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="clearstream" data-source="post: 7148944" data-attributes="member: 71699"><s></s><s>I'll leave it to you to figure out why these sorts of guides are useful. You own a copy of the DMG, right? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I wonder how big Xanathar's guild could be?</s><s></s><s></s><s>Deplorably, I do not contribute on forums in order to earn the agreement of other contributors. I suspect anyone who does is in for disappointment <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> That said, from experience in simulating the real world, I've learned to respect accuracy over precision. I think if I assert that there are 1000 Level 4 PCs, then that is very precise, but it probably has low accuracy. If I say instead that I think there are 2000 PCs between levels 1 and 4, that is less precise, but probably more accurate. More times, it will turn out to be right. It would be better still to say, I think there are from 1000 to 3000 PCs between levels 1 and 4, but that feels a bit harder to work with. Steve McConnell pointed out that if you are asked to estimate the length of the Amazon River, then your answer should at least include the correct value.</s><s></s><s></s><s>Fear not when the mechanical conversation turns technical. Put more simply, any good simulation should output results consistent with what you observe. For instance, a rule of thumb that there are "no more than one handful of high tier character class NPCs" is in essence a simulation. It asserts that there will be 0-5 such characters. Is that output consistent with the baseline D&D world? It isn't, and therefore it fails the most basic test.</s></blockquote>

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