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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fingol" data-source="post: 1955452" data-attributes="member: 22679">Granted there are those sorts of challenges. But there must be some that are life threatening. If we are going to subject NPCs to random challenges like PCs lets have a look at table 3-2 of the DMG on page 49.From the table 5% of the challenges are EL 5+.Lets assume that the commoners have a good support system; at least good enough for 4 strong ones to band together in times of emergencies, so they look a bit like a group and the xp/ CR rules "work". 5% of the time they are going to be faced with an overpowering encounter difficulty.At 1st or 2nd level this means there is a 5% chance of having to fight/ face something equivalent to a Tendriculos or a Ogre Barbarian, or Vampire (I don't mind if you think of this as a particularly bad drought or sand storm or locust plague....). These I think are fatal encounters. If we assume that they survive all the other 95% of challenges life chucks at them including the 15% of EL1-4 higher then it can also be expressed as 5% of them dying at every encounter. (This is a really conservative estimate as I think that NPC classes are not very robust and any encounter with a higher EL rating is likely to kill them.) As there are 13.3 encounters on average per level increment it would mean that about 50% of them survive to go up a level (0.95 survival rate to the power of 13.3 is about 50%)That means for every commoner that goes up a level another has died.For every second level commoner you have 1 dead one.For every third level commoner you have 3 dead ones (one out of four lives)etc...For every 20th level commoner or other NPC class that you got out there about 500,000 have died.As most game worlds have some sort of pyramid with one level 20th person supported by multiple 19th and them in turn supported by more 18th etc... and assuming that this factor is 2 then the pyramid of NPCs alive at each level has 1 x 20th, 2 x 19th, 4 x 18 etc...This means that to populate that level pyramid accordingly (each level having two more than the previous) with living NPCs some have to die, about 10,000,000 of them. (Roughly 20 levels x 500,000)As there are about 1,000,000 NPCs in this living level pyramid, it means that every person has to have 10 kids, or each couple 20. This seems a bit much. (Remember that this is a very conservative view)So the next time you are starting a new character give a thought to the plight of the commoner. If you play one it means that some poor wife out there does not have to have 20 kids.Of course you could just have commoners fated to become 20th level.</blockquote>

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