High-level characters don’t just spring into existence overnight. It takes an exceptional person just to survive the rigors of an adventuring life, and characters who make it to the top should be both rare and famous.
Just how rare are high-level characters? Let’s assume, for purposes of this example, that the minimum requirement for an adventurer is having an ability score of 15 or better in a prime requisite in one of the four character classes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom), a Constitution score of at least 9, and no other score lower than an 8. About one person in 10 meets these requirements if ability scores are rolled using the standard method of rolling 3d6 once for each ability score. (If your campaign uses an alternate method for rolling ability scores, what you’re really doing is making sure your PCs fall into the top 10%, non-adventurers are still assumed to use the standard method). Now, let’s assume that out of every group of adventures only half actually make it to the next level (the remainder either die, retire, or just haven’t yet accumulated enough experience to advance). This last assumption is an oversimplification, of course, but a little arithmetic produces some instructive results:
There is only one 10th level character in a general population of 5,000. The actual numbers are summarized in Table 1.
An 18th level character of any class is truly a one-in-a-million individual.
Only .2% of the population (1 in 500) qualifies to be a paladin. Other subclasses with strict ability score requirements (such as bards, rangers, and druids) are equally rare.
Keep these numbers in mind when creating NPCs for your campaign. Your world not only becomes more believable if it isn’t overrun with super characters, but your players have a greater sense of accomplishment when they realize just what they have achieved. Be sure to keep important NPCs alive when possible—it can take a generation to replace a high-level character.
Think on an Epic Scale
It’s easy to think of low-level characters as people who have dangerous jobs. Depending on your campaign style, low-level player characters might frequently be called upon to do heroic things, and well-played characters often have goals more complex than merely slaying monsters and accumulating treasure, such as social recognition, romance, political power, and the like. No matter how well-developed a low-level character is, the character’s chief goal essentially remains making a living and surviving to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
High-level PCs, as the proceeding section on demographics shows, are the foremost heroes of their age. They are the people who bards sing about and who poets write about. Stories of their adventures are told and retold for generations after the PCs are gone. Whether they like it or not, the PCs are larger than life. They have larger-than-life friends, larger-than-life foes, and larger-than-life problems. Practical details such as where the character’s next meal is coming from or how the hero is going to get armor or weapons repaired become petty when compared to the real issues of the character’s life.
Table 1:
Demographics | ||
General Population | Character Level | Approx. No. in 1,000,000 |
10 | 1 1st | 133,120 |
20 | 1 2nd | 66,560 |
40 | 1 3rd | 33,280 |
80 | 1 4th | 16,640 |
160 | 1 5th | 8,320 |
320 | 1 6th | 4,160 |
640 | 1 7th | 2,080 |
1,380 | 1 8th | 1,040 |
2,560 | 1 9th | 512 |
5,120 | 1 10th | 256 |
10,240 | 1 11th | 128 |
20,480 | 1 12th | 64 |
40,960 | 1 13th | 32 |
81,920 | 1 14th | 16 |
163,840 | 1 15th | 8 |
326,680 | 1 16th | 4 |
655,360 | 1 17th | 2 |
1,310,720 | 1 18th | 1 |
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