Hypothetical Question - What's the % chance that a random creature is Templated?

[unseenmage]

Given how many templates there are, what could the percentage chance be that any given randomly chosen creature would be a templated creature?

No seriously, if one had to apply a percentage chance to it what would that chance be? How would we even guess at a number?


Only thing I could figure is maybe putting every creature on a list and figuring out how what percentage chance there would be to select one randomly then use that number.

[Zarrgon]

I like 50%, but I like to keep my players guessing.

[OldTrees1]

Probably the limit of X% as X approaches 0 if we include every creature.
The percentage increases if we exclude the infinite populations.
The percentage further increases if we only count creatures the DM placed in the world.
The percentage approaches 100% if we only count each creature type (1 blue dragon: # of combinations of templates of templated dragons)

[unseenmage]

Probably the limit of X% as X approaches 0 if we include every creature.
The percentage increases if we exclude the infinite populations.
The percentage further increases if we only count creatures the DM placed in the world.
The percentage approaches 100% if we only count each creature type (1 blue dragon: # of combinations of templates of templated dragons)

Any chance the above could be translated for the math illiterate?

[Phelix-Mu]

A huge part of this equation is extremely context dependent, though the above comments about the infinite nature of the core cosmology are probably true, but ~100% is not really a useful result.

Here are some things to consider:

- Setting: DM dependent. In a given setting, a DM might have there be a huge number of paladins associated with a major country, kind of like the officers in it's standing army. In that country, there are likely to be a very large number of mount-type creatures with the Celestial template, serving as mounts for the more accomplished paladins. Those mounts skew the results for the rest of the population. Likewise, in a campaign featuring dragon themes, the draconic template may be all over the place, to show that dragons have been interbreeding with the populations of x, y, and z for untold centuries.

- Narrative Focus: Mentioned above, only creatures relevant to the plot are mentioned, while everyone else conceptually exists out in the background, undefined until they come on stage. Because of the nature of storytelling, individuals introduced are more likely to be exceptional or noteworthy in some way or other. Also, due to the way the game mechanics work, templates can make creatures stronger or add versatility, which makes templates a good tool for DMs to use to augment the critters and beings that are appearing onstage. This is kind of availability bias, though, and doesn't reflect actual statistics on the population level, but meta-concerns involving the plot and tenor of the game itself.

- Metagame: Actual knowledge of the presence of one template or the other is usually not quite knowable in-game. Thus, devices that the characters could use (like divination) don't always turn up the category of creatures that we are looking for in real life. This can lead to problems in actually counting the creatures, and reduces this exercise to a largely out-of-character thought experiment. Basically, you are looking for snakes with the Winged Creature template, but in-game, the character searches for snakes with wings, which will turn up both Winged Creature snakes, and winged snakes, and potentially couatl (depending on wording and divination method used), among other things.

So, basically, if you want to calculate a %, I'd avoid the numbers and instead narrow down what template you are looking for, and rate its frequency on a 1-to-5 scale. Or something more abstract like that, since the actual math is going to be less helpful, more headache. But I don't know of any way to be certain of your results other than counting (problematic due to above), or just asking the DM out-of-game.

[unseenmage]

Well this is not for an actual game, though I admit that if a number were divined I would be more than happy to use it. Other than my tendency to prefer faux randomness this is a purely hypothetical question.

I wonder if there's a spot in any of the books where any numbers are mentioned offhand.

[Phelix-Mu]

The closest thing I can think of is back in 2e they used to do citywide population breakdowns by race, and some of the racial books included details on how to set up this breakdown for custom-made areas. The one that comes to mind is Dwarves Handbook (not sure if that is the name exactly), which gave numbers for subrace-by-subrace breakdown in dwarved strongholds.

So, with that in mind, maybe check Cityscape. I think they did some stuff with building a city in more detail in there. Or maybe the city section of the DMG? Or DMG2? Nothing is coming to mind specifically, but there are some interesting things hiding out there that you might extrapolate to include more stuff.

