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

[Lanefan]

Depends on what version of D&D you are playing. If I remember correctly, I am pretty sure that AD&D awarded NPCs working with PCs half the XP the PCs earned.

That only applied to henches hired by the PCs; and their training was much cheaper if not free also.

Non-hench adventuring NPCs were as far as I know treated the same as PCs; and in any case that's how we've always done it.

 

[Lanefan]

Good point. I did somewhat account for this in that I think it is viable to consider Early Industrial as a realistic equivalent, considering the prevalence of magic in some campaign worlds. But this really depends the world itself and the assumptions built into it by the DM--as you say. Is magic closely guarded by wizardly orders who don't share it with the masses, who thus do not receive any such benefits that you mention? How rare is it? Etc.

And a balancing point: the existence of magic, and fantastical creatures, makes a typical fantasy world far more dangerous than our own world, at least in that it adds potential threats that our world doesn't really have. On the other than, this point is further balanced by the general lack of frequent plagues that have occured in our world, or at least they usually aren't nearly as common in most fantasy histories.

All quite true.

Yes, I like this distinction and thought of it at the end of my long post, which is why I mentioned other factors--such as specific groups. I would imagine that drow would have a very high percentage of leveled individuals, for instance, due to the dangerous nature of their habitat.

I go a step further even than that: Drow are taught arcane casting in school just like we're taught to read and write and count. The only ones who drop these skills later are those who go on to become full-time Clerics.

Yeah, I like this. It is also why I would think more in terms of tiers than levels. If a world has, say, 50 individuals at epic tier (16-20), they can be distributed in any number of ways, and it will always be shifting.

I'm reminded of "cat years." Most people think it is x7, but it really varies within different age ranges.

One last point. A factor that I didn't consider when writing the longer post, but thought of while reading yours, is that "abandoned campaigns" could add an element to the mix. For every campaign that makes it to 15th+ level, there are many--dozens, probably--that never make it past 5th level. This might be the "real-world" corollary to the pyramid/beaker shape. I mean, it isn't unlike the fact that all of us have countless unfinished projects for every one we finish.

Yes, that'd represent part of the drop-off at low levels, along with deaths.

That said, I tend to think more that those adventurers who don't do so well in their early days (their party collapses in the fiction to reflect their players' campaign failing) don't all necessarily retire; some instead find others who wish to keep going, form a new party, and carry on.

I don't think this formula is any more absolute than the original one I came up with, but it does provide another angle and guideline to think this through. Let's say, for instanace, that about 10% of starting campaigns make it to 5th level, and of the PCs, half survive. That means that for every 100 1st level characters in starting campaigns, 95 of them effectively "retire" (corollating with abandoned campaigns) or die before reaching 5th level.

This assumes two things, if I'm reading it right: a) that every adventurer at some point has a player attached, and b) that the character would always retire if-when its player drops off it.

I don't agree with either of these assumptions when it comes to populating my own game world, though I could see the point if trying to populate a common-use setting e.g. Greyhawk or FR by using all the PCs who have adventured there as a baseline.

It doesn't have to be those percentages, but that gives us an idea. If we take the same approach for every tier with an arbitrary one millionish leveled characters, we get:

1 million at 1st tier (1st-4th)
10,000 att 2nd tier (5th-10th)
100+ at 3rd tier (11th-15th)
5 at 4th tier (16th-20th)

Again I think it'd be a lot less steep of a dropoff at higher levels. IME most campaigns, if they're gonna fail, do it fast - usually within the first half-dozen sessions while the PCs are still 1st or 2nd level.

So it might go more like

1 million at 1st tier (1st-4th, with about half of those being 1st and another 1/3 being 2nd)
10,000 at 2nd tier (5th-10th, with not much dropoff per level)
5,000 at 3rd tier (11th-15th, ditto)
3,000 at 4th tier or above (16th level and higher, open-ended; the majority of which are and always were NPCs including mentors, villains, guild masters, master artificers*, and so forth)

* - someone has to make all those magic items, and I'm sure as hell not gonna go all 3e on this and have the PCs doing it!

 

[DND_Reborn]

I did pretty much the same thing. I varied the experience by how dangerous the area was for certain professions though (frontiers made for higher level Soldiers than peaceful areas for example). I've used NPC classes since AD&D as well. Dragon always had boatloads of them, although they tended to be a bit wonky (I preferred my own variants). I rather liked 3E's NPC classes, they hit the sweet spot of covering everybody else outside the PC class professions, but not being so good that PCs wanted to wander off and take up farming or smithing. I did this with 3.x and I've retooled the NPC classes to replace all the variant NPC / monster types that some people love in 5E. I like the NPC classes for world building and setting purposes. I agree with Lanefan, (if I read him right) I want my PCs and NPCs to work in the same ecology / system. As for murder hoboing not being a learning experience for everyone, well those Commoners don't get experience for killing weeds, just for doing their jobs Simulating retirement could be done by subtracting experience when an NPC (or PC) quits their profession. Kind of the opposite of the slow gain XP / level / day bit. Doing some activities (weapon practice, magic research, religious study etc.) could ward off experience loss as well.

