Should all long-lived creatures have 20 levels?

[Balor01]

Say dragons. These guys constantly do stuff, are intelligent. And I bet there are dozens of other smart, long lived races, that should hit that level 20 say in 50 years after they become an adult. Heck, with some serious adventuring, they can do it in four.

Should most of 100+ years old smart (decent INT, WIS, say above 9) creatures have also 20 levels of one of the PC classes?

thanks

[Shieldbunny]

Not necessarily, longer lived races could easily take the long view of things. If there isn't some world shattering reason to go off adventuring, they could easily take years off between dungeons.

[Agincourt]

Say dragons. These guys constantly do stuff, are intelligent. And I bet there are dozens of other smart, long lived races, that should hit that level 20 say in 50 years after they become an adult. Heck, with some serious adventuring, they can do it in four.

Should most of 100+ years old smart (decent INT, WIS, say above 9) creatures have also 20 levels of one of the PC classes?

thanks

This really gets down to worldbuilding and what you want the world to look like. This would definitely make for a high powered world where there are high leveled spellcasters everywhere.

Personally, I prefer to think of adventurers as exceptional. They get better than average stats. Your average person does not want to run the risk of any early death and don't really have the abilities to adventure anyway.

As for dragons, one could argue that having high intelligence and wisdom would lead them to judge the wise move to not engage in combat unless victory is assured. They are greedy but also calculating.

[VoxRationis]

How many CR-appropriate encounters do you think a dragon typically engages in per unit time? Not many. Most of the time, it's probably hunting small, weak things that can't defend themselves in any meaningful way. If it gets into a fight with a creature more powerful than it is, it will probably withdraw, figuring that it can come back when it's older and more dangerous. Only when it gets into battles with creatures in a very narrow range of CR would it actually get experience, and those battles are extremely dangerous for the dragon, so it would engage in those battles only rarely.

[Jermz]

Just tossing out there that elves, dwarves, and to a lesser extent gnomes, all live 200+ years naturally. Thus, it's mainly a question of CR-worthy encounters, and if these races seek them out. Although, it depends on how you really want your world to look. You can easily justify these races having high levels thanks to ongoing conflict (elves vs. orcs, dwarves vs. goblins, gnomes vs. kobolds, for instance). The question is, with these short-lived races around, will the elves, dwarves and gnomes have enough challenges of the correct CR to advance to higher levels?

With regard to non-humanoid races, who already have powerful non-level-related abilities, and who tend to be loners (how many powerful, multi-HD creatures all live together? Giants, maybe? Illithids? Probably a few more that I can't think of now...), I doubt that they'd have the inclination to go out and fight, as VoxRationis said.

Basically, it comes down to how you want your world to play. If you want it populated by dragons with 20 levels of sorcerer, then go ahead and do it.

[RegalKain]

Responding from phone. But people are assuming you have to have combat to advance in level. I'd say a silver dragon who is shape changed to look human because they want to lead a nation to victory against say a red dragon. Is going to be clearing "encounters" even if non combative ones. The same might be said for a dwarven king who saves his people from a food crisis. Isn't that overcoming a challenge or encounter? That may not work at high levels but lower levels? I'd say staving off mass starvation counts. Then again my worlds tend to have a lot of people of mixed levels etc. In my current E10 campaign most of the world is level 2-3 with shop keeps generals etc being closer to 9 or 10 as others have said though. This just depends on the level you want your world to sit at.

[Agincourt]

Responding from phone. But people are assuming you have to have combat to advance in level. I'd say a silver dragon who is shape changed to look human because they want to lead a nation to victory against say a red dragon. Is going to be clearing "encounters" even if non combative ones. The same might be said for a dwarven king who saves his people from a food crisis. Isn't that overcoming a challenge or encounter? That may not work at high levels but lower levels? I'd say staving off mass starvation counts. Then again my worlds tend to have a lot of people of mixed levels etc. In my current E10 campaign most of the world is level 2-3 with shop keeps generals etc being closer to 9 or 10 as others have said though. This just depends on the level you want your world to sit at.

I agree that a king who delivers his people from a crisis should be earning experience, but a king is not most people as Balor01 asked. Also, what class does the king gain levels in? Most likely it should be Aristocrat or Expert, which would not really affect the world too much.

The question is, average people who go about their lives just trying to make ends meet how much should they level over the course of their lifetimes? For my own tastes, I'd say, "not very much." An elf who spends most of his life, say, crafting pottery for various purposes will not have reason to rise in level. He might occasionally "overcome challenges" but those challenges should not provide enough experience to rise very high in level.

[RegalKain]

I agree that a king who delivers his people from a crisis should be earning experience, but a king is not most people as Balor01 asked. Also, what class does the king gain levels in? Most likely it should be Aristocrat or Expert, which would not really affect the world too much.

The question is, average people who go about their lives just trying to make ends meet how much should they level over the course of their lifetimes? For my own tastes, I'd say, "not very much." An elf who spends most of his life, say, crafting pottery for various purposes will not have reason to rise in level. He might occasionally "overcome challenges" but those challenges should not provide enough experience to rise very high in level.

Again I think a lot of that is gonna be on the DM. That pottery maker may get to level 3 or 4 in day to day whhelings and dealings. To get to a higher level they may start a pottery guild. Or transport their things from one town to another. The concept of an encounter is a pretty huge one in my opinion it covers a lot. As for what levels the king might take again depends on the DM I think but I also don't use the DMG for purposes of world building 99 % of the time it doesn't make a lot of sense.

[HunterOfJello]

Beings who constantly go up against increasingly difficult opponents while only surviving by the skin of their teeth should eventually have a very small and select portion of their group reach level 20.

