D&D 5E What proportion of the population are adventurers?

[DND_Reborn]

Simply because pretty much any finely-honed skill or ability deteriorates somewhat if not used for a while, and may or may not fully come back if re-started.

Physically, people let their condition go. Mentally, they lose focus and think of other things.

There's no game mechanics to reflect this, however.

Well of course, but that is a person's choice. If a fighter retires and doing keep up a training program or something, he won't improve and most certainly will decline. Now there is a finite capacity, as new things become important old things suffer. So yeah I get that most people who could do algebra in middle school or high school would struggle with it 20 years later as adults trying to help their own kids.

With the new UA there is in a fashion. The different versatility features allow for PCs to exchange a spell or skill out for a new one.

In AD&D, there fortunately was aging rules that would reflect declining physical conditioning, etc.

IMO one of the lacking aspects of 5E is that characters don't live outside of the adventure. Will most games see a character live out decades of their life while occasionally going on adventures? Not IME. More's the pity.

 

[Lanefan]

This is back to the assumption that XP is physics. The whole point of my example is that XP should not be physics. It's a narrative device meant to serve the needs of a "zero to hero" campaign. If you wish to avoid a Tippyverse, the game-world explanation needs to serve that narrative function, not vice versa.

First off, thanks for explaining what a 'Tippyverse' is.

I'm not convinced at all that you can't in this case have the cake and eat it too; where xp are a part of the underlying 'physics' (for lack of a better term) of the game world but where boot-camp training and so forth can only get you so (not very) far: from commoner to 0th or maybe even raw 1st, but that's it.

After that, you've got to earn xp either quickly, by adventuring with all its associated very high risks; or slowly, by practicing your skills day after day and year after year as a soldier in an army or a stay-at-home temple cleric or a street thief, etc.

I find it convenient for a number of reasons that PCs do not level up between campaigns. So they don't. If an explanation for this is required, the skills they gained during their "chosen hero" period are too great to be heightened by mundane training or practice.

By 'campaigns' here do you mean 'adventures'?

But yes, PCs are already charter members of the Church of Fast-Tracking Level Bumps. A PC who retires for a long time but stays involved in their class somehow, e.g. by training others, might pick up a very few xp over the course of that time but it'd probably take at least a few years to gain a level. A PC who retires outright and becomes a farmer likely wouldn't get any new xp at all.

 

[DND_Reborn]

IF you are capable of recognizing exaggeration is indeed exaggeration then the rest of your comment is rather just a worthless diatribe .... Someone getting great levels in a few months yeh or even a couple years is ridiculously fast in real life terms it is an extremely rarity in real life rather akin to what Alexander the Great did as a very young man not what the college graduate down the block did at college.

Then why are you even bringing it up? If you don't want to be seen as exaggerating, don't do it.

People make quick progress in things all the time without having to be a prodigy. Becoming great at something in a few years is not ridiculous if you apply yourself. Will you be "world-renowned"? Probably not, but you never know...

And as far as most games (or at least some posters) seem to imply, PCs are special, extraordinary, and can be akin to what Alexander the Great did. And FYI, he was 20 when he assumed the throne and his "adventures" in conquest and war lasted for 10 years, not "even a couple years".

 

[Garthanos]

Then why are you even bringing it up? If you don't want to be seen as exaggerating, don't do it.

Sigh you spent a big paragraph whining about (what should be an) obvious i exaggeration what a waste of electrons don't want to be called on waste of electrons don't do it.

And as far as most games (or at least some posters) seem to imply, PCs are special, extraordinary, and can be akin to what Alexander the Great did.

Yes i am fine with that specialness... You seem to be assuming the adverse and that every other person in the game would have the talent etc to do that (which results in the insanity in D&D mechanics applied like they are physics), The players are special is supported by faster than anything typical ... just do not think they are like anyone is very much at all

Its technically even plausible that Alexander did got better after he hit the field his father / teacher was dead after all there may have been nothing to really challenge him (not enough details).

Oh look your pc can do it in 1/4 the time Alexander the great did 2.5 years not 10 ... must be really really special.

I personally think the huge advancement thing is "game" support not really narrative nor simulation of anything at all. Heck it is a rather poor expression of most literary mediums.

 

[clearstream]

A Tippyverse is a setting where the D&D rules as written are largely taken at face value and as the basic rules for a world. (Originally used in the context of 3.5E; it's not quite as insane for 5E, but it's still pretty insane.) It can be an interesting thought experiment, but it looks nothing like any published D&D setting, nor like any homebrew setting I've encountered.

A world in which XP is treated as part of the "physics" is a world in which you can ascend to godlike power over the course of a month or two--if you survive--by going out and fighting a lot. Logical corollary: Every nation can apply this principle to mass-produce high-level characters. And since old age is very difficult to evade in 5E, it makes sense to put your trainees into the grinder as soon as they are old enough to have a fighting chance. The world is thus swarming with high-level teenagers, all of whom have gone through some form of standardized dungeon crawl. Lots of them die at the low levels, of course, but resurrection magic is readily available once you make it to 5th level or so (making you worth the investment).

