Castles & Crusades NPC distribution in non-adventurer society

[Mythmere1]

I'm working on some tables for cities and other settlements, trying to get a general idea of the level and type of NPC's you'd find in these settlements using the C&C classes. This is generally for determining, you know, if there's a cleric capable of casting raise dead in a particular place.

Obviously, this is just a general thing - kind of like the city generation table in the 3E DMG, for general guidelines and particularly when it's needed on the fly for NPC spellcasters or for hiring small squads of red-shirts to help battle nasties.

Has anyone done any work along these lines?

 

[S'mon]

My level-distribution system at http://www.geocities.com/s.t.newman/demographics.htm
might be useful to you - it's for 3e but based off distribution in 1e AD&D Greyhawk so it ought to fit C&C.

Example: An area has a population of 100,000, with a capital city of 10,000. The entire area has 1%, or 1000, PC-class characters. 500 1st level, 250 2nd, 125 3rd, etc. Typically it will have 2 9th, 1 10th & 1 11th level PC-class NPCs. You can roll % dice to see what class they are, in a typical world around 10% are likely to be Clerics, so most such areas won't have a Cleric 9+.

 

[S'mon]

In 1e or AD&D the other 99% of the population were probably 0-level; in 3e they'd be NPC classes of course.

 

[Breakdaddy]

I suspect it would be largely dependent upon which world you are using as your home base. In Erde, magic items are very rare and practitioners of the highest expressions of the magical arts are just as rare. In Greyhawk, quite the opposite is true, particularly in the major cities, such as the Free City of Greyhawk. Any demographic template would hinge on the locale and world in which you place it.

 

[S'mon]

In 1e Greyhawk magic-users & clerics were rare compared to Fighters & Thieves, although powerful magic items were pretty common and there was a very small number of super-powerful Archmages. 3e has heavily ramped up the default NPC power level if you assume Monte's DMG settlement-generator applies to Greyhawk, IME it gives more Forgotten-Realms style results.

 

[Mythmere1]

I've located one answer from the World Builder's Guidebook (I assume this is 2E).

In this model, between five and ten percent of the population will be of character class, with half being first level and then half the rest second, half the remainder third, etc. 70 % of these would be fighters and rogues, 20% divine spell casters, and 10% arcane spell casters.

So, in a village of 200, there will be 10 to 20 character types. Let's use 10%, which gives us 20. 10 will be first level, 5 will be second level, 2 are third level, one is fourth level, one is fifth, and one is sixth. Out of these, there will be, say, 2 arcane spell casters, 4 divine spell casters, 7 fighters and 7 rogues (the proportion of fighters to rogues isn't given).

In a city of 20,000, 2,000 will be classed, with 1,000 first level, 500 second level, 250 third level, 125 fourth level, 62 fifth level, 31 sixth level, 15 seventh level, 8 8th level, 4 9th level, 2 10th level, 1 11th level, 1 12th, 1 13th.

This city would have 200 arcane spell casters, 400 divine spellcasters, and a mix of 1,400 fighters and rogues.

My main concern (and it's a meta-gaming concern) is the availability of raise dead. It's a 5th level spell, requiring a 9th level caster. There are 9 people who'd be high enough level, and 1 or 2 of them would be clerics (depending on how you divide the classes up). That meets my needs, so I think this distribution works pretty well...

 

[S'mon]

Mythmere - I personally think that making 10% of (adult?) population PC-class gives a ridiculous number of low-level PC class NPCs, esp in a C&C setting. If you want more high level NPCs I'd recommend 1-2% PC class _but_ number halves every _2_ levels - so half as many 4th as 2nd, half as many 6th as 4th, etc. This gives reasonable results without every town of 5000 having 500 PC class - ca 50 Wizards, 50 Clerics, 50 Druids et al.

 

[S'mon]

Eg: City of 20,000, 1% = ca 200 PC Class. ca 60 1st, 40 2nd, 30 3rd, 20 4th, 15 5th, 10 6th, 8 7th, 5 8th, 4 9th, 3 10th, 2 11th, 2 12th, 1 13th, 1 14th = 201 total, 13 level 9+ so there'll usually be 1-2 Clerics in there.

 

[Mythmere1]

Mythmere - I personally think that making 10% of (adult?) population PC-class gives a ridiculous number of low-level PC class NPCs, esp in a C&C setting. If you want more high level NPCs I'd recommend 1-2% PC class _but_ number halves every _2_ levels - so half as many 4th as 2nd, half as many 6th as 4th, etc. This gives reasonable results without every town of 5000 having 500 PC class - ca 50 Wizards, 50 Clerics, 50 Druids et al.

I don't mind ridiculous numbers of low-level PC types. Remember that LOTS of guard and military units have a 1st level fighter per 5 to 10 0 level men at arms. Now, a city is defined in the eyes of a party by the highest level NPCs - so your system (one per two levels, reaching a higher overall level) will tend to make cities with more defined leaders. Which can certainly make a city more memorable, but will also affect the players' perception of their characters' relative power in the society. Neither good nor bad, but different.

 

[S'mon]

I don't mind ridiculous numbers of low-level PC types. Remember that LOTS of guard and military units have a 1st level fighter per 5 to 10 0 level men at arms.

Sure, but a city isn't likely to have more than about 2% of its population in the City Guard, maybe 10%-20% are available for militia duty. Per Gygax 1e DMG, about 10% of entire population are 'males in prime condition' while 20% are 'males capable of lifting a weapon'. In 3e terms that means at most 10% of the population are Warrior (or Aristocrat), with maybe 1 Fighter per 10 Warriors that means at most 1% of population are Fighters, maybe the same again for other PC-class, so 2% of total population PC-class.