NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MasterTrancer" data-source="post: 6493530" data-attributes="member: 6762055">Greetings all. For some time now I had some curiosity about the actual density of high-level characters (either PCs and NPCs) in a setting; starting from an entry in the DM Options: High-Level Play from 2E, I jotted down some calculations, and came up with some interesting numbers, which I wanted to discuss with you. Please bear in mind that any assumption on the frequency of a score is based for ease on a 3d6 generation method; note also that there is no default assignation of the scores to the characteristics (so an 18 INT is treated the same as an 18 STR).A basic character which has AT LEAST 10 in every score (so, no maluses) has a little less than 6% chance to be rolled, and that means that for every million persons, there will be about 60 thousands people with these scores.If we raise the bar, and look at the PHB's standard scores (i.e.: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) we see that a (N)PC with AT LEAST this scores is much rarer: only 764 of these persons exist out of every million computed.Since we're debating of the chance of being born with these values, we're focusing only on 0th or 1st level chars.What are the odds of leveling up in this edition? Not only considering deaths, but also retirements? Say one-in-two (so as to also preserve the assumptions in the original paper and eventually compare the numbers)?Halving each population as the levels increase, we have 1 20th level PC with at least the standard scores (however mixed) for every BILLION people in the world (actually 1,46, since the numbers get rounded, but I prefer integers for this calculation).So, to recap the assumptions: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">standard scores (as found in PHB)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">values mixed as preferred</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">statistical frequency of the scores based on the 3d6 distribution</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">at every level 1 (N)PC levels up and 1(N)PC retires (or dies)</li> </ul>And the results:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">for every million people in an area, only 764 will be eligible</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">for every billion people in a world, only 1 will reach 20th level</li> </ul>That says much about the abundance of high-level (N)PCs in a fantasy world.Frankly, I was a little surprised with these numbers; what do you think? Do you hold true the assumptions, or would you modify them in some ways?</blockquote>

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