Demographics of Level

[Haltherrion]

My current campaign is in a Dark Age kind of setting of small petty kingdoms in a partially wasted land. In a typical kingdom there might be 16000 of which 90% live on farms, 10% live in villages and the King’s town. Of the latter, 20% are nobles and warriors (2% of the total population). There are greater than level 0 in all groups but fewer among the farmers, some among the townies and many more among the nobles (but not all- there are young and old among the warriors, non-combatants, etc.)

Modeling the different level distributions among the three main groups, it comes out for me to something like:

Level # %
Level 0: 14160 88.5%
Level 1: 874 5.5%
Level 2: 378 2.4%
Level 3: 195 1.2%
Level 4: 101 0.6%
Level 5: 95 0.6%
Level 6: 68 0.4%
Level 7: 51 0.3%
Level 8: 25 0.2%
Level 9: 23 0.1%
Level 10: 6 0.04%
Level 11: 5 0.03%
Level 12: 5 0.03%
Level 13: 2 0.015%
Level 14: 2 0.015%
Level 15: 2 0.015%
Level 16: 2 0.012%
Level 17: 2 0.011%
Level 18: 2 0.011%
Level 19: 2 0.010%
Level 20: 2 0.010%


From a game point of view, it does mean the players could go rampaging through the farms but that was the fate of farmers in history and really isn’t an issue game-wise. Once they hit very high levels they could probably take over a kingdom but these are fairly petty kingdoms.

The above seems a good enough starting point but I’m sure I could smooth out the distribution some. It's flatter than some of your distributions. The largest group has some but not many over level 0. The nobles/warriors have many over level 0 (even then are 55% level 0 counting children, non-combatants, etc.) but are diluted by the other groups.

Anyway, it's a different way to model it.

 

[Celebrim]

Level # %
Level 10: 6 0.04%
Level 11: 5 0.03%
Level 12: 5 0.03%
Level 13: 2 0.015%
Level 14: 2 0.015%
Level 15: 2 0.015%
Level 16: 2 0.012%
Level 17: 2 0.011%
Level 18: 2 0.011%
Level 19: 2 0.010%
Level 20: 2 0.010%


The only real problem I have with this distribution is the upper half of it. You have 8 characters of 17th level and above for every 16000 people? So, you have a city of like 3200 people and assorted outlying towns, villages, and hamlets and 8 17th level characters inhabit that area?

If they all lived 'in town' its like 1 in 400 people were at least 17th level. It's like having a veritable demigod watching out for you on every corner. There are 24 characters of 10th to 16th level for the remaining 12800. Every village of 500 people has a superhero watching out for it. It would be like every Smallville having its own Superboy. How does anyone in such a universe die an untimely death and not get resurrected save by pure shortage of diamonds? How does anyone get so much as the sniffles without a cure disease being cast? How in the world do things like Ogres compete? Unless the ogres have the same level distribution, I'd expect them to go extinct. If you can't show your face without some CR 13 human hunting you down, you aren't going to live very long otherwise. And if the ogres and other monsters do have this level distribution, how in the world does anyone under 6th level manage to do anything without extinsive baby sitting?

You seem worried about high level characters going on a rampage. I look at your demographics and go, "You mean every petty kingdom can field an army of 48 name level or higher characters?" It's like having the full justice league in every small town. A truly big town, and my bigger towns run to the half-million size, would have literally a thousand or more characters at 10th level and above, to say nothing of the 500 9th level characters. There would be like 65 or so 20th level characters alone.

You can pretty much forget about standing armies or town watches in a setting like that. The world wouldn't need them. If something happened, if anyone so much as littered, there would be a superhero (or supervillain, depending on the prevailing alignment) on the scene to take care of it. You wouldn't have a town watch, because the expected CR of any real problem (like a mugger or something) would be at least 9. If anything happened, it would have to be the superheroes - the town leaders and elders - that took care of it. Everyone below9th level or so is such a red shirt as to be useless.

