Talent Bottlenecks in DnD 3.5

[Schattenbach]

Hello,

I'm wondering about what levels would be considered typical bottlenecks at which mundane people (as well as casters) usually have an hard time (if their potential is actually high enough to allow them progress further in the first place, that is) to pass (if they don't manage to do that through EXP grinding as adventurer, so lets talk about non-adventurer here) somehow one way or other.

Has someone some idea in regard to that?

[ZamielVanWeber]

In 3.5 I tend to see the opposite. Spikes where getting up in levels in easier. The builds that tend to grind down a bit are some fish builds where you don't see the culmination of your work until level 14+

[Fizban]

I think you're talking about NPC levels here: NPC levels are controlled by the DM, NPCs do not gain experience or level up, they simply are whatever level the DM wants them to be. DMG p138-139 gives how to roll a standard array of NPCs for a town and what level they are, not counting any extra you choose to add. But we can explain it from their perspective as if they were leveling up:

We can infer from the town generation rules that most people never pass 1st level in NPC classes. PC-classed NPCs fare a bit better, but flow downward from one high level to more and more lower. This can be explained in-universe by the fact that anyone who wants to hire a specialist wants to hire the best: whoever's highest level has the most chances to do the most rewarding jobs and gain xp so their level is only limited by the size of the city, bigger city= more and better jobs= higher level guy at the top. Then there's a couple runners up who get some jobs but even put together they don't get as much attention as the top guy, so they're both only half his level. And so on down to the pile of level 1s.

[Karl Aegis]

Most casters don't get their next level of spells until they can get an ability score boost or a magic item.

[Particle_Man]

Also there is a bit of a bottleneck for cohorts under the leadership feat. No matter how astoundingly high the leader's charisma score is, the cohort has to be at least 2 levels below that leader.

Other than that, a logical bottleneck is level 20 as after that you use Epic rules, which are a whole different kettle of fish (assuming the DM even wants to bother with mega-high level play.

In practical terms, a lot of parties I am in tend to tpk around levels 3 - 5, FWIW. ;)

[Coidzor]

I tend towards having worlds where most of the population is in E6 land, a smaller portion are operating within E10, a small portion can make it all the way to level 16, an even smaller portion can make it to level 20 but can't progress into Epic levels through experience alone, and then a minuscule number of people are Epic, as in there's about as many of them as there are proper deities, sometimes fewer.