Ratio of wizards in a population?

[jensun]

Personally I prefer my wizards to be reclusive and dangerous. They might occasionally take an apprentice (a PC) but generally they prefer spending their time creating new spells than working for temporal authorities or messing about in politics.

Antagonists are the obvious exception.

For a great example see the Tales of Wyre story hour on these boards.

More Dragonslayer, less Waterdeep.

 

[joethelawyer]

I invite you to look at this blog post I made on the subject of the demographics of the spellcasting population in the game world.

In that post, I worked the math, made a few baseline assumptions, and came to the conclusion that 96.20% of the world's population can't cast spells at all, 2.85% can cast divine spells, and only 0.95% can cast arcane spells. Just apply those numbers to the population of your nation, and go from there.

wow. just...wow. awesome work man.

thank you very much for the response.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I answered this question for myself once. I assigned an arbitrary number of wizards in the population (which I think was around a .01% of a million - it wasn't a D&D world) and then I started giving them names and levels. I only had to figure out 107 names. Worked out well. In a D&D world, looks like 1% is a good rule of thumb. So if you have an army of 10,000, only 100 of those will be wizards.

Now "What levels are they?" is a whole separate question!

 

[WayneLigon]

1. what is the ratio of wizards to citizens in a nation, broken down by race, and

2. what is the percentage of those wizards who are willing and able to take part in war campaigns?

My general overall 'ratio' answer is 'the amount it takes so that the number of wizards doesn't tip the balance of power one way or the other'. They either mostly cancel each other out by neutralizing each other's magic, or they simply don't deign to meddle in mundane affairs all that much. It's a rare, rare wizard that's actually interested in battles and nations and who is king, etc; they're much more interested in cataloging the 79 properties of heated gissia seeds or whatever.

I generally think of 20-50 people in large locale will be wizards,a nd that's the entire range from students to masters; most of them will top out at 4-8th level. Wizards are like specialist surgeons or trial lawyers back in the 1940's; it takes a lot of money, brains and connections to be one. You don't just find one in every town.

Most of the NPC population rolls on straight 3d6, so many of the people who become wizards are destined to not be all that good at it. It'll be the rare NPC wizard that gets 4th level spells and the percentage only goes down sharply from there.

Most wizards are going to prove pretty useless overall in a pitched military battle where the number of fighters outnumbers them 10,000 to 1. They might get off a couple three spells in the first few minutes, fry something like 20 of those 10,000 people, then some farmboy is going to put a three-foot-long arrow in his throat and down he goes. The minute that wizard shows himself, one of the captains on the other side is going to yell '100 gold bonus to the man who kills the mage!' and suddenly Mr Magic User is going to be the most popular target on the field. Even if they're pretty decent level, they're going to run out of spells waaaay before the enemy runs out of arrows. There isn't a '15-minute adventuring day' in a military battle.

Most wizards do best when they stick to being smart rather than getting out on the battlefield. Scrying out enemy locations, using familiars as scouts, mind controlling some key messenger, etc. Then we go back to then being countered by the wizards on the other side, etc etc.

 

[Nifft]

"Rrrrrratio? As in, the mathematical structure with certain numbers on the top and others on the bottom? My dear boy, you misunderstand the most important thing about Wizards.

"Wizards are always on the top."

Cheers, -- N

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

1. what is the ratio of wizards to citizens

Nationally, the number of general surgeons per population of 100 000 varies from 6.53 in urban areas to 7.71 in large rural areas and 4.67 in small/isolated rural areas.

Why not a ratio like that?

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

Also remember that wizards are smarter than the average member of the population (needing Int as the key stat). Because of that, a sizable number of the wizards that do exist will not want to march off to war.

War is unpleasant, messy, you have to spend your time with stupid levy soldiers, take orders from noble born officers --most of whom are your intellectual inferiors!-- march in the cold rain, trudge through the mud, rise at dawn and spend long hours waiting only to then experience a few minutes of horrible, terrible fear as the hounds of war are finally unleashed.

While you are out in the field you are not studying, not increasing your knowledge of the mystical forces of the universe. Your commanders will only see you as a 'boom stick' or a 'chicken entrail reader'. The food is generally bad, the pay negligable, and the company smelly and unrefined. Glory will go to the soldiers and the knights... few people lavish praise upon the mysterious wizard who called forth supernatural powers to bring about the victory.

Worse, if the army makes an effort to recruit magical might, other wizards in close proximity to you. Always will they be jealous of your superiority and greedy for your mystical prowess and spellbooks. You know what wizards are like, and you can't trust any of 'em.

You are a powerful force: you command flame to erupt from your fingertips, you make the very air itself tremble with but a wave of your hand. Supernatural powers dance eagerly in your soul, awaiting but your order to strike out and smite your foes at distance. You willingly seek knowledge about subjects that would make the common man shudder with nightmares.

What could the army possibly offer one such as you?

......

Well... to answer your question, probably not too many wizards will want to join the army. PCs being the exception that proves the rule. Any number you choose will probably be okay.

 

[Orius]

First, I think you need to look at what percentage of NPCs will have a character class be it Wizard or Fighter or whatever. Then you need to look at the setting and detemine how easy/hard it is to be a Wizard.

There are no right answers just what works best for your own setting.

Yeah, this is pretty much how I handle things myself. Figure out how much of the general population has a PC class, then determine how that amount is broken down into the various classes. Myself, I use the usual ballpark of 10% are adventurers and 10% of adventures are wizards, giving me 1%, which seems to be a popular figure.

 

[Treebore]

I think the 1E DMG and the 3E DMG addressed these questions.

Page 35 of the 1E DMG, 20% of 1 in 1,000 of the given population summarizes it pretty succinctly.

 

[S'mon]

Page 35 of the 1E DMG, 20% of 1 in 1,000 of the given population summarizes it pretty succinctly.

So, 1 in 5,000. At 50% progression:

1 in 10,000 level 2+
1 in 20,000 level 3+
1 in 40,000 level 4+
1 in 80,000 level 5+

That seems a bit lower than the environment presented in most D&D adventures, and obviously much less than the magic-drenched 3e setting assumptions (10% of the population are adventurers?!)