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rubycona
2009-11-24, 10:37 PM
I was reading over the spells again, reading Legend Lore (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/spellsHtoL.html#legend-lore) and it mentions, As a rule of thumb, characters who are 11th level and higher are “legendary,” as are the sorts of creatures they contend with, the major magic items they wield, and the places where they perform their key deeds. Also, Detect spells tend to align with that, with overwhelming auras at 11HD+

I'd gotten a different idea in my head of what constituted "legendary," allowing for high-ranking clerics of various temples to be in the 10-14 range, and actual "legends" forming about people in the 16+ range... since, it's not hard to get to 10th level in just a few weeks of game time.

In pursuit of a consistent world, though, I really need to set a standard of levels. How does a 3rd level character fit in, in compared to NPCs? Is that the standard level range of average town guards, of the guard captains, etc? You know what I mean? I think it's important for them to have a frame of reference. In my other game, we're all level 12, and feel like absolute weaklings (but our DM is... well, let's just say, "providing a challenge" is his priority >.>) But really, according to RAW, at 12th level, we should be known around and about, have people impressed at how capable we are, etc, and all in all, feeling pretty capable. Not world shattering, but capable.

What do you guys think? Is there a level frame of reference breakdown somewhere online? (it IS the internet, so it should exist, theoretically :P) Or do you guys have level ranges that you tend to stick to?

Thanks for your help :)

Vitruviansquid
2009-11-24, 10:47 PM
The way I see it is, everything in the official books make up a standard template that you then embellish and make your own when you run a campaign.

Every campaign, then, is the official rules and then some more. In cases where the particular campaign doesn't match up with the particular rulebook, the particular campaign always overrules the rulebook - hence the rule that the DM is always right.

So let's say you're trying to determine if a level 11 character is "legendary." Well, a couple things can happen:

A. You're trying to determine if Jim the Fighter is "legendary." Okay, Jim is level 11, so he's pretty buff, cut, and ripped. We can assume he's done some legendary deeds that required someone thusly buff, cut, and ripped, so he is indeed "legendary."

B. You're trying to determine if Jim the Rogue is "legendary." At this point, you might realize that levels in Rogue have nothing whatsoever to do with fame, which levels in "legendariness" would. Actually, a hypercompetent rogue like Jim is probably very VERY obscure, since rogues dig that kind of stuff. Thus, while the rule of thumb is that Jim is legendary, he is actually not and there's the perfectly logical reason that he has painstakingly kept himself obscure in pursuit of his roguish craft.

C. You're looking up if Jim the Wizard is Legendary. Being a high leveled wizard probably isn't the same as being a high leveled fighter. A high level wizard maybe some prodigy who's locked himself into a library and achieved an absurdly high level of competency in magic OR alternatively, a wizard who picked up all he knew from going on adventures and doing heroic deeds with his magic. So in this vague situation where, really, it can go both ways, you might defer to the book and see that, since he's level 11, he can be considered a "legend."

edit: This is my personal interpretation for your particular situation.

Optimystik
2009-11-24, 11:16 PM
Tome of Magic has a take on levels, due to the Truenamer. A character's Truename never changes, but as he gains levels, it becomes harder for another Truenamer to pronounce. This is represented mechanically by the (much) harder Truespeak check to affect that person.

"...Truename scholars note that many who exhibit this phenomenon eventually become important leaders, great heroes, or sinister villains. They speculate that the universe is taking a greater interest in them as they achieve more."

jmbrown
2009-11-24, 11:48 PM
I could've sworn the DMG gave guidelines on NPC levels for what you'd find in a typical town. If not that, then DMG II.

Either way, what I've commonly seen in adventure modules and guidelines is that NPCs rarely see level 6. A city of 50,000+ population has maybe a dozen NPCs above level 10. The PCs are heroic and rightly so. At 10th level, they should dwarf 90% of the player character races.

The truly powerful monsters you end up fighting are rare and one-of-a-kind IE "creatures of legend." The dragon you killed at dungeon level 20 should be the only one in a 1,000 mile radius. The clan of giants your party slaughtered should be the only ones in the area contending for power. As a general rule, the more HD a monster has the fewer of them you'll encounter.

