I've currently been pondering about the distribution of NPC levels thoughout the Flanaess. I know that the 3rd edition DMG has models for calculating things like this out but its a fairly generic way of doing things. So., I wondered if people had thoughts on this or would like to share with me how the do things in their own versions of Greyhawk.
The reason this came about is as follows;
I am currently running the Queen of Spiders campaign. My party is dealing with the Giant modules at present. One of the party is an elf diviner and kinsman of Princess Shallaria who is currently imprisoned in the Hall of King Snurre. His personal quest is obviously to locate his missing kinswoman and rescue her. When questioning the elves about their missing queen - one of the party asked...if your elves and have power with magic why haven't you just scryed for her then teleported in and out?
Good point.
Shallaria is not warded in some way. Why would a notable elf princess not have been rescued by now by a race known for having wizards?
This led me to think on the proportion of high level characters in the world.
A lot of story plots etc would be redundant if high levels clerics and mages were in even moderate numbers.
At 11th level are my party really that powerful in the land...should they demand more respect than my NPCs offer them? Should magic be made much rarer?
I would argue in favour of much lower level NPCs. Especially wizards and clerics...most NPC spellcasters stay at home and study or tend to their flocks of faithful so it makes sense that their progression should be slower.
10th level seems like a significant level in greyhawk for some reason.
anyways - rather than waffle on - I'd appreciate some shared thoughts on this...
We call that a "plot hole." Otherwise known as "Reason #147 on the Why I Hate Players list."
It is similar to the question in 1st ed about why necromancers didn't just create armies of hundreds of thousands of skeletons and zombies and send them rampaging since there were no control limits.
The main answer to those questions is: "If they did, there wouldn't be an adventure. Besides, nobody does that in the books."
Rather than try and limit the levels of NPCs, which eventually bumps up against more than a few NPCs, just revise various dungeon areas with convenient lead painted walls and various scrying and teleport blocking wondrous architecture. It gets a tad excessive, but it is better than assuming every problem can be solved if only Mordenkainen would teleport in and save the day. (Which has been a recent question in the chat room - why he, or another Circle member, doesn't just do everything.)
Why doesn't Mordenkainen do everything?
Because he doesn't want to.
And besides, he has Robilar to do it for him... ;)
I agree - if there's nothing stopping the Princess' clan from scyring her, teleporting in and grabbing her, then add it in. It's an easier fix than rejigging all the levels. Either that or you could put in a nice touch like a permenant anticipate teleport effect on the Princess' cell and a few buffed up guards gnawing on the bones of the last olven strike team that tried to extract her. In a world of magic, clever bad guys will have suitable magical countermeasures.
At the end of the day I tend to go with the feel of the adventure and sod the rules I guess. I worry about why the olves can't locate Shallaria via their spells at a later date. I think I'll go with the lead lined cells idea.
I also have a couple of players who are clued up on the ins and outs of the rules...probabaly more so than I am so I like to throw the rules to the wind occasionaly to throw them off the scent. It's good for players to not be able to break down every story plot and occurrence in terms of spells and abilities and feats.
After a little thought about the number of high level PCs and after a tube journey home in London rush hour it becomes quite clear why high level people such as Mordenkainen don't go in and save the day all the time...sometimes you just simply can't be bothered! We all suffer from that complex...I could go around to my friend's to help him paint his room but after a long day at work...I just want to have some peace. Just like I imagine high level characters have worked hard to get to where they are and sometimes they just have better or other things to do. They just like less powerful people still have daily tasks to attend to, appointments to keep, research to continue, temple repairs to oversee et cetera.
I'd also like to think that even figures such as Mordenkainen must succumb to the ravages of time...with age - whilst their knowledge still grows the cost of using such power is physically more draining. Knowing full well the potential evils about the world it makes sense to save your strength and power for times of grave need than to squander them on saving a random princess for example...leave it to the fighters.
But to cut a long ramble short...thank the gods for lead paint vs scry happy PCs!
How about trying a less than game mechanical answer? How about a sub-plot idea that a writer might use? "The transporter is off line, again, Captain, and sensors are down!" Here's the Greyhawk take on this poor GM's plot device...
