D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on Dec 2, 2012 14:43:10 GMT -8
Ahoy again all!
PCs in Pathfinder are supposed to be heroes correct ? So in your PF world what are the rest of the people like ? Say in a town of 4000 people in your world how many level 1-x npcs are there ? I ask this because the abilities and powers that "heroes" get access to make it very challenging to imagine a plausible world. Say a town of 4000 has 1% NPCs with "levels". So now there are say 40 (edited for piss poor math) clerics, sorcerers, fighters, etc. of varying powers and abilities. Would there ever be a need for fire based sources of light, various challenges imposed by the natural environment (lack of water, food, disease, extreme heat/cold) seem to become very diminished for many in such a world. Is that percentage more like .1 %? Of course I could imagine a drastically altered city, kingdom where that percentage could be very high...but where's there a good (a medievalesque setting still making sense) medium ?
I am not adverse to allowing magic and powers to greatly affect/alter what I would perceive to be a believable world, I just want to start to really think about what those changes would be all about.
If PCs heroic status is a true rarity in the world, how might that affect the way that those lessers might treat/react towards them ?
I don't want to think this into the ground but when I think about what drives plots and stories many of my ideas get quickly derailed and disregarded by an unexpected ripple effect of the existence of various powers/spells/abilities. Hoping to avoid too many retcon train wrecks!
Cheers.
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Post by jazzisblues on Dec 4, 2012 6:41:03 GMT -8
I don't usually worry about npc levels unless and until that npc becomes relevant to the story. Sort of along the lines of until they have a name they're just guard #1 but the instant they have a name they get stats and saving throws. That said, it would be fairly safe in my opinion to assume that various character classes would be represented at least at some rudimentary level in similar proportions to various broad ranges of professions in the real world. What % of the populous is: Software developers? Graphic Designers? Musicians? etc. But again I wouldn't worry about it until a particular npc impacts the story. JiB
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 8:15:56 GMT -8
In the world I run in, I don;'t have exact percentages, but I have labled several groups of levels and how common I think they should be:
0-1: pretty much all townsfolk, soldiers, town guard, almost everyone. 2-3: Leaders and veterans 4-7: Kings, High Sorcerers, Warlords...etc 8-12: Kings and warlords can fall here as well, Head of assassin/thief guilds, the lord of each school of sorcery. Level 12 means you are pretty much the boss of everyone. 13-15: Super heroes. humanoids of these levels do not exsist unless they are PC's or the occational EXTREMEMLY old important person. the high Druid of the whole world...etc 16-20: only PC's can attain these levels, and are very close to Hercules/other demi-gods in power status.
I ALso like to run a more realistic low fantasy world, so YMMV
To show it another way, on each continent there are likely 0 characters of level 16-20 unless the PC's are them 5 characters between level 8-15 20 or so characters of level 5-7 several hundered or possibly thousands of level 2-3 crap tons of Lvl 1 or 0 characters
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Post by ironnikki on Dec 4, 2012 8:59:31 GMT -8
Just a quick nitpick: 1% of 4000 would be 40, not 400. I know, it's irrelevant, but it was driving me nuts. xD
Now that we've got that unpleasantness out of the way, I tend to think of PC classes as things learned from experience. So, maybe the clerics at the local temple do have some divine powers, but they've never strayed far from the temple, so they can only heal. I wouldn't expect anybody other than your typical "adventurer" to have exquisite skills in most things, with notable exceptions being crafting, profession, performance, etc. Just because a guy is in the town guard and knows how to swing a sword doesn't mean that he's any match for someone who has fought off hordes of orcs.
You could also assume that people with particular skills gravitate towards large population centers. So, maybe the three or four huge cities contain lots of magical prowess, but the "suburbs" don't. One cleric or wizard can only do so much in a day!
Like JiB, I don't typically put too much thought into class levels outside of NPC's that are going to have a definite impact on the story, but the utility spells available do tend to trivialize some things in an unexpected manner. Occasionally, I'll make an executive decision in the form of a plot twist. To use your example from another thread, living in the desert shouldn't be terribly hard if a cleric can conjure food and water at will, but for some reason, there's no clerics out here. Why not? You can't do this too often, as it can kind of put a damper on PC creativity, but it's a fun way to introduce a new element into the story while allowing your plans to survive just a bit longer.