Typical 11th level encounters truly are encounters of legend, though. Only you can effortlessly take down an army of giants, kill dragons, and destroy most demons/devils. if that's not legendary, then I don't know what is. Perhaps your definition of legendary is a tale spread on a worldwide scale, but some legends remain local. There are thousands of real life legends that never leave their point of origin but the people who know them pass them on through generation.

My personal rule of thumb is that non adventuring NPCs that live in comfortable areas gain 1xp a day while those in more dangerous positions gain 2 or 3xp a day. In a typical human life time using my guideline, a commoner or craftsman would hit 7 or 8th level in his lifetime, a soldier would reach 10th, and a cleric or wizard may go as high as 15th.

Narazil
2009-11-25, 12:02 AM
You could look at the class' powers on the level, without comparing it to equal levels. a 12th level Sorcerer can cast spells such as Dominate Person, Permanency, Fabricate, Teleport, Legend Lore, Contingency, Veil, Permant Image ect.
I'd say a person able to do such things, in the eyes of a first level Commonor, would be pretty legendary, even compared to 20th level Wizards who walk all over the laws of physics.

Gpope
2009-11-25, 12:09 AM
It's an entirely subjective scale. In some campaign worlds, even experienced professions are mostly made up of level 1s, you're a big deal if you make it past level 3 and levels in the double digits are practically unheard of. In others, just about everyone has a couple levels, mid-ranking officials are level 10 or above and you're not really important until you're well into epic.

Do bear in mind that "legendary" doesn't necessarily mean you're world-famous, or that the average person on the street has heard of you, just that you've performed noteworthy deeds. Casting Legend Lore is basically the D&D equivalent of searching something on Wikipedia.

Devils_Advocate
2009-11-25, 12:20 AM
"Does this mean you should never throw a 10th level blacksmith into your campaign? Nope. D&D is all about mythic fantasy, after all. But when you do decide to throw a 10th level blacksmith into the mix, consider the fact that this guy will be amazing. He will be producing things that no blacksmith in the real world has ever dreamed of making. And a 20th level blacksmith is one step removed from Hephaestus himself."
- D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html)

Mid-to-high-level characters in D&D are literally superhuman, in the sense that the system allows them to do things that no one can do in real life. This is true even of characters who lack explicitly "magical" abilities. (As well it should be, lest we fully embrace the Muggles Don't Get Nice Things principle.) At the very high end of the scale, it's not really absurd for epic characters to be able to kill gods; that's just where the power progression logically goes. The poorly designed bit is that deification isn't assumed to be the norm for anyone who gets to be high level enough, and epic play isn't built around that.

A good rule of thumb is: Do I want this person to be able to kill a bear unarmed? Did I build him so he can? If those questions have different answers, you've probably made a mistake.

So there's that.

elliott20
2009-11-25, 12:26 AM
I remember that someone did some calculations on how a 5th level character can routinely break olympic records on jump checks and the like if they dedicate enough of their time and resources to doing just that.

The Alexandrian also wrote a piece on how Aragorn and other LOTR characters are really in fact no more than 5th level or so.

oops: ninja'd

bosssmiley
2009-11-25, 08:20 AM
Potted history time:

OD&D maxed out at level 10.
B/X D&D maxed out at level 14.
AD&D characters stop gaining hit dice at about level 9-10.

In all these games anyone above name level (9th) was a power in the land who was playing the "rulership and armies" game, rather than the "dungeoncrawl and kill things for money" game.

Given that in all these games the toughest dragons had 9-11 HD, historically, anyone who was lvl11+ really was the stuff of legends. He/she was as tough as a dragon!

3E killed the castle-building endgame and - thanks largely to overlong PrCs - gave us teen level 'mid-level' characters.