I love the non-heroic classes: Diplomat, Expert, etc. and wish 5E had included them. What level is that blacksmith? He is a level 9 expert. It worked for gauging PC vs NPC and made sense IMO.

 

[Maxperson]

Wheel of Time had fate manipulated and manipulating people very very rare ones called Ta'veren an official in game world this is a PC.

The Wheel of Time had others who were not Ta'veren who had PC class levels. The Warders, all the Ais Sedai, the Forsaken, the Aiel, etc. The Ta'veren would actualy not be PCs, as they were railroaded by fate. Their choices were dictated to them by the pattern.

To me, the only difference between a PC and NPCs is who plays them, not the classes.

 

[Maxperson]

Even in 5E our DM awards NPC 1/2 XP (or more I should say, takes it away from our characters... ).

And we have the same houserule: PCs out of the adventure are awarded half the XP (just to keep them somewhat on pace).

I give NPCs a full share of EXP. They are contributing and in equal danger, they should get a full share.

Once upon a time I gave PCs of players who weren't there less experience, but then I realized that 1) like the NPC above, they were contributing and in the same danger, so they should get full exp, and 2) giving them less exp just gimped the players who showed up by making the other PCs less powerful, which in turn gave the party lower survivability.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I give NPCs a full share of EXP. They are contributing and in equal danger, they should get a full share.

Once upon a time I gave PCs of players who weren't there less experience, but then I realized that 1) like the NPC above, they were contributing and in the same danger, so they should get full exp, and 2) giving them less exp just gimped the players who showed up by making the other PCs less powerful, which in turn gave the party lower survivability.

That's fine, but to me NPCs are not PCs, they are rarely the same level and power, and are controlled by the DM, so they contribute to the success but not equally. Hence, 1/2 XP.

For instance, in our last session, the NPC "veteran" is about 7th level compared to the PCs who are 12-13. It is only marginally contributing to most encounters compared to what the PCs do.

I am not talking about PCs of players who weren't there, I am talking about characters who are not there. If a player misses a session, and someone else plays the character, the character gets full XP.

 

[Maxperson]

That's fine, but to me NPCs are not PCs, they are rarely the same level and power, and are controlled by the DM, so they contribute to the success but not equally. Hence, 1/2 XP.

Most of my NPCs are lower level as well. Not due to half exp, though. It's due to them stopping at lower levels due to the danger, injuries, and lack of desire(they only gained levels during the great war, etc).

For instance, in our last session, the NPC "veteran" is about 7th level compared to the PCs who are 12-13. It is only marginally contributing to most encounters compared to what the PCs do.

Veterans are more like 4-5th level in my game. Once you pass 5th level, you are becoming well known in your local area and are exceeding that of a simple veteran.

I am not talking about PCs of players who weren't there, I am talking about characters who are not there. If a player misses a session, and someone else plays the character, the character gets full XP.

Ahh, gotcha. Yeah. If a PC isn't there at all, they don't get exp at all.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As a player (and in-character) I look at such things the other way around: if that NPC can do it then I, being of an appropriate class and with adequate ability, ought to be able to do it as well.

And any NPC with half a brain is going to think the same: e.g. that Fizban guy can learn spells in a day so why does it take me - a more accomplished wizard han he - a year to do the same thing? What's his secret?

In D&D world there are any number of reasons why one character may have capabilities that cannot be emulated by another individual seemingly of the same class. They may have a different class (Dragon magazine frequently presented NPC-only classes) that resembles a PC class. They may have higher stats. They may have an ability like 1e psionics that only a limited number of people possess. They may have non-human heritage. They may have been blessed by a god or other powerful magical being. They may have come into contact with a unique magical effect that has now been exhausted, such as a card from a Deck of Many Things. They may be from another plane of existence that has different physical laws. They might've experienced a highly unlikely magical accident such as a one-in-a-trillion lucky roll on an extended potion miscibility table. They may possess a magic item that only they can use - perhaps it only works for members of one family, for example.

 

[Garthanos]

The Wheel of Time had others who were not Ta'veren who had PC class levels.

How about this other direction - I agree that some who were arguably PCs in the story were not identified as Ta'veren. They also went from zero to incredible in zero time... and very quickly started using lost arts they rediscovered themselves or figured out techniques others thought impossible. They did not seem to be following the same rule set as anyone else... they did things NPCs thought impossible almost casually at times.

I think referencing Wheel of Time is almost cheating as Jordan and his family played D&D (prior to writing those stories)... LOL

However I think we can find other examples fictionally in the first book of the Elric series he discovers that the way everyone around him was doing magic (all based on ritual casting) was not absolutely necessary and that through desperate urgency, need and legitimate desire he was able to fast cast a greater summoning.

To me PCs are definitely not at all the same in terms of talents and other things as those around them except maybe at first glance. They are the central characters the protagonists in a story and that is enough to make them different.

 

[Azzy]

If they line up with PC abilities, why not in the name of internal consistency just build them as if they were PCs?

Because it's a lot easier and more convenient to just just an existing NPC statblock (with or without tweaks) than build a new character. Especially for an NPC that is unlikely to fight the PCs.