But, I'd basically think that templates are probably rare. Otherwise there would be problems in-game with people identifying racial characteristics. Consider if 30% of gnomes are phrenic, 25% are half-fey, 30% are celestial. Well now, isn't most of the stuff that most people know about "gnomes" actually erroneous, and in fact stuff that comes from one of the templates? In that setup, it would be safe to assume that gnomes all have powerful SLAs/PLAs...but they don't.

[unseenmage]

...

But, I'd basically think that templates are probably rare. Otherwise there would be problems in-game with people identifying racial characteristics. Consider if 30% of gnomes are phrenic, 25% are half-fey, 30% are celestial. Well now, isn't most of the stuff that most people know about "gnomes" actually erroneous, and in fact stuff that comes from one of the templates? In that setup, it would be safe to assume that gnomes all have powerful SLAs/PLAs...but they don't.

I think this bit might be the first big step to said extrapolation too. That the majority of a given populace for a given world must be untemplated, or have a template that does not interfere with their common statistics.

[Phelix-Mu]

I think this bit might be the first big step to said extrapolation too. That the majority of a given populace for a given world must be untemplated, or have a template that does not interfere with their common statistics.

Part of that is extremely hard to quantify, though. Maybe all the phrenic gnomes are experts at pretending to be celestial gnomes. Maybe the celestial gnomes come from/related to a higher plane that gives them superficial appearance of fey (and thus mistaken for the half-fey gnomes).

So, also add social interactions and perceptions to your list of difficulty in determining stuff.

Did 3e have a detect bloodlines spell? I seem to remember something like that existing, but it might be 3rd party. Like from Book of Erotic Fantasy or Nymphology.

[OldTrees1]

Probably the limit of X% as X approaches 0 if we include every creature.
The percentage increases if we exclude the infinite populations.
The percentage further increases if we only count creatures the DM placed in the world.
The percentage approaches 100% if we only count each creature type (1 blue dragon: # of combinations of templates of templated dragons)

Any chance the above could be translated for the math illiterate?

Part 1:
There are several infinite populations of creatures without parents. (Demons being a good example) As such they don't have inherited templates. Acquired templates require the creature to acquire them. So at any point there are an infinite number of untemplated creatures.
There is not an example of an infinite population of templated creatures.
Finite/Infinite = Infinitesimal. So the chance of randomly selecting a templated individual is almost but not equal to 0%.

Part 2:
If we exclude the infinite populations we get Finite/Finite which is undefined as of yet but is greater than Infinitesimal.

Part 3:
DMs do not take an infinite number of actions when designing their worlds. As such they only place a finite number of creatures (and import the rest). DMs are biased towards making unique entities (since they can import stock entities). Thus not only does the chance become finite, it is a higher chance than the background finite chance(part 2).

Part 4:
An undead creature can have the Evolved Undead template any number of times including 0. If we only count each unique combination (there is 1 Ghast, 1 Evolved^1 Ghast, 1 Evolved^2 Ghast, ...) then we have a finite number of untemplated creatures printed in the rule books but we have an infinite number of Evolved Undead. So the chance of selecting an Evolved Undead at random from the list of all unique creatures is almost but not equal to 100%.

Summary:
It depends on what you mean by "pick a creature at random". The chance can be as low as "technically not 0%" to as high as "technically not 100%".

[unseenmage]

Part 1:
There are several infinite populations of creatures without parents. (Demons being a good example) As such they don't have inherited templates. Acquired templates require the creature to acquire them. So at any point there are an infinite number of untemplated creatures.
There is not an example of an infinite population of templated creatures.
Finite/Infinite = Infinitesimal. So the chance of randomly selecting a templated individual is almost but not equal to 0%.

Part 2:
If we exclude the infinite populations we get Finite/Finite which is undefined as of yet but is greater than Infinitesimal.

Part 3:
DMs do not take an infinite number of actions when designing their worlds. As such they only place a finite number of creatures (and import the rest). DMs are biased towards making unique entities (since they can import stock entities). Thus not only does the chance become finite, it is a higher chance than the background finite chance(part 2).

