Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 186 - Class Levels In Your World

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

A few weeks ago I mentioned how rare I think class levels are in your world and promised a longer discussion on the topic.  As threatened, here it is.  I make my case that class levels should be relatively rare in your world and give some benefits to designing your world that way.   #dmtips #dnd #pathfinder #starfinder #npcs Resources: Pathfinder 2e Core Preview:  https://paizo.com/pathfinder/corepreview https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-proportion-of-the-population-are-adventurers.659605/  https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/ada98w/how_special_are_you_a_guideline_for_determining/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2

This week on the Taking 20 Podcast. Thank you so much for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 186. A world-building episode all about the prevalence of class levels in game worlds. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Shoes. When I was in college, I became a shoe salesman. I thought I was good at it, but eventually they gave me the boot. If you haven't liked and reviewed the podcast on iTunes, why not? Do you not like me? Am I not entertaining enough for you? Is it not enough that I bleed and sweat and cry myself to sleep at night worrying that I may not be good enough for you, that my content isn't

enjoyable? Well, if that's how you feel, all your stuff will be waiting for you on the lawn when you get home. Where did I go just now? Anyway, big announcements from Gen Con, which is in the second day as I record this. One of my favorites so far is that we're getting Starfinder 2e, which will be compatible with the Pathfinder Remaster. The playtest for Starfinder 2E will be in 2024 with actual release in 2025. I love me some Starfinder, and I can't find a lot of people who play it, so if this gets more people into a little bit of sci-fi roleplaying,

count me in. Speaking of the Pathfinder Remaster, by the way, we also received a first look at the player core preview. I'll put a link in the resources for the episode. Go download it and check it out. As soon as we start getting more complete information about the Remaster, I fully intend to start running those games to introduce people to the new rule sets, so stay tuned for that. Let me ask you something about your game world, whether it's Galarian, Sword Coast, Pact Worlds, Pangea, Earth 2099, The Inner Sphere, or any other game world, official or custom written. We're used to adventurers in these worlds with class levels.

It's easy to understand fighters and scouts and clerics and sorcerers and classes that you regularly see with the player characters. sorcerers, and classes that you regularly see with the player characters. Painting with an overly broad brush, fighters and barbarians hit stuff, clerics heal stuff, wizards and sorcerers blow stuff up or use illusions or lightning bolt the hell out of stuff. Well, we all understand that, and I think we can all picture what a first-level wizard can do. However, when you think about your game world, what percentage of people in the world have traditional class levels? Levels of bard or rogue or monk or alchemist? 50%? 25%? 10%?

What about people who are just everyday people going about their lives as blacksmiths and cooks, farriers and weavers and leather workers? What sorts of stats would these people have in your world? Do they have class levels as well, or are they something a little different? Of course, the answer is game world and edition, and sometimes even a homebrew specific. Different editions of games will have different ways of handling and building NPCs. The two most common systems as of this recording, 5th edition and Pathfinder 2nd edition, don't have any hard and fast rules for their default game worlds of Forgotten Realms and Galarian respectively, but both have a lot of sample creatures as guidelines. 5th edition has a ton of NPC stat blocks available

for you in the Monster Manual and in Volos. You can also reskin monsters and give the NPCs appropriate capabilities of these monsters. These can serve as a guide to your world, what NPCs look like, and how many have class levels. Pathfinder 2e, meanwhile, in the Game Mastery Guide on page 72, has some loose rules about designing NPCs. It talks about how you can build NPCs just like PCs, assigning appropriate classes with feats and class abilities. However, it says that some people wouldn't make sense with a class build, and it cites the example of a baker. Can you imagine a baker fighter? Hang on, maybe it wields french bread or a frying pan. Okay, I've got like character idea number 400 that I'll never get a chance to build, so take that one and run with it.

It encourages the use of the NPC gallery on pages 202 to 249 of the Game Mastery Guide to compare an NPC you make to existing ones provided and not use class-based skills or abilities. How many stable hands do you know that can cast an electric arc? If it's all of them, I kind of fear for your horse's safety. Putting a bit of logic to it, though, it's more likely it's none of them can cast spells at all. I know it's an older system now, but one thing Pathfinder 1e had was something called NPC classes, like Expert and Noble and Adept, Commoner and Warrior. like expert and noble and adept, commoner and warrior.