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D.T. Pints
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JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
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Post by D.T. Pints on Dec 4, 2012 9:41:04 GMT -8
I am perhaps over thinking all of this. But, I run a fairly sandbox campaign and I can't help but think that the world i want to represent will be a fairly dynamic one. One of the aspects (among many) that I find grating about mmos are their static quality. Quests can be repeated again and again...my thoughts are if the world contains even several hundred powerful 5-10 level npcs shouldn't that world show evidence of their actions as well ? How do you folks reflect that in game ? If powerful NPCs are mostly absent , do the lessers treat your PCs like rockstars ? Or if you have numerous powerful NPCs do you have events reflecting these movers and shakers impacts on the world ? That lake wasn't where we left it...or those piles of mud used to be the rival wizards tower...but they otherwise have no immediate impact on the current story (massive red herrings).
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 10:50:09 GMT -8
I am perhaps over thinking all of this. But, I run a fairly sandbox campaign and I can't help but think that the world i want to represent will be a fairly dynamic one. One of the aspects (among many) that I find grating about mmos are there static quality. Quests can be repeated again and again...my thoughts are if the world contains even several hundred powerful 5-10 level npcs shouldn't that world show evidence of their actions as well ? How do you folks reflect that in game ? If powerful NPCs are mostly absent , do the lessers treat your PCs like rockstars ? Or if you have numerous powerful NPCs do you have events reflecting these movers and shakers impacts on the world ? That lake wasn't where we left it...or those piles of mud used to be the rival wizards tower...but they otherwise have no immediate impact on the current story (massive red herrings). If you run a world with THAT MANY powerful characters, i would run it a lot like the Marvel Universe. Anything above 7th level is basicaly a super hero, and I'd run a world like that like fantasy super heroes. Everyone knows them, there is alwasy some 11th level douchebag trying to conquor the world...etc. Only difference would be less notoriety because no TV or internet....unless an 11th level wizard was trying to create such a thing,
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Post by rickno7 on Dec 4, 2012 14:52:28 GMT -8
*Note: I tried to make this shorter... I really did. Ok. So first off. I too like my players to play in a world where not every village has a level 10 Fighter for a Sheriff, and not every church has a level 10 Cleric. In fact, Clerics in most of my homebrew worlds are one step down from Jesus... and only a couple of steps down from fanatic Jihadists on top of that. In the DMG of 3.0 there is a set of charts for NPC character creation, and I know that these occur in almost all D20 modified games, including pathfinder, but the 3.0 DMG set does a lot of extra work for you that those do not. It makes sense to me that if PC's have classes, that could be balanced on the other end by NPC classes and not mess with my nerdrage gland too much. It also satisfies my curiosity as to why a town watchman that has been part of the militia for 30 years of his life just stopped leveling at level 3 in some of the D&D material I've read in my life. Using this chart to have NPC's have their own classes means the PC's can feel extraordinary(or a PC that wants to play someone more normal has the option to play these classes too). This is a good way to show that a town watchman(Warrior NPC class) has experience fighting during town invasions, perhaps bandit raids, but unlike a PC, they raise a family, perhaps do odd jobs in the village, and don't have the time to devote their entire set of waking hours to perfecting their adventuring skills. I never realized these charts were anything special. I never bought the 3.5 DMG, but apparently I'm not the only one that really likes the set in 3.0: www.gnomestew.com/gming-advice/troys-crock-pot-twelve-pages-i-cant-live-without/Generally in my worlds, I have my own tables in my mind on how PC class distribution goes. As the example above, a town watch will probably have levels in Warrior. The guy that trains the watch, watches the jail, and organizes the defenses of the town probably has some levels in Fighter. A wizard school would probably turn out a class of Adepts, but the headmaster is a full fledged wizard, and so on. I also think of levels as being notoriety as well. Being a PC already has to being exceptional in my worlds, you are already on the road to greatness. A simple rule for me is, every level = 10% chance of being known in your region. A level 10 would be a celebrity just about anywhere. Much of this stemmed from the expectations of my players in the late 90's and early 2000's, they all were exposed to Forgotten Realms, where every town sells potions, and chances are your mom is multiclassed even though she has never left your front yard. I needed ways to explain to my players that they are unique, and using these charts and my own ideas was the way to get that across. In some Forgotten Realms materials, a random NPC without a name could have a +2 weapon. That is craziness in my opinion. So I had to make charts to explain how rare things are according to their +'s. Starting at +1, the weapon was not actually magical, but perhaps magic was used to ensure it was created with the highest quality. At +2 the weapon is enchanted, at +3 the weapon has powers. By the time there are +4's, the weapon is named after its user(Stork's Sword of Justice), and at +5 the weapon is more famous than its wielder and gets its own name(Slutbane, Sword of Harlot Slaying). Ok. That's enough for now. Those are just some examples and tools I use to make sure the PC's are put apart from the normal people they meet in a world.
