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Message: <blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 3053019" data-attributes="member: 29746">My own homebrew setting actually incorporates two worlds, as it's a hollow planet with an inhabitable inner surface. The outer surface is basically a high-magic, high-power version of a regular D&D world, with occasional departures predicated on the fact that it's a post-apocalyptic setting (most subraces, for example, are explained away as being mutations from original stock). The inner surface was designed to look more like Dark Sun- arcane magic doesn't always work properly there, so the people evolved to use psionics instead. Because the inner surface is a nasty place, when it came time to start making towns and cities down there due to PCs from the outer world going there on a quest, I decided that the standard population rules didn't quite work. Instead I set the base at 3rd level and worked out formulae for the number of 1st and 2nd level characters that were around. The assumption is that 1st and 2nd level characters are apprentices, still learning their trades whatever those may be, and therefore aren't really considered full-fledged ready-to-run adults as it were. They basically learn whatever is needed to reach 3rd very quickly, or get killed by something and disappear from the equation.I suppose what this really amounts to is a world based on SHARK's principle that an average adult citizen in Imperial Rome (to use an example he's used to explain his game style) had to be at least 8th level in game terms to explain the skills and feats they typically displayed; he estimated that an average modern adult would be between 8th and 10th as well. I hadn't seen his principle when I came up with my skewed population formula, but once I did the concept just made so much sense that I immediately incorporated it into my own philosophy.I eventually put a rule into the setting which has virtually no effect on PCs, but helps explain how people can become so powerful so quickly. Whatever XP represent, sentient creatures with a century-long average lifespan in my setting gain 1000 XP every year after they reach standard adventuring age; creatures of longer-lived races such as elves and dragons gain an amount based on their lifespan in centuries. Thus, 1st-level humans of any class will only be the youngest and least learned members of society, and anybody who survives a year at that level automatically advances to 2nd. Two years after that, they advance to 3rd, and so on. Anybody who lives to Venerable age will thus be at least 10th level and likely considerably higher. If I were to ever run a long-term campaign in the setting, PCs would gain this time-based XP as well. While I haven't sat down and fully worked out what this sort of thing does to population numbers yet, I'm sure it skews them towards a midpoint somewhere in the middle levels or flattens out the curve until one bypasses 10th or thereabouts.Naturally, I'd take this idea into account when incorporating any rules for epic-level stuff; it sort of resembles UK's age-based deity categories, i.e. Demi-Deities are between 100 and 999 years Immortal. But it does tend to throw off estimates on number of higher-level (or more powerful-as-deities) individuals in the setting, I think. <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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