What would be the safest, not-cheesy way to level grind in a sand-box like setting?

[Samael Morgenst]

Thought experiment not meant to be used in a real session.

Suppose you had to make your character grow in experience, levels and - possibly - wealth and power, while minimizing risks as much as possible.

The setting is a procedurally generated sandbox-like world (think about Dwarf Fortress) very similar or identical to core Dungeons and Dragons edition 3.5.

One of the assumption is to avoid blatant cheese, which is subjective, but I trust into the users common sense.

The idea is to use tactics that a character living in that world (a character, not a player) would be able to conceptualize and enact.

For example, a character could plausibly use the Craft or Profession skill for many months, or even some years, to earn money and equip himself better than a standard level 1 character. He could think about raising and training war dogs (which are fairly strong at low levels) to help him in hunting bandits, goblins, or wild boars.

He would NOT think about doing the Thought Bottle / Lycantrophy tricks. Unless he's an high level spellcaster (or mabye a middle level Bard) he would not even know what a Thought Bottle is.

He MAY think about using the Sacrifice / Liquid Pain / soul harvesting methods listed in the Book of the Vile Darkness, if he's Evil aligned and fairly knowledgeable (most evil clerics and fiend worshipper probably does so to a certain extent).


To level grind in relative safety, the first factor is - obviously - to take into account the Challenge Rating of the encounter.
But there is another factor as much important or even more, and is the encounter *predictability*.

Let me make an example. The average wild boar is a CR 2. He's quite strong, but it's a straightforward opponent. He's not stupid but, beside attacking in an impredictable way, there isn't much tactic in his behavior. There aren't many variables.

A goblin is instead, on average , a CR 1/3. It means it takes five or six goblins to match a boar , in a direct fight.
Yet hunting goblins is significantly more dangerous and unpredictable than hunting boars.
Goblins have human-like intelligence. Actually, somewhat below human average, but still sapient.

Therefore:

1. An animal specimen can be larger and stronger (more Hit Dice, larger size), but beside being stronger, it's the same encounter. He'll fight the same way. Intelligent beings instead can have class levels, and vary not only in raw power but also in the kind of danger they pose.

An advanced boar is just a larger, stronger boar. An advanced goblin may be a furtive Rogue, a fierce Barbarian or a crafty Sorcerer.

2. Also, you can immediately notice if an animal specimen is stronger than average: he's larger and looks meaner. A goblin (or orc, or hobgoblin, or koblold) with class levels can look exactly the same as anyone else.

3. Animals are either loners or cooperate only with their same specie (like wolves or lions packs). A goblin can belong to a tribe including orcs or ogres, or he way ride a worg.

4. Animals can be smart in their own way, but they have more or less predictable behavioral patterns. Sapient beings are inherently unpredictable (to a certain extent).


For these reason, personally I would heavily rely on hunting. It's relatively predictable and, in most territories, more or less legal too.

---


Anyhow, how would you proceed? Any idea or insight would be welcome.

[Tohron]

The problem is, it's a bit up to DM interpretation which things actually give XP. For instance, does a character get XP for scrying an area with monsters, teleporting summons over to the location, then watching them kill the monsters? If not, does having a way to remotely give them orders change that?

For lower-level tactics, does a character get full XP for setting up a remote-activated, high damage mechanical trap with bait, then activating it from a hidden location? A level 3 Artificer can make an at-will Arcane Eye item, so they wouldn't even need line-of-sight at that point.

[Samael Morgenst]

It's a sandbox autonomous world without DM.

Experience Points are assigned by an artificial-intelligence-like algorhytms following guidelines as closely resembling those of core d&d 3.5 as possible.



The problem is, it's a bit up to DM interpretation which things actually give XP. For instance, does a character get XP for scrying an area with monsters, teleporting summons over to the location, then watching them kill the monsters? If not, does having a way to remotely give them orders change that?

For lower-level tactics, does a character get full XP for setting up a remote-activated, high damage mechanical trap with bait, then activating it from a hidden location? A level 3 Artificer can make an at-will Arcane Eye item, so they wouldn't even need line-of-sight at that point.


Let's say that is up to your (the user's writing) perception of what constitutes "cheese".

Personally, I would prefer that the character was at least present during the hunt / battle, even if not necessarily involved in first person.

Even better, using traps / summons / trained animals to weaken the kill, but take it down himself.

[RNightstalker]

The closest thing to "cheese" and having predictable outcomes is to consistently go against lower CR creatures. An 8th level character still gets 200 experience points for a CR1 encounter. Grind that out 45 times and that character is now 9th level. That now 9th level character can now go after a CR2 encounter only 40 times to become 10th level, and after that 40 encounters for a CR 7 levels below character level will net the character a new level.

[Tohron]

Another somewhat-cheesy method for finding opponents to fight is making auto-resetting Summon Monster traps designed to created universally-hostile summons. A SMII trap has a base craft cost of 3,000 gp, a SMV trap for 22,500 gp, or a SMIX trap for 76,500 gp. Combine with a Cure Light Wounds trap to heal between fights, and one could accumulate XP rather quickly.

For a less artificial source of regular opponents, a higher-level individual could scry for a layer of the Abyss where the denizens are not too smart, then equip themselves specifically for those enemies and draw them in to a prepared killing field (Fabricate and bags of holding can do a lot, if you have Craft(trapsmithing)). At lower levels, finding an area with lots of dumb monsters and getting their attention to draw them into a prepared killing field could also work well, though you'd need to be more wary of stronger (or flying/burrowing) monsters getting past your traps.

[Maat Mons]

There's nothing in particular saying a fight need to be "to the death" to grant xp. Just fight some other people with the understanding that you're not going to kill each other. This is how people get better at fighting in real life.

[Quertus]

Step 1 - find someone smarter & more knowledgeable (ie, higher level) than me to talk to.

Such a person exists?

Step 2 - take what they tell me (thought bottles, contracting lycanthropy, whatever) under advisement.

Such a person does not exist?

Step 2b - contemplate the nature of the world, how it was apparently procedural-generated with nothing but scrubs, break 4th wall.

Does breaking the 4th wall allow me to ascend to godhood? Yes?

Step 3 - am now a deity, mission successful.

No?

Step 3b - use broken 4th wall to take better ideas (thought bottles, contracting lycanthropy, whatever) under advisement.

So, looks like, in character, we'll be a deity, or we'll have these better ideas to use. Now that that's settled, what do we do?

Craft for money, breed toads (or overcome non-damaging traps) for XP? Breed and sacrifice goblins for Dark Craft funds / Dark Craft XP, and regular XP?

Level a couple times, get the Necropolitan template, spend a few million years crafting and sacrificing until you've maxed out your bling?

Then fight some non-sentient undead (simple zombies, probably) to gain levels, until they're no longer worth XP?

Then fight some larger zombies, until they're no longer worth XP?

Repeat with mindless foes who cannot out-think you and cannot out-run / catch you, until you run out of opportunities to guarantee not-death.

Part of the problem is ensuring that you encounter the things you want to fight, and only encounter those things. Thus, XP farms of breeding toads, or of non-damaging traps, are optimal. Really, you want something more like "sentient mushrooms" or "sentient snails" rather than goblins to sacrifice - something that has no way of ever harming you.

Also, you really want someone higher level creating and facilitating and administering all this, to keep things running smoothly. They can be in charge of creating the harmless sentient sacrifice race, finding or creating lycanthropes, whatever.

Because, in character, realistically? If all you've got is you, who knows what's out in the scary woods (or other nearby terrain feature) that might kill you? At level 1, realistic random encounters should prove quite fatal in most randomly-generated areas. So if there's no one knowledgeable (high level) to ask, the safest things to kill are your fellow villagers and yourself.

[Unoriginal]

If this world is as close to 3.5 as possible, then the answer is simple:

Step 1: Find a portal to Ysgard

Step 2: adventure in Ysgard to your heart's content, knowing that if you die there you just come back in the morning with no inconvenient.


You may require investing points in Knowledge (The Planes) in order to know that's how Ysgard work, and to know where to find a portal, but once this is done it's smooth sailing.

[Crake]

XP is gained for overcoming challenges, not killing things.

Just like in the real world, the best way to level up in dnd, is set yourself a realistic, but challenging goal, and achieve it. Then set the next one, and achieve that, and so on. That's literally all it takes, but most people are satisfied with the status quo, which is why most people are level 1 commoners.

[Quertus]

XP is gained for overcoming challenges, not killing things.

Just like in the real world, the best way to level up in dnd, is set yourself a realistic, but challenging goal, and achieve it. Then set the next one, and achieve that, and so on. That's literally all it takes, but most people are satisfied with the status quo, which is why most people are level 1 commoners.

Eh, as long as we're splitting linguistic hairs, "overcoming challenges" and "achieving goals" aren't exactly synonyms, either. Even most goalless couch potatoes overcome challenges, sometimes on the daily. So, yes, re-framing things as "challenges" is, indeed, the easiest way to gain levels safely in nearly any scenario.

[yeetusmcgeetus]

Trolls. An adventurer would probably know that trolls regenerate, and specifically that cutting a troll in half makes two trolls. Cut a troll in half, wait for it to regrow into two, then kill and burn 1 of them for xp. Repeat. Only works until your ECL gets high enough for trolls to stop giving XP, but it's certainly a nice boost. Also definitely could be conceptualized, assuming the character knows both how trolls work and how XP works. The first is reasonable, and the second is implied by the question.

You may get XP just for cutting the troll in half, as that does knock it out and "defeat" it, but burning one of them makes it absolutely certain

[Samael Morgenst]

XP is gained for overcoming challenges, not killing things.

Then why when you kill someone you feel that sudden surge of elation and sense of power?





Just like in the real world, the best way to level up in dnd, is set yourself a realistic, but challenging goal, and achieve it. Then set the next one, and achieve that, and so on. That's literally all it takes, but most people are satisfied with the status quo, which is why most people are level 1 commoners.


I read something like "most people never go beyond the 2nd or 3rd level in their lives". I think that most people are indeed level 1 commoner in a standard medieval-like setting because they are young, and the average lifespan is limited. Opportunities for learning were limited too, albeit commoners developed indeed many pratical skills.

Most humans would probably be level 2 when and if they reach the age of 35 to 40, and level 3 by their old age.

[Crake]

Eh, as long as we're splitting linguistic hairs, "overcoming challenges" and "achieving goals" aren't exactly synonyms, either. Even most goalless couch potatoes overcome challenges, sometimes on the daily. So, yes, re-framing things as "challenges" is, indeed, the easiest way to gain levels safely in nearly any scenario.

Hence why I included the adjective "challenging" before the noun "goal". You make it a challenging goal, then it would necessitate overcoming challenges as being a part of the achieveing of goals.

Also, it's the DM that determines whether something was in fact a challenge, not the player or character. Just because you wanna say "getting off the couch was challenging", doesn't actually make it so.


Then why when you kill someone you feel that sudden surge of elation and sense of power?

You would only feel that when the killing was a part of overcoming some sort of challenge, just as you would equally feel it when overcoming any challenge, killing or not. The DMG explicitly states that sneaking past a minotaur guarding treasure is worth equally as much xp as killing said minotaur. "Getting the treasure" was the goal of challenge, not "killing the minotaur".

[Samael Morgenst]

Quote Originally Posted by Samael Morgenst View Post
Then why when you kill someone you feel that sudden surge of elation and sense of power?
You would only feel that when the killing was a part of overcoming some sort of challenge, just as you would equally feel it when overcoming any challenge, killing or not. The DMG explicitly states that sneaking past a minotaur guarding treasure is worth equally as much xp as killing said minotaur. "Getting the treasure" was the goal of challenge, not "killing the minotaur".

It was meant to be a creepy joke :smallbiggrin:


Seriously speaking...

I meant something that could at least approach a credible tale.

For example. This is the "basic background" I came up with.

Character is a Commoner untill he reaches the age of reason/adulthood (let's say 15). Then he does his five years of training and becomes a Fighter.

The Player's Handbook says at page 37:


Fighters come to their profession in many ways. Most have had formal training in a noble’s army or at least in the local militia. Some have trained in formal academies. Others are self-taught—unpolished but well tested. A fighter may have taken up the sword as a way to escape the limits of life on the farm, or he may be following a proud family tradition

More or less, mabye along with Rogue, the Fighter is the class more accessible to a not predestinated, common person hailing from an humble background (aka the majority of people).
So that commoner enrolls in the local militia and spends all his free time training relentlessly to raise above his humble station.

I would say he might spend some years saving each coin he can (living in a makeshift shelter, hunting and foraging for sustenance; 1 rank in Wilderness Lore, even as cross class ability, is enough if the terrain is good) and doing some Profession or Craft work. For plausiblity, I would go for Craft - trapmaking and/or Profession - hunter.

So he trades in fur and game, saves money - 7 or 8 gp per week according to core skill rules, minus 3 gp/month for basic sustenance, it makes more or less 300 gp per year. If he has enough skillpoints he can even craft himself some masterwork equipment (4 ranks, take 10, masterwork tools, a semiskilled assistant, a good Int score, and you can reasonably reach the DC 20 at level 1) to save money; else he can buy it.

Uses the Handle Animal skills, raises a small pack of bloodhounds (riding dogs), mabye even War Dogs if he can reach the DC (with a skill focus feat), and with an investment of time of a couple years he can be assisted by four sturdy CR 2 companions.


At this point he can legally and more or less safely "level grind" hunting animals. With masterwork equipment and 4 war dogs, it's a manageable risk. He starts with foxes, weasles, badgers and deers (Challenge Rating 1/4), then the slightly more challenging muflons and wild goats (CR 1/2), followed by lynxes and wolves (CR 1), and finally - once experienced enough - the big game: black bears and wild boars (CR 2).

So the progression is, more or less:

1. small game (CR 1/8) -> level 3
2. foxes, weasles, badgers, deers (CR 1/4) -> level 5
3. muflons, wild goats (CR 1/2) -> level 7
3. lynxes, wolves (CR 1) -> level 9
4. wild boars, black bears (CR 2) -> level 10


---

Now, what I've described is a progression/story that attempts to remain into pseudo-realistic limits and avoid cheese. The fauna / game I've listed is what can plausibly found more or less in any simil-european environment - I tried to not rely on implausible circumstances.

To level grind further is difficult but... well, that's why I'm open to ideas.

[Crake]

It was meant to be a creepy joke :smallbiggrin:


Seriously speaking...

I meant something that could at least approach a credible tale.

For example. This is the "basic background" I came up with.

Character is a Commoner untill he reaches the age of reason/adulthood (let's say 15). Then he does his five years of training and becomes a Fighter.

The Player's Handbook says at page 37:



More or less, mabye along with Rogue, the Fighter is the class more accessible to a not predestinated, common person hailing from an humble background (aka the majority of people).
So that commoner enrolls in the local militia and spends all his free time training relentlessly to raise above his humble station.

I would say he might spend some years saving each coin he can (living in a makeshift shelter, hunting and foraging for sustenance; 1 rank in Wilderness Lore, even as cross class ability, is enough if the terrain is good) and doing some Profession or Craft work. For plausiblity, I would go for Craft - trapmaking and/or Profession - hunter.

So he trades in fur and game, saves money - 7 or 8 gp per week according to core skill rules, minus 3 gp/month for basic sustenance, it makes more or less 300 gp per year. If he has enough skillpoints he can even craft himself some masterwork equipment (4 ranks, take 10, masterwork tools, a semiskilled assistant, a good Int score, and you can reasonably reach the DC 20 at level 1) to save money; else he can buy it.

Uses the Handle Animal skills, raises a small pack of bloodhounds (riding dogs), mabye even War Dogs if he can reach the DC (with a skill focus feat), and with an investment of time of a couple years he can be assisted by four sturdy CR 2 companions.


At this point he can legally and more or less safely "level grind" hunting animals. With masterwork equipment and 4 war dogs, it's a manageable risk. He starts with foxes, weasles, badgers and deers (Challenge Rating 1/4), then the slightly more challenging muflons and wild goats (CR 1/2), followed by lynxes and wolves (CR 1), and finally - once experienced enough - the big game: black bears and wild boars (CR 2).

So the progression is, more or less:

1. small game (CR 1/8) -> level 3
2. foxes, weasles, badgers, deers (CR 1/4) -> level 5
3. muflons, wild goats (CR 1/2) -> level 7
3. lynxes, wolves (CR 1) -> level 9
4. wild boars, black bears (CR 2) -> level 10


---

Now, what I've described is a progression/story that attempts to remain into pseudo-realistic limits and avoid cheese. The fauna / game I've listed is what can plausibly found more or less in any simil-european environment - I tried to not rely on implausible circumstances.

To level grind further is difficult but... well, that's why I'm open to ideas.

This is just gamifying the world and taking away from it's verisimilitude.

Hunting for the sake of hunting also isn't overcoming a challenge, especially if you're killing routine creatures like that. It's more appropriate to represent it as a profession or survival check.

