How many Survives?

[Goolpsy]

8 years is FAST! but your calculation just countin those dying from the battles and the chance of it... im just very curious...

 

[Nail]

For those that want to know: For CR = Lvl (rather than CR = Lvl -2), the number of encounters is 1393.

 

[Nail]

8 years is FAST! but your calculation just countin those dying from the battles and the chance of it... im just very curious...

Right, my calculations assume that no NPC dies.

The problem of making this calculation any more broad (to include chance of dieing, etc) is simple: How often would such a party of NPCs only come across one foe, and that foe is exactly CR = Lvl-2?

Highly Campaign, specific, right?

 

[Artoomis]

There is realy no way to calculate this without a boatload of assumptions.

I'd assume no more than 5% of NPCs make it to 20th level - some die, and some stop earning new experience.

I think it's probably closer to something less than 1% of those that one might expect COULD make it to 20th level, so a very, very small percentage of the total population, depending upon the campaign setting.

A relatively peaceful setting will have folks exposed to fewer experience-producing events, while a less generally peaceful setting will expose folks to more experience-producing events.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Right, my calculations assume that no NPC dies.

Actually, your calculations assume that no NPC of the party you're tracking dies.
Along the way, they've killed 2876 other NPCs, with the highest bunch being CR 17.
And EACH of other (deceased) NPCs may have killed a lot of other NPCs to get where they were (unless the deceased NPCs were monsters with no levels and therefore no need for XP).
And those killed by the deceased NPCs killed a lot to get where they were, etc.

So, of the total NPCs in your world, it could be that a few hundred thousand died for every 4 that reached 20th-level. Kind of a pyramid scheme.

 

[Artoomis]

Actually, your calculations assume that no NPC of the party you're tracking dies.
Along the way, they've killed 2876 other NPCs, with the highest bunch being CR 17.
And EACH of other (deceased) NPCs may have killed a lot of other NPCs to get where they were (unless the deceased NPCs were monsters with no levels and therefore no need for XP).
And those killed by the deceased NPCs killed a lot to get where they were, etc.

So, of the total NPCs in your world, it could be that a few hundred thousand died for every 4 that reached 20th-level. Kind of a pyramid scheme.

Right. And a certain number of those who died may have been raised and then made it to 20th level themselves. Not too mention that killing opponents is not required, only defeating them. And on and on... Think about this too hard and your head will explode!!

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Right. And a certain number of those who died may have been raised and then made it to 20th level themselves. Not too mention that killing opponents is not required, only defeating them. And on and on... Think about this too hard and your head will explode!!

Raising the dead is not really an option for the hundreds of thousands of lower-level NPCs killed along the way. And you lose a level every time, so it does hold you back.

As to surviving nonlethal defeats, this is true, but you can't exploit it. If you specifically go into a fight knowing that it will be nonlethal, you're not going to get any XP if you win, because the element of risk isn't there. Win, you get XP, lose, nothing happens to you? Can't happen, or else everybody would just raise their armies to 20th level through nonlethal sparring. So you might survive some defeats if you successfully run away, but that's not always possible (many monsters/NPCs will pursue something that was just trying to kill them).

 

[Artoomis]

...As to surviving nonlethal defeats, this is true, but you can't exploit it...

That's not the point - the point is it throws off any sort of calculation for how many npc's survive to 20th level. The real point is that it is impossible to calculate this with any sort of reliability as way too many assumptions need to be made.

 

[kenobi65]

...while a less generally peaceful setting will expose folks to more experience-producing events.

Which would also have the effect of increasing the mortality rate among those individuals.

 

[dcollins]

My prior survey of 1st Ed. sources gave me a ratio of around 1:2,500 or 1:10,000 for 1st:20th level characters. (Of course, in that setting, most NPC's were classless -- only 1 in 100 could gain 1st level in any class to begin with. This is analogous to considering PC classes only.)