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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zardnaar" data-source="post: 7138323" data-attributes="member: 6716779">It was not always X2 per level. It started at 1 in 10, ended at 1 in a million and lvl 17  characters were twice as common as level 18. As I said the problem was people tend to think of populations of millions as a modern day thing but some of the large pre industrial nations and Empire had populations of millions.France 20-30 millionOttoman Empire 30 millionRome 50-120 million (estimates vary)Byzantium varies but around 10 million after loss of lands to Islam.China various dynasty, 100-400 million.UK 1700 5 millionCastille 1492, 4 millionAragon 1492 1 millionScotland 1700 1 million even with 1 in a million being level 18 a lot of nations are going to have at least 1 level 18 character with city states being the exception (Venice population 200k). D&D demographics Page 22 High Level Campaigns (2E) Per Millionlevel/number1 133 1202 665603. 332804. 16 6405. 83206. 4 1607. 20808. 10409. 51210. 25611. 12812. 6413.3214.1615. 816. 417. 218. 1 Note there is a difference between early 1E and late 2E AD&D. If you apply those numbers above to 1983's World of Greyhawk boxed set it kind of hints how rare high level PCs are as most nations are under 1 million in population and the largest is around 5 million which is comparable to the UK 300 years ago. Greyhawk lacks an equivalent to France or Ottoman Empire.  Personally I think the numbers are still to high and need to be cut in half at least, 20% of the population has class levels. Even in a society where life is harder than modern day you won't have 1 in 5 people being the equivalent of being a trained soldier. Even in WW2 only 1 in 10 were soldiers in the most heavily mobilised countries in the world (Nazi Germany, USSR). 1-2% of the population should have class levels IMHO rising to 5% during wartime and maybe 10% for exceptional times and places. Even Sparta you only had around 2-3% of the population being "Spartans".</blockquote>

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