Put it this way: rats are CR1/8th, by your logic every rat catcher would be level 3 in about a week. But they aren't. Because rat catching is just a profession check, its not an encounter, and it's not overcoming a challenging goal.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Trolls. An adventurer would probably know that trolls regenerate, and specifically that cutting a troll in half makes two trolls. Cut a troll in half, wait for it to regrow into two, then kill and burn 1 of them for xp. Repeat. Only works until your ECL gets high enough for trolls to stop giving XP, but it's certainly a nice boost. Also definitely could be conceptualized, assuming the character knows both how trolls work and how XP works. The first is reasonable, and the second is implied by the question.

You may get XP just for cutting the troll in half, as that does knock it out and "defeat" it, but burning one of them makes it absolutely certain

Sorry, that's not how trolls work in D&D. Only the largest still living bit regenerates. The rest of the body still lives for a while, but all it does is try to rejoin with the main body and dies in a day if it cannot. From the 2e Monstrous Manual : "If a troll is dismembered and scattered, the largest surviving piece regenerates. The others die within one day if they cannot rejoin that piece.". It would be pretty weird to have trolls undergoing mitosis in a world where souls exist. Where would the other soul come from?

[Samael Morgenst]

This is just gamifying the world and taking away from it's verisimilitude.

I don't understand. Isn't to gamify the world precisely what roleplay games are about?Take into account english is not my native language. If you please can explain that point.




Hunting for the sake of hunting also isn't overcoming a challenge, especially if you're killing routine creatures like that. It's more appropriate to represent it as a profession or survival check.

Put it this way: rats are CR1/8th, by your logic every rat catcher would be level 3 in about a week. But they aren't. Because rat catching is just a profession check, its not an encounter, and it's not overcoming a challenging goal.

Hunting for sustenance and gain (to trade in pelts and furs) is challenging indeed. Hunting lynxes or foxes is more challenging than hunting small game, and hunting boars is even more difficult.


About rats. If we are talking about mices or ordinary pests , yes.
If we are talking about 20 cm rats that can take off a pinky with a bite and are so aggressive that attack cats (they exist) then I find appropriate for a rat catcher to be level 2 or 3 if he's experienced.

If they are the rats of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (the PS2 game), well...

[Crake]

I don't understand. Isn't to gamify the world precisely what roleplay games are about?Take into account english is not my native language. If you please can explain that point.

No, we usually are seeking to simulate a world. The game rules are used to simplify that simulation process, because we aren't gods capable of simulating worlds down to the last atom, so we reduce things down to a game system that is easily understandable and playable.

With the exception of the isekai genre, where characters are aware of the "game mechanics" of the world they're in, most people don't want to include the discreet nature of "levels", or encounters granting specific xp values needed to atain said levels as actual diagetic experiences of characters in their setting.

[RNightstalker]

Hunting for sustenance and gain (to trade in pelts and furs) is challenging indeed. Hunting lynxes or foxes is more challenging than hunting small game, and hunting boars is even more difficult.

If they are the rats of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (the PS2 game), well...

Hunting isn't an encounter, it's a survival skill check. But that being said, Dark Alliance does not get the love it deserves.

[Crake]

Hunting isn't an encounter, it's a survival skill check.

Or a profession check, if you're seeking to make money off the venture. In any case, agreed, not xp worthy.

Now, of course, you might run into encounters in the woods, where a creature might be looking to hunt YOU, and THAT might give you some xp (challenge unlocked: don't let the wolves/bear/mountain lion eat you), but simply the act of going out and hunting would not.

[Samael Morgenst]

I didn't wrote or imply that the character (not the player) is fully conscious of the rule mechanics or the Experience Points concept, but it is reasonable to assume that almost any character is able understand training, practice, experimentation and improving through direct experience.

Hunting as a test of prowess , beside that as a means for sustenance, was done by more or less all cultures with a martial streak. Deliberately hunting boars, specifically, and doing so during mating season when they are more aggressive to bot, also has historical precedents.

[Gnaeus]

No, we usually are seeking to simulate a world. The game rules are used to simplify that simulation process, because we aren't gods capable of simulating worlds down to the last atom, so we reduce things down to a game system that is easily understandable and playable.

With the exception of the isekai genre, where characters are aware of the "game mechanics" of the world they're in, most people don't want to include the discreet nature of "levels", or encounters granting specific xp values needed to atain said levels as actual diagetic experiences of characters in their setting.

Splitting hairs. I think that would be the LitRPG genre. Isekai tends to refer to the mechanic in which you die and reincarnate or are otherwise transfered into another (usually fantasy) world. There is overlap. Isekai may or may not have levels, exp, etc.

Whether we are seeking to simulate or gamify a world is less of a distinction than a spectrum. Personally, I'm not fond of starfinder's ship system (in which your party's ship is based on character level) or 5e's NPC system (they don't play by the same rules as PCs) because to me, they are overly gamist. But I wouldn't have any issue with a player saying "you get stronger by overcoming challenging monsters, but the challenge must be meaningful" or "a wand of cure moderate wounds costs 4500gp because it is a spell of the second level of complexity." Even, with appropriate knowledge "the sleep spell is effective against basic monsters, but fails at about the same level of power at which clerics and wizards get spells of the third level of complexity, or at which a fighter is no longer debilitated by dragonfear". I would not expect a typical PC to say "YES, thats 35 exp!" But I would expect that an artificer might have a pretty good idea how much life energy he needs to make that next wand of CLW and possibly even units of measurement for that, so they can know how much to charge, or pay for someone else providing said lifeforce. I don't see any reason why something like a wizard school that has had tens of thousands of graduates for centuries wouldn't be able to tell you exactly which spells were appropriate for a caster of what levels, or even have level stand-ins, like "you have to know and cast 2 spells of this grade to be an initiate of the third order, which gets you a second stripe on your robe and lets you eat at the dining hall in the tower of mysteries."

In Eberron, or XCrawl, I would expect you could get a book describing the order in which classes get abilities, as those are industrialized magitech societies, and in XCrawl in particular I would expect particular in character knowledge about power levels, because you can't get into amateur level crawls if you demonstrate the following powers, and there is absolutely an NPC nerd glued to his screen with a spreadsheet calculating your character's hits against a hobgoblin in chainmail like a football fan charting yards thrown or interceptions, and he is dead on ready to say "ACTUALLY, a typical rank 2 sorcerer will know 2 spells of the first order and be able to cast 5 times in a crawl!" It would be more reality breaking if he couldn't do that.

[Quertus]

So, let’s take a step back, and look at the factors we’re considering:

Level / XP

Wealth

Safety

Cheese / challenge / ability to function under different interpretations

Legality

Likelihood of success

Likelihood of complications

Repeatability

Limited knowledge

“In character”

Anything missing from that list?

Now, let me start with that last one.

In character, Limited knowledge

This one’s rather odd. If I tell my 0-level 5-year-old advisor about Thought Bottles and Lycanthropes, then it’s in character for them to know about such things. And some classes (like Wizard) involve extensive training under some usually quite knowledgeable people. So artificial knowledge limits are just that: artificial. Unless we’re playing Adam and Eve (dibs on… eh, never mind) or something similar, I’m gonna just ignore the artificial knowledge limits.

In character, gain levels / XP

Here’s where we actually start having problems. Find yourself a 5-year-old advisor who’s never heard of D&D or video games or levels, and ask them how one might hone their craft. If one is a Ranger / woodsman type, then hunting for furry animals to eat and skin might well be an answer your get. But a Wizard? Read books, study, maybe even invent spells or craft magic items. Cleric? Pray. Pray lots. Maybe give sermons, or tend to the sick. (Good luck explaining an evil priest to a 5-year-old… outside… never mind).

Point is, unless the world is a lot more “genre savvy” than most, you’re not going to be able to level, in character, in most classes - and, in fact, may well *lose* XP attempting to hone your craft.

Gain XP, Challenge (and RP)

If I take the flaw… name… uh… the one that says you need to make a DC 15 Will save to harm animals… suddenly, it’s a lot harder and more challenging to kill animals. So, by Challenge logic, setting the goal of “kill animals” is a challenging goal for the character, and they’ve got to overcome the challenge of “I don’t like killing animals” in addition to the actual challenge involved in killing the animal, so they would earn *more* XP for killing animals than the average hunter - significantly more for low CR threats like bats 🦇 or foxes 🦊. And this is especially important if the world is more Simulationist than Gamist, if the local wildlife is finite rather than simply being random encounters and/or challenges with set DCs to locate specific types of wildlife (more XP!).

Yet, in character, one would expect someone who loved animals so much they couldn’t bring themselves to harm them to, you know, maybe *not* be out killing them?

Repeatability

I mentioned this up above, but “are creatures finite?” is an important question for this challenge. It’s why people talk about “toad farms” rather than just random encounters at toad and fish lake in this kind of scenario.

And, unless the world is *super* genre-savvy, in character, one wouldn’t expect… oh, wait, people are idiots. Yeah, it could go either way as to whether, in character, a character would even consider stripping / wiping out the local wildlife.

This is getting long; I’ll stop here for now.

[Vahnavoi]

It's been a while since I did an equivalent thought exercise, but one of the better ways is to get to high enough level by fighting lower-CR enemies, then build a CR2 resetting magical trap. Right combination of character traits and trap (for example, resist energy spell versus burning hands trap) allows the trap to be repeated daily as a challenge of its own some number of times. This can be used (with NPC adept to cast the requisite spell) to get a new Level 1 character up to level 7 or 8 in three or four months, I've forgotten the exact formula.

The hardest part is getting to the position to make the trap, since a brand new Level 1 character 1) has no ability to guarantee sufficient numbers of lower-CR enemies and 2) no ability to guarantee access to the right materials. A sandbox actually populated according to 3rd edition guidelines is not a friendly place. Actually pulling the strategy off requires careful scouting in low-level areas, hoping you won't stumble to significantly out-of-depth monsters which, according to encounter guidelines, make up 15% of total encounters, with 5% of total encounters being so much above you that you are not considered to have a chance against them & won't even gain experience for defeating them.

Fundamentally, no genuine complete strategy for this early part can be devised without knowing where in the sandbox a character starts, the available populations of nearby monsters, etc.. A similar caveat applies to continuously making Craft or Profession checks to increase available funds. The skill check rules only tell you how much money you get for a period of time, they do not prevent other events in that period of time! If there's a goblin warband planning to attack the settlement you're in during next week, guess what that's going to do to your plan to grind money this way. An alternative but equally frightening option is that all the enemies take the same time to raise funds, make equipment, etc.., and since enemies typically outnumber you, they will gain a larger advantage by doing this than you. Wasting huge amount of time doing low-efficiency work is not safe in a dynamic world.

[Crake]

Splitting hairs. I think that would be the LitRPG genre. Isekai tends to refer to the mechanic in which you die and reincarnate or are otherwise transfered into another (usually fantasy) world. There is overlap. Isekai may or may not have levels, exp, etc.

You're correct, but it is a fairly common trope within the isekai genre, and I would hazard a guess that more people are familiar with the term isekai.


Whether we are seeking to simulate or gamify a world is less of a distinction than a spectrum. Personally, I'm not fond of starfinder's ship system (in which your party's ship is based on character level) or 5e's NPC system (they don't play by the same rules as PCs) because to me, they are overly gamist. But I wouldn't have any issue with a player saying "you get stronger by overcoming challenging monsters, but the challenge must be meaningful" or "a wand of cure moderate wounds costs 4500gp because it is a spell of the second level of complexity." Even, with appropriate knowledge "the sleep spell is effective against basic monsters, but fails at about the same level of power at which clerics and wizards get spells of the third level of complexity, or at which a fighter is no longer debilitated by dragonfear". I would not expect a typical PC to say "YES, thats 35 exp!" But I would expect that an artificer might have a pretty good idea how much life energy he needs to make that next wand of CLW and possibly even units of measurement for that, so they can know how much to charge, or pay for someone else providing said lifeforce. I don't see any reason why something like a wizard school that has had tens of thousands of graduates for centuries wouldn't be able to tell you exactly which spells were appropriate for a caster of what levels, or even have level stand-ins, like "you have to know and cast 2 spells of this grade to be an initiate of the third order, which gets you a second stripe on your robe and lets you eat at the dining hall in the tower of mysteries."

In Eberron, or XCrawl, I would expect you could get a book describing the order in which classes get abilities, as those are industrialized magitech societies, and in XCrawl in particular I would expect particular in character knowledge about power levels, because you can't get into amateur level crawls if you demonstrate the following powers, and there is absolutely an NPC nerd glued to his screen with a spreadsheet calculating your character's hits against a hobgoblin in chainmail like a football fan charting yards thrown or interceptions, and he is dead on ready to say "ACTUALLY, a typical rank 2 sorcerer will know 2 spells of the first order and be able to cast 5 times in a crawl!" It would be more reality breaking if he couldn't do that.

The thing about all this is that many of those things are quantifyable in game. Even xp is quantifyable as a sort of life force/energy of a kind, though it's discreet quantities are about as diagetic as the discreet nature of hit points. I think it would probably be a bit more accurate to describe it as how much effort you are willing to put into simulationism, rather than whether your goal is simulationism. I'm sure there are some who seek to play ttrpgs for the gamification of it, but I think generally those players would be more attracted to computer games, or wargames, as gamification, and mechanics are much more core to those genres of games.

3.5 does of course, have the complexity to attract those seeking to gamify, but I think that isn't a positive thing in many people's eyes, as tey tend to see 3.5 as the "munchkin system for power gamers" which has driven so many people away from it.

[Endarire]

There is or was a PC Roguelike game called Incursion based on OGL 3.5ish rules. Early-game level grinding was encouraged, and level squatting (that is, not leveling ASAP but getting enough EXP to level once or almost twice more) was sometimes encouraged to ensure faster EXP growth.

In this game, I primarily played a Druid who shapeshifted and cast spells. Food was a concern, but corpses provided plenty of food. Sometimes, something too powerful spawned, which meant game over, but barricading doors was useful for recovery. At some point, early-game grinding was too much of a pain or it simply didn't give EXP, meaning I was encouraged to leave this loop and explore the world and play the game.

Thankee!

[Maat Mons]

The nice thing about Pathfinder is that you're never too high a level to gain xp from rats.

In 3.5, you can take the Wild Cohort feat and send your oversized rat terrier riding dog into all the town's rodent infested basements. If it dies, you get another one for free. If it kills some rats, you get xp. You don't even need to go into the basements yourself.




Then why when you kill someone you feel that sudden surge of elation and sense of power?

It's called "The Quickening."




Sorry, that's not how trolls work in D&D.

It is, however, how some types of ooze work. If you can lure the right kind of ooze into a pit you've prepared ahead of time, you can keep splitting it and killing the copy.

[Samael Morgenst]

In character, Limited knowledge

This one’s rather odd. If I tell my 0-level 5-year-old advisor about Thought Bottles and Lycanthropes, then it’s in character for them to know about such things. And some classes (like Wizard) involve extensive training under some usually quite knowledgeable people. So artificial knowledge limits are just that: artificial. Unless we’re playing Adam and Eve (dibs on… eh, never mind) or something similar, I’m gonna just ignore the artificial knowledge limits.


Realistically speaking, most people would not know much of the world in a setting that predates modern information system.
But a fairly wise character can "know he don't know" and do something about.
For example, the fighter/hunter I described before could spend some years studing as an oblate in a monastery and take a level of Cloistered Cleric (access to all Knowledge skills and the Lore Ex ability, that works as bardic knowledge).

But I would not appreciate completely unjustified metagame knowledge. Expecially from a character like an Int 4 half-orc Barbarian.



Repeatability

I mentioned this up above, but “are creatures finite?” is an important question for this challenge. It’s why people talk about “toad farms” rather than just random encounters at toad and fish lake in this kind of scenario.

And, unless the world is *super* genre-savvy, in character, one wouldn’t expect… oh, wait, people are idiots. Yeah, it could go either way as to whether, in character, a character would even consider stripping / wiping out the local wildlife.

Well, killing 40 between foxes, raccoons and ferrets (animals with similar CR) during the course of a year in a setting similar to medieval europe or precolonization americas is not going to cause extinctions.

But the issue of sustainability is one of the reasons why wild boars (and probably, dire boars too) are my prey of choice.

1. they are infestant, tough and reproduce quickly (here in Italy we have a problem with boars in many cities)
2. they damage crops and are dangerous to livestock, so most feudal age nobles allowed peasants to hunt them - or at least did not persecute boar hunters as hard as they did with deer poachers
3. they're edible and provide a lot of useful hide, meat, bone and fat.

[Maat Mons]

You mentioned that Rogue could rival Fighter in terms of accessibility. I think Rogue actually exceeds Fighter in that regard.

