D&D 5E How many adventurers are in your world?

[steeldragons]

My general formula for classed individuals [NPCs] is 1 in 100.

I guess, for adventurers, I always assume there are others in the world even if the party never/rarely come into direct contact or competition with them. But there are "Mercenary Companies" and "Exploration Experts", "Archaeologist Guilds" and the like. But not a formal "Adventurer's Guild", per se. Thieves belong to their guilds (or take their chances, not). Mages belong to their guilds/academies/schools (or risk not). Clerics, obviously, are members of their respective temples/religions, and Warriors form themselves into mercenary groups, guards/soldier careers, "freelance bodyguards", etc... So, everyone has places/organzations, even multiple ones, they can belong to/pay dues to.

Someone looking for "adventurers" might ask around the local tavern, actively seek out/hunt down fellows of renown, or in larger settlements, might solicit the local/best [or most affordable] Mercenary Company and Thieves' Guilds, the temples and wizard towers for experienced "specialists" that would be interested and meet their needs. And, once in a great while, someone will actually post a flyer or make announcements looking for "volunteers of specific skill."

Anywho, it really jsut all depends on the settlement and surroundings. You could have an entire medium to large town along a well-protected trade route with nothing but artisan, merchant, and farmer NPCs. You might have a small hamlet on the borderlands where 1 in 10 folks have some kind of classed training. It just depends on the area, and my needs as the DM.

For generic generation purposes, I'd go with 1 in 100 "normal folks" have classed levels. Then, let's say, 1 in 100 of THOSE would be capable of/interested in what we'd consider an "adventurer" [getting beyond level 1]. So that's, what? 1 in 1,000 ...of classed individuals are or have had some kind of adventure/adventuring career?

Then we knock the numbers by 50% each level above 1st.

So, let's say a bustling urban center with 80,000 residents:
800 classed individuals.
400 are 1st level "mooks", the apprentices, acolytes, your run-of-the-mill street pickpockets/guild thieves, the better trained keep guards (vs. the 0 level NPC soldiers)
200 made it to level 2.
100 made it to level 3.
50 are level 4.
25 are level 5.
12 level 6 [.5 leftover]
6 level 7
3 level 8
1 level 9 [.5 leftover]
.5 + .5 = 1 last guy made it all the way to 10th (probably the head of the Thieves' Guild, Mage's Academy, or one of the city's high priests).

So...8 out of those 800 are actual adventurers in an "equivalent to a PC" way.

I'd probably go with another team/group of 5 with the remaining 3 maybe being acquainted or not. Maybe a devoted duo and the last single guy is the last remaining member of a failed expedition looking for a new troupe to adventure with/avenge his former comrades.

Just about any classed (or not-classed, for that matter) NPC is available for offers of hire, of course. Though most (members of the city guard, for instance) are probably not going to be willing to "quit their job" [or put their lives at risk] on some vague promises/contract of a "cut" of some myth.

But again, it's really just dependent on what I need where and when.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Is adventuring a fairly common profession? Are there adventurer's guilds and taverns, bulletin boards posted with adventuring jobs, laws and conventions governing adventurers' conduct?

Or are the PCs unique? Is their lifestyle precedented at most by heroic myths and legends? Does the rest of society not quite know what to do with these heavily armed wanderers?

Or is the truth somewhere in the middle?

PCs are unique. The only reason the PCs are important is because everyone else in the army died at the beginning of the campaign. Now the country has to make do with quality instead of quantity, and it's tough going. (Not enough force-to-space ratio so threats keep proliferating while the PCs are elsewhere.)

Under Bounded Accuracy, an army of 8000 troops is mostly just plain better than a squad of mid-level PCs. But the PCs are better than nothing.

Edit: oh, what I said applies to natives of the PCs' kingdom/planet, but mid- to high-level PCs are ubiquitous in wildspace. Which is part of the problem, because currently the PCs' kingdom is being colonized by spacers, now that the PCs broke the IEN Interdict. It's sort of like being the Incas when the Spaniards come knocking.

 

[Wuzzard]

No adventuring guilds. That's just ridiculous and lazy. PC's are group of people that are together for a common purpose, with a goal to achieve. Its not about adventuring. That's for players.

