Battle Elves

[kgauck]

Those demographics have nothing to do with age but with relative "experience". They are comleted removed from age makes you better concepts.

The mention of demographics is valid. Given a population of a certain size, and given assumptions about what characters do and what challenges we can presume they have faced, what is a normal distribution of levels? Since immortal, ageless elves have had centuries if not millennia to acquire experience, even if only a bit here and there, its really had to believe they have zero experience.

There should be no problem whatsoever or conflict with the rules, then, when coming up with any other abstraction to account for character levels among NPCs.

Because it will have a direct corespondance to PC levels.

Not at all, at last no direct correspondence. Just yesterday I was checking out the latest Design and Development column in Dragon, and came across this:

We’ve talked elsewhere about some of the bogus parallelism that can lead to bad game design—such as all monsters having to follow character creation rules, even though they’re supposed to be foes to kill, not player characters—this is just another example of the game escaping that trap. Sure, a DM can decide for dramatic reasons that a notable NPC or monster might…

What we establish as true for the general population doesn’t have to be true for PC’s. They can be exceptional. In a normal campaign where you have 1st level elves, they can be the exceptional young elf. Much more exceptional than the teenage human (who is probably vastly more normal in a medieval world than a modern world). Few young 1st level elves doesn’t presume [b]no[/no] young 1st level elves. Such young elves should be markedly less common, but not totally absent. That’s giving extrapolation a bad name!

If a PC regent has a troup with 2-3rd level warriors then why is he only a 1st level character? {That is the arguement you lead to with line of usage}

Sounds to me like you’ve described the classic 2nd lieutenant problem. The young lieutenant who is inexperienced but leading a group of veterans is normal enough not only in the military, but in many companies that hire fresh college grads. Plus, what young scion isn’t sent off with some experienced help by daddy. If it didn’t work this way, I’d wonder why not.

There are present rules for apprenticeships already and again they have nothing to do with age.

Or they just assume that DM’s are sensible people. Are there rules that describe that water is wet? That bathing removes dirt? That characters marry? Rules exist so that people don’t have to think. Rules also presume that the game designer knows more about the world than the DM. How apprenticeships work in a given world is going to vary, so they provide the minimum mechanics necessary. Whether most apprentices are declared journeymen in their mid-teends, late tends, early twenties, or whether one can use these rules for any kind of training of new skills even for older people, don’t need to be included in the rules no matter how much some people need the guidance.

You (and the others) are using real world comparisons to an abstract game (D&D).

This is called modeling. The game is a model for a reality. Imperfect, but if well done, satisfying none the less.

So please show me where in any WotC 3.5 product they equate "age" to "experience" in relationship to levels.

Convieniently, you did it for us.

DMG pg 107

"NPCs gain experience points the same way that PCs do. Not being adventurers, however, their opportunities are more limited. Therefore, a commoner is likely to progress in levels very slowly."

Does one level per five years, or a single CR ¼ challenge per season for a CR 1 commoner qualify as “slowly”?

(DMG pg 36 & PHB pg 58)
Specifically (DMG pg 36):
DMG pg 38 "Challenge Ratings for Traps"
DMG pg 40 "CRs for Noncombat Encounters
DMG pg 40 "Mission Goals" "Roleplaying Awards"
DMG pg 41 "Story Awards and Standard Awards"

Nope, nothing listing for "getting older".

I think both Gary and Ryan have answered this last part quite well. I do find it really hard to imagine that no one encounters even tiny little CR's of this nature over an extended period of

[Lord Rahvin]

Kenneth, Gary, Ryan, while I agree with you and take mirthful delight in your strange alliance, I have to ask why you are arguing so passionately for re-opening Pandora`s jack-in-the-box.

-Lord Rahvin

[Rowan]

Because most people here like to argue

And also because one of the beauties of this site is that we establish decent consenses and some rules alternatives for the benefit of anyone who wants to use them. Justifying any of them just adds to the usefulness of the rules developed and their story application.

Personally, having a large number of NPC's with levels is important for my suspension of disbelief, because I just can't tolerate a world where 1st or 2nd level PC's are superheroes, especially when that world is populated by multitudes of monsters and such that can kill the PC superheroes, but haven't been able to overrun the general populace of 1st level commoners.

I like having a guide to give me a believable indication of about what level I should put a given NPC at should it become relevant--which it may well do with typical PC's who will either try to employ NPCs to their advantage, or get violent with them. Why not have the bar brawl retain its challenge because it's filled with a bunch of 1st-3rd level warriors/2nd level commoners who don't drop instantly when a PC looks at them. Why not know that in a given level 4 province, you can find a 12th level expert weaponsmith capable of forging exceptional weapons for your PCs? What's the harm in knowing there's a posse of frontiersmen and 6th-8th level commoners residing in any given village in Torien's Watch in Mhoried who aren't going to be bullied?