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Post by jazzisblues on Dec 5, 2012 7:57:31 GMT -8
If one were feeling truly ocd about it one could take the basic org chart either from a military division or from a church hierarchy (examples of both should be available by searching Google) and use that as a model for building a hierarchy of similar individuals in one's game. However, I will try to illustrate with an example. (Oh quit whining you knew an example was coming.)
Church of the mighty Juju Organizational Chart
The Mighty Juju from whom all things flow (god of dryer lint) Somnalus the Snorer, high priest of Juju the 13 Arch Prelates of Juju (don't know who they are but there's one for each duchy or county) 39 Bishops of Jujuism (one for each county, each reports to the arch prelate of their region)
Now then, based on the populous there will be churches of various sizes to Juju in each town, each church will need one official to lead it, abbot, prior or similar.
Based on the populous each of the churches / abbeys will have a number of under priests to minister to the faithful. I would go with something on the order of for every 100 but it could be adjusted up or down to set the flavor one wanted.
Now, setting levels is really a matter of adjusting to fit the level of the game. If the pc's are 1-5th level they are probably dealing with under priests and acolytes. 5-10 priests or bishops, you get the idea.
How many levels of what class each one has I would leave open until I needed someone. Rather along the lines of, "Oh I need the bishop of Shyght county for the game now so I'll figure out who he actually is.
Philosophically this is very much along the lines of how we develop software, think ahead, but don't build something you don't need yet.
Cheers,
JiB
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2012 8:08:43 GMT -8
It's sad that never made it to 3.5....im gonna have to go get a PDF of the 3.0 DMG now....that info will help me a TON
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D.T. Pints
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JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
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Post by D.T. Pints on Dec 20, 2012 19:59:35 GMT -8
If one were feeling truly ocd about it one could take the basic org chart either from a military division or from a church hierarchy (examples of both should be available by searching Google) and use that as a model for building a hierarchy of similar individuals in one's game. However, I will try to illustrate with an example. (Oh quit whining you knew an example was coming.) Church of the mighty Juju Organizational Chart The Mighty Juju from whom all things flow (god of dryer lint) Somnalus the Snorer, high priest of Juju the 13 Arch Prelates of Juju (don't know who they are but there's one for each duchy or county) 39 Bishops of Jujuism (one for each county, each reports to the arch prelate of their region) Now then, based on the populous there will be churches of various sizes to Juju in each town, each church will need one official to lead it, abbot, prior or similar. Based on the populous each of the churches / abbeys will have a number of under priests to minister to the faithful. I would go with something on the order of for every 100 but it could be adjusted up or down to set the flavor one wanted. Now, setting levels is really a matter of adjusting to fit the level of the game. If the pc's are 1-5th level they are probably dealing with under priests and acolytes. 5-10 priests or bishops, you get the idea. How many levels of what class each one has I would leave open until I needed someone. Rather along the lines of, "Oh I need the bishop of Shyght county for the game now so I'll figure out who he actually is. Philosophically this is very much along the lines of how we develop software, think ahead, but don't build something you don't need yet. Cheers, JiB Right on all points...it's just my desire to think about a world that would be shaped by its heroes/villains. The default medieval setting/Tolkien world seems a bit lazy. "There's peasants, and farmers and barber/surgeons, and superstition about magic etc...other races are viewed with prejudice and suspicion." In a low magic world like the Warhammer world where witch hunters burn hedge wizards at the stake, elves are rarely seen, dwarfs are insular and mistrustful of other races and injuries mean getting strapped down to a table and getting cut on sans painkillers with instruments just as useful for interrogation. Then there's a high fantasy world/system like pathfinder where magic is abundant and the miraculous becomes much more commonplace. What does that do to the world ? During an early episode season 1 episode 2? Tappy mentions what effect does raise read spell have on the world? Do those that can afford it have a much greater reckless disregard for their lives? Those are the subtle/overt changes I'd like to include in my world. This is my ramble...and this porter is Deelicious!!
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Post by jazzisblues on Dec 21, 2012 6:26:57 GMT -8
Personally, I have always wanted magic to be rare and wondrous in the games that I run, but particularly with games like Pathfinder where more than half of the classes are magic using in some form it's not going to work that way. There's just too much magic and it's too easy to get hold of in different forms for that to work. This is one of the reasons why I'm such a fan of Hero, GURPS and Savage Worlds.