Part 4:
An undead creature can have the Evolved Undead template any number of times including 0. If we only count each unique combination (there is 1 Ghast, 1 Evolved^1 Ghast, 1 Evolved^2 Ghast, ...) then we have a finite number of untemplated creatures printed in the rule books but we have an infinite number of Evolved Undead. So the chance of selecting an Evolved Undead at random from the list of all unique creatures is almost but not equal to 100%.

Summary:
It depends on what you mean by "pick a creature at random". The chance can be as low as "technically not 0%" to as high as "technically not 100%".

Earlier we asserted that templated creatures would have to make up the minority, where the minority simply is not the majority, of a population so that the majority of creatures would still be represented by the untemplated statblocks shown in the books.

Is there a way to apply that to your work here?

-------------
Edit:

Part of that is extremely hard to quantify, though. Maybe all the phrenic gnomes are experts at pretending to be celestial gnomes. Maybe the celestial gnomes come from/related to a higher plane that gives them superficial appearance of fey (and thus mistaken for the half-fey gnomes).

So, also add social interactions and perceptions to your list of difficulty in determining stuff.

Did 3e have a detect bloodlines spell? I seem to remember something like that existing, but it might be 3rd party. Like from Book of Erotic Fantasy or Nymphology.

Quoting you I borrowed your question and asked it in both the 3.5 Q&A and PF Q&A threads, the PF thread yielded this response (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18199341&postcount=765). The answer mentions that monsters are already identifiable via the related Knowledge skill checks and also mentions the spell Hunter's Lore (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/h/hunter-s-lore) as a means to improve that chance.
There was also another response (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18199337&postcount=764) which mentioned the Blood Biography (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blood-biography) spell as well.

For 3.5 one assumes the Guidance of the Avatar (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) spell and similar would do much the same.

[OldTrees1]

Earlier we asserted that templated creatures would have to make up the minority, where the minority simply is not the majority, of a population so that the majority of creatures would still be represented by the untemplated statblocks shown in the books.

Is there a way to apply that to your work here?

Not really. There are consistent with each other but one or the other contains almost all of the information. (Which one depends on the meaning of "picking a random creature").


Let us say we are selecting a random concrete individual(rather than the abstract statblocks) from a material plane from a standard(close to normal) campaign. This already excludes the corner cases (~0% and ~100%). From your assertion we have narrowed it still further to 0%<~0%<X%<50%. (which has negligible difference from what your assertion already shows)

From here we can't continue with quantitative statements and our ordinal claims become more subjective.
For instance, I could say that in most campaigns, races tend to form almost homogeneous groups. This causes crossbreeding templates to have a lower frequency than otherwise expected.

[unseenmage]

Not really. There are consistent with each other but one or the other contains almost all of the information. (Which one depends on the meaning of "picking a random creature").


Let us say we are selecting a random concrete individual(rather than the abstract statblocks) from a material plane from a standard(close to normal) campaign. This already excludes the corner cases (~0% and ~100%). From your assertion we have narrowed it still further to 0%<~0%<X%<50%. (which has negligible difference from what your assertion already shows)

From here we can't continue with quantitative statements and our ordinal claims become more subjective.
For instance, I could say that in most campaigns, races tend to form almost homogeneous groups. This causes crossbreeding templates to have a lower frequency than otherwise expected.

Okay I apologize for my ignorance but your response is all greek to me. Any chance you could break it down again?

If it helps I think you're saying that the number of templated creatures would be negligible or all encompassing. Then we try to lean that towards the 'not the majority' side of things and the number becomes negligible. So if everybody isn't templated then no one is?
Apologies again if I'm misunderstanding.

Edit: Made me think of this bit from The Incredibles. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8I9pYCl9AQ)

[weckar]

I think to properly answer this question, only the Prime Material Plane should be considered. That should cut short any discussions about the nature of a 'typical creature' in an infinite multiverse.