[geeman]

At 05:06 PM 2/6/2008, you wrote:

>Kenneth, Gary, Ryan, while I agree with you and take mirthful
>delight in your strange alliance, I have to ask why you are arguing
>so passionately for re-opening Pandora`s jack-in-the-box.

Because Pandora was a wuss?

I have no legitimate excuse. I`m always fascinated by demographic
issues in gaming. I can`t explain it. It`s nearly a fetish. I
think it may have something to do with a subconscious megalomaniacal
desire to rule the world as a benevolent master of life and death,
but that`d just be speculation on my part... for now.

Gary

[irdeggman]

No one said “simply on getting older.” Gary offered the argument well I think.

Gary is pretty much the only person who hasn't attempted to tie age into experience in this discussion.

And I think you are mistaken. It might not have been what you, Rowan and Ryan meant but what you had actually posted leads one directly down the path of age = experience.


From Rowan:

http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43575&postcount=32

As for levels, I referred in an earlier post to what I thought was a reasonable level difference for elves: give them PC class levels while humans have NPC class levels, and assume they are all typically 3 levels higher than humans (until you start getting into children and perhaps levies). By that assessment, common elven combos to offset the 1st level human warriors are Bard/Ranger, Bard/Wizard, Bard/Fighter, Ranger/Wizard, Noble/Wizard, Noble/Bard, Noble/Ranger, with 1-3 levels in each. That would make almost every elf capable of casting a couple of 1st level spells, or at least 0-level. Leaders would be higher level.

From Ryan
http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43591&postcount=41

The point is that it would be nice to use a suitable variant of the D&D mechanics to help represent a world which does make sense. In such a world, level would be strongly correlated with age, since experience is strongly correlated with age and level is a direct function of experience. Therefore, in any game world where I'm using any part of D&D or any other system which uses the concept of character levels (RoleMaster, for instance), I use a table which translates age to average character level for creating NPCs

And Kenneth:
http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43593&postcount=42

I figure that at a minimum, a human gains a level every five years from 15 years old to 35 and that at 4th level, you've mastered basic skills to the point where doing the same things stop accruing experience. Characters who do more challenging things can expect to exceed this rate and this ceiling. There is no way that the old father of a peasant family is as unskilled as his teenage grandson. The boy may be quicker and more durable, but that's just a matter of imposing Dex and Con penalties for age, and I'd also provide Int and Wis bonuses for age. Con and Wis more than Dex and Int.

And:
http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=43584&postcount=36

Quote:
Originally Posted by irdeggman
Well "age" does not corespond to "levels" in D&D, despite what "logic" dictates.

Sorry, if it doesn't make sense, I might as well play minesweeper.

[Rowan]

I didn't even mention age in that quote, just an arbitrary assessment of a way to measure the difference between elves and humans. Yes, that has something to do with elven longevity and thus the experiences they go through, but it also has to do with their much more adventurous lifestyle, where nearly every elf has the luxury throughout their long lives of a noble or adventurer rather than a human peasant struggling to subsist every day on his farm with little time for anything else.

I think what you are fearing is an absolute rule that for every X number of years, you gain a level, or gain X number of experience points. I don't think anyone has been suggesting that. We just recognize that the two are correlated enough that we should be able to look at a 30 year old soldier and see that, barring infirmity, he's going to whoop most 15 year old boys picking up swords with fire in their eyes (same for blacksmiths and artisans in their trades).

[ConjurerDragon]

Gary schrieb:
> At 10:49 AM 2/6/2008, irdeggman wrote:
>
> ...
> Yes, but in doing so you assume that no one is going to encounter
> challenges as part of getting older, which runs against the experience
> of most people. See the disconnect there? To you people age without
> ever breaking the hermetic seal. They NEVER engage in activities that
> earn them experience in the absence of an adventure. That flies in
> the face of most people`s experience. While you may not have grown
> more experienced, wiser, educated or more skilled in the years since
> you turned 15 or so, it`s clear that other folks around here have had
> that experience, yet very few of us have slain dragons, rescued
> princesses or otherwise adventured. It`s merely common sensical.
Common sense of the real world does not apply to experience and levels
in D&D. Even a 1st level wizard weaving real magic is beyond everything
our real world ever saw (if we stick to known facts and exclude mythos
or religious beliefs).

Simply becoming older and older is as I agree with irdeggman no reason
at all to grow more experienced or to even gain levels.
Only overcoming challenges is.
Challenges are not only adventures, but adventures are the most common
way to gain experience in D&D.
A farmer who plows the same field in the same way after taking over the
farm from his father and does so for the next 30 years will eventually
not gain any level at all after a few levels of commoner.

