D&D 5E Proposed rule for number of character-class-equivalent NPCs in a D&D world

[clearstream]

I'm not sure why this needs to be a hard rule. I wouldn't want hard rules mandating how many people in a town were adventures.

Definitely more a guideline, intended on the same level as the charts and suggestions in DMG Chapters 2 and 4. World building is too much fun to hard rule! It aims to help DMs who want a consistent distribution that maps well to D&D baseline world assumptions (represented in Faerun).

(1 in 1000 is too high for my comfort level. 1 in 10,000 feels better. We don't need 30 people in a village of 67 able to cast spells.)

For me you really point to the value of being silent on our distribution over classes. Say I am running a low-magic campaign? I can weight the number of character-class-equivalent NPCs toward martial. So rather than reducing the overall 1/100 assumption I can go with 6 or 7 casters and the other 60 all martial or rogue.

 

[Mephista]

'Fair enough if it works for you. I just want to say these two things real fast, before I vanish. Consistancy in fiction is a matter of perception and not hard rules. If the PCs never meet any high level in a major city, and meet the higher characterss in smaller, its going to skew their perception, even if the major city technically has higher levels than the smaller.

Two, do keep in mind that rules are made to be broken - a hidden ninja village should be higher level on average than a town of farmers. Or just a higher level of civilization and training for people in other places. The world is not balanced - some nations / regions are naturally more advanced than others.

 

[Krachek]

The veteran in the MM can give some clues about how frequent are people with 60 hit points.
It is an npc, can we say he is level 9? Not really a level 9 fighter, but something that look like.
Base on him, a DM may assume that a professional with 15 years of experience is around level 9. Not common, but not rare.

Personally I would use level 5 as a standard for professional member of army, law enforcement, church, guild, etc.
Level 9 for experienced people.
Level 11+ for members of special ops, elite squad.

 

[ccs]

We had a good discussion in a thread about how many adventurers there are in people's D&D worlds. From that I'd like to propose the following simpli~~~~

I've got an even simpler rule of thumb that always works:

●There's as many npcs with whatever class lvs as I need there to be at any given moment.

 

[clearstream]

I've got an even simpler rule of thumb that always works:

●There's as many npcs with whatever class lvs as I need there to be at any given moment.

I've been heavily influenced by Tolkien's thinking on fantasy worlds. He saw them as real places, not subject to his whim as an author but somehow with a life of their own. He describes feeling more like an historian, uncovering new facts about Middle Earth. I love that approach!

So when I picture all the many cities, towns and villages of whatever world I am working on at the moment I love to find ways that they can become external to me. Places that I explore along with my players. I believe good DMs do "make it up as they go along", but for me that works best in tension against constraints and dice rolls. There are always as many towns, as many trees, as many mountains as I need at any given moment. But the mountains don't sit on top of the trees, the trees are not roots upside down in the ocean, the towns have people in them that fulfilling "real-life" roles such as blacksmiths, bakers, clerics and sages.

Do we need any bakers, in any town of the Sword Coast? No, of course not. None of our NPCs really eat. No one will die if there is no food. It's all made up. However, I like to imagine a reasonable proportion of people actually are bakers. It breathes life into the world. Sets it apart from me. Makes it a wonderful place to explore.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'd have thought that the more powerful would have greater notoriety and therefore be easier to find. Everyone knows of the high priest that called down heavenly assistance or the secretive mage hiding in his tower but maybe not everyone knows the whereabouts of a 2nd level ranger that your group wants to hire.

I can't speak for the OP, but IMO the checks are not necessarily about being able to find such NPC, but also about the NPC being there at all.

 

[CapnZapp]

First off, a word about your usage of "tier".

If you think of tiers of adventure (where level 5-10 heroes form tier II and so on), this doesn't really work for NPCs. I would suggest using Hit Dice instead, as a more useful measure of a NPC.

add 5 to that DC if the search is conducted in a settlement with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

I would have thought the smaller the town, the easier it is to find someone.

Put otherwise, you're conflating the ease of the search with the probability of having somebody to be found. I would not recommend that.

I understand you set a higher DC to lower the probability of there being somebody to find, but this is really independent of how easy or hard it is to find that somebody, if indeed there is somebody.

This all comes to the fore in your example of an Epic PC:

So if my town has 6700 inhabitants I know immediately that there could be about 67 tier 1 NPCs and 6-7 tier 2, and probably no more than 1 tier 3. If my PCs need to find that one tier 3, they'll have a DC 20 check to make. It's nearly impossible to find an Epic level NPC in such a town. If I decided to allow my PCs to try to track one down, that would be a DC of 30.

No, I would say that in a city with 6700 people, any Epic level NPCs are known to every single one of the other 6699 inhabitants.

Unless the Epic NPC doesn't want to be found, in which case nobody knows he's there, and the search is impossible (without Legend Lore type of magic).

Anyway, the existence of an Epic NPC needs to be decided separately from the search to find him or her.

I would never recommend leaving it up to chance for Epic NPCs. You system works best for tier I NPCs, and just possibly for tier II ones.

The D&D 5e game simply isn't made for having random high-level NPCs, so I would recommend against using it for people above, say, CR 5.

Which neatly ties back to what I said earlier about Hit Dice.

NPCs appropriate for Tier 1 adventurers are seldom higher than CR 1. On the other hand, they might have 1-4 Hit Dice. An Acolyte or Scout, say. Just like tier I heroes, they're fledgling and hopeful, but not yet in any real position. During this tier, NPCs can actually surpass PCs in ability and survivability. That's okay.

NPCs appropriate for Tier 2 adventurers are seldom higher than CR 2. On the other hand, they might have 5-9 Hit Dice. A Priest, say. The Veteran is a top of the line Tier II NPC at CR 3. Read the description of the tier and you'll see how somebody like a Veteran is at this tier. As soon as a player character enters Tier 2 at 5th level, he will always be noticeably more capable than any comparable NPC.

Above I drew the line at roughly CR 5. This is because it still allows "powerful" NPCs such as the Mage or Gladiator. They come across as heroes - "name" characters, or Very Important Persons, and so they're tier III. That they compare badly to tier III player characters in a combat is an intentional feature of 5th edition, one which I recommend you do not treat like a bug.

NPCs like Archmage and Champion are definitely tier IV material, even though their actual ability is probably not even half that of the characters in most regards.


Good luck!

 

[S'mon]

The veteran in the MM can give some clues about how frequent are people with 60 hit points.
It is an npc, can we say he is level 9? Not really a level 9 fighter, but something that look like.
Base on him, a DM may assume that a professional with 15 years of experience is around level 9. Not common, but not rare.

Personally I would use level 5 as a standard for professional member of army, law enforcement, church, guild, etc.
Level 9 for experienced people.
Level 11+ for members of special ops, elite squad.

MM Veteran is CR 3 and about as tough as a 5th level warrior-type PC.

 

[S'mon]

The D&D 5e game simply isn't made for having random high-level NPCs, so I would recommend against using it for people above, say, CR 5.

I certainly tend to find that 'generic' or common NPCs cap out around CR 4 (top of Tier I), and most CR 5+ are named, well-known personalities.

 

[Beedo]

Neat little system, thanks for posting it. I'm a fan of anything that brings a little more "fantasy world simulation" to 5E.