Wilderness Rogue, to me, seems like the logical class for a typical hunter to wind up as. Ranger has too much of a mystical feel, and the Background entry for it in PHB lacks any mention of self-taught Rangers. Fighters have to train with weapons that most hunters would never have access to, such as greatswords, warhammers, and halberds. Wilderness Rogues have all the right skills, have the lowest training time, and Sneak Attack makes them very good at putting animals down in one hit from an ambush. Scout is a dumb class.

Martial Rogue seems like what all guard forces would train recruits as. You can’t be an effective guard without Listen, Sense Motive, and Spot. Diplomacy, Gather Information, Knowledge (local) are nice too. Light armor is all you can wear and still expect to chase down fleeing criminals. The Militia feat gives proficiency with all martial weapons. Then you’ve got bonus feats just like Fighter, and no Sneak Attack to conflict with the theme.

I think anyone with any sense would look around the world of D&D and conclude that becoming a spellcaster is clearly the best move. Spellcaster training is probably expensive, so it makes sense that not everyone can actually do that. Still, once you’ve got enough levels under your belt to lay your hands on some decent coin, I can’t imagine why a person wouldn’t retire from whatever they’d been doing before and start a new career in bending reality to their will.

[yeetusmcgeetus]

Sorry, that's not how trolls work in D&D. Only the largest still living bit regenerates. The rest of the body still lives for a while, but all it does is try to rejoin with the main body and dies in a day if it cannot.
...Huh. TIL. Also, apparently by 3.5 RAW the pieces don't retain mobility at all, they just auto-reattach if held back to where they should go.


It would be pretty weird to have trolls undergoing mitosis in a world where souls exist. Where would the other soul come from?

To be fair, where do babies' souls come from? Some could be reincarnation, but not all.

[Quertus]

So, suppose the world is transparent enough for people to be able to understand, in character, the connection between “killing” (etc) and “power” (like… the world of SAO season 3?). And, similarly, that “power” is predictable enough that spells are clearly able to be ranked in power categories, and between that and spell slots, exact power “level”, and the importance of Prime Requisites (ie, Intelligence gives Wizards more spells) is known. As are things like whether or not you can Empower Owl’s Grace (or whatever) and company, and probably even *why*.

In such a world, about the lowest level you’d expect to see is level 10 or so, the level where hunting fairly safe game in fairly safe nearby areas can no longer allow one to gain XP.

That’s… not at all the expectations 3e was built under. Nor is it what the OP was looking for.

So what can we change to try to bridge this gap?

Adding in some kind of nebulous “challenge” requirement could maybe get us something closer to the expected level distribution, only… I don’t think we’d get quite what the OP described.

Maybe if only special people (like the PCs?) actually leveled with the listed level system? I'm not a fan of this method, making PCs and NPCs inherently different, but it's something of an option to create the hoard of low-level NPCs.

Actually… so long as we have the “pick your poison” setup that the OP implied, I doubt we’d ever end up anywhere near the expected level distribution, as people could always pick low-threat challenges (ie, low CR challenges) once they have a few levels under their belt.

More “actually”, I feel that the “pick your poison” aesthetic of the OP all but necessitates the concept of a very Gamist world, where different zones spawn different extremely predictable threats, and it’s not really possible to deplete an area of its spawns.

In this setup, (having our knowing someone with) Knowledge: Local seems tied in value with having a good start location.

So what might a good start location look like?

I’m thinking deep in the middle of the Elven Empire, where everything is either “animals” or “friendly” is a good place to safely get to level 10 or so. Some helpful bonuses might include someone high level to go hunting with (say, your dad, who is trying to help you overcome that psychological difficulty harming animals), someone with a trick to create free undead (Tainted Sorcerer, Blood Money, Merilith Simulacrum, whatever) to release from their control for you to safely practice on (zombies are slow and mindless), someone with Knowledge: Local who knows where good spots are,, and someone who can Resurrect you, just in case.

[Quertus]

Realistically speaking, most people would not know much of the world in a setting that predates modern information system.

Agreed, but... the 2000-year-old, NI level Wizard who trained me probably knows a lot. And they'd be kinda dumb not to give their apprentice useful information if said apprentice has a goal of, how do you say, "power leveling" per the OP, no?


But I would not appreciate completely unjustified metagame knowledge. Expecially from a character like an Int 4 half-orc Barbarian.

That's fair. :smallbiggrin:


Well, killing 40 between foxes, raccoons and ferrets (animals with similar CR) during the course of a year in a setting similar to medieval europe or precolonization americas is not going to cause extinctions.

But the issue of sustainability is one of the reasons why wild boars (and probably, dire boars too) are my prey of choice.

1. they are infestant, tough and reproduce quickly (here in Italy we have a problem with boars in many cities)
2. they damage crops and are dangerous to livestock, so most feudal age nobles allowed peasants to hunt them - or at least did not persecute boar hunters as hard as they did with deer poachers
3. they're edible and provide a lot of useful hide, meat, bone and fat.

Fair enough, a single individual is unlikely to completely eradicate the Dodo Bird population in their excitement to Power Level ("Safe Level"? Whatever it is they're doing.). I guess I was more concerned with the concept of the entire society attempting to Power Level. In a more Simulationist world, the poor Bandit population just won't survive the town's daily excursions for Darkcraft XP components. :smallamused:


Spellcaster training is probably expensive, so it makes sense that not everyone can actually do that.

I guess it depends on whether the Master or the Apprentice is the one footing the bill as to whether they consider it "expensive"...

[Vahnavoi]

Re: character knowledge:

You are all too concerned with whether a character knows specific game details and not nearly concerned enough about all the things that are genuinely unknown even to you, such as enemy placement and terrain.

On to other things: A poster up thread mentioned Incursion roguelike. I played the last working version to completion several times. Some thoughts:

Incursion starting characters have way more hitpoints than standard. It also uses "armor as damage reduction" rules (significantly more damage reduction than tabletop) and 3.0 rules for magic weapon requirements to pierce damage reduction. This makes armored characters, friend and foe alike, much sturdier, and several enemies undefeatable without right magical weaponry.

This means early character level squatting is easiest for characters that don't benefit from it much. A fighter can, with careful play, survive extremely long strings of dungeon level 1 and 2 encounters to grind XP. This won't net them equipment necessary to beat later foes. You can have all the hitpoints and all the feats, yet still find yourself losing by attrition due to being unable to scratch your enemies. Mages face a similar difficulty, since they need new spellbooks for spell access. The best classes to squat with are Clerics and Druids, since they don't depend on equipment as much.

The best place to squat is character level 2, dungeon level 2. This is due to presence of the ecumenical temple, a place where you can pray and sacrifice to majority of the game's gods. It's possible to lure monsters to the temple and sacrifice them at multiple altars, currying favor and worshipper benefits from multiple compatible gods. This allows for power growth independent of character level, allowing a character to better stay alive without decreasing XP gains. One god, in particular, can be offended to summon overleveled but underequipped monsters, which can then be killed and sacrificed for massive XP and piety gains. This a good example of a scenario specific strategy: you can't derive this from basic game mechanics, every new character has to go through the trouble of getting to dungeon level 2 and finding the temple first. Get blocked by unfavorable terrain generation or a tough monster on the way? Better forget about.

Additionally, this and similar strategies in other roguelikes and world simulators rarely last to the late game. At best, they shortcut you past the first half of level progression. Then you try to leave the low level area and find the power increase isn't a substitute for good tactics. Extrapolated to tabletop, cheesing your way to level 10 is an invitation for people who got to level 10 the hard way to kick your under-equipped and underplayed behind. Fittingly, my first win in Incursion was a constitution-based single class, single deity Fighter, before I'd figured out multiclassing or the above pantheon-cheesing tactic. It took me less time to beat a roguelike without cheap tricks, than it took me to find the cheap tricks.

[Pugwampy]

XP is gained for overcoming challenges, not killing things.

Just like in the real world, the best way to level up in dnd, is set yourself a realistic, but challenging goal, and achieve it. Then set the next one, and achieve that, and so on. That's literally all it takes, but most people are satisfied with the status quo, which is why most people are level 1 commoners.


Depends on DM . Killing things , resolving situation or impress DM works for me players .

[Daisy]

When discussing the world general populace and why everyone isn't a wizard or level 10+, what no-one here seems to have considered yet is motivation. If your father is a wool merchant and you've been helping him run the business since you were knee-high, why would you do anything else?

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates: four individuals in the tech industry who have made billions. Are they smart? You bet. Are they the smartest people on the planet? Not even close. Clever though they undoubtedly are, I don't think many people would rate their intelligence higher than, say, NASA engineers or quantum scientists working at CERN. But some people want to make money, and devote a lot of time to doing it. And if they are smart (and not a little lucky) they can become wealthy - sometimes, astoundingly-so. But many people, in fact I would suggest the majority, are only interested in earning enough to satisfy their wants and needs. Once you have enough to be happy, why exert yourself needlessly?

Back to 3.5 world and now you're a farmer/storekeeper/town guard. You work during the day, have a couple of mugs of ale in The Slaughtered Lamb inn in the evening and then go home to your family. You're making a decent living and no-one is trying to cut off your head. 99% of your days involve no challenge and that's the way you like it. I believe (and create/run my gaming world accordingly) that that explains why normal folk rarely get about level 2 or 3: there's no incentive to ever do so.

PCs on the other hand are generally greedy, power-hungry sociopaths. And so they work (grind) their way as far as they possibly can...

[Quertus]

One big question is “Lawful” vs “Chaotic”: does society provide good to amazing starting gear, or is the individual left to their own devices? Despite traditionally being labeled “chaotic”, elves are actually about second only to Necropolitan societies wrt how much they’d reasonably invest in their young. So, much like in many modern video games, starting characters can likely expect to be kitted out with spare bling from high level adventurers.

For the purposes of this thread, I feel it’s assumed that the character in question has to “make their own way”, and that’s a fine constraint; I just felt the need to point out how this is both unrealistic and suboptimal.


You are all too concerned with whether a character knows specific game details and not nearly concerned enough about all the things that are genuinely unknown even to you, such as enemy placement and terrain.

All? Nah, I’d say I’m far more concerned with “enemy placement” than “character knowledge”. Or, to flip that, one of my… premises? Thesis? Whatever… is that “starting location” is one of the most critical elements here.

That said, I’m concerned with whether “the area” / enemy placement / available threats is known or unknown / the extent to which it is knowable.

This is part of why I contended that an optimal *ahem* a very good starting point might well be in the middle of the elven empire, where one can (relatively) safely level up on local wildlife, with no threat of anything else causing problems / suddenly slaughtering the character.


When discussing the world general populace and why everyone isn't a wizard or level 10+, what no-one here seems to have considered yet is motivation. If your father is a wool merchant and you've been helping him run the business since you were knee-high, why would you do anything else?.

PCs on the other hand are generally greedy, power-hungry sociopaths. And so they work (grind) their way as far as they possibly can...

That’s part of the problem: one can spend decades studying weaving techniques, or an afternoon killing stuff to gain the same skills. If it’s known how the world works, then many of your lazy townsfolk will likely gain their skills through power leveling.

OTOH, if it’s not known how the world works, a Wizard might (should), in character, be attempting to hone their craft by scribing magic scrolls.

[Samael Morgenst]

More “actually”, I feel that the “pick your poison” aesthetic of the OP all but necessitates the concept of a very Gamist world, where different zones spawn different extremely predictable threats, and it’s not really possible to deplete an area of its spawns.



It's a semi-realistic sandbox world. Different biomes are inhabited by different fauna, some are more dangerous than others but there are exceptions.

Also, I guess we should assume that some exceedingly large, immortal and destructive monsters do not exist or are somewhat confined, else life would not be present.



When discussing the world general populace and why everyone isn't a wizard or level 10+, what no-one here seems to have considered yet is motivation. If your father is a wool merchant and you've been helping him run the business since you were knee-high, why would you do anything else?

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates: four individuals in the tech industry who have made billions. Are they smart? You bet. Are they the smartest people on the planet? Not even close. Clever though they undoubtedly are, I don't think many people would rate their intelligence higher than, say, NASA engineers or quantum scientists working at CERN. But some people want to make money, and devote a lot of time to doing it. And if they are smart (and not a little lucky) they can become wealthy - sometimes, astoundingly-so. But many people, in fact I would suggest the majority, are only interested in earning enough to satisfy their wants and needs. Once you have enough to be happy, why exert yourself needlessly?

Back to 3.5 world and now you're a farmer/storekeeper/town guard. You work during the day, have a couple of mugs of ale in The Slaughtered Lamb inn in the evening and then go home to your family. You're making a decent living and no-one is trying to cut off your head. 99% of your days involve no challenge and that's the way you like it. I believe (and create/run my gaming world accordingly) that that explains why normal folk rarely get about level 2 or 3: there's no incentive to ever do so.

PCs on the other hand are generally greedy, power-hungry sociopaths. And so they work (grind) their way as far as they possibly can...


I mostly agree.
But I also think that for most people misery and lack of opportunities play a role too, plausibly. In any era.

[Maat Mons]

That’s part of the problem: one can spend decades studying weaving techniques, or an afternoon killing stuff to gain the same skills. If it’s known how the world works, then many of your lazy townsfolk will likely gain their skills through power leveling.

On the other hand, the neighbor kid with lycanthrope parents was born with 26 hit dice and the kind of crazy numbers that come with it. Kind of disheartening when you contemplate how much work it would take you to get to where he started at.

[AvatarVecna]

Pure RAW: a creature with CR less than 1 counts as CR 1 for all encounter calculations except the amount of XP gained for defeating it. A lvl 8 PC can get XP from defeating a CR 1 creature, and thus from a CR 1/10th creature. Toads are CR 1/10th, breed very quickly, cannot escape you if you start attacking them, and cannot attack back. 1200 toads will get you to lvl 9. After that, you need to find some good CR 2s. It'll take 40 CR 2s to reach lvl 10, then 40 CR 3s to reach lvl 11, and so on. If you only pick fights "tough enough" to give you any XP at all, lvl 1 to lvl 20 is, at absolute maximum, 1640 fights away.

But that's the absolute maximum, fighting the weakest things that still technically advance you. Adventurers can generally punch a bit higher up than "the literal weakest creatures that technically grant you XP". The game expects you to fight something closer to 247 fights in order to get from 1 to 20. If you punch high enough out of your weight class, you could theoretically get there in just 19 fights, leveling up after each epic battle.

The biggest difficulty in answering your question is "non-cheesy". There is no set community definition for what counts as cheese, there's just 10000 people who all have their own opinion on what stuff is "perfectly fine", what stuff is "practical optimization" and what stuff is "cheesy tryhard nonsense". The only person who can answer what's too cheesy for this game is the DM running it. Maybe they think toad genocide is fine. Maybe they think energy drain/restoration loop stuff is fine. Maybe they think teleporting past random encounters counts as an "Easy If Handled Properly" encounter, since you used resources to deal with an obstacle that could've slowed you down on a time-sensitive mission. Maybe they think setting up a Fight Club where you can win fights without anyone dying is fine. Who knows?

Once you know where your DM's cheese line is, figuring out the safest options from those that remain on the table should be easy.

[Quertus]

Suppose you had to make your character grow in experience, levels and - possibly - wealth and power, while minimizing risks as much as possible.


If I take the flaw… name… uh… the one that says you need to make a DC 15 Will save to harm animals… suddenly, it’s a lot harder and more challenging to kill animals. So, by Challenge logic, setting the goal of “kill animals” is a challenging goal for the character, and they’ve got to overcome the challenge of “I don’t like killing animals” in addition to the actual challenge involved in killing the animal, so they would earn *more* XP for killing animals than the average hunter - significantly more for low CR threats like bats 🦇 or foxes 🦊. And this is especially important if the world is more Simulationist than Gamist, if the local wildlife is finite rather than simply being random encounters and/or challenges with set DCs to locate specific types of wildlife (more XP!).


I’m thinking deep in the middle of the Elven Empire, where everything is either “animals” or “friendly” is a good place to safely get to level 10 or so. Some helpful bonuses might include someone high level to go hunting with (say, your dad, who is trying to help you overcome that psychological difficulty harming animals), someone with a trick to create free undead (Tainted Sorcerer, Blood Money, Merilith Simulacrum, whatever) to release from their control for you to safely practice on (zombies are slow and mindless), someone with Knowledge: Local who knows where good spots are,, and someone who can Resurrect you, just in case.


Personally, I would prefer that the character was at least present during the hunt / battle, even if not necessarily involved in first person.

Even better, using traps / summons / trained animals to weaken the kill, but take it down himself.

So, how's this, then:

Every morning, my Elf Wizard goes out with their father (a high-level Arcane Archer, probably) to check the traps. If they can make their DC 15 Will save, they put the animal out of its misery; if they can't, [choose one: their father kills it, they let it go, they feed it in order to keep it alive and trapped for another try tomorrow]. Maybe they earn extra XP attempting to make "kills of opportunity" out of all the wildlife they see (just how many birds, squirrels, etc, can you see while walking through the woods for 8 hours? I'm thinking "a lot", which is a lot of CR <whatever DC 15 Will save translates to> challenges to attempt to overcome), maybe not, depending on the underlying physics engine (ie, does it disrupt their "traps" plan to do so?).

