Prestige Classes, Demographics, Clerics and Statistics.

[Sir Giltheas]

Hi,

I have an observation here regarding prestige classes, and demographics, which I’d like people to comment on. If you don’t like mathematical analyses of D&D, you might want to stop reading here...

A lot of these figures, below, I’m getting from the Forgotten Realms. Many of the percentages are just well-educated estimates. These are rules of thumb, but I think they’re about the mark. I think you’ll be surprised and a little puzzled at the results...

Suppose we take a region like Cormyr, population 1.4 Million.

Now a least 90% of these people will be NPC-type characters (Commoner, Expert etc), leaving 140,000 people with PC classes (Paladin, Sorcerer etc). (A rate of 1 adventurer in 10 people is not unreasonable; if anything it should probably be lower.)

If we suppose that 14,000 of these PC-classed characters are 1st-level, and a mere 22 (2 of each 11 classes) are 20th-level (assume that this is linearly distributed), it works out that the total number of 5th-level, 6th-level, 7th-level plus 8th-level PCs combined is about 40,000. These are the total number of PC characters who would be are high enough in level for a prestige class, since you can typically take one at these levels.

Now 90% of these 40,000 PCs won’t be eligible for such a prestige class – prestige classes have strict requirements, and not everyone hails from the right region, has the required ranks in skills, or possess the right feats. This leaves 4,000 who are eligible for a prestige class. Some PCs won’t opt to take one – say 50%, since they’re happy being a regular fighter or whatever – which leaves 2,000 who take a prestige class and who are eligible. (Remember, this is from a population of 1.4 Million!)

At last count, there were 128 Realms-specific prestige classes (including those from the DMG and Dragon, but discounting those from Complete Warrior etc). If we do a simple division, it works out that there are 16 people of each prestige class in a population of 1.4 Million people. It could be argued that not all prestige classes are equally common. The ones in the DMG and FRCS/PGtF are more common that those in Dragon Magazine and the regional supplements like Unapproachable East. In any case, if you increase the number of PCs in one prestige class, like Divine Seeker, you’ll need to decrease the number of PCs of less common ones like Zhentarim Skymage to keep the total the same. So, although you might have now, say 300 Divine Seekers, you’ll be left with 3 Zhertarim Skymages, 2 Great Rift Skyguards etc.

Now, these PC-classed characters who belong to such exclusive groups, would typically hang around in cliques (a little gang of Zhentarim Skymages etc), which means that encountering a member of a Prestige Class is pretty damn rare!

Comments?

A similar observation can be made of the Cleric class just by itself. If we use the above numbers, then 140,000 PC-classed characters divided by 11 (11 PC classes) gives 12,700 Clerics. Now Clerics have the unique property that they represent a church, so a substantial portion of them (say 20%) hang out in the church with their Adepts buddies and do no adventuring. The remaining 10,200 need to be divided among the 120 churches – which leaves 84 per faith adventuring! Obviously Helm is a lot more popular than, say Valkur, so you could argue that 84 adventuring clerics for Helm in a population of 1.4 Million is ridiculous. But remember that if you were to “weight” the average, and say, give Helm more clerics, then the other faiths need to decrease to less than 84. Thus you could give Helm, say 1,000 Clerics roaming about, but then other churches will have their Clerics decreased; Red Knight might end up with only 15 or so in Cormyr. Note that for each church, the number of Clerics still have to be split up on a per-level basis. So Red Knight might have 5x 1st-level Clerics, 4x 2nd-level Cleric etc up to maybe 1x 16th-level Cleric. If there was a suitable Red Knight prestige class available then you might only get 1 or 2 characters of this class in the whole or Cormyr.

I think that this shows that prestige classes and Clerics of particular faiths are a lot rarer than first thought! I think my percentages listed above, are not too unreasonable, but the results are fairly surprising.

Obviously this is only for a place, namely Cormyr. The result for Faerun as a whole will be larger, but not by much when you consider how massive the place is.

Comments are appreciated.

 

[CyberSpyder]

it works out that the total number of 5th-level, 6th-level, 7th-level plus 8th-level PCs combined is about 40,000. These are the total number of PC characters who would be are high enough in level for a prestige class, since you can typically take one at these levels.

What about the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th level characters who have already taken a prestige class?

 

[Tonguez]

The Numbers sound good to me (although somewhat contrived but thats okay) since it pretty much supports the argument that 99% of the Preisthood of any given church are NOT PC Clerics (in fact since the Cleric class is highly militant it could be that many dieties have NO ordained devotees with the Cleric class (all of them being Adepts and Experts)

Same with Prestige classes - not all members of the Dark Brotherhood a Shadowdancers and not all members of the Assasins guild have the Assasin class...

 

[Sir Giltheas]

What about the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th level characters who have already taken a prestige class?

I thought of it this way too. Basically you could look at it two different way (although I'm not sure which is correct)
Method #1 (as above): 5th-8th level guys will eventually become 9th-20th level guys as they advance. The reason for counting only 5th-8th level guys is that that's the point whereupon they make the initial choice of entering a prestige class or not.

Method #2 (your method): This assumes that PCs have already have a prestige class and you're tallying the number of each level. In this case, the figure is 90,000 instead of 40,000, so the figures at the end of the calculation would about double

I'm not sure which is the correct method. With a lot of this estimatating it's difficult work out which point of view is right. In any case doubling doesn't make a huge difference to the end result. They're still pretty small considering the initial population.

 

[Umbran]

If we suppose that 14,000 of these PC-classed characters are 1st-level, and a mere 22 (2 of each 11 classes) are 20th-level (assume that this is linearly distributed)...

Interesting. Note, however, that this does not match the core rules. The DMG says it shouldn't be linear. By the DMG, for each 20th level character, there will be two of 10th level, four of 5th level, and eight of 2nd to 3rd level, and sixteen of about 1st level. You get a doubling of individuals for every halving of level.