Then have a look at spells of 6th level and up, assume that spellcasters with access to those spells are a dime a dozen, and you have yourself a Tippyverse.

This is why I treat XP as a narrative device rather than as game-world physics. Every so often, a group of people will go through an episode in their lives when they level up super-fast. It's not something that can be predicted or replicated or controlled. It doesn't even consistently apply to the same people--you may have spent years training as a wizard to reach 1st level, and then (when the campaign starts) you go into overdrive and level up to maybe 11, and then (when the campaign ends)... it just goes away and you're back to normal. If a new campaign starts 20 years later with the same PCs, you'll still be level 11. Does this happen to NPCs? Sometimes, but again--you can't predict or control it. Most NPCs have to earn their levels the hard way.

Someone worked out that XP is lossy. So that it functions a bit more sanely than expected.

 

[Dausuul]

First off, thanks for explaining what a 'Tippyverse' is.

I'm not convinced at all that you can't in this case have the cake and eat it too; where xp are a part of the underlying 'physics' (for lack of a better term) of the game world but where boot-camp training and so forth can only get you so (not very) far: from commoner to 0th or maybe even raw 1st, but that's it.

After that, you've got to earn xp either quickly, by adventuring with all its associated very high risks; or slowly, by practicing your skills day after day and year after year as a soldier in an army or a stay-at-home temple cleric or a street thief, etc.

The problem is that if XP are physics, that physics can be exploited, just as humans have long exploited physics in the real world. Whatever it is about Ye Olde Dungeon Crawl that lets people go from zero to hero, every D&D nation has a tremendous incentive to figure out how to replicate that in a controlled way. Build your own dungeon, stock it with any type of enemy that can be easily farmed (oozes are good for this), fine-tune the risk level so it generates a steady stream of XP but doesn't kill too many of your conscripts.

The logical answer to this, as a DM wanting a self-consistent non-Tippyverse setting, is to start putting restrictions on how XP are earned, so you can only get on the fast track by going on actual adventures. But it's fiendishly difficult to work out a set of restrictions that don't have loopholes, and any loophole would surely be discovered in a world where adventuring was common.

I find it much simpler to start with the assumption that only The Chosen Ones (PCs and selected NPCs) get to do the zero to hero thing, and work backward from there.

By 'campaigns' here do you mean 'adventures'?

I think of a "campaign" as a connected series of adventures, usually culminating in a final battle with a big villain--I do story arcs rather than sandboxes. For a sandbox campaign, "adventures" would be a better term, I suppose. Whatever word you choose to describe the period when PCs are actually being played by the players.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Sigh you spent a big paragraph whining about (what should be an) obvious i exaggeration what a waste of electrons don't want to be called on waste of electrons don't do it.

Let me see... You exaggerate... I say it is annoying when people do that... And then you complain but go back and edit your posts. Good, at least you got the hint.

Yes i am fine with that specialness... You seem to be assuming the adverse and that every other person in the game would have the talent etc to do that (which results in the insanity in D&D mechanics applied like they are physics), The players are special is supported by faster than anything typical ... just do not think they are like anyone is very much at all

Its technically even plausible that Alexander did got better after he hit the field his father / teacher was dead after all there may have been nothing to really challenge him (not enough details).

Oh look your pc can do it in 1/4 the time Alexander the great did 2.5 years not 10 ... must be really really special.

I personally think the huge advancement thing is "game" support not really narrative nor simulation of anything at all. Heck it is a rather poor expression of most literary mediums.

Whether it was challenging for AtG to continue his conquest or not has nothing to do with XP. If he defeated enemies, he earned HP. A fighter gets the same XP for killing an orc whether he is 3rd level or 13th. Sure, he has to defeat a lot more to level, but AtG kept defeating more and more forces. XP would be there.

Where did 2.5 years come from? Did you just pull that out of the air? I hope you weren't referring to my comment about our main campaign, but because those characters have been at it nearly 4 years and would be several levels behind any Alexander the Great NPC write-up I would make.

 

[delericho]

This then led to the question of how common adventurers were.

I tend towards the view that it's about as common as being in a band - lots of kids talk about starting a band, a much smaller subset actually get together a band, and an even smaller number of those actually play something in front of an actual audience. And that's the point at which they're the equivalent of being 1st level adventurers.

(At the same time, it's not vanishingly rare or outlandish - you probably know someone who is, or at least was, in a band at some point.)

So maybe 1 in 1,000 either are or were at some point adventurers.

But very many fewer stick at it after that first adventure - even amongst those who survive, many realise the rewards just aren't worth the dangers.

All IMO and IMC, of course.

 

[Garthanos]

Whether it was challenging for AtG to continue his conquest or not has nothing to do with XP. would make.

Thing is levelling without being challenged sounds like vampirism you are draining power off those you slay like in a Highlander movie .... there is this though AtG at least seemed to take active front side participation and fought alongside his troops. Of course if he is sharing all that drained life force with all those troops of his.

 

[Garthanos]

Let me see... You exaggerate... I say it is annoying when people do that... And then you complain but go back and edit your posts. Good, at least you got the hint.

I actually had it opened before you went all diatribish on it... LOL