More Elves

Hemlock wrote:
>I would put the percentages a lot lower, actually. I'd say you probably
>have an 8% chance of survival to 10th level (working through the
>"adventuring" method, instead of the stay-at-home-and-train one).

>Beyond tenth level, the survival rates increase. However, the XP
>requirements are large enough that aging might start to kick in, preventing
>everyone but wizards (and priests with access to the Time sphere) from
>reaching the very highest levels. Also, as you pointed out, many characters
>will eventually achieve the goals which drove them to adventuring in the
>first place, and will settle down to real life. This applies doubly to old
>adventurers.

>So here's my own take on the math.

>Working with humans:
>The SJ population of a sphere is about 6 million. (Translation from CSHB.)
>Humans compose about 30% of the SJ population. (My call.)
>10% of all SJers are classed. (CSHB)
>About 2% of all classed characters are mages. (My own decision; most are
>soldiers--that is, fighters--as well as some thieves. Clerics are rare,
>too. Of course, you wouldn't normally notice this, because all the
>spellcasters tend to cluster in the ports.)
>8% survive to 10th level.
>About 60% reach each subsequent level. (Some violent deaths, but most just
>get old or tired.)

>Even with these IMHO very conservative figures, I still have 8 out of every
>thousand mages reaching 18th level. While Int will weed out some, since
>only .2% of the population ever become mages, you can be sure that those
>.2% are among the best and the brightest--and aging modifiers will boost
>even that eventually. So say 3 out of the 18 will eventually achieve 18 Int
>and become archmages. Out of a population of 2 million humans, I have 12
>archmages popping out every 100 years or so (we have to go by lifespan, not
>generation). It kind of makes me wonder where all the old ones are
>hiding...

>Hemlock


Well the percentages where of course based on my campaign, which has a
high level of magic, and a ready availability of healing spells. This
pushes the numbers of survivors upwards a bit.
Also, there is a cultural push, spread among the races, that makes it
interesting for the heroes (that's it; not just adventurers, heroes) to
keep going. As an indication of the strength of this push: most capital
cities on the homeworld (where most PCs call from) has an Adventurers'
School, where they learned heroics.
All this pushes the percentage beyound your 8%.
After L10, age and acchievement of goals etc kick in (Another point:
most kingdoms on Riann accept the Law of the Hero-kings, which states
that no-one under L10 can become ruler; so after reaching that level a
lot of people drop out).

Then there's Intelligencer. IMC, intelligence doesn't limit your level,
but the level of the spells you can cast. With an Int of 12 you can
reach L36 just fine, but you'll never cast a spell over spell level 2.
Priest have the same trouble with wisdom.

Anyway, starting with 1.000.000 L1 heroes -any class- (note that this
means 10.000.000 normal people), a loss (wether death, settling or
whatefer) of 60% at L10 (which leaves 400.000 heroes), and a loss of 50%
per level after that, I come up with 341 (rounding up) L20 heroes, and 1
single L29 hero (these levels btw indeed come from D&D; I saw no reason
to drop the higher levels when I switched to AD&D).
(also Btw, how you get 8 mages at L18 out of every 1000 is beyond me;
substracting 40% for each level leaves me with 7 mages at L14..)
As an alternative, starting with 50% loss at L11, 49% loss at L12, 48%
at L13 etc gives slightly better figures (400.000 at L10, 912 at L20, 5
at L30, and 1 at L34), but still indicates very few high level heroes of
any class.

As to where those that do reach L36 and up are hiding, IMC most of the
wizards live reclusive lives far away from most peoples' ken, and the
world rarely hears about them unless something disasterous happens, the
fighters become king or something similar and die of old age (or in a
great battle or so), the clerics are as reclusive as the mages, and the
thieves twice as much as the clerics and mages put together -if they
weren't, the law would have caught up with them long ago...


Then there's dual and multi class heroes; these make for the most
powerfull characters, but ther rise *very* slowly, and are therefore
very rare at the higher levels.
IMC, any race can take more than class, but switching from one class to
another (multi class) means you lose 1 level of your old class for every
5 levels you gain in the new due to lack of practise (though never below
L1). This means its very hard to get high level at both classes.
Rising in two classes at once means you have to get the full xp of
whichever class requires the most xp to advance, and 2/3 of the xp for
the other class. Also, you get the average of all stats for both classes
(Fighter gets 8HP per level, mage gets 4HP, you get 6HP), and are
penalyzed in other ways.
This ensures that such characers rise *very* slowly, and are never as
good as a "pure" mage, fighter, whatever of the same level.

Of course, if you are an elf, you have *lots* of time to achieve high level anyway :)
Still, even most elves will eventually want to settle and raise
children, taking them out of the picture for one but often several
centuries -after which most will be too old to desire the heroic life.

Enough calculations for today, let me know what you think :)

Stardancer