How common are spellcasters?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Shut up, you're making more money than the dropout who works at McDonalds.

Not necessarily- when I got my license back in 1996, there was such a glut of lawyers in the US market, I knew some who were delivering pizzas. Even JAG wasn't hiring.

And if you had $80K in student loans, that meant- momentarily, at least- you were in worse financial shape than a lot of stoners.

 

[Empirate]

Indeed. I'm over 30 now. Had I been flipping burgers since I was 16, I might have saved up a lot of money in the meantime...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Indeed. I'm over 30 now. Had I been flipping burgers since I was 16, I might have saved up a lot of money in the meantime...

Tell me about it!

A couple of nights ago, I went to dinner with a buddy of mine who is a Cognitive Scientist, and we were waited on by a young lady who had saved up enough money to invest in a green power company. Her return on investment meant she had managed to stash over $100k...most of which she spent traveling the world.

(And don't get me started on my programmer buddies- college educated or not, most are making high-5 to low-6 figure salaries.)

 

[billd91]

Dosen't seem so applicable to D&D. D&D doesn't really require any "drive" to succeed. I think it's pretty much assumed to exist as a result of someone willing to crawl in to a dungeon and fight monsters. And what's really silly is that you can technically level to the highest levels by backstabbing level appropriate humanoids. So the game doesn't even specifically require that you even cast a single spell to gain 9th level spells (but your DM might).

If all you're looking at is base game mechanics, then no, D&D doesn't require any drive, but that's not really looking at the motivations of the individual or his means. And DannyAlcatraz is definitely taking that into account. Inherent in the question of how many spellcasters there are, you have questions about how many people mechanically qualify, how many actually want to pursue that life, how many have the opportunity to pursue that life assuming some kind of formalized education is required, and how many survive their foray into that life (or have the discipline to complete their training). I could probably think of more complications inherent in that initial questing given enough time.