NPCs would sometimes be built with these NPC classes instead of traditional PC class levels. Furthermore, the game system has this to say on the Inner Sea World Guide, page 253. Quote, Key NPCs that are mentioned by name are not usually presented with stat blocks and class levels for these NPCs in order to maintain a level of versatility and freedom, allowing us to adjust these NPCs as we wish. Nonetheless, there are guidelines how powerful most rulers and heroes and city guards are in the Inner Sea region. The vast majority of humanity are quote-unquote standard, ranging in level from 1st to 5th, most with NPC classes like Common or Expert or Warrior.

It's uncommon for a character with only NPC class levels to be above 5th level. A significant number of the nation's movers and shakers, along with other leaders, heroes, and notables are exceptional, ranging in level from 6th to 10th. Powerful characters, ranging in level from 11th to 15th, are quite rare. Typically, only a handful of such powerful characters should exist in most nations, and they should be leaders or specially trained troops, most often designed to serve as allies or enemies for use in an adventure. And then finally, legendary characters of 16th or higher levels should be exceptionally rare, and when they appear, only should do so as part of a specific campaign.

All legendary characters should be supplied with significant histories and flavor. End quote. Now that is a long quote, but the purpose of it is to make you think. How many people of various levels would exist in your world? Based on the preceding information that I just quoted, it depends on the parsing of the definition of significant number, exceptional, rare, and exceptionally rare. Given this glut of information, I want to restate the question to you. In your world, what percentage of people have class levels of any kind? Let's

take the NPC classes of Pathfinder First Edition out of the mix for now. How many bards and barbarians, clerics, and sorcerers exist in your world at all? Not every singer that travels from town to town has levels of bard. Not every preacher that stands behind the pulpit has levels of cleric. And not everyone who wanders the woods is a druid or ranger. Could you build your world where everyone is trained in one class or another? Sure. But then I would ask you, what would make

your characters around your table unique? Why are they special? Why are they the heroes of your gaming story? If there are 500,000 level 1 characters in your nation, why focus on these four? I will admit I'm a little old school when I consider this question. I believe that the number of people with class levels at all should be fairly rare. After all, the vast majority of NPCs, even in a high fantasy game, don't have the capability or tenacity to study and prepare and learn enough to gain a class level. They're content being shoemakers and innkeepers and stonemasons, fishermen and farmers, millers, or whatever they do day to day to earn silver

and keep their family fed. Rat catchers don't need levels of wizard to do their job. They need good traps and knowledge of how and where rats hide. How many people in the world would really want to put the time and effort in to become members of a certain class? Have you ever really thought what it would cost and how long it would take to learn to become a wizard? In many game systems, wizardry is taught and it may take weeks or even months for a person to learn their first cantrip. Do you think Joe the Scrivener has enough savings put away for him to take a 12-week leave of absence and learn how to cast dancing lights? Unless the basic needs of everyone in your nation are taken care of, that NPC will still need to work for their wages and can't afford to take the time off.

I'm back! Oh, well, I know half our kids may have starved to death, but look, I can make lights dance now. Ooh, honey? Honey? Honey? Oh. Let's put some hard math to this. Yes, I was a math minor for my undergraduate degree, so it's time to put some of that schooling to work.

I believe the percentage of people who would have class levels is likely 1% or less, and here's why. There's a limit to the number of people who are brave, foolhardy, or desperate enough to take up the life of an adventurer. I'll grant you that some of these classes wind up working as town mages and town healers, maybe scouts for the local forest or wild areas. But for easy math, I'm going to say it's about 1%-ish. And at this point, I want to give credit to a couple of Redditors. MineralFellow, who did some great initial analysis on the percentage of class levels by using chess ratings as a comparison, and NumEx Prism, who expanded on that, included additional facets and got even better numbers. I started down the road of doing my own numbers comparison, but found their work to be, frankly, superior to my own,

so I'm going to reference it here. I'll put a link in the resources so you can go check my math. Using NumEx Prism's percentages, which seem reasonable, he came up with about 1.25% of people having class levels, instead of my estimated 1%. I'm going to call that close enough for government work. Suppose a nation of Tholia in your game world has a population of 1 million people. Now I'm going to stop there. The biggest city on Galarian is Absalom, which has a population of just over 300,000. I think the biggest city on Galerion is Absalom, which has a population of just over 300,000. I think the biggest city in Faerun is Waterdeep with about 130,000 people, so already we're talking a big nation.

