 'adventurers'. Instead, you'd be dealing with a combination of knights errant, templars, champions, questing priests, mercenaries, inquisitors, bounty hunters, professional hunters and exterminators of different sorts. You'd also have a variety of guides, professional treasure hunters and scholars who studied various esoteric dangerous things, or whose studies regularly brought them in contact with various dangerous things. Plus you'd have people who worked as guards for or assistants to all of the above.

Of course, you'd also have a lot of mercenaries and the like out there that didn't really fight monsters or uncanny things except by necessity. And technically, a 'rat catcher' is a monster fighter, but we don't really think of the rat catchers as adventurers (though in a fantasy world, they might be rather tough and competent individuals).

So, in 2 million persons you'd have like 400,000 leveled PC classed individuals, of which about 400 of them in some sense were competitors to the PC's. Of those, probably only a 10th of those would be a part of a long term multi-disciplinary mercenary company from diverse backgrounds that we think of as 'an adventuring party'. The vast majority would either work alone, or have specialties (like killing undead or lycanthropes), or be emergency task forces sponsored by various temples or perhaps in some cases governments.

Hussar · May 27, 2019

Parmandur said:
At the risk of taking the topic entirely too seriously, from the WotC website:

"The City of Splendors is certainly the greatest of the Sword Coast cities and perhaps the greatest cities on the face of the world. It’s home to as many as two million people, though an accurate census is all but impossible since so many come and go, visiting the open city to trade and otherwise seek fame and fortune."

https://dnd.wizards.com/dungeons-and-dragons/what-is-dnd/locations/waterdeep

Feeding people in Waterdeep is done through magic: big, honking Druidic magic.

Heh. It really depends on which sources you want to read.

FRCS pegs it at about 150 000 ish. In any case, 2 million is a ludicrous number for a city that size. I mean, the inside of the walls are less than 5 miles by 2 miles. 2 hundred thousand people per square mile? That's a bit much.