Eventually (probably really quickly), they make enough XP for enough levels and enough money for enough equipment that they a) can feel confident walking the really safe woods "alone", even if a stray cat should leap out and attack them; b) aren't actually alone, thanks to (Improved) Familiar and Leadership; c) can start facing off against the slow, mindless, uncontrolled zombie creatures that are animated for their training purposes (by someone who can do it for free / without material components). Even if they have to pay for casting services, a 20 HD zombie should run... 600 gp? It's a bit of a temporal setback to make that much money, but they're an elf, and this is just about the safest way to level against low-mid level foes I can think of. Or maybe their Mirror Mephit Improved Familiar could make a Simulacrum of a Marilith for free Animate Dead? That's about the least cheesy thing you can do with a Mirror Mephit, no?

Once they get Fabricate (and maybe a level of Arcane Archer, just to get their dad off their back), they can spend a decade Crafting (and using Fabricate for "Crafting") to make up for their rather low wealth relative to their level. And by "make up for", I mean likely put them well into Epic wealth, depending on just how clever they are with their crafting. Maybe they have Item Creation Feats to nearly double their effective wealth, maybe not. Shrug.

At this point, they've got to leave the Elven Woods if they want to find anything "worth XP" that isn't an ally. Hopefully, someone has some Knowledge: Local that they can show them good spots on a map... and hopefully, nothing's changed in the decades or centuries since those elves last visited those hunting grounds.

This sounds like a terrible plan from a Simulationist perspective. So, alternately, they could go hunting the Planes... or have creatures from other planes summoned for them to fight. I don't have any specific ideas yet, other than maybe go with a larger party, especially if hostile animals are likely to be a potential issue.

So, there's my idea for the safest way to level grind an Elven Wizard in this scenario. Doubtless it's highly suboptimal, and the build will be quite the head-scratcher, but that's what I've got so far.

At low levels, it should be extremely safe, repeatable, low on complications, able to generally handle the complications of "Random encounter: stray cat" with the high-level supervision, be in character (if dear old dad is disgusted with his squeamish child, and said child is trying to make dear old dad proud), possessing minimal cheese, able to work without a communal level grinding infrastructure (requiring only the Wizard's class-mandated teacher, and the biologically-mandated parental unit), and legal. At mid levels, is should still be extremely safe, repeatable, have virtually nonexistent complications ("oh no, a stray cat or friendly elven child random encounter while we're kiting this slow zombie!") all of which should be trivially handled, and still not require an existent level-grinding infrastructure. It's in character if the 2,000-year-old NI level Wizard who trained the Elf Wizard suggested this training regimen and the Elf accepted "if you animate and kill them, they cannot be animated again" as a valid counterpoint to SEP (Standard Elven Procedure) of "burn the witch... and everything and everyone else who is dead, so they don't come back as undead". Cheese factor is... questionable. But since I didn't want to go Tainted Sorcerer with this build, didn't want to count on PF content for Blood Money, and was too lazy to think too hard about other ways to get free undead, and wanted to add it into this build in order to circumvent the need for communal leveling infrastructure, I circled back to, "well, what would the 2,000-year-old, NI level Wizard who trained them suggest?". And I still feel this is one of the least cheesy uses for a Mirror Mephit Familiar. The legality of animating the undead within the Elven Empire might pose a problem; perhaps the character can get a license for their specific use case? It's something to consider.


On the other hand, the neighbor kid with lycanthrope parents was born with 26 hit dice and the kind of crazy numbers that come with it. Kind of disheartening when you contemplate how much work it would take you to get to where he started at.

OK, first things first: what kind of Lycanthrope is looking at 26 HD?

That said, yes, what you're born as also matters a whole lot. Just look at the true Dragons. :smallwink:

As to how good the Lycanthrope is... on the one hand, even with cross-class skills, that's, what, 14, 15 ranks in arbitrary skills? That's pretty respectable, especially on a chassis that's that hard to kill. On the other hand, it'll level as a fairly high level epic character, so approximately never. This is one character who's pretty legitimately stuck as a 1st level Commoner (or whatever class they took that 1st level in).

As for this human emotional response? "Disheartening"? More like "heartening"! It's great that our community has such a skilled family doing X, Y, and/or Z, so I can [choose one: apprentice under them, concentrate on other letters of the alphabet].

[Maat Mons]

The kind of Lycanthrope is Were Legendary Tiger. Or Legendary Were Tiger. Or whatever. It’s based on Legendary Tiger, which appears in both Monster Manual II and Epic Level Handbook, is what I’m trying to say.

I was figuring on 30 ranks in a Craft or Profession skill, as long as it’s a class skill for whatever the character’s one class level is. Most classes have one or the other, if not both. The exceptions I’m aware of are Aristocrat, Knight, and Warrior. That makes 3 gp per day feasible, which is enough money that most people would probably be content. Still takes most of a week to craft a masterwork suit of full plate though. If you’re human, you can take Able Learner to avoid needing to spend double skill ranks for your animal hit dice, which don’t have Craft or Profession as a class skill. It isn’t necessary though, if you don’t mind being unskilled in other areas.

Yeah, the Were Legendary Tiger will never get more than one class level. However, they’ll start with stats that most mundane characters will never achieve with a lifetime of training. I think some might consider it a good deal. Not if you’re aiming to be a caster, of course. But if they’re aiming to be a tradesperson or guardsman, slam dunk.

Yeah, being born awesome is the key to success in this game. Though if there’s a tribe of Lycanthropes who are willing to induct outsiders into their numbers, an average person still has a fast path to being a badass. Actually, I think in a realistic setting, some Lycanthrope tribe with expansionist tendencies will naturally wind up composing huge swathes of the population in humanoid lands. The major hurdle is getting all the new members trained in Control Shape ASAP. Don’t want to have any accidents giving the tribe bad PR. If skill retraining is anything to go by, it’ll take more than 8 months to learn to reliably control the transformation. Gonna need some adamantine manacles for those first few full moons.

[JNAProductions]

Ray Of Stupidity, as a scroll, wand, eternal wand, or however you can get it, would be a valuable tool.

1d4+1 Intelligence damage makes an elephant (CR 7, Touch AC 8, Intelligence 2) comatose. Kill at your leisure.

[Vahnavoi]

When discussing the world general populace and why everyone isn't a wizard or level 10+, what no-one here seems to have considered yet is motivation.

There are far simpler reasons for that. If the simulation actually runs by 3.5's population guidelines, the answer is that these kinds of worlds are not what they model and not what they spit out.

From a deeper first-principles viewpoint, different classes have different training and infrastructural needs. For example, a human wizard will gain their 1st level in 2d6 years. A human rogue, barbarian or sorcerer gains their first level in 1d4 years. This is after reaching young adulthood (~15 years).

What does this mean? Consider a hundred would-be wizards, a hundred would-be barbarians, a hundred would-be rogues and a hundred would-be sorcerers begin training at the same time. By the time the first three wizards finish training and achieve 1st level, they will have to compete with 25 barbarians, 25 rogues and 25 sorcerers of the 1st level, in addition to whoever's left of the previous years 25 barbarians, 25 rogues and 25 sorcerers who had an entire year to get stronger.

Additionally, wizards require spellbooks, which requires a society that's already invented writing and has requires industry to make them, since a 1st level wizard is not particularly good at making those. A barbarian or a sorcerer has no such need.

Why not just be a sorcerer instead of a wizard, then? Because sorcerers are supposed to gain their powers through inheritance. Being able to pick sorcerer at all at character creation is a gameplay convenience, in a simulation, the capacity to be a sorcerer could actually be modeled by an inherited factor or random chance.

This leads us to ability scores. The game suggests using arrays, but these arrays are a compromise so a dungeon master doesn't have to roll every character's abilities by hand. A computer simulation can ditch arrays in favor of using 3d6 and 4d6b3 functions to stat a population, meaning someone who has the required inheritance to play a sorcerer, does not necessarily have ability scores high enough to be a viable caster at all.

So, you get a lot of people who can't be wizards worth a damn even if they wanted to. Similarly, most starting characters won't exist in favorable starting conditions, such as an existing elven empire, nor have 2000 year old mentor. Those are less strategy and more "pray the simulation allows for this". If it's set up closer to how games of this genre usually go, you'll start in or near unpopulated wilderness, with only small low-level communities nearby. This impacts strategies such as the toad farm too: where are you going to find your first toads and can you ensure your character has the necessary Knowledge (Nature) and Survival skills to get it off the ground? How confident are you that this won't piss off the Toad God and cause a gigantic Boss Toad to murder you and your children in turn? Or piss off other predators that also eat those toads? Remember, PCs and NPCs in 3.5. are highly symmetric, so in a simulation, you being able to advance in level can mean other beings are able to advance in level. If you can power level by killing toads, so can other things, which means going to a toad pond to get your farm started can mean going face-to-face with a whole host of large and huge snakes.

[Quertus]

Similarly, most starting characters won't exist in favorable starting conditions, such as an existing elven empire, nor have 2000 year old mentor. Those are less strategy and more "pray the simulation allows for this".

Sure, this isn't the character's strategy for leveling, any more than it was the character's strategy to be born a Grey Elf, or to be born with "Wizard Stats", it's the Player's. Just like it could be Society's strategy to have set up toad farms, or equip newborn babies with Amulets of Intellect +6, to maximize their skillpoint development.

IIRC, the OP specified, "how would you...", so I was giving a player's strategy, along side "in character", and thus including the character's strategy in parallel.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to explicitly tease those apart. Later, I may address "but what if the player gets no hand in strategy?" of a 3d6 random lost soul.

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: the OP also specified it's a Dwarf Fortress-style procedurally generated world. This means what's in it depends on what an algorithm spits out based on a random seed. You, as a player, are not guaranteed access to elven empires or 2,000 year-old-mentors unless the generation algorithm specifically includes a part saying "and this is where the elven empire, with 2,000 old wizards, goes".

We're both talking of player strategy; I'm simply talking from the perspective of a player dealing with largely unknown generation algorithm, which means a distinction can drawn between "this is a choice I can reasonably expect given basic character generation rules and hence always available for strategy" and "this is a favorable initial condition I have no control over and should not expect to be available for strategy before confirming it exists in the world".

[Quertus]

@Quertus: the OP also specified it's a Dwarf Fortress-style procedurally generated world. This means what's in it depends on what an algorithm spits out based on a random seed. You, as a player, are not guaranteed access to elven empires or 2,000 year-old-mentors unless the generation algorithm specifically includes a part saying "and this is where the elven empire, with 2,000 old wizards, goes".

We're both talking of player strategy; I'm simply talking from the perspective of a player dealing with largely unknown generation algorithm, which means a distinction can drawn between "this is a choice I can reasonably expect given basic character generation rules and hence always available for strategy" and "this is a favorable initial condition I have no control over and should not expect to be available for strategy before confirming it exists in the world".

I’m not familiar with Dwarf Fortress; I am marginally familiar with D&D worlds, and very familiar with basic… “this is dumb” error checking.

D&D has concepts of towns, cities, and class and level population distribution within such. This is the type of thing I was expecting to be generated by the AI. If the AI generates, say, 20 nations, but puts their towns and cities randomly around the map, rather than, you know, generally grouped by nation? Then this fails my “this is dumb” check.

So, I can’t speak for how idiots might choose to build such an AI, but were it written by me? The arboreal elven empire my playthrough required was on the low end of Elven safe zones it could produce.

Well, no. If I wrote it, it’d be needlessly complex, and “elves as refugees”, “space elves only” and “no elves” would actually be possibilities (as would “what’s a forest?”, per Athas). But the zone I described was the minimum level of safety one could find in a “standard” world with elves in it - I didn’t have my sample characters benefit from Mythal level magic, symbionts, “Mother hen” deities, or any of the homebrew elves have gotten on various worlds.

As for the Wiz2k, it’s a reference to a running gag of mine on my opinions on limited information. Don’t get me wrong, I played older editions of D&D before Internet forum optimization, I know just how suboptimal *real* builds are. Heck, one of my catchphrases is “people are idiots”. Still, it’s not the case that *everyone* in the world is a complete ignoramus; Wiz2k is my way of saying, “push mandated idiocy too far in the name of ‘realism’, and I’ll combine Simulationist logic and background optimization to say, ‘sure, but I’ll run the guy who wasn’t raised by wolves and was trained by someone who wasn’t a complete moron, thanks’.”. Wiz2k spends those years of training wisely, bothering to mention or do things that are actually useful to their apprentice.

Oh, and it’s a reference to the idea that Wizards are actually *trained* - rather extensively, as your own calls to “starting age” demonstrate. Unlike plebeian Sorcerers, who legitimately should be ignoramus…es?

And we’re talking Elves - even without age magic, millennia is kinda normal.

As far as “what can we reasonably expect?”? I sadly lost a post on that earlier; short answer is, if I wrote the AI, and you chose “completely random settings” for the world and “no user input” for your stating character? You couldn’t even guarantee elves or humans existed in the world, or that the character wasn’t born mute or armless, so I suspect most strategies would be able to fail.

Lastly, I’m not interested in a “largely unknown generation algorithm”; thus, I’m trying to nail down (or simply arbitrarily choosing) some basic known facts, like “normal Elven empire generation”, “can everyone level through murder? (and is that known)”, or “Simulationist vs Minecraft logic for monster spawns?”.

As I said in the lost post, if you choose different assumptions, you get different results.

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: not knowing how Dwarf Fortress or other extensive procedural generation simulations go excuses you somewhat. You may find the following elaboration interesting:

A procedural generation algorithm starts with a random or pseudorandom seed - you can imagine this as a long string of die rolls used to check various world generation charts, as that is how you'd do it by hand. The Dungeon Master's Guide has its own tables for population demographics and settlement creation, but I'll leave those aside.

Instead, imagine the initial position created by the random seed as the beginning of a grand strategy game: a tribe of elves is placed is here, a tribe of orcs is placed there, so on and so forth. They all start with equal numbers, with no ready-made infrastructure present.

Here, like in many grand strategy games, a phenomenom arises: some races have great long-term potential, but no particularly great starting advantages. Other have great short-term advantages but level out in the long term. As noted by the argument about class starting ages, many powerful classes are in the former category. The same applies to longer-lived races, as they tend to take longer to achieve 1st level in any class. This creates an unstable equilibrium, where small changes in initial conditions can change who ends up on top.

For example, if a tribe of elves gets unlucky and is placed next to a tribe of orcs, you may never get large elven empires with 2,000 year old wizards. In competition for resources and living space, the orcs are incentivized to commit to an early rush strategy, such as, say, choosing barbarian class over others - this allows them to wipe out or enslave the elves before elves get off the ground at all. The downside of this is that choosing the early rush strategy and eradicating the elves may condemn the resulting orc society to illiteracy and low magic for extended period. So when the simulation reaches "modern day" when you, the player, step into the created world, you may find yourself having no elves, no wizards and really no large civilizations at all.

The same algorithm may be able to spit out hundreds of thousands of variations. Sometimes, the elves are placed far enough from quicker-maturing species to get off the ground, but majority of living space has already been occupied by other races that have had years to secure their foothold - the elves remain an isolated minority that never live up to full potential in either class advancement or age. Some times, the elves can only survive if they adopt a variant rush strategy, meaning that instead of very old magical elves, you end up with lot of young elf barbarians who never live very long because they keep dying in wars against other races. So on and so forth.

So, "everyone can level through murder" and "normal elven empire generation" are not in the same boat at all when in it comes to a simulation such as this. The former statement can be answered true or false just depending on whether basic rules of the game are applied universally. The latter depends on uncertainty about the initial conditions of the simulation. Again: you are not guaranteed an elven empire with 2,000 year old wizards, unless the algorithm specifically includes placement rule for an elven empire with 2,000 year old wizards. You cannot assume elven empires to be normal without knowing that.

It isn't simply about lack of user input. A generation algorithm can have all kinds of toggles from map size to what kind of terrain is favored, and still be unpredictable in its output. There a huge difference between "when I enter the world, I can pick my race, class etc. according to normal rules" and "when I press 'generate new world' button, I can be confident it will have this specific thing in it".

[Quertus]

@Vahnavoi: ah, interesting. I was, indeed, thinking in terms of "starting at the moment generation is done", not "let the simulation run for an extended period after it is generated before entering". My playthrough was based on it being generated "at the end", and I was going to comment on one generated "at the beginning". But the "the simulation runs for a while before you enter" mechanic throws quite a wrench into things.

As you said, there's no guarantee Elves aren't extinct. The same is true of the OP's dogs, or even the question of whether wolves have been domesticated into dogs at all.