[OldTrees1]

Okay I apologize for my ignorance but your response is all greek to me. Any chance you could break it down again?

If it helps I think you're saying that the number of templated creatures would be negligible or all encompassing. Then we try to lean that towards the 'not the majority' side of things and the number becomes negligible. So if everybody isn't templated then no one is?
Apologies again if I'm misunderstanding.

Edit: Made me think of this bit from The Incredibles. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8I9pYCl9AQ)

The question in the OP is very ambiguous. Depending on the context and the definitions used the answer varies from ~0% to ~100%. However you seem to be talking about a context that does not reach one of these extreme. Hence my initial post has little use from here on out. Aka my initial post is of negligible help.

For further discussion I would agree with weckar that we should stick to the creatures on the Prime Material plane, with the addendum that we are talking about concrete Prime Material planes (primes of the kind that are used in games) rather than abstract (all primes that could be used in games). This needs an example to explain.
For instance we should not be talking about the Prime Material populated with only Half Fiend Aasimars or Half Celestial Tieflings.

We could even talk about the typical Prime Material plane(in as much as there is a typical). So we should expect that Orcs and Goblins tend to not live together but Goblins and Worgs sometimes do live together.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, so here is my approach.

1.) We want templated creatures to seem "untypical" in order to preserve narrative effect in a standard setting. Thus, absent some plot device, the draconic orc is the outlier, not the typical.

2.) We should assume that most people in the setting are fairly social, fairly uneducated, and prone to the human-standard groupthink involving labels, groups, and stereotypes. Thus, even the nonhuman races are prone to such psychological and sociological tendencies, and these are the views bandied about in the books as cultural norms (e.g., that all dwarves hate all goblins, that all elves hate all orcs, that other races view all halflings as either innocently naive or criminal). Races vary a bit from the human-ish bits of these behaviors, but close enough for us to generalize and derive some probable views on groups of people.

3.) I am going to use a couple numbers of import here, using baseline Int 10 as an assumption of human norms, and extending that broadly to most of the populace. The numbers of import is seven.

4.) Seven. Seven is the average number of digits/data bits that a person can retain before data-loss occurs with predictable and reliable frequency. Basically, if one tries, a person can probably remember the Seven Dwarves, having recently been informed of their names. But if there were eight, ten, or more, then people start to drop dwarves. The same can be generalized to groups and lists. If there are seven types of templated orcs, then that is about the maximum that we can expect people to be able to grapple with. Any more, and it becomes "those orcs that are all weird," as people form mnemonics within the list that attempt to group the templates into broader groups, to lessen the amount to remember. Data-loss.

5.) So, going from this sociological view, there are unlikely to be more than seven statistically significant templates within a population. There might be more, but most people would be ignorant of their presence, and the less significant those are in representation, the more ignorance.

6.) Assume we look at 100 people/creatures from a population. We want the total templated population to number less than fifty (though I would argue it should really be less than 40, more like one-third, so that normals are twice the number of templated...availability bias). So, given seven statistically significant templates (pick the ones you like for any population), each has to number less than seven individuals in a hundred (assuming equal distribution); this is arrived at by taking the smaller half (49) and splitting it seven ways. Again, if you want to maintain the appearance of a majority, you should probable also make sure that no template group in an more prevalent template is more common than twenty in a hundred, as one-in-five is significant enough to alter the perception of the race as a whole (possibly now qualifying as a subrace, assuming they breed true).

7.) Leave a few people at the end (definitely less than 14, since that is the one-in-seven number from point #4) to represent even less statistically significant people (who should probably make up less than 5% per template, and more likely 1%, otherwise it's not really statistically insignificant). So, even given the seven more commonplace templates, there are a few people in the 100 that are outliers, having one or more very rare templates (or a rare combination of the seven common templates).

Now, a slightly contrasting approach:

1.) Templates all almost always make creatures better or different in a way that increases their mechanical oomph. Natural selection and self-selecting breeding tends to make for more species to fill more narrow niches, specialization, yadda yadda. The takeaway here is that real forces in the world make templated creatures more likely to survive and rise to positions of prominence or power.

