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

[The Crimson Binome]

Passes the test of roughly yielding the D&D baseline world (Faerun)

That seems like an odd premise. Faerun has always been on the extreme high end of high fantasy, as far as D&D settings go. There's more going on in Faerun, with more high-level spellcasters, than every other published setting put together.

Even anecdotally, when people talk about their home settings, most make note of how it's less fantastic than the Forgotten Realms. I can't recall anyone ever mentioning that they play in world where high-level adventurers are more common than they are there.

 

[clearstream]

That seems like an odd premise. Faerun has always been on the extreme high end of high fantasy, as far as D&D settings go. There's more going on in Faerun, with more high-level spellcasters, than every other published setting put together.

Designing for the default D&D world isn't an odd premise within the usual definition of "odd"

Even anecdotally, when people talk about their home settings, most make note of how it's less fantastic than the Forgotten Realms. I can't recall anyone ever mentioning that they play in world where high-level adventurers are more common than they are there.

It's true that people's experiences and tastes differ on these things. The most common other rule I've heard is 1/100 at level 1, halving per level upward. That rule produces greater numbers of character-class NPCs at low levels, but fewer or none at higher. As an algorithm I feel like is good because it is easy to get your head around, but bad because for iterations = levels it doesn't extend properly upwards. This is in truth a complex discussion and I don't want to over-simplify. Some elements are whether we play much at high level and use high level NPCs to challenge our parties? Do we assume organisations such as monasteries, holy orders, clergies for multiple gods, arcane colleges, or thieves guilds? Have we thought about how many character-class equivalent NPCs are needed to populate those (or is our 5th level Rogue the top of the tree? and if so, what happens after that?) What is the base population of our world? (I believe Faerun has 70m.) Often people hand-wave "rare"... is 1 in a million rare? Or do they mean something else? If their world has 3 million people, maybe 3 epic tier NPCs turns out to be right.

That all said, we clearly hear different anecdotes! Anecdotally what people tell me about their campaigns maps pretty well to what I have proposed. But this is the wrong sort of assertion to make, isn't it? Very he-said, she-said with no facts on other side.

It would probably be more accurate to say that many DMs haven't felt the need to map out a distribution in detail. There is a contingent chiming in with "I always hand wave it". It's impossible to say what that implies in terms of densities unless they will also tell us their world populations, their party levels, how many NPCs their party has encountered all-told, and how many were character-class-equivalents. Clues of that sort. I suspect we will find an extrapolated density for their world turns out close to that proposed.

 

[clearstream]

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.

I like this because it gives us a short-cut to place the MM stat blocks into the tiers. A thug will be tier 2 for instance. Please note that I see those stat-blocks as time savers - representative abstracts - rather than a fundamental disconnect between PCs and NPCs. A Mage can be fleshed out with detail from the Wizard character class, for instance.

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

That is something I would like to improve. Do you have any suggestions? One goal is to answer arbitrary searches by the party - is there a Resurrection level Cleric here? (Before anyone chimes in piously - yes, the DM can hand-wave anything. Rules are there to guide and validate.)

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.

For me it is useful to have a guideline for about how many such NPCs there could be in our world. That gives context to how significant the presence of a single one is, and how many might be engaged in a given affair. That yields better consistency, which per-Tolkien sustains the fiction. Can you explain better your objection to a guideline for a rough number of them? Do you think you'll need more than that number? Is your concern that if you don't represent every last one of them in your game, your PCs will mutiny?

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.

Again I feel this premise is mistaken. The D&D game is expressly made for having random high-level NPCs. And that is what makes it great! Consider the Blackstaff. From my point of view that is a random character. Produced by arbitrary processes in an author's mind that I had no control over. The method proposed suggests at least 1 other Epic level character in Waterdeep. I love that! It makes me curious to know who they are and what they are up to?

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.

I feel like a community consensus has emerged around a frank power disparity between 5e PCs and the recommended level of challenge for them. Throughout my DMing career I have found that ultimately, character-class individuals create the most lively challenge for players. Hmm... okay, I'm flat-out saying it is a bug. Why do you think it isn't? What breaks when you challenge PCs with character-class equiv. NPCs?

 

[transtemporal]

I think we should write this rule into the 5e core ruleset. Perhaps we can move on to punishments for violating the rule?

 

[clearstream]

I think we should write this rule into the 5e core ruleset. Perhaps we can move on to punishments for violating the rule?

Hmm, we'll have to think up punishments for violating all the other rules first! And what to do about all those DMG guidelines? It's jolly annoying how these books we keep buying contain all those rules and guidelines, isn't it!

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

There is one factor that needs to be taken into account when looking at the percent of population that is higher than 0 level: is the region/country you are detailing currently at war or has just resolved a war within the past few months. If this is the case and there has not been a long-term period of peace, you will have a much higher than normal number of level 1+ warriors/fighters running around. Some will join the city guard, some will stay in the army, some will become mercenaries, and some will become bandits.

 

[BoldItalic]

Does this reproduce Tolkien's world of Middle Earth?

 

[Warmaster Horus]

So are we saying that Veterans (CR 3) and other MM-type humanoid challenges are something like .1% of the population? Or is this just for PC-like NPCs with class levels?

 

[clearstream]

Does this reproduce Tolkien's world of Middle Earth?

No that's not the goal. Tolkien discusses the importance of consistency to a fantasy world. When everything it made up, consistency is the bedrock of credibility. Rules of thumb, guidelines, whatever we want to call them. The sort of material typically found in the DMG. Are all valuable to that end.

 

[clearstream]

So are we saying that Veterans (CR 3) and other MM-type humanoid challenges are something like .1% of the population? Or is this just for PC-like NPCs with class levels?

I'm not certain. What do you think works best? Say for a town of 5000. How many Veterans do you expect? The connection with the MM stat blocks is an extension of the concept and one I am still settling in.