Under this scenario, I'll... echo myself from the last (and first!) time I heard of the idea of starting a simulation at 0: my money's on the were-rats. When you combine their high DR and low ECL with an ecological niche with little real competition, they're one of the ideal species to successfully develop real power. To which I'll add, Deities are another decent choice as far as "likely to still exist"; the problem is, with their 20 Outsider HD and Epic ECL, they should have a doozy of a time leveling.

So, in a Dwarf Fortress setting, I'd probably aim for Wererat or Deity, since they're the most likely to still be around.

A Level 1 Wererat Wizard is ECL 5. If I cheezed (heh!) that down from... uh... "natural" to "infected", they're ECL 4. Or if I went full cheese of Quasilycanthrope, they're ECL 1. I'd say that, after Wererats' all but inevitable initial success, the ensuing Quasilycanthrope communities would be very well positioned. If, somehow, 3e's "free literacy" didn't happen, or the Wererats were otherwise unable to develop the industry necessary for Wizardry, it's easy enough to go Cleric instead - which I expect would be a rather popular choice, given the diseases many traditional Wererat haunts are rife with.

The Wererats cannot go the same route as my Elf Wizard playthrough, because even with Improved Familiar, they cannot get a Mirror Mephit before they level out of earning XP from trapped animals. And, IIRC, Lycanthropes don't get the Grey Elf bonus to Intelligence, but do get a bonus to Wisdom. All in all, it sounds like Cleric is the way to go here. (We'll just ignore the Quasilycanthrope, and assume they manage to go a Wizard route not entirely unlike the Elf).

With Rat Empathy, it's really easy for a Wererat community to scout and keep appraised of nearby threats, and put them in the mind to think in terms of animal friends. Domesticating wolves into dogs seems unlikely (unless they stole the end product from other races), and cats seem right out, but Giant Rats (obviously), plus Elephants and Rhinos (large, distracting, trampling creatures) seem the kinds of things Wererats would want on their side. Other good choices include Giant Spiders and Dragons. Maybe Hydras.

Anyway, just from killing stone-age Goblins, or whatever "not-threat" we've allowed to live nearby to let our young cut their teeth on (toad ponds, whatever), we'd hit Wererat Cleric 5 (if breed) or Cleric 6 (if infected). That's high enough level to cast Animate Dead. And Cure Disease. Between Casting Services for Animate Dead for our Community's defenses, or Cure Disease for the nearby settlements for diseases we totally didn't cause, the Wererat Cleric 5 could in theory earn money quite quickly; in practice, we're looking at mediocre Crafting checks, or the ridiculously OP "Craft Magic Items", 1k gp per day solution to financial problems. And it only costs us 500 gp, and 200 gp worth of XP per day! :smallsigh:

In other words, while the Infected Wererat could craft items for 500 gold profit a day while taking out his frustrations on squishy stress balls in toad form, the *real* Wererat has to actually kill "real" threats in order to keep replenishing their XP from crafting magic items for sale. Thanks to their DR, even things like Brown Bears can only hurt them on a crit, so it's not too hard to replenish those XP (and Diplomacy is a Class Skill for Clerics, so it's fairly easy to rely on others / utilize the rat scout network to find suitable prey).

The Wererat isn't as nigh-immortal as the Elf, but even after a season worth of crafting (possibly spread out over a year, if they're also gaining XP and setting up plots ingratiating themselves into various communities), that's more than enough $$$ to give ourselves level-appropriate items. Maybe even including a War Rhino mount, or a Dragon Egg to hatch and train.

As suboptimal as it likely is, we're probably looking at Animal and Trickery for our Spheres (if those are even actual spheres in 3e), although Luck and Disease sound like valid options for a hypothetical "god of wererats" to have, as well. Or we could have rolled up a really weird world, where the only Dragons left are the ones in captivity, that the egg-stealing Wererats train, giving their deity the Dragon sphere. Shrug.

Taking a Wererat Cleric 5 out into the world, though? I'm not liking those odds near as well as the Elven Wizard. We'd definitely want some speed boosters, and a Potion of Invisibility or two (Trickery probably gives us that spell, doesn't it?) to escape from threats before even considering heading out on our own.

Or... with the "Dwarf Fortress" premise... would anyone really do that? Or would the Community just some day up and ravage an area? I'm not quite clear on the "world-level roleplaying" that the AI has forced upon the world.

Level grinding a Deity... that's really hard. I'll have to give it some thought.

I'll also think on whether there's any other races I'd believe were highly likely to still exist after a realistic "Dwarf Fortress" run from Re:Zero.

[Maat Mons]

Under this scenario, I'll... echo myself from the last (and first!) time I heard of the idea of starting a simulation at 0: my money's on the were-rats. When you combine their high DR and low ECL with an ecological niche with little real competition, they're one of the ideal species to successfully develop real power.

Lycanthropolis is inevitable!




Deities are another decent choice as far as "likely to still exist"; the problem is, with their 20 Outsider HD and Epic ECL, they should have a doozy of a time leveling.

Every deity can cast all spells for domains they offer as spell-like abilities at-will. Make sure you offer domains that include Wish, Miracle, and Shapechange. Having those three SLA's at-will makes being stuck at low levels much less onerous.

[Vahnavoi]

It doesn't make sense to talk about deities in context of player strategy - whether they exist or not, they are not typically player characters so not a valid pick when play starts.

As for infectious templates, Dwarf Fortress proper has vampirism. Vampires can infiltrate colonies and are often much sturdier and more powerful than normal. The problem there is that vampires require mortal blood - not everyone can be turned into a vampire or a community collapses. So a player has incentive to either restrict spread of the template or come up with an elaborate trap to kill the vampires without losing too many resources.

In D&D, not all were-templates have such obvious restriction, and if they happen in a primitive community, nothing much can be done to limit spread. Some kind of prey-predator-relationship can still limit their numbers. Damage reduction is a significant boon against most low-level threats, but if I recall correctly, does not apply against other werecreatures.

When thinking of infectious templates, one has to consider level draining undead. In Dwarf Fortress, a localized zombie apocalypse (due to necromantic mist of whatever it is) is a real threat. Similarly, a procedurally generated D&D landscape may end up with one or more no-go zones in the form of undead wastelands.

[Quertus]

So, at least the way I would write it, there won’t be any Vampires until you get a Cleric capable of casting Create Greater Undead, or a Deity who earns a domain granting them that spell (directly, or indirectly through Miracle) who would also actually create a Vampire.

Further, I wasn’t actually going the “infectious” route for the lycanthropes - I was only assuming natural, “bred” wererats. They do get even more powerful (and easier to level) when you let them multiply via infection.

Yes, the wererats would die like rats to most other lycanthropes, who can indeed ignore their DR. For them, it’s a question of getting the levels - or, better yet, peaceful coexistence, if the AI allows such things.

There’s also the question of what’s available at Time 0. That is, I can see implementing this “by raw”, where everyone can level as everything, craft everything, etc, but that feels to violate the “in character” principle of the OP. Alternately, everyone can appear naked, and have to go through a Civilization-style tech tree to build the tools to unlock the tools to unlock the classes. In that scenario (which was what was described at the other time I heard of “start at 0”), wererats have those huge defensive advantages while still being fairly easy to level.

In addition to deities, I think Sprites and Beholders might be worth looking at. I’ll ponder their grinding.

[Quertus]

The setting is a procedurally generated sandbox-like world (think about Dwarf Fortress) very similar or identical to core Dungeons and Dragons edition 3.5.

The idea is to use tactics that a character living in that world (a character, not a player) would be able to conceptualize and enact.

For example, a character could plausibly use the Craft or Profession skill for many months, or even some years, to earn money and equip himself better than a standard level 1 character. He could think about raising and training war dogs (which are fairly strong at low levels) to help him in hunting bandits, goblins, or wild boars.


A procedural generation algorithm starts with a random or pseudorandom seed - you can imagine this as a long string of die rolls used to check various world generation charts, as that is how you'd do it by hand. The Dungeon Master's Guide has its own tables for population demographics and settlement creation, but I'll leave those aside.

Instead, imagine the initial position created by the random seed as the beginning of a grand strategy game: a tribe of elves is placed is here, a tribe of orcs is placed there, so on and so forth. They all start with equal numbers, with no ready-made infrastructure present.

If we’re starting from 0, with no infrastructure, the Simulation may need to run for thousands of years before domesticated animals become a thing. Do note that “domesticating animals” is the leading cause of disease, which may make this a dubious strategy for some races.

It also makes it interesting that, just as you get dogs from wolves, you might generate things like “domesticated hydras”, “domesticated Dragons”, or even “domesticated elves”.

Also… I personally prefer the starting population to be based on CR (proportional to the square of CR, per Deity of Creation logic) rather than equal. It may seem to shoot my wererats in the paw, but I think an equal size “tribe of Dragons” (or “tribe of deities”! :smalleek:) might be a little too OP.

[Vahnavoi]

If we’re starting from 0, with no infrastructure, the Simulation may need to run for thousands of years before domesticated animals become a thing.

In terms of the final printed timeline? Yes. In terms of game turns processed? Not really, probably not. A comparison can be made to Civilization 6: the nominal Ancient era starting point is 4000 BC or something, with every technology having to be researched from scratch. This time is not evenly divided among the standard 500 turns: the game will typically reached middle ages (500 AD to 300 AD) by turn 120.

Similarly, a world generation algorithm can cheat a lot to speed past ancient history. I don't remember how Dwarf Fortress in particular does it, other than it can print out highly intricate accounts of old civilizations, but it probably takes for granted presence of several basic technologies. Nonetheless, if you actually want a generation algorithm to spit out thousands of years of history, it will take a long time - in real time. This another obstacle for expectations of supremely ancient things: there obviously won't be any 2,000 year old elves if world generation was stopped after 200.

Odd domesticated animals are a possibility, ingenuity of the algorithm maker allowing, but might be reasonable expectation of D&D. There's a lot of fantastic fauna (giant lizard, dinosaurs, magical beasts etc.) that are part of the core rules and have seen use in handcrafted settings, so yeah. You may get jungle elf barbarians herding triceratopses or something.

[Quertus]

So, it sounds like the simulation will be running for a long time, that the game will start a very long time after world generation. Meaning that even if Adam and Eve's contemporaries were all level 0, modern day individuals won't have that problem.

Thus, IMO the best answer to how to level-grind in a Dwarf Fortress style scenario based off 3e rules is to have several high-level individuals chaperone one or more noobs through "fairly safe" territory (ie, places known for those past few thousand years to produce "survivable" random encounters), letting them level by earning "their share of the XP" from any kills. And doing so in zones that are "adjacent" to "safe zones", just in case of trouble.

Note that relying on higher level characters instead of trained dogs doesn't require the society to have domesticated wolves into dogs, or even to have encountered wolves. "The math just works", regardless of any unknowns in world generation. :smallwink:

Further, IMO, the society that will prosper most in this scenario is the society that not only has such "murder mentorship methods", but also equips their citizens in defiance of WBL. Whether that's war horses, Amulets of Intelligence, Boots of Run Away Real Good, Mythals that extend into the "danger"/XP zones, or what have you, these advantages will hugely impact the ability to safely level. Call it the equivalent of a "college loan". Only, even a group of 10 leveling off random encounters of CR 1 animals won't take 4 years to graduate to level 9. Probably more like 4 months.

Also, the society that "terraforms", that a) literally changes the landscape to give themselves advantages; b) exterminates (and stocks) wildlife / threats in order to maximize advancement and minimize risk will have the advantage over societies that are attempting to grind while "leaving the dice where they lay"; ie, who just take what is given without being smart about it. Which, I admit, requires a little more advanced stuff than I'd expect most implementations of this as a program to include (but, honestly, would anyone write the code such that the random encounters in town are the same as out in the wilderness? I'd hope not. So "changing the random encounter table" should happen in any good implementation anyway.).

-----

Also, by RAW, am I remembering correctly that "naked Adam and Eve" need to make Survival DC 15 to get food? Which, if there's 20 people, means they get food for... 15&16: 1, 17&18:2, 19&20:3, or 12 out of 20 people total. If all of them spend 8 hours foraging. So, am I missing anything, or do most 0-level "naked Adam & Eve" races just die off in the first couple days? :smallconfused:


In terms of the final printed timeline? Yes. In terms of game turns processed? Not really, probably not. A comparison can be made to Civilization 6: the nominal Ancient era starting point is 4000 BC or something, with every technology having to be researched from scratch. This time is not evenly divided among the standard 500 turns: the game will typically reached middle ages (500 AD to 300 AD) by turn 120.

Similarly, a world generation algorithm can cheat a lot to speed past ancient history. I don't remember how Dwarf Fortress in particular does it, other than it can print out highly intricate accounts of old civilizations, but it probably takes for granted presence of several basic technologies. Nonetheless, if you actually want a generation algorithm to spit out thousands of years of history, it will take a long time - in real time. This another obstacle for expectations of supremely ancient things: there obviously won't be any 2,000 year old elves if world generation was stopped after 200.

Odd domesticated animals are a possibility, ingenuity of the algorithm maker allowing, but might be reasonable expectation of D&D. There's a lot of fantastic fauna (giant lizard, dinosaurs, magical beasts etc.) that are part of the core rules and have seen use in handcrafted settings, so yeah. You may get jungle elf barbarians herding triceratopses or something.

I feel like, if a race is suited to a "Zergling Rush", they might well live highly nomadic lifestyles, meaning that they could know and encounter large portions of the map quickly. Such a lifestyle would, however, result in them having minimal infrastructure, minimal tech tree growth.

Point being, with such large turn sizes, in the first turn, they may well have encountered (and possibly exterminated) several races.


Suppose you had to make your character grow in experience, levels and - possibly - wealth and power, while minimizing risks as much as possible.

The setting is a procedurally generated sandbox-like world (think about Dwarf Fortress) very similar or identical to core Dungeons and Dragons edition 3.5.

For example, a character could plausibly use the Craft or Profession skill for many months, or even some years, to earn money and equip himself better than a standard level 1 character. He could think about raising and training war dogs (which are fairly strong at low levels) to help him in hunting bandits, goblins, or wild boars.


You are all too concerned with whether a character knows specific game details and not nearly concerned enough about all the things that are genuinely unknown even to you, such as enemy placement and terrain.

Even if "starting from zero", if "society" has been around for the thousands of years necessary to turn wolves into dogs and get a D&D economy from "naked Adam and Eve", I feel it'd be horrifically unrealistic for the civilization not to know the area, and its denizens. So it's not "genuine unknowns", it's... "unknown knowns", I suppose. :smallamused:

And, again, that's for naive morons who aren't "terraforming" the area to suit their needs. So, with a smart race that has killed off all local predators they don't want around, it's less "unknown knowns" and "predicted knowns". How good that prediction is depends on how different the programmer made each individual forest, mountain, and plains's starting random encounter tables.

[Maat Mons]

Also, by RAW, am I remembering correctly that "naked Adam and Eve" need to make Survival DC 15 to get food? Which, if there's 20 people, means they get food for... 15&16: 1, 17&18:2, 19&20:3, or 12 out of 20 people total. If all of them spend 8 hours foraging. So, am I missing anything, or do most 0-level "naked Adam & Eve" races just die off in the first couple days? :smallconfused:

I just checked, it's only DC 10. So if you put in 4 ranks, take 10 on the check, and don't have a Wisdom penalty you can provide for yourself and two other people.

[Quertus]

I just checked, it's only DC 10. So if you put in 4 ranks, take 10 on the check, and don't have a Wisdom penalty you can provide for yourself and two other people.

DC 10? Oh, that's much easier. If Classes are a thing at T=0, only 1/3 of your population has to take classes with Survival as a Class Skill and spend their days foraging. OTOH, if classes are unlocked via some strange civilization skill and tech advancement tree, then they've just got their Humanoid HD... is Survival a Class Skill for a Humanoid HD? If not, then they can take at most 2.0 ranks, and 1/2 your population needs to be dedicated to foraging initially.

For your man-sized humanoids. Other creatures will have different results.