2.) The more forces there are like this, the more pressure the population is under to evolve/drift toward coping strategies. Templates that boost stats, add SLAs, DR, or self-healing abilities dramatically improve a critter's ability to cope. These templates will spread as the weaker creatures die off, out-survived and out-competed by the templated ones.

Something to consider, anyway. Basically, distribution of templates can't really be seen to be random (clearly, inherited ones are quite the opposite of random), but propelled by larger forces in the world. Still, the OP's goal is to statistically look at prevalence, not at forces affecting distribution, so I think an analytical approach still works.

My goal in my analysis was to avoid too much maths, while also avoiding compiling master template lists and then going to every creature, checking applicability, then deciding on functional combos and chances of one popping up in a random sample. Because that would be a lot of maths.

[deuxhero]

Depends on the type.

Undead for example are nearly all templated simply because skeleton, zombie, vampire and a bunch of other stuff is templates.

[unseenmage]

Okay, I think now I know more about what I was asking now that we've discussed it some too.
When I think of a random creature I think of a creature randomly generated by encounter charts. I also imagine that there are encounter charts for every creature in every book.

I imagine too that there is a templated version of every creature in those mythical charts as well. For some, like undead, this could even be mostly true as there are so very many common undead that are templated versions of other things.

My version is far too simple though to get a "real" number as the random encounter charts tend to treat all monsters of the same CR as mostly identical insofar as how big a chance one has of encountering a CR 3 Orc over a CR 3 goblin.
Even worse, the CR 3 Goblin isn't even on those charts most of the time as Goblins beyond the norm aren't generally represented.

Complicating matters is the fact that templated creatures are usually awesome individuals rather than exemplars of a new race or demographic. Template stacked creatures should/would be even rarer from a DM standpoint, more common from an evolutionary standpoint, and more rare by a sociopsychological standpoint. Whether that given creature has been advanced via HD or class levels adds even more random.
And yeah, adding in the idea of the infinite populations mucks the whole thing up even further. I get that now.


A list with a templated version of every creature beside a class leveled version of every creature (for each class level even) beside a HD advanced version of every creature that advances so beside a mundane version of every creature would leave the "normal" creatures woefully outnumbered. So that doesn't work.

A set of lists that accounts for the idea that templated creatures have to come up less often than the mundane versions is even harder. Accounting for and including every version of every templated, template stacked, class leveled, HD advanced creature that also makes it so you generate that near infinite diversity less often than the single instance of the same creature in its mundane as found in the book form would be dauntingly impossible.
The only way I can see is with multiple d100 percentile charts that literally make you do nothing but, "Roll again to confirm; on a 01 roll again on the next confirmation chart otherwise creature is untemplated." Which seems largely useless.

So to my mind in the rubric of the d100 encounter chart that we're all so familiar with in 3.x the chance of encountering a templated creature might be decent, though less than encountering the mundane version. The chance of encountering a specific template or creature variant would be as small as possible. So to my mind the templated creature part is semi easy because of the 'there should be fewer of them than the average creature' idea, picking which template becomes the chore.

[Phelix-Mu]

So to my mind the templated creature part is semi easy because of the 'there should be fewer of them than the average creature' idea, picking which template becomes the chore.

Well, unless you really want to roll on a list of all templates (which is a hassle due to incompatibility, illegal combos, etc), then let's say it works something like this.

Step 1: Roll d1000 and compare to list of creatures in D&D and their frequency. This would be chore in and of itself, but I seem to recall that there is already a database of all monsters in 3e out there on the interwebz. Might be worth a new thread, sure someone has a link if there is such a thing. The result of this roll gives the creature that is randomly encountered.

Step 2: Roll d100, compare to list of that creature's template breakdown, using a method similar to the one I outlined (i.e., less than ten common templates, less than fifteen rare templates, but the majority of creatures, rolls 01-51, are normal). This is the challenging step as this table will be highly varied by creature, and possibly also by setting/campaign/op-level.

