Character survival beyond 1st level - how many survive, by level?

[Mercurius]

I'm talking about ALL leveled characters, aka "adventurers," PC or NPC. Let's take a few assumptions:

1) A Points of Light setting -- therefore overall a harsher environment than more standard fantasy (earlier editions of the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk). Much lower populations, civilization centered around fortified cities and keeps, etc.

2) Adventuring is a "mainstream" economy -- not unlike other guilds, therefore there are quite a few adventurers, but not overwhelming so because of the high casualty rate. Higher level (paragon tier) characters have a certain celebrity status and are known throughout their region, while epic tier characters are living legends and will be remembered for generations.

3) PCs are "special" - at least somewhat, depending upon "DM harshness"; meaning, PCs have a higher survivability than NPCs...to whatever extent.

So what percentage of 1st level adventurers might survive to reach 2nd level? 3rd? 5th? 10th? Etc. I realize this will vary widely depending upon the DM and campaign, but what do you say? For every 1,000 adventurers, how many are at a given level?

One of the reasons I'm asking is that I'm trying to figure out rationales for why well-known adventuring sites in my setting would still be worth exploring--that is why they haven't been totally picked through in a relatively thriving adventuring economy. One answer is low survivability; that is, for every adventuring party that seeks out a lost city, how many actually return having successfully "completed" it? How many return bruised and battered and defeated? How many don't return at all?

I'm also trying to get a sense of how many paragon tier and epic tier characters might be in existence. So the basic questions I am asking are (given the above assumptions):

1) What percent of such a population would be adventurers?

2) What would be a realistic "survival" trajectory, from 1st to epic tier?

I'm thinking that in such a setting, somewhere in the 5-10% range of the population could be adventuring; in "adventuring towns" the percent would be 10% or more, while in most settlements it would be 5% or less. In other words, in a large adventuring town of 2,000 inhabitants, there would be about 200 adventurers.

Next, I'm thinking that survivability increases slightly as you go up in level. But this could really depend upon the campaign. But in general, maybe only half of all 1st level characters survive to make 2nd level; a quarter of those 1st level characters survive to make 5th level; and only one-tenth survive to make 10th level. Then it drops by about one per level afterwards, so that...

For ever...you have...
100 1st level characters...
50 2nd level...
35 3rd level...
30 4th level...
25 5th level...
20 6th level...
17 7th...
14 8th...
12 9th...
10 10th level...
9 11th
8 12th
7 13th
6 14th
5 15th level...
4 16th
3 17th
2 18th
1 19th
1 20th level...
1 21st+ level.

This would mean there are...

240 low heroic tier characters (1st-5th)
73 high heroic tier characters (6th-10th)
46 paragon tier characters (11th-20th)
1 epic tier character (21st+)

Again, I'm just brainstorming...does anyone else give this type of thing any thought?

 

[Umbran]

As you say, this could vary a whole lot, depending on the campaign assumptions and implied toughness of teh world.

Rather than make some assumptions, and try to derive an answer, I'd be far more likely to choose the answer I want, and then see what that would imply about how the world operates.

So, I'm going to pick how many characters of each level exist, and then see what that means for how fast they die off.

Or, even more likely, I'm not going to worry about it much. The PCs are not going to see the whole world at cones - they only get to see the small section of it around them at a given time. How many there are a continent away probably doesn't impact local events.

This goes with a basic DMing principle - don't specify what you don't have to. If it isn't specifically relevant to the plot, you don't need to say. If you know the 20th level characters aren't going to be involved, how many exist in the world is irrelevant.

 

[Mercurius]

This goes with a basic DMing principle - don't specify what you don't have to. If it isn't specifically relevant to the plot, you don't need to say. If you know the 20th level characters aren't going to be involved, how many exist in the world is irrelevant.

I don't entirely agree with this principle, or at least find that while it is true that you only "have to" design on a need-to-know basis, doing some of the "meta" background work really helps bring what is relevant to life. Or at least that is how it works with novels, and I think it is the same for RPGs.

Take Tolkien, for example. Part of the reason the LotR is so evocative is the tremendous amount of backstory that propped it up--when a name was mentioned, while Tolkien might not say much about it, it had a kind of life to it, a sense of reality and depth. The Balrog is a great example--Tolkien's actual description was quite sparse, and it was only in the story for a few pages, but it remains one of the most iconic fantasy creatures ever.

Now this doesn't mean that we, as DMs, should put that much work into our campaigns--it would be nice, but who has the time?--but that it helps to know why, to know the deeper story.

So for me I'm trying to get a sense of, for example, how many epic-level characters exist in my world, or at least the local region? Who are they? How many paragon tier characters? What percent of the population are adventurers? And what are the level breakdowns? None of this would be exact, but more in the way of rough guidelines. And in that sense I am less asking for answers from you and more examples of your own process.

 

[the Jester]

Here are the basic demographic assumptions I have been working with imc:

Out of every 100 humans, about ten are 'leveled'.

Of every 100 leveled humans, about ten are 'pc classed'- the others are more like city watch, soldiers, sages, etc.

