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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 1709834" data-attributes="member: 2067">MonstersYeah, the 2/day rule is an extrapolation from rules that give you a 10% per hour chance for an adventuring party. It's not exactly airtight. That said, I still think it's an extremely useful situation to explain why the population *doesn't* skyrocket because of the availability of healing. Monsters are more than common; they're likely. People die every day, and the fields are always at risk. The exact number doesn't matter, as long as you realize that a settlement faces these risks very often. Why don't they just move somewhere else? They can't. Anywhere they move, they will have encounters that they can earn XP from 2/day. You think they should move to a less dangerous area? There isn't any less dangerous area. Especially not that they can still farm and supply a city off of. You move to the urban area, you've got slimes in the sewers. You move to the arctic, you got remorhaz in the barn. You move to the jungle, you've got dinosaurs in the well. You move to the desert, you've got mostrous scorpions. Everyplace. In the entire world. Is this dangerous. And the desolate, uninhabited areas, where the chance for random encounter is effectively 0? You think you could feed a family, let alone a viallage in a place where the necromancer king doesn't even keep an outpost? There are scores of D&D creatures that don't even need food to live, a desolate, uninhabited area is a true anomoly, and likely the result of magical corruption itself, rather than anything natural. There is no place without monsters. Noplace. Now about the XP. There are a few reasons that the less talented spellcasters gain XP slower than that 9th level commoner. And it hinges on the only thouroughly codified way of gaining XP in D&D: risking your life in encounters. Encounters that don't risk your life don't give XP, and it is assmued that encounters that *do* risk the lives of at least a few people in the town give XP to those who risk their lives happen about 2/day. That figure is very flexible, but it's based on the current rules...adjust it as you see reasonable. I, for one, see the 2/day figure as suggested by the rules to be *very* reasonable. Now, not everyone in the town responds to a single attack. That 9th level commoner can handle a goblin or two without calling in the militia. He doesn't gain much XP for it anymore, but he did back in the day -- when he was 1st level, and he was meeting his first goblin, and he called in the militia, and he helped fight it off, and he gained the XP for the encounter. But 95%+ of the people in the town didn't bother with the encounter, so they don't gain the XP. Only the folks who did it gain it. That commoner gained XP. The rest of 'em didn't. That 9th level commoner is one who has seen more than a few conflicts. But there are people just as old in the town who haven't seen even one conflict. The first level commoners, for instance. They've seen goblins, they've heard of them, but they've never faught one. That 9th level commoner, has. Now, the spellcasters need to respond to a fight less than the militia. The warriors, the commoners, for the most part (maybe a few experts) and a handful of PC-classed protectors. Their spells are not nessecarily immediately useful in the fight, and even if they are, the spellcasters are generally much more frail and much less effective than warriors. In addition, the commoners have fields to protect; large expanses of food. The spellcasters, comparatively, only have their home, likely near the center of town, often publically protected (the militia will respond to a threat to the temple). This is because the service that they provide is rarer than the service the commoner provides...there are maybe three people who know cure light wounds. The town isn't going to risk these by putting them at the fringes and demanding they defend themselves. The adept who's lived in the town for a slong as that 9th level commoner has seen far less danger and action in his 60 years than Toothless Joe, because he doesn't have food to protect (he gets fed by serving the town), he is protected by others, and he is too vital a force in the town to risk (while commoners will be, well, more common. <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=":)" />). Not only that, but he'd be less useful in direct combat than the warriors, so there's no reason to call him to battle. Use him before to bless, or after to heal, but not during...this means that the adept doesn't risk his life, and so doesn't gain XP from the vast majority of those encounters. When emergencies happen, when he is surprised, when a powerful force penetratest to the heart of town, then he gains XP...but these are unusual, since most of the conflicts are not hard to drive off, even though they do take their toll on the populace.  The second reason that we don't see 9th level Adepts, but we do see 9th level commoners, is migration. In this loosely feudal system, the capital sends their low-level folk out to the fringes (where they count as 'population') to help control the monstrous risk. This is where the fighter and the cleric and the bard come from -- the Kingdom, not the Locale. These folk in turn probably train a handful of alcolytes, and deal with a greater number of threats. After they've served their term in the realm, they go back home to the kingdom, and are replaced by new low-level folk. So the XP gained by the fighters is eventually negated, because the fighters leave before they gain many levels. They leave for the city, where they were born, and they take with them those who show impressive skill -- those who gained levels. The city attracts high-level people not because of the danger of living in a city, but because a lot of those high-level people originally came from the rurual areas, or at least served some time out there protecting them from the monsters. The same is true of PC and NPC classes, but, because of their frequency, commoners are often the last chose. Toothless Joe has probably seen more than a few scamps take up the sword and leave for the Kingdom, scamps which undoubtedly are higher than 9th level by now, but he's been passed over for one reason or another (those 'all 10's' statistics may be the reason). He may be one of the most experienced members of the town, but the town has a population that is not stagnant. Kids are born, youths are trained, protectors from the Kingdom come in, and promising kids who gain levels are taken away by the cities, the price the community pays for being beholden to a king. Potentially, the kid will come back later, as a higher-level fighter, to protect the land he once called home. In this system, spellcasters are going to be gathered up earlier than martial professions, because spells are more useful to a society as a whole than a strong sword arm (Which still is not to be discounted -- they need swords too, they just need spells more badly.) The adepts that reach 3rd or 4th level are taken back to the city by the cleric that was sent to help protect them, so that those who stay in the community are the low-levels, and those talented individuals are taken away to serve in the Kings's Own Mook Patrol. The warriors who reach 5th or 6th have the same thing happen to them. This Mook Patrol becomes citizens of the city, and maybe adventurers, and maybe raise children that come back to the home thorp and protect it once again.  A reason we don't see high-level adepts, but we do see high-level commoners, is the same reason that the kobold sorcerer bites the dust before the kobold barbarian -- precieved threat. Magic-users are not only weaker than martial classes, they're also potentially more destructive, so those who raid the village concentrate on taking them out. It's hard to gain levels when you're dead, and the cleric is the target of the *smart* goblin warlord. So there are higher attrition rates, meaning they don't have as much of a chance to raise to high levels. Toothless Joe, on the other hand, became powerful while protecting his adept friends. By the time the goblins realized ol' Joe was a threat, he was beyond their ability to easily destroy.  And this same reason is why we don't see 7th level orc barbarians crushing every village they come accross (though certainly they crush one or two). They're not involved in the fighting every day, they're living fat off the efforts of others. They're the leaders, they're the skillfull, they're too important to risk in the raids on a Podunk warrior getting a lucky crit. Not every 1st level party encounters these 7th level barbarians just because they're in orc land, it's a bit crazy to assume that the town nessecarily would.</blockquote>

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