D&D 5E The unlimited fountain of youth

[FormerlyHemlock]

I never said the transmuter wouldn't charge *shake my head*. I said it costs the Transmuter nothing. So he can do it at will once a day forever.

Aha. All is right with the world again.

 

[Baumi]

There's an autocorrect error there. It should be "I figure that...". Since "professional athlete" seemed to be a good bar for adventurers, as we have hard numbers of that. (There's far fewer than you'd think.)

The Realms is an exception in that high level characters are more common. Maybe 3-4x as common. So maybe 100 wizards above level 10.

And lets not forget that not all Wizards will be able to do it .. you have to be a transmuter. So only around 1/8th of the high Level Wizard Population will be ablet to do that, so more or less a dozen!

 

[Horwath]

I figured out that characters with adventuring classes are close to 0.005% of the population, using the percentage of professional athletes in North America to set the numbers.
Low levels (less than 4) might be ten times as common, but high levels (above 10) are likely ten times as rare. The population of a region is 0.0005% level 10+ adventurers, with wizards in specific being a tenth that.

In a fantasy world (we'll go with the Realms, since we have numbers) there could be 50 to 75 million people on a continent. In the Realms, there'd be 34,000 adventurers, with over 30k being rookies while 3,400 are "professional". But only 34 wizards in the 10-20 range across Faerûn. A couple per major region or one per nation.
That'd be the guy you'd have to tap to remove the laugh lines from your face. It's like going to the Surgeon General for a face lift. They can do it, and if you throw enough money at them they'll probably say "yes", but since they're spending a full 8-hour work day on the task it's going to be expensive.

I wouldn't put the figures that low. And you cant compare todays profecional athletes to medieval mercenaries. population with adventuring classes would be rather close to 5% than 0,005%. In 14th century Italy band of merceraries White Company had 5500 men in it ranks. If you use your percentage Italy then had population of over 100M people, twice of todays.

At battle of Crecy Edward III had around 12000 men, when population of england was estimated at around 2M, thats 0,6% of population as soldiers for a single campaign.


Maybe the best way to estimate percantage of population with PC/adventure classes is to total all members of police, army, firefighters, civil guard, medical personel, park/forest rangers, private security, profesional athletes and add 25% more to that number for safe measure and divide the total by countries population.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Um...adventurers are WAY better than your standard mercenary or soldier. That's why Soldier is a BACKGROUND, not a class. And we regularly trounce mercenaries. So the professional athlete os probably a better comparison.

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[Horwath]

Um...adventurers are WAY better than your standard mercenary or soldier. That's why Soldier is a BACKGROUND, not a class. And we regularly trounce mercenaries. So the professional athlete os probably a better comparison.

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I wouldn't called them ALL better. Rather crazier. Sure, expirienced adventurer is higher level but not any better that maybe profesional bodyguard.

Any soldier that finnished boot camp or basic training(lets say 6 months) is a level 1 fighter or ranger. depending on training focus.

 

[Ancalagon]

For those trying to figure out how many level 14 wizards, I strongly suggest that you consult the skills and options book for high level campaign, they did the math quite convincingly. I'm on the bus at the moment but I will check this evening. As a teaser, I do remember that a level 18 character (not wizard) was literally 1 in a million.

 

[TwoSix]

Weird. It's almost like the core rulebooks aren't meant to be world-building simulators, and the appropriate amount of high-level wizards for a campaign world is "whatever the DM says it is."

 

[KahlessNestor]

I wouldn't called them ALL better. Rather crazier. Sure, expirienced adventurer is higher level but not any better that maybe profesional bodyguard.

Any soldier that finnished boot camp or basic training(lets say 6 months) is a level 1 fighter or ranger. depending on training focus.

A soldier is not a level 1 adventurer. Adventurers are a cut above. Pretty sure it even says so somewhere in the PHB. Again. Soldier is a background, not a class.

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[Jester David]

I wouldn't put the figures that low. And you cant compare todays profecional athletes to medieval mercenaries. population with adventuring classes would be rather close to 5% than 0,005%. In 14th century Italy band of merceraries White Company had 5500 men in it ranks. If you use your percentage Italy then had population of over 100M people, twice of todays.

At battle of Crecy Edward III had around 12000 men, when population of england was estimated at around 2M, thats 0,6% of population as soldiers for a single campaign.


Maybe the best way to estimate percantage of population with PC/adventure classes is to total all members of police, army, firefighters, civil guard, medical personel, park/forest rangers, private security, profesional athletes and add 25% more to that number for safe measure and divide the total by countries population.

Mercenaries, soldiers, and members of a city guard would be NPCs. They're not adventurers, and don't have the same skill. In 3e, that was what the Warrior class was for.
Using that group, adventures would be Special Forces. The elite soldiers.

Not everyone who picks up a sword a fights for a living is a fighter.

 

[Waterbizkit]

All the demographic talk aside, I'm still pressed to see what the actual issue is here? I don't see it.

As others have already stated quite clearly this is a purely cosmetic alteration, it doesn't prevent death from old age nor does it prevent any statistical aging penalties a character has accrued. I believe in design terms this is what they've been referring to as a "ribbon" ability, something which lends some flavor to a class/subclass but which doesn't have a truly measurable impact on the game from a mechanical standpoint.

So the wizard can cosmetically alter someone's age once per day at no cost. I'm not seeing the problem.