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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 6286922" data-attributes="member: 3887">Let me chime with some observation about pre-3e, specifically AD&D, because I've been running a campaign of it for 2.75 years now. It was a brief experiment revisiting the RPG I started with, which, surprisingly, hasn't ended yet <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.  Under AD&D, an Olympic athlete, elite soldier, and leading academic would & could be represented in any number of different ways.Since AD&D doesn't have a proper skill system, the athlete only needs high physical stats. Class and level are irrelevant. They could normal people, ie 0-level. Unless their chosen sport was boxing, or maybe javelin-catching, ie a sport where hit points figure in. In general, class levels have no bearing on "skills". Thieves excepted, of course. Interestingly, this leaves room for a 'great general' or even 'pirate lord' who is low-level, or even 1st level. They wouldn't have automatic followers until 9th level, but there's nothing stopping them from being INT 18 tactical geniuses or CHA 18 leaders of men and women. This is tougher to justify under 3e and beyond, since those systems tie all competencies to class level (even for NPCs) via the formal skill system. AD&D's elite soldiers are almost always be fighters, rangers, or even paladins with levels, going as high as 8th.Leading academics could be wizards, clerics, any educated caster class. Or bards. Or sages from the DMG -- which all have 8d4 HP, great stats, and percentile areas of knowledge. Oh, and assorted spells. Or sages could just be normal 0-level old people, give them 1d4 HP and a chance to know stuff (roll under INT, percentile, whatever). It's true most folks are 0-level/1HD creatures. But higher-level characters aren't really uncommon. The (plethora of) random encounter charts include mid-to-high level NPCs, so, for instance, just running into a 12th fighter lord or a 9th level assassin, or even a powerful M-U while strolling through as city isn't out-of-the-question, cf. the famous illustration of Emirikol the Chaotic.In fact, any large group of people, or people-like things, automatically gets higher-level "leader types", or elite guards, or some spell-casters. So leveled characters are basically a consequence of population size (and are present in most "groupings").</blockquote>

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