-----

So, were I really simulating a 3e world from T=0, IMO all of the Humanoid races "play the same", more or less. The races that are particularly interesting / have different tempos include
Wererats - Good defense vs many things, great at T=0 (especially if nobody gets classes until they are unlocked) while still being able to earn XP. But they level with more difficulty, and most hit a much lower level cap than Humanoids.
Most Lycanthropes - great early game; can't level easily or at all. Best strategy is to partner with other race(s), have them become Lycanthropes when they hit the end of their leveling curve.
Dragons - Powerful, flying, ranged, magical, automatically improves with age. About the only way to level is to hunt really high CR targets (while at the right age). Best (or funniest) target/class combination? Hunting Deities, to level in Ur-Priest. Otherwise, Dragons work best when they don't get into fights, as those offer them nothing.
Beholders - Really powerful from the start; about the only class worth taking is Beholder Mage, but XP is hard, and their power arguably drops with that 1st level and losing their Antimagic.
Sprite.Pixie - Flight and Invisibility mean they can kite (or avoid losing scenarios) like nobody's business; small size means they need little to eat (Survival gives additional "man-sized portions" with no reference to the size of the being making the roll), and great stats for Rogues and (arcane) Casters. Unlike Wererats, these seem able to reach higher level IME, even if they die a little more often.
Petal - small, easily fed fliers with even better stats than Pixies, with less LA and therefore easier to level to boot! Humanoids can't fit in their fortresses, and they lose most of their mobility advantages in theirs. And having almost no carrying capacity definitely impacts their options.
Maugg (sp?) - reproduction based on getting enough money to Craft more of themselves. And, if in a run where Classes need to be unlocked, they start with Sorcerer. EDIT: Also, they don't eat, so no need to have anybody foraging. They also don't sleep, so (for example) their whole society could escape an Undead Hoard.
Anthropomorphic Bat - Small size & Wisdom Bonus means minimal foraging, so most can be doing other things; flight for defensive evasion or kiting; easy to level. About the only real downside is not great stats otherwise, especially at the start.
Deities - If on the world, they're just dead, so that's not interesting. If "projecting", they care about number of followers (as that determines how long they're locked out from "projecting" if they "die"). If (say) there's a Deity of each race, they care about their race's strategy, as it affects what Spheres they get access to. Completely different priorities and play than any other race.


So, were I to write something to try to simulate a new, artificial 3e world, I'd include at most 2 creatures of each of these playstyles (ie, 1-2 powerful Lycanthropes, 1-2 Dragon races), plus a bunch of Humaniods and other "playable" races (Treant, Troll, Ogre, whatever), each with their own Racial Deity who starts with no Spheres. The choices the races make determine the Deity's spheres (so the Dino-riding Elven Barbarians might find that their Deity gets Strength and Lizard as their spheres or something).

"Unplayable" races (those that exist) would exist as "random encounters" for terrain. If enough are encountered and killed in a given amount of time (varies by creature type), that element is removed from the random encounter table; over time, nearby populations (ie, random encounters from adjacent areas) may replace the "no encounter" entry that was left behind by their local extinction, favoring favorable terrain and a few other factors. This would allow races to custom tailor their environment. Note that "us" becomes a Random Encounter; ie, in a Human City, potentially all of the Random Encounters are "Human(s)". Animals would definitely be part of the Random Encounters. Anything that is a Random Encounter can also be explicitly "Hunted".

In a slightly more sophisticated version, "random encounters" might hunt one another, and, when a population in an area grows too great (creatures with no predators - Deer in an area with no Wolves, for example), their Random Encounter Rate increases, and eventually spills over into neighboring areas (even if their Random Encounters haven't been wiped out yet). Meaning that patrolling a wider area is important for keeping Undesirables out (the Elven Rangers with Chosen Enemy: Cats know what I'm talking about).

Some races (like any half-, including half-elves and half-ogres and half-dragon everything, but also the aforementioned Vampires, infected Lycanthropes, and Quasilycanthropes) are emergent - they don't exist at T=0, but can be created through play.

Anyway, that's how I might build such a thing, which impacts how I think about the question of "how would one (plan to) safely level-grind a character in a world with random programmatic AI advancement of a race, under 3e rules". And I doubt there's many better answers than, "high-level friends guide one or more low-level noobs through minimal threats in a carefully-crafted environment" "in a society that Empowers its Youth with Items / Mythals / etc".

Now, how many societies can get to the point where they can afford to send their children to college? That can depend on a lot of variables, but I think those that do, win.

[awa]

even if it were dc 15
a dedicated hunter even with the standard array
human first feat skill focus survival
second feat self sufficient
4 ranks survival
wis 12

take 10 to get 20 every time and the base dc assumes you are traveling it would not be unreasonable for someone focused entirely on hunting to either get a bonus or be allowed multiple checks.

[Maat Mons]

OTOH, if classes are unlocked via some strange civilization skill and tech advancement tree, then they've just got their Humanoid HD... is Survival a Class Skill for a Humanoid HD? If not, then they can take at most 2.0 ranks, and 1/2 your population needs to be dedicated to foraging initially.

If classes aren’t a thing at simulation start, then I think Elves are the zerg-rushers. They start with longbow and shortbow proficiency before class levels or feats. Technically, they also get longsword and rapier proficiency, but good luck putting that to use before unlocking metalworking. Yeah, they take a Constitution penalty, but if enemies have to charge through arrow fire for a few hundred feet just to get close enough to attack and then are still stuck attacking at a -4 penalty because they haven’t gotten themselves any weapon proficiencies yet, it’ll be hard to capitalize on your lower HP. I guess a race with Darkvision could attack you on an overcast, moonless night? Eh, I guess you’ll just have to attack them before they get the chance.

There are also Elves without a Constitution penalty, but I think Jungle Elves might be the best rusher, even though they keep the Con penalty. You’d be stuck with a Shortbow, so -1 average damage compared to a longbow, but you’d have a handaxe. Ideally, your forces would kill any enemies before they got close, but since things don’t always go to plan, proficiency with a melee weapon is good to have as a backup. Jungle Halflings get all the same proficiencies, but I think we can all agree that halflings are lame.




I personally prefer the starting population to be based on CR (proportional to the square of CR, per Deity of Creation logic) rather than equal. It may seem to shoot my wererats in the paw, but I think an equal size “tribe of Dragons” (or “tribe of deities”! :smalleek:) might be a little too OP.

Under that setup, Aquatic Elves seem primed to dominate the water. They’d outnumber Merfolk by 4 to 1, Locatha by 9 to 1, and Sahuagin by 16 to 1. Actually, wait, there are still Aventi, Shoal Halflings, Shalarin, River Spirit Folk, Sea Spirit Folk, a bunch of Unearthed Arcana races, and anyone with the Amphibious template. Hmm… well unlike most of them, Aquatic Elves can venture onto land to collect wood to make spears. So, I guess it’s Aventi, Shoal Halflings, Spirit Folk, and templated creatures that you still need to worry about. Still less of a battle royale than the land.

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: speculating about what a character in the setting would know isn't all that useful, since all a player gets of any of that when starting theur own play is whatever Knowledge skills the character has, what's printed in the game manual and what's visible on the game map when choosing starting location. Things like who your neighbours are or where and how far safe areas extend have to typically be explored on one's own. Yes, this can include asking from higher-level NPCs, if those are available, but they too have to be found. Though with some luck, Gather Information and Knowledge (Local) will point a starting character to the right direction.

Anyways, back to safe leveling: if non-lethal combat between friendlies is allowed to grant XP, then simply holding non-lethal unarmed combat and wrestling matches beats most other options in simplicity, speed and availability of resources. The chief downside is the opportunity cost of some fraction of a community's fighting-capable people spending hours unconscious. Notable, the best time to attack a community is when their warriors are spent from training.

As for T=0 survival, I did a lot of number crunching on this once. Humans, with their extra skill point and feat, are one of the best early specializers. A human community can significantly reduce number of people required for Survival and, equally importantly, significantly increase productivity of goods and services via Profession and Craft skills. Races with Wisdom penalties face extra difficulty - notably, this means some shorter-lived races (such as orcs) that have an edge in how fast they can get first classed characters, can't sustain as big populations from the start.

How to model characters before they reach 1st level in their chosen class is iffy for many humanoids, as 0th level is not a defined concept in 3rd edition. The choices I would pick between are 1 HD humanoid and 1st level commoner, which is then retrained to the correct class when a character meets starting age qualifications.

[Samael Morgenst]

Deities appear to be mostly indifferent in this world, but they curse with either vampirism or lychantropy those who topple statues in their temples.

Also, deities of death sometimes gift their most fervent followers with slabs containing the secrets of life and death (necromancy , in short).

[Quertus]

Deities appear to be mostly indifferent in this world, but they curse with either vampirism or lychantropy those who topple statues in their temples.

Also, deities of death sometimes gift their most fervent followers with slabs containing the secrets of life and death (necromancy , in short).

"Eat LA+8 Template, Evildoer! Just try and level now! Bwahahaha!" I guess I could see it. Is that a Dwarf Fortress thing?

Still, I think I like my gameplay of the race's actions determining their deity's spheres (meaning that there's more considerations than, "we winrar good?", more consequences for those actions) better than the idea of the Halfling deity being disconnected from her people because they went a different route than she's hard-coded spec'd for.

This brings up something I haven't explicitly stated yet: how Breed Lycanthropes can be a Created race. Can D&D Deities actually cause people to become Breed Lycanthropes? If so, then, yeah, I guess that makes more sense than having them as a starting race, since I had planned to not consider any others like Vampires. So much for my Wererats.


@Quertus: speculating about what a character in the setting would know isn't all that useful

Agreed, which is why I propose engineering a society where that's more of a known than an unknown.


all a player gets of any of that when starting theur own play is whatever Knowledge skills the character has, what's printed in the game manual and what's visible on the game map when choosing starting location. Things like who your neighbours are or where and how far safe areas extend have to typically be explored on one's own.

Or Society can just hand them a map. Cooperation and all the having a cluefulness of an evil-overlord-mandated 5-year-old advisor does a Society good.


Yes, this can include asking from higher-level NPCs, if those are available, but they too have to be found. Though with some luck, Gather Information and Knowledge (Local) will point a starting character to the right direction.

"Say, Master, ..." Funny how valuable being a Trained class is for finding those high-level NPCs, and doing so before the game even starts no less.

And this reminds me of another point: There's population statistics for distribution of NPC levels. If there any reason not to concentrate your population into planar metropolis sized chunks? If you're running Gamist logic for NPCs. If you're running Simulationist logic for NPCs, well, pretty much all races can get to ECL 9 pretty trivially. I'm guessing the latter isn't desirable, so we're going with the more Gamist logic of % of population.

Not that you need the high end of those charts to Mentor all the NPCs, or to chaperone them through the "safe" wilds to level up; that can easily be handled by some mid-tier "Graduates".


Anyways, back to safe leveling: if non-lethal combat between friendlies is allowed to grant XP, then simply holding non-lethal unarmed combat and wrestling matches beats most other options in simplicity, speed and availability of resources. The chief downside is the opportunity cost of some fraction of a community's fighting-capable people spending hours unconscious. Notable, the best time to attack a community is when their warriors are spent from training.

I imagine (given how quickly one could gain levels from this method, if it grants XP) that very few people need to be involved in "leveling", and that other duties, like gathering food, crafting goods, and reproduction services, will leave Society more vulnerable on average.


As for T=0 survival, I did a lot of number crunching on this once. Humans, with their extra skill point and feat, are one of the best early specializers. A human community can significantly reduce number of people required for Survival and, equally importantly, significantly increase productivity of goods and services via Profession and Craft skills. Races with Wisdom penalties face extra difficulty - notably, this means some shorter-lived races (such as orcs) that have an edge in how fast they can get first classed characters, can't sustain as big populations from the start.

Yeah, Wisdom penalties are bad in this scenario. But Humans aren't optimal the way you describe - any race can have members good at Survival - some far better than Humans. What they can't do is have as much redundancy of skills, be as good at recovering from suffering losses. Elves lose their Suppliers, and they're in trouble (well, except Grey Elves, who also get +1 skill point (from Intelligence)); Humans lose theirs, and someone else took it as a fallback skill, no biggie. Also, many other races (especially smaller races, and those with wisdom bonuses) greatly outperform humans, and are thus able to dedicate much more of their manpower to other tasks.

Also, we have some very different T=0 starting assumptions. My assumption is, human babies left in the wild die. Thus, my assumption is, all T=0 starting beings are "Adults". Which is nice if you're a Dragon. :smallwink:

If we're all starting as babies, IMO all the humaniods die off, and Hatchling Dragons rule the roost. Doesn't seem very interesting to me.

I suppose... *IF* you can unlock classes within the first year or two, then the shorter-lived races might have some advantage in that their young will come "of age" sooner, to be the first race with "good builds". Still, the Elf Commoner 1 or Elf Humaniod 1 will happily be an Elf Humaniod 1 / Wizard 19, so I don't think your young Orc Barbarian 20 is all that advantaged.

So, can you explain the exact scenario under which you see "short lifespan" as a big advantage for "getting classes"?


How to model characters before they reach 1st level in their chosen class is iffy for many humanoids, as 0th level is not a defined concept in 3rd edition. The choices I would pick between are 1 HD humanoid and 1st level commoner, which is then retrained to the correct class when a character meets starting age qualifications.

Oh, right, retraining. So it's Elf Wizard 20 vs young Orc Barbarian 20. So really not seeing how short-lived races have a class advantage. (A numerical advantage? Definitely. Enough so that I'm concerned Elves aren't actually tenable long-term. But I'm not seeing any reason the shorter-lived races would have a class advantage.)


If classes aren’t a thing at simulation start, then I think Elves are the zerg-rushers. They start with longbow and shortbow proficiency before class levels or feats. Technically, they also get longsword and rapier proficiency, but good luck putting that to use before unlocking metalworking. Yeah, they take a Constitution penalty, but if enemies have to charge through arrow fire for a few hundred feet just to get close enough to attack and then are still stuck attacking at a -4 penalty because they haven’t gotten themselves any weapon proficiencies yet, it’ll be hard to capitalize on your lower HP. I guess a race with Darkvision could attack you on an overcast, moonless night? Eh, I guess you’ll just have to attack them before they get the chance.

There are also Elves without a Constitution penalty, but I think Jungle Elves might be the best rusher, even though they keep the Con penalty. You’d be stuck with a Shortbow, so -1 average damage compared to a longbow, but you’d have a handaxe. Ideally, your forces would kill any enemies before they got close, but since things don’t always go to plan, proficiency with a melee weapon is good to have as a backup. Jungle Halflings get all the same proficiencies, but I think we can all agree that halflings are lame.

And here I was, concerned that Elves were unplayable. Thanks for restoring my faith in their viability (even if they don't play quite the way I was envisioning).


Under that setup, Aquatic Elves seem primed to dominate the water. They’d outnumber Merfolk by 4 to 1, Locatha by 9 to 1, and Sahuagin by 16 to 1. Actually, wait, there are still Aventi, Shoal Halflings, Shalarin, River Spirit Folk, Sea Spirit Folk, a bunch of Unearthed Arcana races, and anyone with the Amphibious template. Hmm… well unlike most of them, Aquatic Elves can venture onto land to collect wood to make spears. So, I guess it’s Aventi, Shoal Halflings, Spirit Folk, and templated creatures that you still need to worry about. Still less of a battle royale than the land.

OK, I'll admit, I was ignoring "water" as being equivalent to "lava" in this scenario. :smallamused:

I'd ask about weresharks, but Lycanthropes may be disqualified as starting races.

[Samael Morgenst]

"Eat LA+8 Template, Evildoer! Just try and level now! Bwahahaha!" I guess I could see it. Is that a Dwarf Fortress thing?


Yeessssssss....

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: I already explained why shorter lived races have an advantage. Do check the starting ages for classes again: shorter lived races typically mature faster, meaning they will achieve 1st level sooner. Which, again, means that if fast leveling tricks are in play at all, you will have a bunch of high level orc barbarians running around when the first elven wizards get out of school.

[Maat Mons]

Thinking about it a bit more, Elves wouldn’t necessarily have to rush, even though they’d be good at it. Even in “present day” D&D, 90% of people are Commoners, regardless of which type of humanoid you’re talking about. I can’t imagine neolithic D&D would have a more robust public education system. Elven Commoners are capable enough to fight in defense of their homes, due to racial weapon proficiencies. If an attacking force is using only trained combatants, that’s at most 10% of their adult population being pitted against 100% of the adult population of the Elves. This would, I think, make up for the Elves’ lower population.

Of course, the attacking race could also send their Commoners into battle. But I think an Elven Commoner is a more able combatant than a Commoner of another race, which can still partially mitigate a numerical disadvantage, albeit not at the 10-to-1 rate Elves would enjoy if the attacking race left their Commoners at home. Comparing Commoner versus Commoner, it really depends on how heavily each race’s Commoners spec into combat. I think the default assumption is that Commoners don’t spec into combat at all, which puts the Elves in the best relative position.

If the attacking race fully specializes their Commoners for battle, they’re either spending a feat for a weapon proficiency or each Commoner has to pick between a sling, a longspear, or a regular spear. Crossbows would be off the table until the Middle Ages, at which point we’re well past any starting issues. That means each unit is either ranged or melee, not both. The elven units, on the other hand, can all switch rolls as needed. They can have 100% of their forces shooting while the enemy is distant, and 100% of their units stabbing when the enemy is close. Other Commoner troops would have to be split between the two rolls at some ratio or another. Plus, the Elves are still much better at ranged combat, because slings are shorter-range weapons.