And a sidhelien living in the deep forest away from any fight, content
to forage for berrys and hunt for meat does not overcome challenges that
would justify a new level if he does it for 100 or 1000 years.

> How about that last quote. What do you think it meant by "a commoner
> is likely to progress in levels very slowly"? Commoners are not
> adventurers. They don`t engage in the challenges that adventurers do.
Sure they do. Once in a while they leave their farm, travel to the next
town to enjoy citylife, sell surplus and buy needed stuff. That´s what
Endier did in the beginnings of "The Spider´s test". Travelling beyond
the village using unsecure roads, negotiating (successfully) with
merchants from the town are challenges to low-level commoners.

An adventure is not the same as killing monsters but can be anything
from successfully negotiating a peace treaty with your kings enemys to
slaying a dragon.
> Yet it specifically says they advance in levels and that this
> process is slow.... How does that happen if not by NPCs gaining
> experience as they age? This process is left up to the DM to
> adjudicate, and that`s all we`re talking about doing.
In the end everything is up to the DM - but if we stick to the
guidelines then no, aging does not gain you XP or levels.
NPC´s gain XP slowly because they face "challenges" much more seldom
than PC´s and the challenges NPC´s meet are either not very challenging
gaining them only very little XP - or the NPC is dead.

> If there was some sort of system for doing this in the core rules we
> needn`t bother coming up with one, but if there were a system of
> domain rules in the core rules we needn`t have to bother with one that
> is made for BR either. At the pace at which BR campaigns can
> sometimes progress it is important for us to have some sort of way of
> thinking about the slow progress of commoners, and that`s all we`re
> talking about here.
No, you were talking about a reason to have more levels for NPC´s (and
especially for non-human or immortal NPC´s )because they´re older.
If we are discussing why Commoners level slowerlier than PC´s I have
missed the point the whole discussion.

[irdeggman]

I didn't even mention age in that quote, just an arbitrary assessment of a way to measure the difference between elves and humans. Yes, that has something to do with elven longevity and thus the experiences they go through, but it also has to do with their much more adventurous lifestyle, where nearly every elf has the luxury throughout their long lives of a noble or adventurer rather than a human peasant struggling to subsist every day on his farm with little time for anything else.

I think what you are fearing is an absolute rule that for every X number of years, you gain a level, or gain X number of experience points. I don't think anyone has been suggesting that. We just recognize that the two are correlated enough that we should be able to look at a 30 year old soldier and see that, barring infirmity, he's going to whoop most 15 year old boys picking up swords with fire in their eyes (same for blacksmiths and artisans in their trades).

You are correct you did not directly tie age to level (it was inferred).

But Ryan and Kenneth did specifically state so. (see the quotes above)

One has a specific table that correlates age to level and the other states that humans gain a level roughly every 5 years.

So I think that there is a clear voicing of the opinion that age directly correlates to level, which is what I am opposed to.

I do not, and said so several times, have a problem with a judgment that due to ahazardous (or adventurous) life a character gains levels.

I do have an issue with a statement that all elves are 3-4 levels higher without some sort of correlary as to why (other than age). Then it becomes problematic when dealing with PCs since PCs are by definition "eleite" and "exceptional". So saying that all NPC are higher levels and not stating that PCs also get this benefit is flatly missing in logic. And if applying hte lgic then this makes things poorly balanced between PCs with one being given more levels than another.

[ConjurerDragon]

ryancaveney schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ryancaveney wrote:
> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> How about Arthur? Or Robin Hood? Or any of the legendary heroes of literature. Their "equivalent level" in D&D terms is measured by what they did not by their age.
> -----------------------------
>
>
>
> But Arthur at age 10ish, when he pulled the sword from the stone, was much lower level than at age 20ish when he formed the round table, and continued to gain levels though adventuring until his fall on the battlefield at age 50ish.
Yes. And thousands of other people were also 10 and (if they were lucky
to survive in medieval times) 20.
They never did what he did so they never became what he did become -
with the exception of age. They did become as old as he did.

> Since level-draining monsters are rare, and in 3e level draining is generally temporary anyway, within any one person`s life there simply must be some relationship between age and level. You just write down the year in one column and the experience level in the other, and notice that both sets of numbers increase over time.
Wishful thinking that?s all. "Alter schützt vor Torheit nicht" - could
be roughly translated to "Age does not protect from foolishness". You
can spend your years aging overcoming challenges (not only adventures)
and you can spend your years staring at your wall at home and not
gaining enough XP for even a single level of commoner.

