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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9262840" data-attributes="member: 4937">I mean, are there?  That would seem to be a decision of the DM and not something necessarily expressed by the rules.  That's a question of demographics, and it's really up to the DM to assume that the higher-level NPCs in society are also likely to be the older members of society.  So if we have some demographic methodology of generating the inhabitants of a temple, it's up to the GM to decide that the highest level priest is probably the oldest priest.  And the same would be true of a college of bards or a college of wizards.  And in practice, I think that generally tends to happen if only because it fits to stereotypes. D&D has rarely though been particularly explicit about its demographics.  1e AD&D answered your question by saying the general NPC population lacked the ability to gain levels and so most were trapped to being 0th level or at most a handful of HD, no matter how experienced they were.  By 3e D&D it suggested that while NPCs weren't really trapped at low level, they were in fact mostly of NPC classes ill-suited to adventuring and didn't gain levels rapidly because they weren't doing things that would lead to rapid gains in XP.  4e and 5e largely don't seem to care about the question, with NPCs having whatever level the GM feels justified to creating the story he wants.In my own 3.X inspired game, it's not unusual to meet an octogenarian that is a 9th level commoner with like 4 Str, 4 Dex, and 4 Con that would probably lose a combat to 1st level PC but whom is a great deal more skilled at cooking, managing a home, tending a garden, and small talk and routine social skills than most PCs are ever likely to be.  That old lady might just have 9 hit points, but she has a +17 on her sense motive check.  There is a reason why her village has a great deal of respect for her even if she'd be in real trouble against a single orc.</blockquote>

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