Tengu_temp
2009-11-25, 08:28 AM
The "Aragorn is level 5" article is worthless - the guy who wrote it got 10 things wrong for each one he got right. Other people on the forums made an in-depth analysis of it.

oxybe
2009-11-25, 08:51 AM
the alexandrian in itself should be taken with very large grain of salt. i've read some of his stuff and had to reread it just to see if i really read that.

i mean seriously: "One of the most impressive things about 3rd Edition is the casual realism of the system. You can plug real world values into it, process them through the system, and get back a result with remarkable fidelity to what would happen in the real world."

seeing as how 3rd ed's D&D's "realism" as a whole is essentially:

stuff happens > do math > F**k it > "black box" it > realism!

he made me giggle. but so do fart jokes.

a class level, to me, is meaningless. then again, for me a "class" is nothing but a collection of thematic abilities strung together in a linear progression. your class isn't your job and your job isn't your class. a Fighter can be a bookbinder and a Wizard a carpenter. a Thief can be a cleric and a Cleric a thief. shrug.

what legend lore assumes is that a level 11 character has been around the block quite a bit and made a name for himself. which makes sense, since the game assumes you start at level one and hopefully, if you don't get critt'ed by a goblin or an orc lands a solid blow with his ax, make it high enough to survive.

our 3rd ed campaign went on for about year or more in-game time when we got to level 11. which is enough time for rumors to spread about that group of guys what suddenly sprang up who layed a smackdown on the corrupt dockmaster, violently broke up the thieves' guild, scared off the pirates, and are still going at it with greater and greater deeds.

now that's effectively the assumed norm. it will vary from game to game of course, but like the alexandrian, take it with a grain of salt.

hewhosaysfish
2009-11-25, 09:02 AM
it's not hard to get to 10th level in just a few weeks of game time.

Bear in mind that the XP and CR system is set up so that you level after 13 (and one third) CR-appropriate encounters. So that the 11th level fighter in your party has been in a 4-man squad that has, in "just a few weeks", taken down the equvalent of:

13 (and one third) ghouls
13 bugbears
13 ogres
13 barghests
13 trolls
13 wyverns
13 hill giants
13 dire tigers
13 rocs
13 clay golems
4 calling birds
3 french hens
2 turtle doves

and a partridge in a pear tree.

Ok, so maybe he was part of a team of four, and they weren't fighting all those beasties at once but still... Fighter pilot in WW2 were classed as "Aces" if they claimed 5 kills.
This fighter would be reckoned as an even match for an elder elemental, cloud giant, stone golem or dread wraith. If the local guards are in the 1st-3rd level range then he could cut them with neglible effort

Dude's not a legend?


I could've sworn the DMG gave guidelines on NPC levels for what you'd find in a typical town. If not that, then DMG II.

DMG page 139.
Although I'm skeptical as to how much sense they make.
Any given metropolis will have at least 4 Commoners of at least 16th level; worst case scenario, they could have four 28th level Commoners and sixty-four at 16th level (a total of 31 epic Commoners and 480 "legendary", non-epic Commoners).
What the heck are these Commoners doing that lets them get to level 28..? but still does not accord them the respect of being represented by a better class..? even Expert or Warrior?! What "legends" could be told about these 480 (480!!!!) Commoners who are apparently worthy of legend?

Which makes me think....

B. You're trying to determine if Jim the Rogue is "legendary." At this point, you might realize that levels in Rogue have nothing whatsoever to do with fame, which levels in "legendariness" would. Actually, a hypercompetent rogue like Jim is probably very VERY obscure, since rogues dig that kind of stuff. Thus, while the rule of thumb is that Jim is legendary, he is actually not and there's the perfectly logical reason that he has painstakingly kept himself obscure in pursuit of his roguish craft.

...that characters of level 11+ may be considered to be "legend-worthy" even if no legends are told about them; character level is a determinant of competence, not (directly) of fame. On the flip-side, someone who isn't high-level may be the subject of legend by virtue of artisitic license, being in the right place at the right time or just telling whopping big lies about their exploits.

Which is not to say that I agree that there would be no legends told about a high-level rogue. Assuming he doesn't have any daring jail-breaks or escapes from the gallows, assuming he doesn't take an opportunity to brazenly thumb his nose at the authorities, assuming he doesn't leave a Scarlet-Pimpernel-style calling card behind him, even assuming all that then there will still be stories circulating about the "person or persons unknown" who managed to steal the Hyoo-Jas Diamond from the adamantine vaults underneath the Imperial Citadel and endless speculation about how they slipped past all the trained guard-sphinxes without raising the alarm.