That particular area where the princess is held is in a weak mana area which disperses all magical energies before they are fully manifest. You can't scry or t-port in and the giants were just lucky to find such a spot (knowingly or not).
Another and better answer is that the princess was given an enchantment at birth which protects her from being scried and teleported away with by her enemies. Only the highest elven officials would know this. This time it has backfired against them.
As to the question: are there too few high powered wizards? Yes and no. Yes, there are too few good ones and no, there are too many bad ones. Heroes need enemies more than they need peers (NPC peers). Perhaps being bad simply means gaining power thru the suffering of others with many immoral shortcuts and bargains to hasten the ascension to power.
On this point, I have always thought that the prevelance of counter magic should be increased. The simple excuse for why the characters have not encountered it more is that they dont need them.
Otherwise, all castles are useless, all secrets are known. The only thing that prevents this is the hoarding of magic and secrets by the possesors of magic. We discussed this on Greychat a month or so back... how information quickly becomes more valuable than magic even in a world with a few thousand moderate level mages.
I am trying to work out this very thing in the microcosm of Gran March. Here is what I have come up with...
Total Spellcasters in the March: 6,631 or 3% of the population. This includes:
The Rangers and Paladins generally do not gain sufficient levels to cast many spells, and generally nothing above 2nd level.
I have given all classes a fairly even distribution between levels 1 thru 6th, based on a system I use to gain levels by age and an age distribution for the March. However the number of persons above 6th decline rapidly. The number of people of 6th level exceeds the number of all persons above 6th level.
hmmm yeah the 6th level bench mark idea seems good to me. I want to keep a contrast to the Forgotten Realms setting which is magic heavy. Higher level characters, especially spellcasters will not be that numerous . Partly for practical reasons - to get that high indicates either years and years of laborious study / worship or adventuring and we all know adventurers have a high mortality rate heh.
You are so, so, SO right, Wolfling. Powerful mages seem to grow on trees in 3E, as do magical items. I would say that you are quite right (and more in keeping with the spirit of Greyhawk) to say that your 11th-level characters are very famous and get more respect from movers and shakers than do your average 1st-5th-level characters.
Elves are not numerous, nor are they all magic-users. Even among the elves, wizards with enough power to teleport are not common. Keep in mind that any number of things could go wrong with a teleportation spell-and besides, don't you need to have some knowledge of where you're going, or to have been there already, before you can cast the spell? If they scry the elven princess, all they'll see is her trapped in a dungeon cell...which could be one of a million places in the Flanaess. Is she being held by humans? Dwarves? Other elves? Orcs? Aboleth? Goblins? Giants? Scrying alone won't reveal the information, nor will it show in what direction a would-be searcher has to go. These are just based on my recollections of how these things work-I could be wrong, mind you.
And in any case, even if this were FR, some powerful NPC won't just show up out of nowhere to save the day. If I were running a Realms campaign, Elminster and the Seven Sisters would be damn tired of expecting people to solve all their problems for them.
Elminster would be all but retired-able to do the research or scribe the scroll necessary to advance the plot, but far too old and frail to fight on the frontlines. As for the Seven Sisters, some of them are in positions of power-Alustriel and Laeral Silverhand, for instance-and they can't risk getting mixed up in politically explosive situations. As for the rest-Storm Silverhand being a prominent example-they have their own lives to live, and can easily burn out if all they do is fight evil and battle ferocious monsters. Besides, if the conflict is ambiguous-the supposedly lawful and good Cormyr launching a blatant and unprovoked invasion of Sembia and Westgate, or Aglarond freebooters attacking the Red Wizards of Thay-whose side would these supposedly moralistic characters be on? The Harpers can be mightily resented by those who view them as imposing "their" views of what's right and wrong on other people. In short, even when powerful people could intervene, their hands can be tied by all sorts of matters.
In Mordenkainen's case, he just wouldn't care about the princess's fate. If her presence might help her people resist an invasion by humans or dwarves, and in general keep the balance of power in a given region, then fine. But if it doesn't make a difference, then let the paladins and idealists worry about it, and let him get back to the business of keeping the Flanaess from tearing itself apart.
