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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeavenShallBurn" data-source="post: 3960124" data-attributes="member: 39593">Curious here no more, but how do you define Point of Light.  What I mean is what boundaries do you hold settlements to within when working in that style?  About the Blobs of Light, it doesn't go from POL to BOL without the ability of a settlement to project power beyond their individual boundaries or to cover a large area compared to the darkness surrounding them.  I think this is tied back to level demographics in our settings.  Yours seems to put the baseline at Com1 for the vast majority of individuals.  And you're right that under this style once the threat passes a certain threshold in order for settlements to be tenable it requires a Blob of Light.  Because the resources necessary to defend against the average threat level require a large dense population with some spread.  Whereas aside from chopping off the smallest group of settlements I don't cluster POL into BOL or increase population density, instead I raise the overall leveling demographic.  All humanoids start at 0-level with 3 racial levels that are on-par with a PC level, average level of an adult is 5th level overall with 3 racial and 2 pc.  To use an example take Kerenendon: a village of 883 inhabitants, aside from children the lowest level inhabitants are equivalent to 3rd level PCs and the average adult is 5th level equivalent.  It's ruled by a Rahax who's 9th level and has an agreement with a small clutch of wyverns(3 adults plus eggs) who serve him and his family as mounts in return for a certain tithe of livestock and nest in the spit of rock the village is built around.These level demographics are basically unchanged all the way up to to large town.  Then the settlements jump directly over small cities to large cities in the form of city-states.  Here the level demographics jump again.  The vast majority of the population remains the same level but the ruling classes begin to reach above 9th.  But they still don't have the ability to form a BOL or to project power because their greater size and wealth attracts more dangers to themselves so that even with the aid of their patron god they just squeek by in the manner of the small communities only against much more impressive threats.  Generally the ones small communities buy off with a tithe because they're not enough for the Big Threat to really care about.  That and everything above large town is placed at double the usual radius from any other community.  The unusually heavy threat environment around large settlements empties the surrounding region.</blockquote>

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