 

[Lanefan]

No adventuring guilds. That's just ridiculous and lazy. PC's are group of people that are together for a common purpose, with a goal to achieve. Its not about adventuring. That's for players.

No adventuring guilds, perhaps; but it's only logical that certain classes will form guilds or unions. Thieves and Assassins have this built into their rules; Clerics have their temples (same general idea), Wizards might easily form guilds, either generic or broken down by type (Illusionists' Guild, Necromancers' Guild, etc.); Monks have monasteries; Bards have colleges, and it's easy to imagine warriors coming together in a mercenaries' guild. Rangers and as-written Druids are the only ones unlikely to form any such association.

Also, once the party grow up big and strong and establish some sort of base or stronghold they might well end up attracting adventurers and-or wannabees to themselves.

Lan-"and guilds of all sorts are the best places to trade magic items"-efan

 

[Shadowdweller00]

In my worlds, adventurers tend to be a sizable and well-known minority with a generally terrible reputation. They're basically considered something akin to pirates and brigands with a touch of mystique or romance; known for theft, violence, dishonesty, disruption, vandalism, adultery, recklessness, and unleashing ancient curses or evils. Tolerated mostly because the rich and powerful occasionally have a use for them as well as for the rare act of heroism.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Fairly Rare but encountered fairly often. For the most part not too different then Mercenaries. What they do and how they do things varies between them. It's a rere profession however because it has a very high turnover rate. Most die early in their careers.

There are guilds but like Adventurers they vary in what they do and how they operate and size. Plus lots of Adventurers are not affiliated with any.

I don't tend to feature other Adventurers in my games other then the party too often. And the ones I do are usually rival ones.

 

[Celtavian]

High level say 12+ are extremely uncommon. Adventurers in general are extremely common, just as they were in the ancient world. Making a living as essentially a mercenary was an accepted and highly practiced profession for many in human history. I believe it would be quite common in a D&D world.

 

[Caliburn101]

No adventuring guilds. That's just ridiculous and lazy. PC's are group of people that are together for a common purpose, with a goal to achieve. Its not about adventuring. That's for players.

Actually, if you look at your Medieval History, mercenary companies and service-related guilds were THE way to offer your services without stepping too far outside of the society's acceptable norms to be hunted down as dangerous outlaws.

In my main homebrew game worlds there is an organisation that regulates adventurers. Only one, and headquartered in the biggest most cosmopolitan free city in the game world. It polices member excesses and helps to hunt down rogue adventurers. It's leader is a high level ex-adventurer/politician and ennobled to assist in getting into the right parties, war councils or courts to ensure the 'guild' are well represented and seen as sufficiently legitimate by the powers that be.

After all, if no-one was keeping a lid on murder hobos, tomb robbers and the various other expressions of 'a bull in a china shop' that adventurers typically indulge in, then the rich and powerful would just hire a sufficient number of assassins or soldiers to remove the problem permanently...

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

There are classed people but there are no adventurers guilds or is "adventuring" a profession. Most people are not nuts enough to go into a the lost temple of the forgotten god of destruction to find trinkets. The players are fairly unique IMC. Sure there are thieves and assassins guilds since there is organized crime. There are mercenary companies of course as well but they tend to not wander around looking for lost tombs to raid.

 

[Li Shenron]

Is adventuring a fairly common profession? Are there adventurer's guilds and taverns, bulletin boards posted with adventuring jobs, laws and conventions governing adventurers' conduct?

Or are the PCs unique? Is their lifestyle precedented at most by heroic myths and legends? Does the rest of society not quite know what to do with these heavily armed wanderers?

Or is the truth somewhere in the middle?

Strongly campaign setting - dependent.

My preference is for adventurers/heroes to be rare. And often I think I would even like to try going as far as Tolkien-esque, something like "no more than a dozen characters of each class in the known world".

But often I have to adapt to the fact that in pretty much all published settings they are common. If I want to run a game in Forgotten Realms, I have to accept that there are classed characters at every corner.

But I never go as far with commonality as treating adventuring as a regulated profession, for my tastes that sucks.