And finally, even if they wanted to, the various organizations/cabals/conspiracies and other power groups simply do not have the resources to do everything they would like. Mordenkainen has a wide network of agents, to be sure, as does the Scarlet Brotherhood, but it's ludicrous to assume that they have the resources to respond to every single situation, or that their agents can know every single thing that might be of interest to them. Agents can make mistakes, politics can go on without scheming liches or dragons getting involved. If I were King Lynwerd, I would worry more about my nobles getting comfortable with my traitorous brother, or the way the Duchy of Urnst is using the debts I owe them to extort me, rather than what some lich or dragon in the Flinty Hills might be thinking of doing. _________________ <div align="left">Going to war without Keoland is like going to war without a pipe organ. They both make a lot of noise and they're both a lot of dead weight, so what's the point in taking them along? </div>
That's one of the problems I have with my group. They look at the book and say, "Hey, an average town this size should have the following people in it." They will also travel to a capital city and expect to deal with the highest level wizard and pay him/her enough gold to help them or enchant an item. It blows their minds when they look around and see that they are the most powerful people around or that the truly powerful people are simply too busy dealing with other movers and shakers of the world to do anything with the party. I have always told my group that most people become fighters for example. Truly good fighters become 2nd level. Exceptionally capable people become 3rd-4th level. The hero's of the lands become 5th-8th. The nation builders, kings and legendary conqueror's of the lands become 9th-whatever, but that's just my Greyhawk.
In the early days, right around 10th lvl was considered "name level" (it varied slightly by class). That was the point the character became famous for his or her skill alone, as opposed to whatever deeds he or she had done. It was also the dividing line between regular and high level campaigns. The old breakdown as lvls 1-4 were 'low level', 5-9 were 'midlevel' and 10+ was high level, essentially.
Gary Gygax mentioned a few times that that was about the point PCs in his campaign stopped adventuring regularly and tended to be retired to quasi NPC status, brought out for special occassions and the like.
Characters lvl 10 and up are few and far between and spell casting classes are rarer that non spell casters. So its perfectly fine for the PCs to be pretty darned important at the mid levels. Not only are there few folks better than they are, damn few of those who are better happen to be interested in living a life of adventure. It is important to remember that most NPC mages are not adventurers, don't have the training/inclination/spell selection to function as a part of a commando unit. PC characters are professional practitioners of violence. Most people simply are not.
And I heartily endorse the aforementioned point about the existance of all manner of countermagics and the like that are not detailed in the rules. After all "Wizard" is the adventuring class for mages. Its capabilities reflect those of a mage expecting to routinely participate in small unit skirmish combats. Mages without that sort of background would have a different character class than Wizard and different spells/capabilities. Yeah, they aren't defined in the rules. Big whoop. The rules are for defining the actions of adventurers, not ordinary people. Does everyone in the world have assorted small arms and espionage skills because you happen to be playing Top Secret? Hardly. The rules for PCs are NOT the rules for NPCs.
If I understand the problem here, it is the tension in setting power levels for NPC's, especially the rulers and powers.
If the NPC rulers are more powerful than the PC's, why do they need the PC's?
But if the NPC's are not as powerful as the PC's, why don't the PC's rule the world? (Or why don't the evil NPC's, the PC nemesis, walk all over the rulers?)
The way this gets worked out in my campaign is by remembering that most PC and NPC power is not from personal ability but from divine favor. The gods invest power in mortals, and they do so for their own reasons. The way adventurers acquire power and how they can use that power is different from the way rulers acquire and use power.
Adventurers acquire power through a long, slow process of trials, proving themselves (ie, gaining xp). Once acquired, they can use that power in any circumstance.
Rulers are granted power because of their position, the belief of their subjects and the grace of the gods. Their power is effortless and instant - no xp required. But it can only be used in limited circumstances, the ones that support and confirm their social roles as rulers.
For example, the moment a man is crowned king, he becomes a high level fighter, even if he has no experience. However, he can use his abilities only in situations which the gods deem appropriate for a king - leading his people in battle, saves against poison in an assaination attempt, etc. The king on a horse, on a field of battle, gets the hp, attack rolls, etc of a high level fighter. If the same king made the mistake of getting involved in a barroom brawl, he is treated as 0 level.
