NPC Level distribution

[Clovenhoof]

Which NPCs should have what levels? How much is a "level" for a non-adventuring dweller of Hyboria? I'm sure many GMs have similar questions they need to decide for their games.
Questions like, "What level should the typical city guard have?" -- I'm not in favour of making guards etc. ever stronger as the PCs advance in levels.

What clues do we have?

- Characters of a level greater than 10 are considered "legendary". That's in the rules somewhere (I think in the Sorcerous News spell description). We should always keep that in mind so we don't overdo it with legendary NPCs.

- Soldiers get their first "Formation Combat" ability at level 3. It would be rather pointless if only one soldier in a company had this ability. I think it's reasonable to assume that most soldiers with combat experience know their ropes.

- if memory serves, Mongoose wants to add a level 5 Soldier ability called "Officer" or something. I think it's about giving Formation abilities to soldiers below level 3. This would of course imply that officers typically are level 5 or greater.

So here's my preliminary assessment -- focussing on the Soldier class, because it's the most structured, but you can adapt it for other classes:

Level 1: Common Soldier after basic training, but without combat experience. (Could of course also be an officer who got his post only due to connections or his social standing)
Level 2: Soldier with a little combat experience, but not yet very much, probably only minor skirmishes.
Level 3: Soldier with considerable combat experience, probably one major battle. May be Corporal or squad leader, but may also be a regular soldier that is simply more experienced ("Gefreiter" in German).
Level 4: Platoon leader, or soldier in a special unit, for example bodyguard to a city lord.
Level 5: Battle-hardened Company Sergeant, commissioned Officer by merit, with extensive war academy training (Lieutenant).
Level 6: experienced sergeant or officer, possibly Captain of a company (100-200 troops), guard captain of an average city, or "Special Forces" warrior.
Level 8: Commander of a full garrison, of a mercenary host, or a large city's forces -- around 1000 men at command.
Level 9: Commander of a portion of the armed forces of a kingdom
Level 10: Supreme Commander of the Army of a kingdom.
Level 11+: legendary General renowned in homeland and abroad, successfully defended his country in war against superior enemy, or crushing victory against another country.

What do you think?

 

[VincentDarlage]

Personally, I use Argo's method.

To state it again:

A NPC's level reflects his general competence:
1st - incompetent apprentice
3rd - average young adult professional
5th/6th - seasoned veteran
7th - master
9th - grand master
10th - hero
13th - legend
16th - earth-shaker
19th - myth

And the breakdown of levels in any given population is:
1-3 = 50%
4-6 = 25%
7-9 = 13%
10-12 = 6%
13-15 = 3%
16-18 = 2%
19-20 = 1%

So that makes it about a 2:1 ratio. Furthermore, approximately 45% of the population is 3rd level exactly.

"savage" populations may get a bonus of +1 or +2 levels.

 

[Trodax]

For my taste, "argo's method" is a little too weighted towards the higher levels. Where he has 12% of the population at level 10 or above, I would rather have like 1% or so (with levels 15-20 being extremely rare). I actually like the setup Clovenhoof suggested above, looks good.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Argo's competence table is okay I guess, but in that case you should probably start a campaign at Level 2 or 3 (which I usually do, my current one is an exception because everyone was new to the system).

However, I share Trodax' reservations about the distribution. According to this chart, a city of 10.000 (adult) people would have no less than ONE HUNDRED level 19-20s.

IMHO level 20 should be about "one in a million".

There may be 1 level 10 per 10.000 people (0,01%), at least that's what I deem appropriate for the genre. The whole range of 11-20 maybe amounting to another 0,01%.

 

[Majestic7]

I actually use something akin to the distribution system Vincent mentioned. Experienced soldiers are around level 6 in my campaign, while true veterans and the like might be around level 10. However, the portion of people on levels 15-20 is about 1% and the amount of people on levels 5-10 higher in exchange.

 

[argo]

Personally, I use Argo's method.

Thanks for the compliment!

@Clovenhoof: yes, I do typically start my campaign's about 3rd level. One of the revelations that makes my table work is the fact that 1st level characters (of any sort) are so damn useless unless you are setting them up against the scourge of the dreaded dire rat :roll: The only reason I can really think of to start the characters at level 1 is if you are deliberately trying to emulate the "heroes start as 14-year-old farmboys who have never touched a sword before" monomyth. And in that case having the PC's be 1st level in a world where the town blacksmith is 3rd level is actually in genre. Personally, I am sick of emulating that particular literary convention.

However, I share Trodax' reservations about the distribution. According to this chart, a city of 10.000 (adult) people would have no less than ONE HUNDRED level 19-20s.

IMHO level 20 should be about "one in a million".

Well, this is mitigated by a couple of factors.

