Ratio of wizards in a population?

[S'mon]

Skip Williams was always terrible at demographics. 10% of population PC class is ridiculous for either AD&D or 3e IMO, where we have NPC classes and level-0 combatants. It might sorta work for Moldvay or Mentzer where Bandits are 'Thieves' and common soldiers are 'Fighters'. Even then, there's a Normal Man monster/class to cover most adult humans. Gygax's much more sensible figures are:

20% of population can wield a weapon.
10% of population are in prime condition, suitable for man-at-arms training/status.
1% of population are PC-class (2% for demi-humans).

The 3e DMG demographics are silly also. Far too many high level NPCs and too few low level IMO. Note BTW that that 3e metropolis has 4 13th-16th level Wizards and a similar number of Sorcerors, any one of whom could destroy a regular army of hundreds of Warrior-1s.

 

[firesnakearies]

I prefer to run games where true magic-using individuals are very rare and special. One in a million people, perhaps. Armies would essentially never expect to have to contend with an enemy wizard, and if there was one, it would be a Big Scary Deal.

However, given D&D 4E mechanics, longbows have a MUCH better range than any attack spells, so a handful of good archers should prove more than sufficient to keep enemy spellcasters down long before the troops even get into fireball range.

 

[Darkness]

If using the guidelines in the 3.x DMGs, even a metropolis of over 25,000 adult residents would only have about 4 wizards of roughly 14th-level, 8 of 7th-level, 16 of 3rd-level, and 32 of 1st-level. And an equal number of sorcerers. Combined, that's 0.0048 percent of the population. But of course, only a total of 24 mages capable of casting Fireballs or similarly-devastating spells, so 0.00096 percent of the population is actually useful to a war effort (the remainder of the mages are barely equivalent to green-recruit archers, with just a little bit more tactical ability but far less firepower).

These percentages should be 0.48% and 0.096%, respectively.

1% of 25000 = 250
Thus, 120 = 0.48% of 25000