Step 3: On result of 100 on the previous roll, roll again on second table to represent extremely rare results, such as double templated individuals, creatures with other unusual mechanics (like dragonborn or something), grafts, etc.

So, to illustrate Step 2, let's take orcs. Again, just an example, so I am going to be a bit arbitrary.

Common Templates: Each of these likely numbers between 3-15% of the population, but they can't total to be more than half (or more than a third if you want a supermajority of the critters to be normal).
Draconic
Fiendish
Half-Ogre
Half-Troll
Sharakim (not a template)
Grey Orc (not a template)
Orog (not a template)
Ogrillon (not a template)
Rare Templates (maybe this is roll again on new table, see below)

I included non-templated stuff because those specific creatures interact with the overall orc population in a manner not unlike the templated ones.

Rare Templates: None of these should make up more than 1-2% of the population, so there might need to be a step 2.5 with a rare template table. Altogether, they probably shouldn't be more than 10-15% of the population, if that.
Winged
Half-fiend
Celestial
Anarchic
Aximatic
Half-dragon
Pseudonatural
Etc.

I'd avoid all of this for less natural stuff that is usually crafted/created/spawned/evolved, because those numbers are very hard to imagine due to no solid math governing their breakdown. Basically, the number of templated skeletons is arbitrary based on the desires of whoever is making most of the skeletons out there (and also DM fiatted cases of spontaneous animation due to hauntings/NEnergy manifestations). Similarly, prevalence of vampirism within a population operates largely unknown, and thus has to be extremely rare (unless the setting calls for otherwise) despite the fact that vampires mechanically should probably reproduce almost without limit (at the very least generating huge amounts of spawn), because there is basically nothing stopping them from doing so, so powerful is the template. Well-organized vampires could rule a whole society from behind the curtains, and their prevalence would be hard to determine beyond their own wishes to be more plentiful or more rare.

[unseenmage]

Thanks everyone for helping me to wrap my brain around this idea. With infinite and even nigh infinite planes the number of templated creatures should be immense. And it becomes moreso the farther from those ideal "average" populations the DM or plot or adventure takes you. Very cool thread.

For now, in the thread which inspired this question, on my charts over in this thread of randomly templated animals and vermin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?372681-How-do-template-stacked-Animals-compare-to-more-common-corpses-for-necromancy) the chances that something is templated is 99/100 and the chance that it is template stacked is 2/100. Which works for now.
Can't seem to get my charts to explode with the "roll again"s like the random magic weapon charts always seemed to back in the day. Oh well.

[OldTrees1]

Thanks everyone for helping me to wrap my brain around this idea. With infinite and even nigh infinite planes the number of templated creatures should be immense. And it becomes moreso the farther from those ideal "average" populations the DM or plot or adventure takes you. Very cool thread.

For now, in the thread which inspired this question, on my charts over in this thread of randomly templated animals and vermin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?372681-How-do-template-stacked-Animals-compare-to-more-common-corpses-for-necromancy) the chances that something is templated is 99/100 and the chance that it is template stacked is 2/100. Which works for now.
Can't seem to get my charts to explode with the "roll again"s like the random magic weapon charts always seemed to back in the day. Oh well.

Um, that is the reversed conclusion.
The infinite and nigh infinite planes have an immense number of templated creatures but an infinite number of non templated creatures. The template rate increases the closer you are to the DM/plot.

[Anlashok]

Um, that is the reversed conclusion.
The infinite and nigh infinite planes have an immense number of templated creatures but an infinite number of non templated creatures. The template rate increases the closer you are to the DM/plot.

if 3% of all demons get exposed to something that grants them a template in their lifetime that's still an infinite number of templated creatures.

[OldTrees1]

if 3% of all demons get exposed to something that grants them a template in their lifetime that's still an infinite number of templated creatures.

What is going to expose an infinite area at a finite average incident rate? No. It is more likely the per template exposure rate is infinitesimal(on average) per demon.