The great census of L4W

Mal Malenkirk · Jul 5, 2009

The wise men of the great library are back from collecting data and getting drunk off their asses at the Hanging Man tavern. They have now completed the adventurer's census of Daunton.

Humans rule! But this is mostly tradition. A lot of people play humans no matter what. I know I was playing mostly humans in AD&D when there was no good mechanical reasons to do it, considering I have never played in a campaign when level limits were an issue.

I also notice that about 17% of the race are MM races and half of these are bugbears and minotaurs. It likely has something to do with the dubious oversized weapon madness. Just saying...

Okay, so, people... STOP MAKING STRIKERS!

Ahem. No, seriously, just consider when crafting a new character that if it is a striker, it's not likely to wow anyone. If scarcity creatres value, then a striker is the least valuable commodity, right now.

Defenders are on target while leaders and controllers are in short supply.

Builds (and entire classes!) that are still at 0% or very low should be seen as opportunities to make a PCs that will stand out.

If you really want to make another 1h fighter, TW rangers or artful dodgers, fine, but you may run into your clone, one of these days!

Moon_Goddess · Jul 5, 2009

Wow that's awesome thanks for the census, bet that was alot of work,

Wonder why we've not seen any druids or shamans yet.

EvolutionKB · Jul 5, 2009

I was torn between creating Montroya, my deva invoker and recreating Redbeard my human druid from 3.5. That was tough call, Redbeard was fun!

TwoHeadsBarking · Jul 5, 2009

How did you collect the data? Or, to be more specific, what was the criteria for who got counted? I don't think there are that many active minotaurs/bugbears (I can think of three total: Hrav, Vaunea, and, er, I'm sure there's another bugbear rogue). And I know there are a couple barbarians about.

Hey, who's the assault swordmage? I didn't know we had one of those.

Lord Sessadore · Jul 5, 2009

Well, I would imagine he used the Official Approved Characters list. Seems the natural choice (and it's what I used when I took an accounting of levels/classes/races recently).

However, yes, there are a number of characters waiting for approval, or just recently approved. I know there's a third sorcerer, and dimsdale has a barbarian. I think with shamans and druids, we just need to wait a bit. I know I've heard rumors or a druid or two being cooked up, but people might be taking their time since there's a big load of characters due to finish adventures and not enough new adventures for them to go on (which would mean that 2nd characters will have to wait anyways).

I think it would be interesting to go through all of the active adventures and the tavern and take a census of all the currently active characters, though that would be a fair bit more work.

Lastly: TwoHeads, shame on you!

The other bugbear rogue is Heinrich, in Ring of the Feylord with Haruka.

Not sure if we can count him as active, though.

TwoHeadsBarking · Jul 5, 2009

Lord Sessadore said:
Lastly: TwoHeads, shame on you! The other bugbear rogue is Heinrich, in Ring of the Feylord with Haruka. Not sure if we can count him as active, though.

Who?

Ha, no, kidding. I wasn't counting Heinrich. I was thinking of Grim, who's actually a ranger.

Lord Sessadore · Jul 5, 2009

Ooh, yes, you're right. I thought it strange that you'd forget about Heinrich, anyways

On another note, I believe the assault swordmage is Miranna Stormsong, in the Jade Frontier.

Mal Malenkirk · Jul 5, 2009

DarwinofMind said:
Wow that's awesome thanks for the census, bet that was alot of work.

Maybe a little over two hours, most of it coming from the bad idea I had to also recense the differents build, because just doing the races or the class was a snap. The builds on the other hand required me to open all the wiki page of all the PCs (except those kind enough to put it in the title). That took a while.

If you think that's a lot of work, you can start a petition to convince judges to give me DM credit for it!

How did you collect the data? Or, to be more specific, what was the criteria for who got counted? I don't think there are that many active minotaurs/bugbears (I can think of three total: Hrav, Vaunea, and, er, I'm sure there's another bugbear rogue). And I know there are a couple barbarians about.

Official approved character list, excluding the retired characters.

Yeah, I know of at least 2 barbarians on the way but they weren't on the list yet.

Considering the minotaurs and bugbears, what can I say; they may not all be active but they are still just 2 shy of bing 10% of the total population.

garyh · Jul 5, 2009

Thanks for putting that together, Mal! Very interesting. I'm curious as to how PC level plays into all that data, but don't go running to figure that on my account.

Two responses from me regarding my current and potential characters:

1) Yes, I love Hrav's large rapier. But that's not the main reason I picked bugbear. I really wanted to play a brutal rogue, and at the time, that was the only Str/Dex race out there (since joined by half-orcs). Plus, I love the Bacartan "monster pirate" theme.

2) I'm strongly considering a warforged guardian druid for my second character. Not influenced by this at all, of course not... That'd be the first druid and help up the controller count.