Level 20 is achievable within a single year. It is not dependent on living to an old age or being of a strong race.

If a race only ever fights the same type of enemies (e.g. orcs fighting bugbears) then they're also unlikely to reach level 20. They'll hit a plateau where they are stronger than the things around them and can no longer obtain exp from them.

[heavyfuel]

I think it's kinda like something Liara said in Mass Effect 1:


"At first, I thought that was a weakness of your species. After spending time with you and your crew, however, I think it may actually be an advantage. You humans are creatures of action. You pursue your goals with an almost indomitable determination. It is an admirable trait, but also an intimidating one."

So yeah, the dragon that lives the lifespan of many humans probably won't pursue goals as frenetically as one.

[Slipperychicken]

I'd argue that most ordinary people (i.e. everyday schmucks who don't fight things and just try to live their lives in peace) would only have a handful of XP-worthy encounters each year to break up the routine. The majority of these would be either very low CR (around 1/2 or less = an angry dog stands between you and your objective, someone slips something in your drink, you need to sneak past a sleeping relative, hunting defenseless animals, etc) or overwhelmingly difficult at irregular intervals (things like getting shaken down by policemen or armed thugs, being assaulted by a drunk football player, an airstrike targets your house, getting jumped by 4 muscular gangsters in prison, trying to fend off a dozen gun-toting soldiers kidnapping your relatives in the night, someone decides to shoot up your classroom, and so on). It goes without saying that ordinary people would only "overcome" a fraction of their encounters. I imagine that most people would either meekly avoid most of the "overwhelming" ones, or attempt to defeat them and fail. As a result, I would conclude that most people either don't face enough encounters to level up past low levels, are defeated by enough encounters so they don't get XP for them, or the encounters which they can regularly overcome do not scale with their level and thus grant them only negligible XP after a few level-ups, The result, I believe, is the overwhelming majority of normal people not getting past level 3 or 4. The few who do go beyond that are most likely well-equipped to defeat the encounters they face, and are in some profession or circumstance conducive to regularly facing such challenges (in either case, that minority could hardly be considered ordinary).

[Afgncaap5]

I think that depends on how you treat the concepts of XP and levels. I see them more as an out-of-world construct to simulate a rough approximation of an individual, so my NPCs of level 20 are truly exceptional individuals (on par with or superior to the PCs, usually.) Others who see XP and Level as a more literal mechanism disagree and decide that any creature with a significant age and activity will eventually hit level 20.

[jedipotter]

Not necessarily, longer lived races could easily take the long view of things. If there isn't some world shattering reason to go off adventuring, they could easily take years off between dungeons.

The problem is the human centric view of D&D. Humans only have like 40 years of effective life(20-60). A lot of other races have much more years of effective life. Elves get more like 200 years, dragons more like a thousand.

You'd have two types of people, active and inactive. The inactive people don't do much to get XP. Even if they get one point of XP a day, they would take years to go up a single level. The more active people might get a couple dozen points of XP every couple of days and they would go up a level a year.

And that makes a problem. An active elf can get to 100th level in a 100 years, let along just 20th. Even if the active elf only got a level every five years, they would still be 20th level after 100 years. But that makes races like humans like bugs that only live a couple weeks.

But D&D levels don't go by time, they go by challenge. So if you have 15th level PC's, they need 15th-20th level foes as a challenge. And they just 'pop' out of nowhere, as the game needs a challenge.

[Afgncaap5]

I like how Keith Baker explained his personal justification for elves who practice centuries and humans who've only been in the game for a few years being roughly equivalent. You've got the elves who learn hundreds of different sword techniques to achieve the same result on different creatures ("Use Ravan's Forest Troll Dispatcher, not Elwisp's Cave Troll Dismemberer...") while humans pretty much just use the same sloppy, albeit effective, tactics ("Hit it! Hit it now!")

[jedipotter]

I like how Keith Baker explained his personal justification for elves who practice centuries and humans who've only been in the game for a few years being roughly equivalent.

This from the guy who made the setting of ''everyone is a 0 level helpless character and only YOU the PC's can do anything, ever.''

But what about the sloppy elves? Take an adult sloppy chess player who is like 50. They have played thousands of games of chess and know the game well. They will beat most people under 20 no problem, and most others too. Even if they are not the greatest player, all they need to really do is remember one of the hundreds of times they lost a game, and copy the moves that were used to beat them.

[Balor01]

I really like the idea with challenges. As you progress, appropriate challenges become ever more meager.

[A Tad Insane]

Adventurers get to high level because they do stuff most people would consider suicide on an hourly basis. Living life doesn't get you the massive exp. Pushing yourself past your limits every minute for two months is what gets you that.

[Tvtyrant]

I do not like the 20 levels paradigm anyway, but I tend to give races like Elves and Dwarfs a lot more levels than a human. But the vast majority of those characters are going to have levels in NPC classes (The level 10 Elven Adept for instance instead of level 5 human wizard.) Also I assume the longer lived the species the less frequent the reproduction and longer the childhood, so their population is smaller and does not recover easily.

[With a box]

It looked really strange if there is a bunch of 20th cleric in town church..

[Susano-wo]

Honestly, I see EXP as a more meta concept. Its a measurement for the game to determine when you, the players get to mark up your sheets. :smallbiggrin: In the game-world, the universe operates like a sane(well, maybe not sane:smallwink:) reality. IE, people gain skill as they practice and train, and some people train certain skills much easier than others. So its not a matter of counting XP and assigning a level: their level should be whatever supports the game-world.