So, if we say we have 14,000 1st level characters, we end up with 27,125 or so people beween levels 1 and 16.

If we say there's a total of 22 20th level characters, we end up with about 682 characters between levels 1 and 20

In neither case are we approaching 140,000 PC classed characters. By the DMG, in order to get 140,000 PC-classed characters total, there needs to be something like 4,500 characters of level 20!

The basic problem is that your estimate of 1 adventurer in every 10 people is not anywhere near the DMG standard. By the DMG, a population of 25,000 people will have perhaps 124 people with PC classes, total. That's about half of one percent of folks have PC classes, rather than your 10%.

 

[Beholder Bob]

For prestige classes - remember that the npc classes can still qualify for prestige classes. An 9th warrior human has 4 feats and would thus qualify for many fighter prestige classes.

 

[Sir Giltheas]

Interesting. Note, however, that this does not match the core rules. The DMG says it shouldn't be linear. By the DMG, for each 20th level character, there will be two of 10th level, four of 5th level, and eight of 2nd to 3rd level, and sixteen of about 1st level. You get a doubling of individuals for every halving of level.

So, if we say we have 14,000 1st level characters, we end up with 27,125 or so people beween levels 1 and 16.

If we say there's a total of 22 20th level characters, we end up with about 682 characters between levels 1 and 20

In neither case are we approaching 140,000 PC classed characters. By the DMG, in order to get 140,000 PC-classed characters total, there needs to be something like 4,500 characters of level 20!

The basic problem is that your estimate of 1 adventurer in every 10 people is not anywhere near the DMG standard. By the DMG, a population of 25,000 people will have perhaps 124 people with PC classes, total. That's about half of one percent of folks have PC classes, rather than your 10%.

Okay, I agree with this -- the demographic rules state this.

If I use 0.5%, then we get about 7,000 PCs in 1.4 Million. About 4,000 of these are 5th+ and about 90% of these wont meet requirements for Prestige Classes, leaving 400, and of those about half won't bother to take one, leaving now only 200 (compared to 2,000 in the previous example). Now, dividing by the number of classes (128) gives only 1.5. Hence out of the whole of Cormyr there are about 0, 1 or 2 people of each prestige class.

This even further illustrates that if you do the maths, the prestige class statistics and cleric statistics don't add up at all -- to the point of being ridiculous. It's impossible by using maths to get any remotely sensible answer for, say, the number of Blackguards in the kingdom.

Consider the following, rating people from commonest to uncommonest

Unskilled Peasanty (Extremely common)
Skilled worker (Very common, Experts etc)
Nobility (uncommon)
PCs-classed characters as a whole (very uncommon; only half of one percent)
PCs of a specific class (extermely uncommon)
PCs of a specific prestige class (very rare)
PCs of a specific prestige class and who are of a certain level (very very rare)

Basically, D&D divides and subdivides into more and more specialised areas, until, when you get down to the prestige class granularity, there aren't very many people at all who can take them (possibly 1 or 2 in a Kingdom of millions for each prestige class)

 

[CarlZog]

Basically, D&D divides and subdivides into more and more specialised areas, until, when you get down to the prestige class granularity, there aren't very many people at all who can take them (possibly 1 or 2 in a Kingdom of millions for each prestige class)

Which would certainly seem to support the argument that we don't need any more of them!

I'm more curious about why this might be considered surprising.
How do these figures compare to the demographics in the campaigns people are running/playing?

zog

 

[Umbran]

Basically, D&D divides and subdivides into more and more specialised areas, until, when you get down to the prestige class granularity, there aren't very many people at all who can take them (possibly 1 or 2 in a Kingdom of millions for each prestige class)

Seems there's a couple fundamental misunderstandings of the demographics and PrCs here.

First off, the DMG specifically states:
"In addition to the residents you generate using the system described above, you might decide that a community has some sort of special resident... Residents such as these do not count against the highest level characters who are actually part of the community."

The demographics are there to help a DM come up with a plausible community. These guidelines are not supposed to be a straightjacket, giving an exact accounting of all people who exist, limiting the number of NPCs the DM can work with. Specific things the DM wants to see there for dramatic purposes are in addition to what the demographics rules suggest.

In addition, FR is a specific campaign world, and may not follow the core demographic.

It makes a great deal of sense for the basic demographics rules to overlook the issue of prestige classes, for two reasons - 1)PrCs are optional. 2)PrCs are stated as being a tool for the DM to use for world building. If they gave you rules which dictated the PrC content of a place, then it would have been the game designers building the world, not the DM.

I think the main flaw in your argument is the assumption that having found a PrC for FR in print implies that said prestige class actually exists in every FR campaign. Instead, I believe that the DM is expected to choose which PrCs he or she intends to use as elements. Instead of saying that there's 128 classes that do exist, think of it as there being 128 that might exist, if the DM wants to use them.

This is the basic fallacy in the statement that "we have enough prestige classes already". All you're being given with a published PrC are options. Like monsters - just because it appears in the book does not mean it actually exists, or that the PCs will ever meet one. The DM chooses PrCs to use just like choosing what monsters will be found in encounters. If the number of monsters in print doesn't concern you, don't worry about the number of PrCs in print either.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

The DMG demographic info isn't well-suited to making judgements about anything other than individual communities. I did some work on this a few months back, and if I recall, PC-Class percentages ranged from roughly 6% of smaller communities to around 2% for cities.

1st and 2nd edition used a base assumption of 1% of the population was PC-Classed. Personally, I'm using 2% as the number for my current campaign. I could certainly see going a little higher but I think 5% is about the maximum I would see. It would have been nice to be given something a little more official to work with, but there it is.