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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Baron Opal" data-source="post: 3518317" data-attributes="member: 10433">Bear with me, I'll get there.One of the things that I decided after reading through the rules is that society would tend towards city-states. There is magic that can feed people and create water, boost crop yield, &c. Farming is a very dangerous profession. There are monsters in them thar hills. I figured that, assuming the average clodhopper was a third level whatever, there would be enough magic boosting the yield per acre that farming would be minimized. You couldn't keep your peasants alive working the fields, but when your fields are small and the yields huge, you don't have to.There is healing and curative magic available. One thing that spans cultures is that children are precious. Societies have no problem putting them to work when things need doing, and they are often the first to starve when times are hard. But, most people love their kids and try to provide for them as much as possible. So, rather than in our world, child mortality is down. People are willing to keep their kids healthy if only so they can work the fields, and you don't need twelve births from three wives to get four kids to adulthood. Great! with more kids surviving to adulthood, we have more people!Well, no. As I said before, there are monsters out there. And while farming may be a good and honorable life, when you see the manticore swoop down and carry off Uncle Ken and Billy Joe it will lose it's shine. So you might be tempted to get great-grandad's sword out and figure out a thing or two. 'Cause Sarah is the prettiest girl in the town, and her dad wants her to be taken care of, and that damn manticore has just got to have some great loot.So, we have some excess population, clustered around a common area, in a dangerous world where, if you're really lucky, you can kill some monsters and take their loot. Of course, your chosen profession is probably the most dangerous job there is, and there is a pretty high attrition rate associated with it.Hang on, almost there.One thing that has struck me about the German and Italian city-states during the Renasance is their civic pride. They may detest the leadership of the city, but don't you dare disrespect their city. And, if you happen to have gone out there with some buddies, slain a manticore that was eating your neighbors and married a councilman's daughter, the people will think you're pretty darn spiffy too. If you figure that just 1% of the population are adventurers that's 10 people in a town with a 1000 population. 6 are third level, 3 are fourth and 1 is fifth, to use a mix of my and Sepulchrave's method. A rule of thumb that I have about classed characters is, below around 9th level, for one character to advance three levels five other characters die. Six 3rd level fighters leave, one 6th level character returns. It's a dangerous world, and there isn't any garuntee that you will come into an encounter of appropriate CR (if you're a NPC, anyway). They will have garnered some impressive wealth by farming standards and are likely to be a touch protective about their town. So when the 5th level wizard comes into town to steal it blind, there are a passel of PC classed characters with similar abilities who aren't going to like it that he's are messing with their town. The miscreant is also potentially messing about with the survivability of the town, as we've said before, there are monsters out there. The populace is always going to be wary about strangers until they have proven themselves. The local adventurers may even keep an eye on them as well.Once you get into larger cities, there is going to be an even bigger population, with more classed characters. These places will have an adventuring population that can support specialized industries. Libraries, guilds, societies. Areas that can trade goods (celestial feathers for a sapphire the size of a robin's egg that you need for your amulet of winter's might) or knowledge (a scroll of dispel magic for the song that activates the fey road to Wending's Red West to capture the last ray of twilight in your special crystal vial). These people get really cranky when someone starts making it even more difficult than it already is to achieve their goals.So, when someone starts abusing their powers, there is someone of equivalent level nearby to stop them. Or, at least make the putz expend enough effort to make the acquisition of dubious value.And if there aren't any, that's why we have PCs, now, isn't it...</blockquote>

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