> This correlation is not perfect, but it is significant.
It also is nonsense ;-)
Consider a sidhlien fighter - he slowly gains XP the first hundred years
overcoming local lower threats gaining some levels, then 200 years
living in peace in the deep forest gaining no XP at all and then 1000
years later he slays a dragon and gains lots of XP.
There is no relation between passively aging and XP - only between
actively overcoming challenges and XP.

> Therefore, once you are dealing with groups of thousands or millions of people,
Are we talking about the sidhelien population of Cerialia here still?
Thousands of millions?

> it is actually quite easy to compile their life histories into a table of average level at any given age.
We can make statistics for everything. Sure you can make a table and say
"on average a person gains an average of 10 XP per year aged". But one
person gains all the XP and another none. Consider Churchills words "I
only belive the statistics I forged myself".

Or consider three women sitting in the doctors waiting room. One is
pregnant, two are not.

According to the average all 3 women are 1/3 pregnant.

> It does not predict any one person perfectly, but on average it is pretty close to most people, so it provides a good reference point when making lots of NPCs from scratch. It makes n
> o argument about whether age causes experience -- it merely observes that both age and experience tend to increase over time (since neither can decrease),
Why not? Fantasy world and such. Negative levels? 2E wights :-)
> That has nothing to do with character level. He could have been a first-level aristocrat his entire life but still done all that because Emperor of Anuire is the title he inherited simply by being born. By your own argument, he need not have gained a single xp from his battles because he need not have fought in them himself -- that`s what having an army is for.
>
He could have gained XP for fighting personally (Michael definitely is
not the type of person sitting on his horse playing Frederick the Great
overlooking the battlefield - especially with his bloodability of Divine
Wrath), he could have gained XP for successfully doing a job as supreme
Commander of the Army or General as tactician, he could have lead a
company of the royal guard into battle or he could have supported the
army by negotiating supply from his allies and vassals - all are
challenges that could earn XP. Aging while the wars were waged is no
challenge. It?s automatic.

[Rowan]

Conjurer and Irdeg, do either of you ever have anyone other than the PC's have class levels? Do either of you recognize higher level NPC's among the general populace?

I bet you do, and if so, how do you determine who is of what level?

We who look to age as a guideline merely seek something other than an arbitrary choice. For story encounters with singular characters, arbitrariness as the story dictates is fine. To attempt to determine things on realm level play when you're averaging out statistics demographically to add to the depth of realism in the game (just because we want and/or need that realism for our enjoyment), setting up guidelines is very important.

We can make statistics for everything. Sure you can make a table and say
"on average a person gains an average of 10 XP per year aged". But one
person gains all the XP and another none. Consider Churchills words "I
only belive the statistics I forged myself".

Of course the gaining of XP is going to be sporadic and not consistent across everyone. Statistics work because we're looking at averages across huge samples (thousands OR millions), where mathematics PROVES that you can extrapolate an average as the large sample size approaches Normal (distribution set). So we're going to have 60 year old 1st level commoners and 15 year old 5th level fighter/rogues. But these are the outliers.

No age rule yet proposed issues XP strictly for time, merely as an extrapolation to avoid having to determine what challenges each of our million Anuireans has faced in their lives. PCs DO determine the challenges that they face, so we don't apply this extrapolated system to them at all, unless the GM and players agree that they want to play characters, for instance, for the first year of their adult life, then skip ahead to when they're 60 and about to pass the throne, but not before one last adventure (perhaps the group then decides to give each character a couple more levels).

PC's gain experience so much faster than everyone else that they already wildly break the pattern. If your PC's haven't gained a level in 5 years, something's wrong, and players should have ditched their GM long ago. But the whole point of playing is to play through the adventures of a few people; the whole rest of the world doesn't get this attention, despite the implicit assumption that they are going through challenges of their own.

One last thing. Challenges as the sole source of levels makes sense for PCs (again, D&D is a PC-focused game). For PCs, that's all that's needed. Looking at the general population of NPCs that you're not going to focus on, we have to consider that levels include skill at arms (for soldiers) and skill points. Of course extra training or combat experience or brawling in an inn are going to increase your BAB. Of course extra training or 30 years on the job are going to give you extra Skill Points. That's how most NPC's advance.

As for elves, I've made most of my argument that they live a much more luxurious and adventurous lifestyle than humans which would warrant much higher levels even within a human's lifetime because of those lifestyles. Over their extra centuries, it surely accounts for something, unless you want most elves to dilly-dally like mindless little sprites happy to dance their lives away in the woods for 3,000 years (in which case they should still have 15 levels of Expert in Perform (Dance), or at least like 30 ranks in it). Do you disagree with my assessment of elves?