Of the pc classed characters, npcs have a much lower survival rate than pcs. A big part of this has to do with parties- most pc-classed npcs don't have a bunch of other pc-classed npcs with them. As you look at higher levels, you have a higher survival rate, but less npcs that advance that far. So, roughly speaking, ignoring pcs (since they are a drop in the population bucket, at least until you get to paragon and higher levels), my campaign's distribution at heroic levels is something like this:

-For every 100 1st level pc-classed npcs, you have 25 2nd level PCCNPCs.
-For every 100 2nd level PCCNPCs, you have about 25 3rd level PCCNPCs.
-For every 100 3rd level PCCNPCs, you have about 25 4th levels.
-For every 100 4th levels, you have about 25 5th levels.

And so on.

Once you hit paragon tier, you have reached the 'special npcs only' section of my campaign. You're talking about the heads of large cities, generals, bandit kings, etc. At epic tiers, npcs are heads of worldwide churches, Emperors of world-spanning empires, etc.

So, overall, for heroic tier npcs, this is the breakdown; note that this assumes an overall population of 29,185,365 people.

1 10th level
4 9th level
16 8th level
64 7th level
256 6th level
1,024 5th level
4,096 4th level
16,384 3rd level
65,536 2nd level
262,144 1st level
2,621,440 'leveled' but not pc class
26,214,400 'nonleveled npcs'

Now, I'm not a slave to demographics at all; I'll use higher level npcs if it works and makes sense. But in generally talking about demographics imc, that's my rough starting point.

 

[Umbran]

I don't entirely agree with this principle, or at least find that while it is true that you only "have to" design on a need-to-know basis, doing some of the "meta" background work really helps bring what is relevant to life. Or at least that is how it works with novels, and I think it is the same for RPGs.

Two things - first of all, what you feel you "have to" flesh out really is up to you. I don't claim there's some absolute minimum or maximum. I may be happy working with less background done than you/.

The other thing is a major difference between novels and RPGs - in general, for a novel, an author has a pretty solid idea of where he's going before he starts. Frequently, the entire plot is outlined before the prose is written. The background, then, can't get in the way of developing story, as that background is written to support the story the author already knows is going to happen.

The same is not generally true with an RPG. The DM and players don't know where the story will go when they start, and if the DM specifies too much, he can wind up writing himself into a corner, where what he (or the party) wants to do next is contraindicated by the material he's already put out there.

So for me I'm trying to get a sense of, for example, how many epic-level characters exist in my world, or at least the local region? Who are they? How many paragon tier characters? What percent of the population are adventurers? And what are the level breakdowns? None of this would be exact, but more in the way of rough guidelines. And in that sense I am less asking for answers from you and more examples of your own process.

Thus, I gave an example of my process - for a given game, I typically choose how many there will be, as a rough estimate (Like "many/few/nearly none"). Who they are is not relevant unless the PCs are going to hear about them. Those they are really relevant to the current storyline are sketched out, but really, the number of Epic tier characters doesn't matter to 1st level adventurers.

This is part of why I don't specify when I don't need to. If the PCs are not going to deal directly with the NPC in question, their information is going to be scant. If I do ned to reference such a person, I can make up the needed details on the fly, and flesh it out later. The players will never know the difference.

 

[grodog]

Definitely check out the thread @ http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-essence-1e-demographics-implied-setting.html for some excellent thought on level demographics.

 

[Solodan]

I've played a few published adventures so far in LFR, and a common theme is "Another adventuring party died doing this" so my guess is that level 1's don't last too long.

 

[Delta]

About 2/3. Spreadsheet interpolating AD&D statistics linked.

http://www.superdan.net/download/demogrph.xls

 

[Daztur]

One of the reasons I'm asking is that I'm trying to figure out rationales for why well-known adventuring sites in my setting would still be worth exploring

One thing you could do is have the PCs come across partially completed "dungeons" where either the NPC adventurers looted the easy stuff and ran off to spend their money or died part-way through.

Alternatively I think that a dungeon that was "completed" by a high level party would be an amazingly awesome adventuring site for a lower level party. Just think of the way an adventuring party smashes through a dungeon and what it would be like afterwards, you could have:

A. Big bags of bulky treasure that the high level party decided wasn't worth carrying because it was too heavy. I'm imaging massive stacks of jewelry with all of the good gems pried out but the gold left behind.

B. Obstacles that were smashed through but still dangerous. Maybe destroyed stone golems that are reduced to one leg.

C. Lots of terrain that was obviously mauled to pieces in massive battles.

D. Left-over monsters that the original party didn't bother with and monster that have moved in since then.

E. Have things that the old party did that inadvertently make it dangerous for the PCs. Left over animated dead, jury-rigged traps, stranded henchmen, etc. etc.

I think it would be a lot of fun for PCs to go through a place that piece together what happened to it while scavenging through the ruins.

 

[Ydars]

Mercurius; do you actually want an adventuring "economy" with lots of NPC adventurers? I ask as the default 4E assumption seems to be that there are very few, if any, other adventurers apart from the PCs (I assumed you were talking about 4E since you mentioned PoLs and didn't specify any other edition specific information).

For a PoL setting, this makes sense because basic survival would take precedence over adventuring, because the latter is so dangerous (I know the rewards are great).

This would seem to answer why adventuring sites have not been picked over before, unless this answer doesn't appeal to you?