An NPC cardinal, in his cathedral, before a crowd of faithful, can heal, raise the dead, better than all but the highest PC's. But the same priest stuck in an underground crypt, with rats crawling up his vestments, would be hard pressed to turn a skeleton, let alone a vampire.
Court wizards can cast amazingly powerful magic when they are esconced in their laboratories, surrounded by books and such. Their spells tend to fail when they are being held upside down by an ogre.
PC's, on the other hand have to earn their power, it doen't come with their title. Once earned however, they can use the power in any circumstance, which is why they are sought after to perform missions. _________________ My campaigns are multilayered tapestries upon which I texture themes and subject matter which, quite frankly, would simply be too strong for your hobbyist gamer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mp7Ikko8SI
To prevent teleporting there was some old adage about mixing gorgon blood into the mortar mix used between the stones/brickwork on an area. No rules were given as to how this worked, but you could make it a more ritualistic, long-term sort of endeavor to accomplish rather than making it a powerful spell cast in a short amount of time. Think of it as a construction type thing like making a golem, but much easier because of the focused application. Maybe it requires a rock to mud spell or the reverse as the big thing to turn the morta solid at the end. Or something even simpler than that, such as the application of a detect evil/good spell. that sets off the ward. Some magic can be low tech but effective without haveing to resort to a powerful spell. A non-high magic campaign need not have a lack of magical effects; they will just tend to take longer to accomplish and therefore be more rare, and also be more subtle and less noticable. This solves many odd problems regarding the lack of availablility of a high level spell caster. Group magic- its why druid have circles, mages congregate in guilds and organizations, and why priests gather at temples after all.
Just a thought. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Ritual magic is a very important part of magery that is not reflected in wizardry much at all. After all, its not that useful to be able to cast a big non combat spell in conjunction with 12 of your peers when you make your living breaking into buildings and killing the bad guys therein and other exciting adventuring tasks.
I definitely concur with what a lot of you seem to be saying about working outside the rules for the ourpose of storytelling. For me the story is the most important part of the adventure...that's not to say the rules aren't important mind you heh.
Cebrion - I'd not heard of that gorgon's blood method before but quite handily there is a gorgon in the lower levels of Snurre's stronghold...hehe...perfect :o)
Kirt - your ideas about NPC abilities is really interesting actually...I think that I will perhaps use your thoughts in particular with clerics and divine casters. Afterall most of the gods have some agreement to not interfere directly ont he Prime Material so what better way to circumvent that than through giving boons to your mortal followers. As for the same principal for rulers...in some instances I think this could work very well...and also very appropriate for a medieval setting where historical monarchs were often attributed with divine power (e.g. Charlemagne)
anyways - so once again thanks to everyone for their thoughts!
First of all, any of my players that start trying to quote the Dungeon Masters GUIDE will find that they painfully misread it or that mine does not say what theirs does, and they cannot see my copy
As to the ritual magic. I have used it often and persisitently over the years. A long slow spell that is aided by many lower level mages, or maybe clerics, and unusual components in large quantities. I have never had to define it as a) the process took weeks and b) it was types of magic that my characters were generally never interested in.
I do have a party (thats euphamistic, one living party member and some new players wanting to take the place of those left dead in the bowels of Castle Maure ) that is about to be of a level and wealth to have their own home (14th level). At this point they have asked some questions concerning this type of magic, but nothing specific.
One downside to adventurers, this magic is by definition stationary and passive. i.e. it can repel an earthquake spell from a castle, but it cannot do so on a cart. It can block scrying, but it cannot be a scrying pool.
As to levels, I think we have established over and over that the levels of 1ed, 2ed, and 3ed are not the same. The systems is so subtly different that they are hard to compare. For the same reason the presence of magic is not the same. A +1 sword was a big deal in 1ed, not because it was magic, but because it could greatly affect the outcome of a battle. The differences in the systems result in a +1 sword having a negligable effect on a 4th level character battle.
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) that is about to be of a level and wealth to have their own home (14th level). At this point they have asked some questions concerning this type of magic, but nothing specific.