If the attacking force gives their Commoners Martial Weapon Proficiency (longbow), things are more even. They can each have a good ranged weapon and a good melee weapon. They still need to pick between a reach weapon and a non-reach weapon for melee, so each unit is specialized to be either front row or second row. Jungle Elves, in particular can have a shortbow and a handaxe from their racial proficiencies, plus a longspear as their weapon of choice from Commoner. This gives them the full trifecta. Alternately, the attacking race could give their Commoner Simple Weapon Proficiency to also have the trifecta, but then they’re back to using slings, which gives Elves the advantage at long range. Plus, the Elven Commoners still have a feat to play with, while the attacking Commoners don’t unless they’re human. I’m not sure which feat gives the best advantage here. My first instinct was Wild Cohort, but they couldn’t reliably hit the Handle Animal DC to direct their pets.




I already explained why shorter lived races have an advantage. Do check the starting ages for classes again: shorter lived races typically mature faster, meaning they will achieve 1st level sooner. Which, again, means that if fast leveling tricks are in play at all, you will have a bunch of high level orc barbarians running around when the first elven wizards get out of school.

Not untrue, however…

According to Races of the Wild (page 13) a 15-year-old Elf is equally as physically mature as a 15-year-old Human, and somewhat more mentally mature. From there, the Human fully completes their physical growth by age 20, and the Elf by age 25. Since a 15-year old human gets full adult Human stats, I don’t see why the same wouldn’t be true of Elves. The only thing I can see holding Elves back is that their fertility rate is 1/5th that of Humans. Admittedly, this is going to be a big issue starting around 15 years after simulation start and continuing for however long it takes before everyone’s populations have reached the maximum their respective territories can sustain.

[Quertus]

@Quertus: I already explained why shorter lived races have an advantage. Do check the starting ages for classes again: shorter lived races typically mature faster, meaning they will achieve 1st level sooner. Which, again, means that if fast leveling tricks are in play at all, you will have a bunch of high level orc barbarians running around when the first elven wizards get out of school.

Now, I’m hand-waving a few things for brevity, but… 4 months after game start (EDIT: that’s “4 months after initial generation”, not thousands of years later after the player starts playing), you could have a batch of level 9 characters under one interpretation. That’s shorter than most pregnancies, even if you set them to “reproduction services” immediately, and they’re successful. So you’ll have mid if not high level characters running around before you’ve got babies running / crawling / lying around.

So, again, I’m not seeing how lower starting age of shorter lived races really matters here.

Now, sure, that’s Generations 1. Generation 2? Sure they’ll get a head start on the shorter-lived races. But that seems trivial next to the number of epic level wrestlers your technique might have put out on both sides by then.

The big advantage they have is just in sheer reproductive rate - how quickly they transition from “baby” to “breeding”, and how successful those attempts are… and how big the “litter” is, I suppose.

Sure, age to maturity matters - it determines how long they’re a resource sponge before transitioning into a productive member of society, getting levels, what have you. But that new 1st level character just isn’t significant compared to their epic level elders.

Now, to give some Arbitrary Internet Numbers, you could argue that, when multiple generations go to war, level [50, 30, 10] beats level [50, 10]. I’d file that under “reproductive rate” rather than “mature faster”, but we could be saying the same thing.

However, if we call that T=X? Then at T=2X, after the “short lived” part of “short lived races” comes into play? Then we’re looking at the same level [50, 30, 10] vs level [90, 50, 10]. And that’s what we’re looking at from now to eternity. And that’s assuming the longer-lived races only live twice as long.

There’s a short window of level advantage from the new crop for secondary fighters; otherwise, Level advantage goes to the longer-lived races. It’s only an advantage of numbers that the short-lived races can hope to rely on after that. Quantity vs Quality.

However, that’s all Simulationist logic. If, OTOH, we go with Gamist logic of 3e population tables, more reproductive races gain population faster, therefore build cities and planar metropolises faster, therefore level faster. Quantity = Quality.

So it depends on which kind of silly the underlying system is, as to what level NPCs will be.

But this thread was, I believe, about leveling a single PC*. And, here, “hunting / trapping tasty animals well inside the safely patrolled areas with high-level NPCs (and a map)” and “coed naked wrestling” seem valid answers, if similarly dependent upon the underlying system (of how random encounter table generation works, and getting XP from friends, respectively).

* where the question about how races would fare is simply a question of, “what races can I predict won’t have gone extinct before the game actually starts?”, or “what would the society of a surviving race reasonably look like in this scenario?”, to replace those “unknown unknowns” (or whatever) you were talking about with “known knowns” (or whatever).

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: I'm talking of the first generation. The age adjustment for starting as class is added to threshold for reaching adulthood. If at T=0, everyone is an untrained young adult, it makes a difference whether you add +1d4 or +4d6 to that number.

[Quertus]

@Quertus: I'm talking of the first generation. The age adjustment for starting as class is added to threshold for reaching adulthood. If at T=0, everyone is an untrained young adult, it makes a difference whether you add +1d4 or +4d6 to that number.

OK, let me try this: You are saying that *if* everyone starts as a "young adult" (mostly undefined except for dragons, but mostly defined by the next bit), *and* everyone starts off without class levels (because they're at the "before training" age), *and* class levels don't need to be unlocked, *due to the fact that* shorter lived races add smaller random numbers to their "young adult" age to get their "trained age", *then* in this situation, the shorter lived races will gain their 1st level first *and therefore* gain their higher levels first *and therefore* have an advantage. Is that right?

If so, I start with the response of, "That was never a scenario I had considered". That is, I considered "levels not unlocked, humanoid HD" and "levels unlocked, 1st class level" as the potential T=0 start conditions (well, and "age = 0, humanoids just die", due to my senile half-remembered memories of the last time this concept came up).

I guess I'd say, off hand gut reaction, it feels inelegant to force the "humanoid HD" to determine skills / skill points for just the first few years of the simulation, rather than just go with class levels straight off the bat. But other than the fact that I'd never want to write the code that way (and certainly *wouldn't* write it that way if "NPC Levels are determined by Population", so add "*and* NPC Levels are determined by Simulationist 'earning XP' rather than Gamist 'population tables'" to the opening statement of what I think you're saying), I don't see anything inherently *wrong* with imagining that as a possible simulation vector, and if everything worked that way, maybe the shorter lived races would have the early level advantage.

Personally, I think the level advantage will be much more significant for the long-term races living longer and getting to accumulate more levels, or for the short-lived races having more population and therefore winning the level advantage in "level determined by population tables" scenario. Shrug.

Also, for the "small and has a Wisdom bonus" races like Anthroporphic Bats being able to raise significantly larger families or otherwise support more production than other races per Resource Gatherer (and, if a mechanical limit is implemented, able to support more of their race off the same resource pool).

Those are the advantages I'm looking at.

[Maat Mons]

Jermlaine are Tiny, which means they require only 1/4th as much food as a medium creature. They also have a +6 racial bonus to Wisdom. So, a 1st-level Jermlaine Commoner with Skill Focus (Survival) could feed themself and 23 others with their daily foraging.

According to the internet, reptiles need to consume only 1/8th as much food as mammals of the same size. I haven’t been able to find anything in the D&D rules to model this. Does anyone know if it’s been addressed anywhere?

If anyone is curious, the internet says birds consume 40% more food than mammals of the same size. Since Anthropomorphic Bats have been brought up, I’ll note that I suspect bats might be closer to birds than to other mammals in terms of metabolism, but I haven’t checked to verify this.

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: I noticed you didn't consider it, that's why I reminded you, since it is a corollary to the argument from starting ages. As far as elegance goes, "everyone starts with racial HD only" and "everyone starts as a commoner" before finishing class training are both more elegant for populations at T=0 than "everyone starts as 1st level in some class". Reason being, with everyone starting from scratch, it is possible to use the starting age by class rules to determine the rate at which various classes appear in the world. "Everyone starts as 1st level in some class" requires additional assumptions to cover why those classes appear in quantities that they do, similar to DMG's demographic tables.

Related, the split you draw between "simulationist" and "gamist" is nonsense. In general, it is not a good idea to use Forge terms in context the Forge largely failed to cover. "Everyone levels by XP" is not more or less simulation-like, nor more or less game-like, than "population spreads are determined by tables". They aren't even mutually exclusive. We're instead talking of different ways to set up a simulation, specifically contrasting ways to set up the initial conditions for it. All methods, on a fundamental level, involve arbitrary authorial decisions regarding the initial populations, and "everyone levels by XP" is an additional rule on top that may or may not be in place in any version.

In any case, being biologically long-lived or even immortal poses no real benefit for leveling or numbers of higher-level characters. The first reason for that is that every race that advances by class is capable of reaching high levels in their lifespan - the second reason is that the only real limit is the existence of sufficiently high CR encounters. Other classed characters are an obvious source of higher CR encounters. The third reason is that there will still be all normal reasons for hostilities: not everyone wants to watch you get to arbitrary levels, and a long lifespan on its own doesn't make a character more resistant to unnatural death. It's more likely to work the other way around: achieving noticeable level advantage allows reaching full natural lifespan.

[Tohron]

When high level characters can cast Genesis to make new land for living space and create items to supply endless food, the amount of time between being born and casting Genesis becomes relevant for determining their population's exponential growth rate. If the time is significantly shorter for shorter-lived races, then their exponential takeoff will inevitably pull ahead.

[Quertus]

When high level characters can cast Genesis to make new land for living space and create items to supply endless food, the amount of time between being born and casting Genesis becomes relevant for determining their population's exponential growth rate. If the time is significantly shorter for shorter-lived races, then their exponential takeoff will inevitably pull ahead.

Um... no? Say there's just 2 of one race, "Adam" and "Eve". Adam's build can Survival to feed 2 people, Eve 1. Even at level 999,999,999,999. They can support at most 1 child, no matter how many Genesis planes they create. (EDIT: And that's only if they spend all their time making Survival checks to support the little Resource Sponge!)

Point is, there's a few more variables involved.


@Quertus: I noticed you didn't consider it, that's why I reminded you, since it is a corollary to the argument from starting ages.

I'll grant it's a 3rd option beyond "Starting Age" and "Dead Babies".


As far as elegance goes, "everyone starts with racial HD only" and "everyone starts as a commoner" before finishing class training are both more elegant for populations at T=0 than "everyone starts as 1st level in some class". Reason being, with everyone starting from scratch, it is possible to use the starting age by class rules to determine the rate at which various classes appear in the world. "Everyone starts as 1st level in some class" requires additional assumptions to cover why those classes appear in quantities that they do, similar to DMG's demographic tables.

How to explain "elegance"?

Humaniods


Have two states: "Resource Sponge" and "Productive Member".
Resource Sponges follow these rules: ... and transition to Productive Members with 1 Class Level based on rules of Race, Age, AvailableClasses, Population, and Strategy.
Productive Members follow these rules: ...
At game Start, create X New Productive Member Humaniods with 1 class level as though they just transitioned from Productive Members
On TimePasses, check for Resource Sponge Humanoids with CurrentAge >= ProjectedStartingClassAge; transition them to Productive Members.
On TimePasses, check for Productive Member with CurrentAge >= MaxAge...


vs


Have three states: "Resource Sponge", "Racial HD", and "Productive Member".
Resource Sponges follow these rules: ... and transition to Productive Members with 1 Class Level based on rules of Race, Age, AvailableClasses, Population, and Strategy.
Racial HD follow these rules: ... and transition to Productive Members with 1 Class Level based on rules of Race, Age, AvailableClasses, Population, and Strategy.
Productive Members follow these rules: ...
At game Start, create X New Racial HD Humaniods with these rules for starting skills: ...
On TimePasses, check for Resource Sponge Humanoids with CurrentAge >= ProjectedStartingClassAge; transition them to Productive Members.
On TimePasses, check for Racial HD Humanoids with CurrentAge >= ProjectedStartingClassAge; transition them to Productive Members.
On TimePasses, check for Productive Member with CurrentAge >= MaxAge...
On TimePasses, check for Racial HD Humaniods with CurrentAge >= MaxAge...


2 data objects vs 3, 2 sets of rules vs 4, 2 TimePasses check vs 4 3, and a lot of redundancy in the code. OK, fine, there is 1 line of arguably inelegant "cheat code" necessary to make the 1st one work, but it's paralleled with a similar line in the other set.

I would never write the latter when the former was a possibility.

With complex multiple inheritance, you could remove the code redundancy, but then the object definitions would be rather inelegant.

Still, if you wanted no classes whatsoever until classes were unlocked, you could have those 3 states, but the Resource Sponge objects would always follow the same check of looking for available classes to determine whether to flow into Racial HD or a Productive Member, no extra inelegance introduced by starting the T=0 Humaniods off with Racial HD (except for the crossed-out line I accidentally added above).

So, all in all, just starting with class levels is the most elegant solution.


Related, the split you draw between "simulationist" and "gamist" is nonsense. In general, it is not a good idea to use Forge terms in context the Forge largely failed to cover. "Everyone levels by XP" is not more or less simulation-like, nor more or less game-like, than "population spreads are determined by tables". They aren't even mutually exclusive. We're instead talking of different ways to set up a simulation, specifically contrasting ways to set up the initial conditions for it. All methods, on a fundamental level, involve arbitrary authorial decisions regarding the initial populations, and "everyone levels by XP" is an additional rule on top that may or may not be in place in any version.

I mean, if you want your (AFB, Internet numbers) 10,000th Humaniod to spring from the womb as a 20th level character, because that's what the Population Table says you get at Humaniod #10,000, and you want to call that Simulating how things work rather than an oversimplification (ie, a Gamist abstraction), you do you. However the Forge may have done these terms dirty, I find them to have meaning, and I call the population tables Gamist, and tracking individual growth Simulationist (even if XP is, itself, arguably a Gamist abstraction).


In any case, being biologically long-lived or even immortal poses no real benefit for leveling or numbers of higher-level characters. The first reason for that is that every race that advances by class is capable of reaching high levels in their lifespan - the second reason is that the only real limit is the existence of sufficiently high CR encounters. Other classed characters are an obvious source of higher CR encounters. The third reason is that there will still be all normal reasons for hostilities: not everyone wants to watch you get to arbitrary levels, and a long lifespan on its own doesn't make a character more resistant to unnatural death. It's more likely to work the other way around: achieving noticeable level advantage allows reaching full natural lifespan.

Eh, no. Let's step through these.


The first reason for that is that every race that advances by class is capable of reaching high levels in their lifespan

Maybe.

Let's say the only method of leveling, period, is through random encounters, and the random encounter tables end at CR 1. Then NOBODY will be able to get beyond 9th level, regardless of their lifespan.

Let's say the only method of leveling, period, is through your wrestling scheme (I like calling your XP scheme "coed naked wrestling" and mine of killing animals in traps "baby seal clubbing", btw), or my "Hone your Craft" theory. In such a sysstem of earning XP, infinite levels are theoretically possible, as your (to use your idea) wrestling partner(s) hopefully win about half the time, and hopefully level up with you.

In practice... lots of annoying fiddly details, but imagine Adam and Eve, one (starting or) pulling ahead, therefore winning more often... but the other earns more XP for their wins... OK, it's probably fine, especially with a larger population.

Because of the way the XP tables are set up, rate of level gain while wrestling equal-level opponents is, all things being equal, static. But static at what rate? If it takes 1 year per level, vs if it takes 20 years per level? That's a huge difference wrt what level races can reach based on their lifespan.

And, at 1 year per level, a 1,000 year old elf is looking pretty scary if you ask me.

Let's say the only method of leveling, period, is through killing other "active participant" races. While this is arguably the most interesting "1 way" scenario, it's also the one least in keeping with the thread premise. But in this scenario, enslaving other races and farming them for XP is the dominant strategy, IMO.

Let's say the only method of leveling, period, is through the DMG demographic tables. Then "age" is irrelevant; it's reproductive stats (including how quick a reproduction rate the Productive Members can support with their Survival skill) is the most important set of stats in the game.

That last one is the only "only" that's likely to see play (and it really doesn't favor the Elves); otherwise, there's likely a combination of factors that can add to XP. But how those factors are calibrated (and little things, like whether Society is smart enough to use Maps) will determine how quickly levels can be gained.


The third reason is that there will still be all normal reasons for hostilities: not everyone wants to watch you get to arbitrary levels,

Anyone "watching" will likely be "allied" or "hostile" already (although I suppose the system / AI / whatever could allow more nuance than that). With a map size and exploration rate anything like this world, I imagine most races will be unaware of most races for thousands of years, minimum.


and a long lifespan on its own doesn't make a character more resistant to unnatural death. It's more likely to work the other way around: achieving noticeable level advantage allows reaching full natural lifespan.

I'd argue that Society, and creating Safe Zones (my idea of hunting all dangerous creatures until the Random Encounter Table makes sense - just "Humans" in a Human town, just Elves, Allies, and Animals in an Elven Woods, etc) do a lot to make a character more resistant to unnatural death. Also, if we're following RAW, outlawing "Businesses", as they invoke rolls on the "Natural Disasters" table. :smallamused:

But, yes, obtaining levels, which happens somewhere between "quickly" and "instantly" (depending upon the underlying system) upon reaching the appropriate age, definitely provides a nice buffer against many things that cause unnatural death.

