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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 5575723" data-attributes="member: 29398">If a field adventurer can go from 1-10 (any edition) in less than 2 game-world years, a mercenary can certainly do it in 10 years, or 15...particularly if there's lots of little wars and battles to get involved in and paid to fight in.  Similar rationales can easily be made for non-adventuring members of other classes to gain levels as they go through life.Within military circles they might be known as the Gray Company or whatever, beyond that they might be completely anonymous.  And they might not know a dungeon adventure if it walked up and hit them, but they sure know their way around a battlefield and they're very good at winning the fights they get in.Perhaps, depending on their situation and what the BBEG was promising them and-or what kind of hold he had over them.This one's edition-dependent; in 1e all you had to do was find treasure to earn x.p. - you could in theory get to decent level and never kill a thing.A series of assumptions are made here that don't necessarily hold up, let's strip 'em down: - that all battles are to the death.  Remember, x.p. are earned for defeating foes, whether said defeat is by surrender, subdual, changing sides, or whatever - it all counts.  Thus, it's entirely possible to fight the same foe more than once over time. - that the only foes are other people.  There's lots of monsters out there that are just as good as humans (if not better) at reproducing; and if this world runs out there's always other worlds and planes with things that need killin'. - that the only way to earn x.p. is by combat.  While in some editions by RAW this is true, it's not a big jump to give x.p. for research, invention, and other successful pursuit of activities related to one's class that don't involve combat.  And while advancement in this way is slower, those x.p. still mount up over 20 years...and if those people also sometimes hit the field for an adventure or two (whether by their own choice or not) they're set.Adventuring is the fast track to high level, but not the only track.  I see adventuring PCs as using almost a different system than stay-at-home researchers; both gain x.p. and levels but the adventurers do it much faster and with much more risk involved.No.  There are more than that.They come from about a quarter-million years of civilizations rising and falling and rising again; from monsters gathering hoards then dying alone; from artificers messing with magic and creating works of art that end up forgotten in a mathom house; from previous adventurers' strongholds now abandoned; from Necromancers achieving their career goal of Lich-hood; and from a thousand other sources not mentioned...And that's just on this one world.Why the heck not?  If I'm supposed to be running the show, why not hire my own gang of bashers to keep the place in one piece?  If they occasionally find a dungeon it means I don't have to pay 'em, they can keep what they loot.Benefits all round.I don't agree with the "silly gamist world" conclusion you draw here.  Stock D+D does assume there are high-level characters in the world that are not PCs, and in many ways it makes sense that there are.  Also, when you ain't got the fire in your belly any more you retire and let others do it - that doesn't necessarily make you stupid or lazy, it may only show you've moved on from (to use a sports analogy) playing to coaching.Lan-"every time I try to retire I end up back in the field anyway"-efan</blockquote>

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