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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nijineko" data-source="post: 6078245" data-attributes="member: 52240">a magi-tech society is completely doable even if you limit it to 1st and 2nd level casters. genetic selection will take care of the rest. with the xp transfer rules and just one mid level caster, it can be jump-started. solving social difficulties, puzzles, training, heck - even just surviving a famine or storm or bandit raid counts as xp, not just combat with monsters or traps in a dungeon. that's why most people should be a minimum of level 3 by the time they die (more if magical access is available - just think of what gentle repose can do for food preservation), even commoners. the whole level-one-for-life concept is completely bogus, and therefore most demographic distributions presented for d&d are completely off. i mean, think about it. an ecl 1 encounter for a first level character is 300 xp. that's assuming 4 characters splitting it. so 75 xp, potentially more if you don't have to split it. but if you have an encounter with the baron's men, present a good argument as to why your town doesn't have the taxes yet, and get beaten for your trouble... that's at least an ecl 1. sneaking onto selfsame baron's land and hunting in his private forest, sneaking out, and selling the skin at the market to make those taxes, dodging a patrol of the baron's men that almost finds you is another ecl 1, maybe even 2. and the peasant wouldn't have to split that xp - unless you subscribe to the 1/4th rule regardless of if you have partners or not. and that bad storm that ruined a chunk of the crops in the first place but has now survived is another ecl 1 or 2 depending on how rough the storm made it. but now he recognizes the signs of a big impending blow out next time it happens - ie: peasant learned, grew, and gained xp. by the time one year has passed, said peasant will likely have had 4 to 5 events significant enough to be EL1 occur. even if you assume only 4 big enough events over the space of a year, that's somewhere between 300 and 1200 xp in one year, depending on if and/or how you split the award. say the peasant lives 40 years, and taking off for childhood, that's between 25 and 30 years of potential xp gain. let's say just 25 years for argument's sake. and only 4 events per year. assuming bare minimum xp gain, that calculates to 7500 xp or level 3.just the sheer number of skills that a peasant will know should clearly dictate that they can't be level one. they are going to have some ranks in profession or craft, some in handle animal, use rope, quite a few in survival, some in move silent, some in hide, some in bluff, probably one in perform: instrument, some in appraise, and a lot in know: local. peasant kids are probably level one, but adults are likely to be levels 3-5. extending this, even if you only have adepts, it will eventually provide the foundation of a decent tech base, so long as they don't all get wiped out in a war or disaster or something. then genetics and training will eventually expand the magic capable population base.</blockquote>

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