 

[Haltherrion]

Level # %
Level 10: 6 0.04%
Level 11: 5 0.03%
Level 12: 5 0.03%
Level 13: 2 0.015%
Level 14: 2 0.015%
Level 15: 2 0.015%
Level 16: 2 0.012%
Level 17: 2 0.011%
Level 18: 2 0.011%
Level 19: 2 0.010%
Level 20: 2 0.010%

The only real problem I have with this distribution is the upper half of it. You have 8 characters of 17th level and above for every 16000 people? So, you have a city of like 3200 people and assorted outlying towns, villages, and hamlets and 8 17th level characters inhabit that area?

The upper levels should have tapered off more. I was lazy in how I modeled this and left it too flat. I just made a chart for each population group of percent at each level and for the higher levels, I made the numbers small but probably not small enough. Gets hard to keep it all adding up to 100%.

If they all lived 'in town' its like 1 in 400 people were at least 17th level. It's like having a veritable demigod watching out for you on every corner. There are 24 characters of 10th to 16th level for the remaining 12800. Every village of 500 people has a superhero watching out for it. It would be like every Smallville having its own Superboy. How does anyone in such a universe die an untimely death and not get resurrected save by pure shortage of diamonds? How does anyone get so much as the sniffles without a cure disease being cast? How in the world do things like Ogres compete? Unless the ogres have the same level distribution, I'd expect them to go extinct. If you can't show your face without some CR 13 human hunting you down, you aren't going to live very long otherwise. And if the ogres and other monsters do have this level distribution, how in the world does anyone under 6th level manage to do anything without extinsive baby sitting?

In 4E Ogres are level 10 and up. Same for giants. The sweet spot for most older system big monsters are the 10s. So this isn’t as much of an issue for higher level NPCs.

I may tweak my chart and try this once more but the basic premise for this setting is as follows:

The world is a dark age world of low population but much warfare. In feel, it is something like the Germanic and Norse worlds 400s-800s CE. In movie terms, think 13th warrior. The average person is a farmer supporting the elite and among them, there aren’t many above level 0. The average townie is also lower level but there is more chance of someone with some experience or a “retired” fighter or such. For both farmers and townies, the level distribution is very much skewed towards 0 and there are no higher level characters.

The nobles/warriors are different. They spend all their time training. They are only 2% of the pop and I still had more than 50% at level 0 (children, mothers, non-combatants, the old modeled here as level 0). But beyond that, it is much flatter. Ignoring the level 0s, the average level for them is about level 5 IIRC with it tapering off.

Distributions that trail off from level 0 for the bulk of the pop combined with a warrior group that is much flatter feels right to me for modeling such a group.

You seem worried about high level characters going on a rampage. I look at your demographics and go, "You mean every petty kingdom can field an army of 48 name level or higher characters?" It's like having the full justice league in every small town. A truly big town, and my bigger towns run to the half-million size, would have literally a thousand or more characters at 10th level and above, to say nothing of the 500 9th level characters. There would be like 65 or so 20th level characters alone.

In a heroic setting where warriors spend a lot of time sparring, fighting and raiding, there would be a fair number of heroes, I think.

This might make more sense to you if you map my level 15 to your level 10 or some such.

I will take another stab at a distribution though.

 

[Haltherrion]

The only real problem I have with this distribution is the upper half of it. You have 8 characters of 17th level and above for every 16000 people? So, you have a city of like 3200 people and assorted outlying towns, villages, and hamlets and 8 17th level characters inhabit that area?

How's this one look to you?

I included the sub-distributions so you can see how I put it together. This is only so scrubbed but I like modeling the different pop groups separately; makes it easier to work in the macro world effects. In this case, it allows for the dominant populations to "fall out" at higher level, leaving the trained warriors dominating.

[Edit: change the pop chart for warrior class to make to center the distribution of non-level 0 warriors at level 3. These folks train for war from an early age in this setting.]

