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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 89761" data-attributes="member: 3146">A worthy attemptI'm not going to evaluate your math but I have a few comments.Conceptually, I like it when my DMs try to present a consistent world where NPCs, ecologies, etc. make sense. It's hard to know how a character could react to unusual situations or develop suspicions about odd things if 30 foot tall, 10 foot wide monsters are regularly found in rooms with 5 foot high entrances or herds of tyrannosaurusses attack the party in the middle of a desert.On the other hand, I don't think that one equation would be sufficient to give you a balanced ecology. Deserts, jungles, tundra, and marshes would all have different densities of population.Furthermore, overpopulation in certain segments is a regular occurance in nature--particularly where people are around. A campaign to erradicate medium and larger predators (which often feed on livestock) would most likely result in more herbivores than usual around developed lands. On the other hand, those might lose numbers to habitat destruction or deliberate hunting too (most farmers don't like rabbits or gophers eating their crops after all). Perhaps, even more to the point, most of the time adventurers are involved in combat with animals it will be because the numbers are out of whack. For example, if adventurers are attacked by starving wolves, it's probably because there are more carnivores in the area than the number of herbivores can support. Otherwise, the wolves wouldn't be starving and they probably wouldn't attack the adventurers. Unless your PCs are really odd, they probably won't be counting the number of wolves in non-combat encounters.Another fact to consider is that some animals in the monster manual are noted for being destructive to the ecology. Bullettes, for instance, typically eat everything there is to eat in a territory and then move on. If a territory has a Bullette in it and very little stuff to eat it's probably because the Bullette already ate it. If there's not enough to sustain a Bullette for very long, that's to be expected too--they hunt an area until it's not worth hunting and then move on.On the whole, I think you're better off just adjudicating on a case by case basis as your stories require than trying to come up with a formula that won't be applicable in most cases anyway.</blockquote>

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