1.25% of 1 million would be 12,500. That means only 12,500 people in all of this million population nation of Tholia have any class levels whatsoever. One warning about the Redditor's numbers is that he includes level 0 characters, which is actually a variant rule in 5th edition for adventurers without a class. Pathfinder 2e also has level 0 rules where you can have an ancestry and a background, but no character levels. So let's include them in our analysis just for funsies. I'll say again, this is an old school way of thinking about adventurers because especially

in the early days of Dungeons and Dragons, it was explicitly stated that very few people take up the adventuring life and that has colored my view of the number of adventurers in a world ever since. Back to Tholia. If the ratios hold similar to chess ratings, there'd be about 596 level 1 characters. That's it. Less than 600 out of a population of 1 million. Combined levels 1 through 4, there's only about 1,900 adventurers. Levels 5 through 9, less than 800. High-level characters, levels 10 through 14, only about 120. And truly world-shaping characters over level 14, 5 to 6 of them. That's it. Adventurers truly are a rare breed in most regions of most game worlds. However, let's put some logic to this. In a frontier town that serves as a jumping-off point for an adventuring area like the Wild Frontier or something like that,

the percentage with class levels is likely much higher. Those towns would build part of their economy out of supplying and trading with adventurers. For those of you familiar, compare these towns to the silver and gold mining towns that sprung up in the western United States in the 1800s. to the silver and gold mining towns that sprung up in the western United States in the 1800s. They were built around supplying miners with equipment, land rights, and labor, and they did an excellent job of trading for that gold by supplying equipment, entertainment, food, and so on. It stands to reason that there would be more adventurers in these towns and more services for them to use. Contrast that with a city in the middle of a well-explored, completely mapped empire. That city is safe, threats are few, and the occupants have grown complacent, fat, lazy.

That city may have an even lower percentage of adventurers than the default numbers that we calculated. The point behind this short episode is that, in my games, adventurers and NPCs with true class levels are rare. A couple of years ago, there was a meme all over discussion boards and social media outlets for tabletop RPGs that joked about every shopkeeper being a retired level 20 adventurer. However, characters that powerful should be rare. Really, really rare. You don't have to listen to me.

Do you have to run your game like this with rare class levels, really rare. You don't have to listen to me. Do you have to run your game like this with rare class levels? Absolutely not. You could make your game world where every shopkeeper, barrister, and street urchin has at least one level in something, with maybe lore or background or knowledge skills that would make sense for them. But I want to encourage you to think about your world where people with class levels are exceptional. Where people who are willing to take on the dangers of the adventuring life are looked upon with a mix of awe, fear, and maybe even a little pity for the hard life they're going to lead.

In these worlds, your PCs will stand out, more easily make a name for themselves, and will have slightly easier road to becoming big damn heroes. I bet if you ran a game that way, you and your players would have fun doing it. We have a website, www.taking20podcast.com. Feel free to stop by, listen to old episodes, and find out more about us.

Unfortunately, my friends, life has very much caught up with me at the moment and has beaten me with a bat with my fall classes that I teach starting very soon, as well as a lot of high-pressure, high-visibility projects coming to a head in my regular job. And I'm seeing more damn doctors right now than I ever thought I would in my life. I'm going to have to ask your forgiveness and take next week off from producing a lot of new content. I'll release something short next week, but it'll likely be a reminder of going

back to basics. That being said, tune in two weeks from now when I'm going to talk about tips for how you can smoothly replace a character in your campaign. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Shoes. While I was a shoe salesman, I had a girlfriend who wanted to know all the inside secrets of the shoe industry. I told her I would kiss and tell, but no tongue. This has been episode 186, all about class levels in your world. My name is Jeremy Shelley. I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.