The first is level compression. If you accept the stipulation that an "average grunt" is 3rd then a NPC of 19-20 is about 7 times his level. IOW it is not that much wierder than having a standard generic fantasy world with 1st level grunts and having NPC's be 7-10th level. What I'm saying is that it is the relative power gap that matters more than the actual level. By making the "baseline" more competent it makes the upper reaches less extroidnary. Furthermore the Conan RPG helps along with this - massive damage, capping HP at 10 HD, multiple attacker rules, formation combat and several other rules combine to erode the power of very high-level characters relative to the low-level counterparts

Second, and related to the first, is that the demographics distribution is likewise established more evenly accross the levels. I've flattened out the curve. So yes 1% is 19-20, and 2% is 16-18, 3% is 13-15, that means that 6% in total is 13+. Thinking about that for a moment we realize that that again means that the very high levels are less rare and therefore less exceptional.

The key is that I've built my campaign upon these core assumptions, therefore there is no "culture shock" at finding a random 20th level NPC butcher in the town down the road. Saying it out loud it may feel simplistic but what I'm arguing for here a paradigm shift away from the DnD demographics of 1st level commoners. So it does need to be stated out loud.

The result in actual play has been that each level increase for the PC's feels incrementally "smaller" than in DnD. They don't level from 3rd to 4th and suddenly think it's time to take over the kingdom. I view this as a positive thing. At high levels I can still make them feel bad-ass by flooding them with a bunch of mooks, but I can also challenge them by sending an army of mooks or, alternatevly, a handfull of those 9th level "elite royal guardsmen" and I have not broken the versimilitude of the setting. Thus I avoid a common problem in high-level DnD where you have to wonder where all those level-appropriate bad-guys are comming from and why they haven't already taken over a world populated by 1st level commoners. Also, from a more gamist prospective, it means I can increase the XP awards such that my players level every 2-3 sessions but it does not feel like we are "racing" through the levels. Again because each level increase is incrementally smaller when compared to the world at large.

Personally I have found all these things to be advantageous. YMMV

Hope that helps.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Thanks for your elaboration, argo.

Taking all this into account, I think I might go for the "golden mean".

Again, normally I start D20 campaigns at 3rd level for just the reasons you named. I also would have done so for Conan, but I wanted to give the players, who were all new to D20, a chance to get a feel for the system before they have to level a newly created character.

So, 3rd-4th will also be the typical level for mooks.

Then, most of the rest of the world will spread between levels 5 and 10. Meaning there will be a fairly high amount of anything up to level 10.

For 11 and up, the air will get thinner. Maybe not to the sum of 0,01% as I have written previously, but a bit more so the players won't feel so alone once their characters hit the high levels.

Let's say, maybe 1% for the sum of levels 11-20, of which a whopping 0,01% are level 20. (That is a lot more than what I propagated in my previous posting)

Keep in mind that even a fraction of a percent is still a high absolute number if you look at overall populations. I am not aware of any abolsute figures for the Hyborian kingdoms, but let's assume for a minute the world of Hyboria counts a total of 200 million humans -- that was roughly the world's population from 300BC to 800AD.
(trivia: it was much lower before 500BC, the sudden increase probably owed to the advent of the iron age and, with it, iron plows significantly improving crop yields)
The total 1% of levels 11+ would make for 2.000.000, two and a half million. I suppose that will be enough.
0,01% of that number is 20.000 humans, and that would be just the level 20s in my calculation. I'd say that's an ample supply of potential opposition for even the most ambitious high-level party.

(I am using a homebrew conversion using even smaller populations. Have to figure out an absolute number yet, but it's probably going to be less than 100M worldwide, since arable land is extremely limited. Still, ten thousand level 20s should be enough not to run out.)

 

[Trodax]

Yes, argo does make a very good case. I guess I'm a bit stuck in the D&D mindset when it comes to levels. A level 20 blacksmith hanging out in a random village just makes me cringe (I'm trying to get over this feeling, though, I promise ).

I also always start games at level 3 minimum. Less than that just doesn't feel like Conan for me.

 

[slaughterj]

Questions like, "What level should the typical city guard have?" -- I'm not in favour of making guards etc. ever stronger as the PCs advance in levels.

I don't increase guards as the PCs get stronger, but do tend to provide encounters with the more elite guards (i.e., 10th level PCs are no longer doing small-time burglaries which might alert the 4-man 2nd level guards, but are instead infiltrating royal palaces and would therefore encounter the 6th-10th level seasoned veterans).

I don't use a "rigid" system like Argo's and don't feel it is appropriate for a 100-person podunk town to have 26% of their population (i.e., 26 people) at 7th level and above. As noted above, 10th level PCs passing through a 100-person aren't going to be engaging in activities that draw the ire of the 100-person village guard, they are going to be passing through on toward bigger adventures, and I probably won't even do anything other than a passing mention of the podunk village while moving on to the more substantive part of the adventure. Sure, there's always the possibility that the PCs may decide "hey, let's just conquer this podunk town" (odd, but possible I guess), and that would just result in one of them fleeing to the closest noble / town / castle with whom they probably have relations or supply and get higher level support from there to deal with these marauding PCs.

