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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6662951" data-attributes="member: 1465">I am currently mid-way into reading "The Hobbit" as a bedtime tale to our little children, and it's nice to encounter to this feeling that true classed characters are actually very few. We've seen 3 wizards/sorcerers mentioned so far: Gandalf, Radagast and the Necromancer, each time another is mentioned, the children always go "...there is another sorcerer?" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> It's kind of implied that there are more Thieves than just Bilbo, but he's the only one encountered. Gandalf mentions he chose a Thief to help the dwarves because Fighters exist but are all busy fighting wars somewhere far away, and Heroes (Paladins?) almost don't exist anymore these days. Beorn sounds like he is the werebear, and Smaug is perhaps not the only dragon left in the world but anyway the others aren't relevant if any.By contrast, at least since 3ed D&D has a strong tendency to presenting fantasy worlds with a very high density of both monsters and PC/NPC. On one hand I think it's because there is a sort of underlying idea that we're all playing together, so my Wizard, your Wizard, everyone's Wizard are kind of co-existing, even if we know that each gaming group technically has its own separate universe, so they are never going to meet. But the idea spills over to book descriptions, so that even for a smaller-scale character choice (e.g. prestige class, archetype etc) you read stuff like "Most 'Paladins of the Ancient Flame' are humans, but elves and dwarves sometimes pick the path up, and halflings are not unheard of", which immediately sets the feeling that between 'most', 'some' and 'rare' there must be at least quite a good number of them anyway, even for the most specialized concept, and for nearly all concepts published. Not to mention population tables sometimes showing up to 20% people with class levels!On the other hand, there is nothing in the rules of the game that requires this to be the case. No strict requirements about having others teaching what you character learns. The closest thing might be e.g. Wizard's spell scrolls found in adventures, that carry the implication that someone must have scribed them, but even this can be left unexplained (relics from the past? gifts from above?).I wonder if someone goes against the "high density" default/tradition of D&D and is running a campaign in a fantasy world where a classed character is a rare thing (or at least, not as common as to treat it as a common profession in society). Anyone?</blockquote>

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