Populating the world

[DarkMaster]

I was unable to find a coherent point in the preceding post, so I'm simply going to ignore it.

Half the population might have died before the age of forty, but most of those people would be infants and young children. It's quite likely that a person who made it through puberty would survive turning forty.

Basically the article you present talk about life expectancy of 40 years and provide a way to understand what it is and to allow you to make a age pyramid, my point is that the life expectancy in medival europe was 20-25 using the same logic, that 65 % were reaching 18 you get an entirely different age pyramid where maybe only 20-30% (maybe less) reaches 50.

Therefore most people would die before they reach 50

 

[blargney the second]

Darkmaster: I'm glad you like the synergy bonus idea! It occurs to me that it's the sort of thing that could get way out of hand if a PC tries to use it, so I'd be inclined to state that it is a class ability of pure experts. (Synergy between their chosen class skills.)

Wrath of the Storm: Sean's article is really interesting! His statement that NPC experience and PC experience aren't equivalent is exactly what I was going to write in this thread. You beat me to it!

MavrickWeirdo: As always, I love your comparison. The stats on that smith really say "national master smith" to me - he's like Inigo Montoya's father. He'll be seeing use in my campaign!

A painter with 7 ranks in Craft(Painting) would know enough to use masking tape so he wouldn't hit the ceiling.

*lol*
He can always say that it was the university student that he hired to do the job who botched it...

As for the budding flame war about life expectancies, I think I'll just state that people can live as long as they do nowadays thanks to magic. Solves a lot of problems.

-blarg

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

I would agree with you that many adults will be at least level 3 of an NPC class. The older and more experienced ones will probably be at least level 5. Level 1 NPCs are really only suitable for apprentices - anyone with more than a year of real-life experience will probably be level 2 or more.

 

[blargney the second]

Level 1 NPCs are really only suitable for apprentices - anyone with more than a year of real-life experience will probably be level 2 or more.

This is exactly the thought that prompted me to rearrange the standard population assumptions of this campaign.

I think the next step for me will be to use the population's age distribution to establish how many people of what level are in a given region. I wonder if it'll be easier to adjust the DMG chart rather than create it from scratch.

-blarg

 

[DarkMaster]

This is exactly the thought that prompted me to rearrange the standard population assumptions of this campaign.

I think the next step for me will be to use the population's age distribution to establish how many people of what level are in a given region. I wonder if it'll be easier to adjust the DMG chart rather than create it from scratch.

-blarg

I don't think that age alone should determine the level. The more you have been there the more chances you have to been exposed to learning situation sure, but not every 40 years old should be 6th level and not all 22 years old should be 2nd. Some people experience different aspect life much more than others.

 

[blargney the second]

I agree with you Darkmaster! What I want to do first is to establish the rule, and THEN determine exceptions. I figure that starting with the age brackets is a logical place to start.

-blarg

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Don't forget, class matters as well! Sean's example calculations only hold for a commoner supporting himself through farming. Farming is tough and requires significant knowledge and skills, but being a blacksmith or cobbler or healer is more challenging.

 

[blargney the second]

Don't forget, class matters as well! Sean's example calculations only hold for a commoner supporting himself through farming. Farming is tough and requires significant knowledge and skills, but being a blacksmith or cobbler or healer is more challenging.

I think for simplicity's sake I'll assume that the difficulties are evened out by the inherent capacities of each class. Let's face it - the commoner class SUCKS... anybody who gets saddled with it already has life's deck of cards stacked against him!

-blarg

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Frankly, I would just eliminate commoners. I don't think the creators of 3rd Ed. thought DMs would care about the difficulties of being a farmer or random townsperson.

C'mon, farmers are supposed to be strong and tough from all their manual labor. Commoners are neither strong, nor tough, regardless of their stats.

 

[blargney the second]

Frankly, I would just eliminate commoners. I don't think the creators of 3rd Ed. thought DMs would care about the difficulties of being a farmer or random townsperson.

C'mon, farmers are supposed to be strong and tough from all their manual labor. Commoners are neither strong, nor tough, regardless of their stats.

I suspect you're right on that score - D&D is mostly meant to make heroic stories, as far as I can tell. Peasants and townspeople are kind of the antithesis of the heroic.

To represent a strong and tough farmer, I'd give him Str 12 and the Endurance feat. It's kind of a fun exercise to figure out how to represent a given trait with the ruleset!

-blarg