In regards to Tappy's comment about Raise Dead I think it's spot on, and even goes beyond that. Why bother with little things like a healing skill when there are clerics who can mutter a few words and the little hurts of life are suddenly gone. This also comes in when one considers the implications of religion/faith at all. How much FAITH does it take when the powers of the gods are immediately and irrefutably visible? This is largely the reason why a majority of my characters in most fantasy games are ecumenical, they acknowledge each of the gods in their time and on their day, though there are usually one or two that are of particular importance and one or two who's aims are counter to the pc's
Just my 2 krupplenicks worth, as always your mileage may vary.
JiB
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2012 8:07:39 GMT -8
Personally, I have always wanted magic to be rare and wondrous in the games that I run, but particularly with games like Pathfinder where more than half of the classes are magic using in some form it's not going to work that way. There's just too much magic and it's too easy to get hold of in different forms for that to work. This is one of the reasons why I'm such a fan of Hero, GURPS and Savage Worlds. In regards to Tappy's comment about Raise Dead I think it's spot on, and even goes beyond that. Why bother with little things like a healing skill when there are clerics who can mutter a few words and the little hurts of life are suddenly gone. This also comes in when one considers the implications of religion/faith at all. How much FAITH does it take when the powers of the gods are immediately and irrefutably visible? This is largely the reason why a majority of my characters in most fantasy games are ecumenical, they acknowledge each of the gods in their time and on their day, though there are usually one or two that are of particular importance and one or two who's aims are counter to the pc's Just my 2 krupplenicks worth, as always your mileage may vary. JiB A long while back, I found a site that had details on how to adjust encounter CR/ECL for having less treasure/lower magic in a campaign. I'll see if I can find it again. I used to use those rules a lot, I have internalized them now so I just wing it, but they were quite helpful to me. I also love low magic games, I was raised on 2E D&D where magic items were super rare and expensive and I always have tried to impose that feel on the later editions (3rd ed really).
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Post by jazzisblues on Jan 4, 2013 7:28:37 GMT -8
Personally, I have always wanted magic to be rare and wondrous in the games that I run, but particularly with games like Pathfinder where more than half of the classes are magic using in some form it's not going to work that way. There's just too much magic and it's too easy to get hold of in different forms for that to work. This is one of the reasons why I'm such a fan of Hero, GURPS and Savage Worlds. In regards to Tappy's comment about Raise Dead I think it's spot on, and even goes beyond that. Why bother with little things like a healing skill when there are clerics who can mutter a few words and the little hurts of life are suddenly gone. This also comes in when one considers the implications of religion/faith at all. How much FAITH does it take when the powers of the gods are immediately and irrefutably visible? This is largely the reason why a majority of my characters in most fantasy games are ecumenical, they acknowledge each of the gods in their time and on their day, though there are usually one or two that are of particular importance and one or two who's aims are counter to the pc's Just my 2 krupplenicks worth, as always your mileage may vary. JiB A long while back, I found a site that had details on how to adjust encounter CR/ECL for having less treasure/lower magic in a campaign. I'll see if I can find it again. I used to use those rules a lot, I have internalized them now so I just wing it, but they were quite helpful to me. I also love low magic games, I was raised on 2E D&D where magic items were super rare and expensive and I always have tried to impose that feel on the later editions (3rd ed really). I've always just winged it as well. The difficulty I find in making a game like Pathfinder low magic is not the items, it's the classes. As everyone levels up the characters who have intrinsic magic begin to outstrip those who do not have intrinsic magic. Pathfinder seeks to address this by having fighty characters and sneaky characters gain more feats and or skills. But, let's be realistic. The ability to a couple of extra dice of damage against one opponent does not weigh against the ability to do nDx of damage against everyone in a 30' circle. In terms of healing, one of the best healing implementations I've ever come up with was an empathic healer. She could heal amazing amounts of damage, but she took it on herself, and once she started, she couldn't stop. The character never once got hit in combat, but she was covered with scars and had a broken leg that didn't heal properly all that she absorbed from other characters. She almost died more than once in the attempt to heal someone. The point of that is that I have had the best luck with making the casting of magic costly to the caster and potentially dangerous. Add a bit of danger to using an ability and it suddenly becomes much more questionable whether they will or not. Cheers, JiB
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D.T. Pints
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JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
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Post by D.T. Pints on Jan 5, 2013 14:26:20 GMT -8
JiB I need to get you playing some Warhammer the risks/benefits of being a spellcaster is pretty damn cool. By using magic you potentially expose yourself to the warp and its negative /weird effects. Magic is powerful but comes at a potentially brutal price.
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