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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FourthBear" data-source="post: 3860655" data-attributes="member: 55846">I believe that indeed the majority of published (and from what I've seen homebrewn) campaigns from 1e-3e have an overrepresentation of arcane spellcasters at the high and epic levels.  This was justly infamous in the Forgotten Realms, where the distributions often felt to me like a caste system.  You had warrior and thief types topping out around 9th, clerics around 14th and magic-users up in the stratosphere (16-30th quite common).  I don't think there's too much of a puzzle as to why.  How many times do we see PCs running to a high level fighter when the Big Bad comes to town?  1)  The scope of influence for spellcasters is simply much higher than for non-spellcasters.  I don't care how much of a sword-swinger you are, your class abilities simply can't affect the setting as much as an arch-mage with the power to open gates to other planes, teleport, create new creatures, et cetera.  2)  The class abilities of magic-users simply kept increasing qualitatively at higher levels.  In 1e and 2e, your fighter past 9th level didn't get much as he went up in levels.  Your attack bonus went up and a little increase to hit points, but that was it.  To represent a "high level" fighter, 9th level was quite sufficient.  Once clerics gained 7th level spells, pretty much the same, a 14th level cleric could do pretty much everything a 25th level cleric could, just fewer times and a bit weaker.  The arch-mage increased in power right up to 18th.3)  Source fantasy material often depicts the world-shakers as mages.  How many ancient, lost empires do campaign worlds have that were dominated by cabals of high level thieves?  About one for every one hundred lost empires noted for their mighty arcane might.   Again, this goes back to point one.  It's much easier to come up with plot hooks and concepts around ancient powerful magic gone awry than from some kind of ancient thief lore.</blockquote>

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