 

[kintire]

Its worth bearing in mind, too a couple of other things: Stats and distribution.

I very much view stat 10 as average, 12 as good and 14 as excellent. Viewed in that light, suddenly a 1st level PC isn't so bad. Yes the village head of miltia will be third level and he's only first, but the village head of militia will also have Strength 12, whereas the PC may well have 16-18. That puts their actual attack bonuses more or less on par, and the PC will do more damage. He may not have much fewer hits either, given similar Con differences. As soon as the PC hits second level, he is frankly better than the third level average in all respects.

Secondly, distribution. "1% of all the population is 15-20th level" (for example) does NOT mean "in a village of 100 people there will be one level 15-20". Such people are not evenly and randomly spaced across the world: they clump. The superb training and traditions of excellence will mean that a vastly disproportionate number of the world's level 20 blacksmiths are in Akbitana. Most of the others will be in Messantia, Tarantia, Aghrapur etc. Even if, by a wild fluke, a podunk village does produce a level 20 blacksmith, he isn't going to stay there. He'll be recruited by his kingdom. He'll attract students in swarms. Either the blacksmith will move to a ctiy, or the village will cease to be "podunk" in short order. SImilarly with others: lvl 15-20 soldiers will not be left as militia commander of an obscure village and so on. Very occasionally you might get the occasional Master who has retreated to obscurity for some reason or another, but it will not be typical. High level characters will tend to clump, either in powerful orders and organisations, or in areas where opportunity exists.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Both are good points and make sense.

Stats:
10 is average, and NPC fighter-types (guards et al) usually get Str 12 or 14 in my game. I also assign them HP based on average rolls (like 5 points for d8, 6 for d10), whereas PCs - in my game - get full HP over the first three levels.

So a Level 2, Str 18 PC (not such an oddity for a fighter class) has about the same Attack and HP values as a level 3-4 NPC...

You may also use point buy to stat out your NPCs -- of course as GM you can give them any stats you like, but PB gives you a better idea of how powerful the NPC will be in relation to the SCs, I think.

 

[slaughterj]

Its worth bearing in mind, too a couple of other things: Stats and distribution.

I very much view stat 10 as average, 12 as good and 14 as excellent. Viewed in that light, suddenly a 1st level PC isn't so bad. Yes the village head of miltia will be third level and he's only first, but the village head of militia will also have Strength 12, whereas the PC may well have 16-18. That puts their actual attack bonuses more or less on par, and the PC will do more damage. He may not have much fewer hits either, given similar Con differences. As soon as the PC hits second level, he is frankly better than the third level average in all respects.

Secondly, distribution. "1% of all the population is 15-20th level" (for example) does NOT mean "in a village of 100 people there will be one level 15-20". Such people are not evenly and randomly spaced across the world: they clump. The superb training and traditions of excellence will mean that a vastly disproportionate number of the world's level 20 blacksmiths are in Akbitana. Most of the others will be in Messantia, Tarantia, Aghrapur etc. Even if, by a wild fluke, a podunk village does produce a level 20 blacksmith, he isn't going to stay there. He'll be recruited by his kingdom. He'll attract students in swarms. Either the blacksmith will move to a ctiy, or the village will cease to be "podunk" in short order. SImilarly with others: lvl 15-20 soldiers will not be left as militia commander of an obscure village and so on. Very occasionally you might get the occasional Master who has retreated to obscurity for some reason or another, but it will not be typical. High level characters will tend to clump, either in powerful orders and organisations, or in areas where opportunity exists.

I very much agree with the clumping, so again, adhering to a rigid distribution doesn't work for me because due to clumping you will have less high levels in podunk areas and more in royal areas, so applying a preset distribution doesn't work out right.

 

[VincentDarlage]

To me the percentage breakdown isn't really the useful part. If my NPC is supposed to be a seasoned veteran, I know about what level to make him. If he is supposed to be a master smith, or master swordsman, etc. I know what level to make him. That is where most of the value lies for me. I never randomly roll up an NPCs level.

 

[Majestic7]

I guess I should add that I think the percentage of certain level people meaning population of the whole wide geographic area, such as entire kingdom - not that every small village has one hero.

 

[SnowDog]

I think that I would separate Combat level and skill package level for civilian NPCs. Let's say that there is this level 20 smith. Okay, he will probably have lots of ranks in craft but he is hardly a very tough customer in combat (meaning saves, BAB or even hit points).

If I intend to use existing class (like a soldier for mercenaries) then I would not bother with splitting the level or anything.

Well, anyway this just came to my head and it has not yet rounded to a clear idea how to do it (or even if it is necessary).