 

[LostSoul]

I don't have a level distribution chart or anything like that. What I've been doing is making rules for populating Lairs.

A Lair of Level X has a certain distribution of monsters within it; there's some random rolling, but not too much. I only use monsters from the MMs (and the Monster Vault), so that constrains the design.

The effect is that when you come across a bandit lair, most of the bandits will be poorly-trained thugs (Human Bandits) and crossbowmen (one home-made monster); some will be well-trained professional soldiers (Human Guards); and there will be a few leader-types among them (Mage, Hexer, Javelin Dancers, Cavaliers, Knife Fighters, Slavers, and Dire Beast Hunters). They'll also have a bunch of followers, probably gathering food (as non-combatants, they are minions). The higher the level of the Lair, the more guys you'll have of both fodder- and leader-types.

This same logic holds true for monster lairs as well.

I haven't done anything like that for settlements (towns, villages), but it'd probably use the same base logic. Figure out the level, then staff it with "monsters" based on the level, then work out the population needed to support those NPCs.

 

[Mercurius]

Nice chart, Marcq - and that represents a truly Dark Age setting. I am wondering, though, if there might be a slightly reverse bell curve where at higher levels the numbers go up a bit, meaning once you get to a higher level - say 15th+ - you are harder to kill and simply be virtue of the fact that you've "survived the gauntlet" you might stick around for awhile. Furthermore, depending upon magic, you might have higher level characters living longer by virtue of some kind of "life extension magic." There is also the retirement factor - the higher level a character gets, the more likely they are to retire from active adventuring, therefore the less likely they are to get killed. Retirement might even be the primary factor of this "reverse bell curve," the key being to figure out when characters start retiring and when when it is at its peak.

 

[Haltherrion]

Nice chart, Marcq - and that represents a truly Dark Age setting. I am wondering, though, if there might be a slightly reverse bell curve where at higher levels the numbers go up a bit, meaning once you get to a higher level - say 15th+ - you are harder to kill and simply be virtue of the fact that you've "survived the gauntlet" you might stick around for awhile. Furthermore, depending upon magic, you might have higher level characters living longer by virtue of some kind of "life extension magic." There is also the retirement factor - the higher level a character gets, the more likely they are to retire from active adventuring, therefore the less likely they are to get killed. Retirement might even be the primary factor of this "reverse bell curve," the key being to figure out when characters start retiring and when when it is at its peak.

You could certainly make a case for that and work into the demographics. I think in a higher magic setting, it would make sense to allow for the "too hard to kill" and life-extended folks. In a lower magic setting, or a non-D&D setting, level might simply be a stand-in for "experienced warrior." Fun to play around with the demographics.

 

[Celebrim]

You could certainly make a case for that and work into the demographics. I think in a higher magic setting, it would make sense to allow for the "too hard to kill" and life-extended folks.

The problem with being high level is that you also tend to attract attention from other high level types.

I imagine for my game that the situation ends up working out alot like real medieval demographics - average life expectancy of a noble is actually slightly shorter than the life expectancy of a commoner. What you gain in reduced risk of starvation, you more than lose in increased risk of being killed by another noble.

True high level types in my campaigns tend to maintain very low profiles. Avoiding attracting the envy and fear of mortal rivals is important, but its even more important not to be seen as so influential that you risk making rivals of the gods. The gods of my game world are like those of the Greek mythology - petty, active, and with zero tolerance for hubris whether real or percieved. You don't really want to be the best in the world at something.

 

[SKyOdin]

For 4E, I would have only a few dozen, or maybe a few hundred Paragon Tier characters at any one time (depending on setting size). Epic Tier characters probably only show up on average once every few centuries. Everyone else would be distributed in the Heroic Tier, heavily skewed towards the lowest levels.

Of course, this would only be true for humanoids. Dragons and other long-lived, inherently powerful, and nigh-immortal creatures are exempt. I might also through these rules out the window I wanted a particularly high-powered setting for some reason.