Way too many Epic Level Spellcasters

[mmu1]

Honestly, I think you just took a bit of flavor text and went nutty with it.

Hey, that's what I said... INTP's think alike?

 

[Aldymnor]

I haven't read the rest of the thread but I think the presented argument possesses two holes.

1: Wizards of thay make a LOT of magic items.

2: 4-5 encounters a year basically does make someone an adventurer. "Normal" wizardly life is research and normal peasant life is farming. Any encounters with an ECL (not CR as mentioned) of their level is pretty adventurous to the normal person even once a year.

But that's according to me, and hey I don't play FR anymore, nor am I anyone important

 

[herald]

Nope, it isn't. As per the UN 2000 estimates at this http://www.un.org/popin/data.html website. Click on the Population Division table on the left. Scroll down to page 25. It shows:

Edited for brevity.

Thwere is no way that you can take real contemporary world statistics and measure them against a fantasy world.

If you want to try and do something like that, you would have to start to take in to consideration how many of a population are affected by healing from a divine source, how many are killed by a divine source. How many are killed animal attack, by monster attack. Etc, ect.

You could go mad trying to figure out the many, many satistics of a game world and work util the day you died and you wouldn't have it all sorted out.

 

[mmu1]

Edited for brevity.

Thwere is no way that you can take real contemporary world statistics and measure them against a fantasy world.

If you want to try and do something like that, you would have to start to take in to consideration how many of a population are affected by healing from a divine source, how many are killed by a divine source. How many are killed animal attack, by monster attack. Etc, ect.

You could go mad trying to figure out the many, many satistics of a game world and work util the day you died and you wouldn't have it all sorted out.

You definitely can't claim you'd get anything like an exact result by comparing Thay to a 3rd world country, but the assumption that the demographics and mortality rate will be worse in a fantasy hellhole like Thay is a pretty safe one. It's enough to show that the original assumptions are probably off by an order of magnitude.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Re: Um, what sort of comb?

The CR and experience system is so central to progression in the game that I'd hardly think a fine-toothed comb is necessary to understand it. I happen to be traveling sans DMG, so someone else will have to quote it. It's right there, though, so take a couple of minutes to read about non-combat experience awards. Who knows, XP awards for something other than slaying monsters might open new vistas of gaming to you.

Pretty much after this point I thought "what on earth are you on about? I don't think you understood a word which I wrote, which is a shame. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of my starting point and then build a straw man opposition to that.

 

[Plane Sailing]

You get all kinds of logical absurdities, wherein the only blacksmith's who are really good at smithing are those that go kill orcs one weekend a month, so they can level up and take skill points in craft (smithing) or something like that.

It is worth noting that a 2nd level Blacksmith with Craft(smithing) 5, Skill Focus(craft (smithing)) and a 16 Str would have +10 on his check, enough to get a value of 20 just by taking 10 all the time. If you allow knowledge synergies to apply (e.g. just as prof(herbalist gives +2 to heal checks, you could allow prof(blacksmith) to give +2 to craft(smithing) checks) this could easily be +12 or even better - depending upon how many synergies you decided to apply.

In my campaign most experienced blacksmiths are about 2nd level with checks in the +12 to +15 range (since I allow synergies and made skill focus +3)

Cheers,

 

[ashockney]

From the Dungeon magazine writer's guidelines, there is a caution that in a perfectly balanced series of encounters (assuming 5% chance of death in any one encounter), a character only has a 50% chance of surviving to the next level...

of 2.56 million, 1.285 million survive to 2nd level

518 survive to 14th level
259 survive to 15th level
179 survive to 16th level

89 survive to 17th level
44 survive to 18th level
22 survive to 19th level
11 survive to 20th level

5 survive to 21st level
2 survive to 22nd level

1 survives to 23+ level

Five Epic level characters (total, not just spellcasters) produced from the nation over the course of multiple generations. They won't all coexist through their epic careers. This seems much more reasonable, don't you think?

Ok, this is now a really cool thread. Anyone who's tried to DM high level or EPIC level will tell you that it's kinda tough to determine what to do with other "EPIC" personas of the world. Have there always been tons of EPIC? Shouldn't it be rare? How rare is it in the world? Are there 100 NPC's over 20th? 1000? 10000? Why don't they all just rule the world?

No offense to everyone who jumped the thread with, "YOU'RE A BAD DM, BECAUSE I DM DIFFERENTLY THAN YOU." Please exit stage right, and start your own thread. Those interested in Irda's thought, stick around, because we should run with this idea!

So, for example, we've got a pretty good model we're using for Thay. Cool!

Does anyone want to venture guesses on the other "major" powers of the world?

The Zhentarim
Waterdeep
The Dalelands
Cormyr
Sembia
The North (now ruled by Alustriel)

How about the known FR World? How many total Epic?

The intersting questions here are:
When your characters reach Epic levels, who are their peers?

How many of the peers are detailed in the books?
How many does this leave us to turn into stark-raving mad lunatic EPIC villians?

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

Thwere is no way that you can take real contemporary world statistics and measure them against a fantasy world.

Wait a second, you make an assumption, then you jump on me for being thorough?

If you want to try and do something like that, you would have to start to take in to consideration how many of a population are affected by healing from a divine source

Actually, I can, since divine spells cost way more gp than 95% of the populace can afford. As per the DMG.

how many are killed by a divine source.

This would worsen the statistics further.

How many are killed animal attack, by monster attack. Etc, ect.

There aren't any monsters in the real world (and even animal attacks are pretty rare.)

This means that in addition to the pestilence, accidents, infections, or violence of the real world, the fantasy world populace must also contend with monsters. Therefore, I propose that the fantasy world would be far worse than the statistics presented previously.
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mmu1----
Hey, that's what I said... INTP's think alike?

Only when they have similar data...and make similar assumptions.
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ashockney----
Ok, this is now a really cool thread. Anyone who's tried to DM high level or EPIC level will tell you that it's kinda tough to determine what to do with other "EPIC" personas of the world. Have there always been tons of EPIC? Shouldn't it be rare? How rare is it in the world?

Yes, this is difficult. I just made a conscious choice based on my specific campaign how rare Epic characters were and went with it. (I can count them all on my fingers.) In my world, the crystal sphere does not let any being higher than L20 into the Material Plane. (Once a L21+ leaves the MP, they are locked out forever.)

I tend to think that the Outer and Inner planes should have lots of Epic characters, whereas the Material Plane should be a "newbie" zone. By the decree of the gods or what have you.

No offense to everyone who jumped the thread with, "YOU'RE A BAD DM, BECAUSE I DM DIFFERENTLY THAN YOU." Please exit stage right, and start your own thread. Those interested in Irda's thought, stick around, because we should run with this idea!

We are just pointing out the flaws in Irda's description of Thay. Would you prefer us to instead jump on the other bandwagon and say, "Yup, FR has 5 million Epic characters in Thay alone, didn't you know?"