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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4938546" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm assuming 3.0 as my edition.  Some of these I'd prefer to use homebrew classes to describe, but that would just be confusing.  Some of these come from story worlds where magic works very differently than default D&D and to really capture the feel you'd need customized spell lists (typically long range widely influential magic is easier, but flashy rules of reality breaking magic like flight, teleportation, etc. are harder).Typical peasant: 2nd level commonerTypical guardsman: 1st level fighterTypical guard captain: 5th level, mixed class depending on locale.Typical knight (or equivalent): 5th level fighterKing Arthur: 14th level PaladinMerlin: 17th level wizardElric of Melnibone: Not familiar enough with the canon.Bilbo: (end of his adventuring career) 3rd level aristocrat/7th level rogueFrodo: (end of his adventuring career) 3rd level aristocrat/5th level fighterSamwise: (end of his adventuring career) 2nd level commoner/8th level fighterGandalf the Grey: 10th level wizard/10th level Paladin/2nd level Ranger (Istari, essentially incarnated angel)Sauron: 30th level wizard (Fallen Ainur)Saruman: 16th level wizard/4th level bard (Istari, essentially incarnated angel)Aragorn: (end of his adventuring career) 5th level ranger/10th level paladinThe Witch-King of Angmar: 10th level fighter/5th level wizard (wraith)Boromir: 10th level fighterLegolas: 10th level fighterGimli: 10th level fighterGaladriel: 17th level wizard/4th level druidConan (height of his adventuring career): 15th level barbarian/5th level rogue I have a great deal of respect for the 'Gandalf was a 5th level Wizard' theory, because its very easy to make stories from fantasy literature work on that model.  By that model, you could easily divide any of the above numbers in half or even to one third, and you could make the stories work just fine with the smaller numbers.  And above all, I respect that theory because it emphasis's that the fun comes early and often and that you don't need arbitrarily big numbers to have epic level play.  Indeed, I tend to think that big numbers and massive power often gets in the way of truly interesting epic play, because well, you just teleport Frodo to mount doom and telekinesis the ring into the fire and that's your story.The one problem I have with the theory is that it doesn't work very well in actual play.  This is because level advancement is so relatively easy in every edition of D&D, that the PC's quickly outstrip the power of even the most famous NPC's if 'Gandalf is a 5th level Wizard', at which point the game starts to get abit silly.  In actual play, Gandalf needs to be about the highest level you expect PC's to obtain, else the PC's too easily get to be 'more powerful than Gandalf'.  Likewise, in actual play, assuming virtually everyone is a 0th level fighter or 0th level commoner, ends up in a world where the PC's can pretty much abuse NPC's at will with no fear of consequence.</blockquote>

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