[Maat Mons]

Um... no? Say there's just 2 of one race, "Adam" and "Eve". Adam's build can Survival to feed 2 people, Eve 1. Even at level 999,999,999,999.

Why wouldn't the level 1 trillion minus 1 character have a higher Survival modifier? They have lots of skill ranks to throw around, and a very high skill cap. Every +2 to Survival is another person feed with the same time expenditure.

[Quertus]

Why wouldn't the level 1 trillion minus 1 character have a higher Survival modifier? They have lots of skill ranks to throw around, and a very high skill cap. Every +2 to Survival is another person feed with the same time expenditure.

Because that wasn't the build? Maybe the build only gets 2 skill points per level, and has to keep Bluff and Sense Motive maxed, in order to be competitive in the Mirror Match.

Maybe we've set up the game such that not just Classes, but even Skills need to be unlocked, and they just never unlocked Survival.

The point was, there's other considerations than just resources, any one of which can turn out to be the Limiting Factor.

My question was more, whether by RAW, resources were ever a Limiting Factor preventing our Humanoids and other whatchamacallit (Participating Races?) from clustering in Planar Metropolis-sized chunks, either for purposes of goods available for purchase, or in the scenario in which class and level are determined by (local) population.


If we’re starting from 0, with no infrastructure, the Simulation may need to run for thousands of years before domesticated animals become a thing. Do note that “domesticating animals” is the leading cause of disease, which may make this a dubious strategy for some races.

It also makes it interesting that, just as you get dogs from wolves, you might generate things like “domesticated hydras”, “domesticated Dragons”, or even “domesticated elves”.


Odd domesticated animals are a possibility, ingenuity of the algorithm maker allowing, but might be reasonable expectation of D&D. There's a lot of fantastic fauna (giant lizard, dinosaurs, magical beasts etc.) that are part of the core rules and have seen use in handcrafted settings, so yeah. You may get jungle elf barbarians herding triceratopses or something.

Oh, I was taking the ability to use Handle Animal to do things like get Mounts or War Mounts per the rules as a given.

What I actually meant by this comment was more, "Wolves get Domesticated into Dogs. What happens if, in Fantasy Land, other species get Domesticated? What new species would Domesticated Hydras, Domesticated Dinosaurs, or Domesticated Dragons produce? Which I've realized is a lot of coding (and data entry, and art, and...) for very little gain. Cool concept for potential world building purposes, not much use here IMO.

OTOH, raising a herd of 3-horns, for their meat, for their hide, and to animate their skeletons in defense of Society? That actually sounds pretty cool.

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: your argument for elegance involves another abstracted category of characters that is not derived from anything in the d20 rules. Your version for two data objects only looks simpler because the assumptions behind who belongs in that category are not enumerated.

Similar relationship exists between simulation of individual objects versus picking groups from a table. The latter solution is actually computationally simpler, as it involves simulating less objects over time. But it is not more elegant because of all the additional assumptions that go into making those tables, even if those assumptions won't be visible in the finished code.

This also the flaw in your "gamist" versus "simulationist" argument. Your decrying of tables as more "gamist" is based on assuming silly reasoning behind those tables. That's baseless, the reasoning can be anything. Similar argument applies to individual simulation: that only produces more "simulationist" results than tables if the assumptions about those individuals aim for realism. Experience points are an abstract game scoring mechanic, they are fundamentally non-realist. The only thing you're simulating by applying d20 experience point rules is the d20 game system, but this isn't more accurate to source material than applying rules of population demographic tables. It's just an arbitrary decision of which parts of the source material to emphasize.

Back to elegance: consider the following progression tracks for characters:

Dependent (child) ---> Dependent (Adult) ---> Classed individual

Dependent (child) --- > Adult-in-training (either racial HD or 1st level commoner) --- > Classed individual

In both formats, the Dependent (child) category has to be specially defined for the simulation, as the base d20 system isn't concerned with child characters. But there is no reason to specially define Dependent (Adult), since we already have options in d20 rules already describe adult characters without character class. Doing things the former way may be computationally simpler, but it also loses details and requires additional assumptions about capabilities of Dependent (Adult) category as well as additional rules somewhere to explain where commoners and characters with just racial HD come from. Remember, at some point, the simulation has to lead to a playable game world, so all dependent characters have to be transformed into viable entities described by d20 ruleset at some point. The alternative is that they just disappear when actual play starts, never being anything more than background numbers.

Regarding old age:


Let's say the only method of leveling, period, is through random encounters, and the random encounter tables end at CR 1. Then NOBODY will be able to get beyond 9th level, regardless of their lifespan.

Yes, that's a special solution that makes longevity even less relevant, but the assumptions made by core 3.5 D&D aren't anything like this, so we can't use it to draw useful conclusions about the simulation.


Let's say the only method of leveling, period, is through your wrestling scheme (I like calling your XP scheme "coed naked wrestling" and mine of killing animals in traps "baby seal clubbing", btw), or my "Hone your Craft" theory. In such a sysstem of earning XP, infinite levels are theoretically possible, as your (to use your idea) wrestling partner(s) hopefully win about half the time, and hopefully level up with you.

It's rather relevant to the argument you're commenting on that these are NOT the only ways: at any point, anyone hostile to you can also gain XP by terminating you. This means that continuing to level up in perpetuity requires achieving an insurmountable advantage over every hostile entity.


Because of the way the XP tables are set up, rate of level gain while wrestling equal-level opponents is, all things being equal, static. But static at what rate? If it takes 1 year per level, vs if it takes 20 years per level? That's a huge difference wrt what level races can reach based on their lifespan.

It's rather relevant to the argument you're commenting on that they way XP tables are set up, the rate at which XP is gained is so quick that longer lived races gain no real advantage. Which leads us to...


And, at 1 year per level, a 1,000 year old elf is looking pretty scary if you ask me.

That elf had no real advantage reaching 9th level when they were a young adult, compared to a young adult human or a young adult orc. Them making it to 1,000 years old requires they reached such a great advantage earlier in life that no-one of any other race who started leveling at the same time could stop them.

Could the simulation maker adjust leveling rates so that extreme lifespans are required to reach high level? Yes. But core 3.5 doesn't really do this. Indeed, given its starting age rules, it does the opposite. An elf at 110 has not learned more than a human at 16.


Let's say the only method of leveling, period, is through the DMG demographic tables. Then "age" is irrelevant; it's reproductive stats (including how quick a reproduction rate the Productive Members can support with their Survival skill) is the most important set of stats in the game.

Untrue. You forgot to account for death rate: aging rules set the limit for natural lifespans too. This obviously impacts population growth curves, with larger effect the longer the simulation runs: when the first generation elves start to drop from old age, the several human generations will already be dust. Though, again, for this to become visible, the conditions have to be such that characters can actually live long enough to die naturally.

The most significant practical limit is that an actual simulation on an actual computer isn't going to run forever. The player has to stop the simulation and begin play after some practical real number of cycles.

Related:


Anyone "watching" will likely be "allied" or "hostile" already (although I suppose the system / AI / whatever could allow more nuance than that). With a map size and exploration rate anything like this world, I imagine most races will be unaware of most races for thousands of years, minimum.

Practical constraints mean a simulation is not going to run for that long in anything resembling realistic scale. The effective distances in time and space will be shorter. A 2,000 years a long time to simulate using Dwarf Fortress proper, especially for a large world. It's much more reasonable to expect the simulation to cover smaller terrain, such as a country or an island, over (low) hundreds of years, than it is to expect full planet-size simulation over thousands of years. Alternatively, as already pointed by bringing up Civilization 6 for contrast, if you have a nominal planet for nominal thousands of years you can expect the simulation to not be very detailed at the early end and the actual number of game turns using full game rules to be much less than the amount of years.

---

@Tohron: the time and place within the simulation for the first 17th or so level character capable of casting Genesis to appear, is fundamentally unpredictable. More practically, Genesis has to be cast on the Ethereal plane. For simulating a game world, characters and civilizations who go this route to grow can rightly be considered to have ****ed off to go play another game entirely. The bulk of their expansion would, literally, not touch the prime subject of the simulation, and would require different set of rules alltogether to model.

[Tohron]

Admittedly, casting Genesis to add space is a significant way off for a starting civilization (they could use Stone Shaped tunnels earlier on), but for the food situation, it just takes one level 5 Artificer/Cleric/Archivist/Healer to make an at-will Create Food & Water item/trap, which can then supply food for 15 * 600 * 24 = 216,000 people per day. So you don't need that many crafters to support a very large population, and level 5 is very achievable using the CR < 1 creature XP farming methods outlined previously.

[Vahnavoi]

@Tohron: where are you getting 600 as a multiplier? A day has 24 x 60 = 1440 minutes. If it takes 10 minutes between trap resets, one 5th CL trap can produce food to at most to 144 x 15 = 2160 people. Yes, that's a lot for 7,500 gp , 600 XP and seven days of work. It becomes less impressive when you look at the number of animals you could have for the same costs and factor in that the trap doesn't produce any other goods or materials beyond simple sustenance. Additionally: if you can get any of the farming techniques to work that net you all the required animals to keep leveling, your food problems have already been covered. You don't need Create Food and Water for that.

[Tohron]

I was using 1/round for activations. An unlimited-use command word activation item could presumably do this, and would cost 1.8 times as much as the trap (the time between auto-resetting trap activations is never defined in the rules, to my knowledge, so that's a bit of a grey area). One of the benefits of using food-generating items is space: without needing room for farming or livestock, you can house more people as your population grows exponentially (and you also don't need to defend the farms/livestock). The generated food can even be used to feed the monsters for XP farming.

[Vahnavoi]

Precisely because there is no other defined rule for resetting traps, it makes sense to default to casting time of the spell, which in this case is 10 minutes.

As for unlimited use command word item, it's possible to achieve that, yes, if you can ensure someone is constantly activating the item throughout the day. This only becomes practical once you genuinely have huge number of mouths to feed and several workers working in shifts to keep activating the item and distributing the food. The logistic requirements mean that such an item is unlikely to offer practical benefits over the trap or other limited use sources of the spell when it first becomes available. Leveling up is much faster than population growth, so it's possible to get 5th level characters when settlements still have population numbers in the low hundreds. You just don't need this much food this quick... which means a significant chunk of the item's potential and hence the cost of its making is wasted in the short term. If a neighbouring hostile settlement used only resources proportionate to their actual population for food production, and the rest to offense, they now have an advantage in short term confrontations and can come in take the it from your cold, dead hands.

[Quertus]

@Quertus: your argument for elegance involves another abstracted category of characters that is not derived from anything in the d20 rules. Your version for two data objects only looks simpler because the assumptions behind who belongs in that category are not enumerated.

Similar relationship exists between simulation of individual objects versus picking groups from a table. The latter solution is actually computationally simpler, as it involves simulating less objects over time. But it is not more elegant because of all the additional assumptions that go into making those tables, even if those assumptions won't be visible in the finished code.

This also the flaw in your "gamist" versus "simulationist" argument. Your decrying of tables as more "gamist" is based on assuming silly reasoning behind those tables. That's baseless, the reasoning can be anything. Similar argument applies to individual simulation: that only produces more "simulationist" results than tables if the assumptions about those individuals aim for realism. Experience points are an abstract game scoring mechanic, they are fundamentally non-realist. The only thing you're simulating by applying d20 experience point rules is the d20 game system, but this isn't more accurate to source material than applying rules of population demographic tables. It's just an arbitrary decision of which parts of the source material to emphasize.

Back to elegance: consider the following progression tracks for characters:

Dependent (child) ---> Dependent (Adult) ---> Classed individual

Dependent (child) --- > Adult-in-training (either racial HD or 1st level commoner) --- > Classed individual

In both formats, the Dependent (child) category has to be specially defined for the simulation, as the base d20 system isn't concerned with child characters. But there is no reason to specially define Dependent (Adult), since we already have options in d20 rules already describe adult characters without character class. Doing things the former way may be computationally simpler, but it also loses details and requires additional assumptions about capabilities of Dependent (Adult) category as well as additional rules somewhere to explain where commoners and characters with just racial HD come from. Remember, at some point, the simulation has to lead to a playable game world, so all dependent characters have to be transformed into viable entities described by d20 ruleset at some point. The alternative is that they just disappear when actual play starts, never being anything more than background numbers.

Again, I don't know Dwarf Fortress, but imagine for a moment, in Hypothetical!DwarfFortress...

I'm playing a Dwarf. I sharpen my Axe, don my Hat of Disguise and/or Cloak of Invisibility, and sneak in to the Human Nursery. I slaughter the couple caregivers (however many it takes to transfer food from those Repeating Food Traps or whatever into the mouths of the babies) and bathe in the blood of thousands of dead babies. Then I move on to the toddlers, small kids, large kids, and teens. Each of these 5 categories has their own placement, and their own graphics; thus, the underlying code has to have 5 separate data objects for them (or 1 versatile data object sorted into 5 buckets, with 5 different graphics (or 5 different *sets* of graphics, if they don't all look the same to me)).

And that's fine for the game, if it wants to treat them differently that way, and make them distinct, slayable objects rather than have them "disappear into the background" (or whatever).

Me, I only care about being able to do the math on food production vs food requirements, determining the level (etc) of the level-able population, and such concerns, not on properly assigning the "Female Half-Orc Apprentice Wizard" graphic to this particular data object. And, for these purposes, one data model is clearly more elegant than the other.

Ugh, that's another vector for targeted strikes (also known as "war crimes"): gender. Not sure whether it's more or less effective than targeting Resource Gatherers (ie, those who have skill at Survival).

-----

Given that the OP was talking about "dogs", I feel it's safe to assume that this simulation really ought to be set up such that it's expected that it will run for thousands of years before the player joins, to give time for Wolves to be Domesticated into Dogs. At which point, much of your commentary wrt early game expectations seem incongruous, like we're playing very different games. I'm trying to envision a T=0 world setup that will lead to multiple races still existing thousands of years later when Dogs walk the earth, and asking myself which races with which Societies have the best chance of existing at that point. Any setup that doesn't produce playable results after thousands of years of simulation, I'm saying the fault is in the setup, and therefore something needs to be changed.

So, sure, I'm expecting some churn, expecting some races to have died out when the simulation kicks out into active play at T=X thousand years later, with there maybe being dogs for the OP to train. But I'd say any initial assumptions, any settings for the initial setup and underlying systems (NPC leveling, population numbers, tech tree, whatever) that don't involve at least the majority of the initial races still being "in the game" as playable choices probably produces a suboptimal play experience, and should be reconsidered.

-----

I honestly believe that the easiest thing... not the easiest thing to code, but the easiest thing for the poor computer to run cycles on is (modified versions of) the DMG Population Tables. And having NPC levels be based on Population really skews what's good. And, yes, I agree, lifespan does factor into that, but when you're looking at a Fibonacci Sequence to simulate Human generations, or faster growing numbers (especially for high wisdom / small size races, like Anthropomorphic Bats), only keeping the last 3 numbers out of 2,000 - 3,000 - 5,000 - 8,000 - 13,000 - 21,000 - 34,000? It really doesn't feel like you're losing much when you're comparing 68k vs 86k. Especially compared to the Level [90,50,10] vs level [50,30,10] differences from the other example.

-----

Oh, and XP are certainly a Gamist abstraction in most games. In 3e, however, where they are spent to cast spells and craft items, figure into payment for spellcasting services, and actively figure into characters' planning and strategies, they pretty much have to be an actual, existent thing in the 3e world, something that's truly part of the Simulation, rather than a mere Gamist abstraction. That's why I worded my statement about them the way I did, because 3e expectations all but mandate it being one of the exceptions to them being a Gamist abstraction.

[Vahnavoi]

Me, I only care about being able to do the math on food production vs food requirements, determining the level (etc) of the level-able population, and such concerns, not on properly assigning the "Female Half-Orc Apprentice Wizard" graphic to this particular data object. And, for these purposes, one data model is clearly more elegant than the other.

It's simpler, yes. It's also a classic case of Spherical Cows in a Vacuum - by lumping everyone without a class into same category to make a problem more tractable, you end up losing details that would be relevant to the end result.

Dwarf Fortress proper, as a game, puts level of detail way ahead of simplicity. Running a massive zero player strategy game on the background to generate a playable world is very processing intensive and clunky. Proposing a Dwarf Fortress- style simulation hence, very like, includes coding you'd deem inelegant.

-----


Given that the OP was talking about "dogs", I feel it's safe to assume that this simulation really ought to be set up such that it's expected that it will run for thousands of years before the player joins, to give time for Wolves to be Domesticated into Dogs. At which point, much of your commentary wrt early game expectations seem incongruous, like we're playing very different games. I'm trying to envision a T=0 world setup that will lead to multiple races still existing thousands of years later when Dogs walk the earth, and asking myself which races with which Societies have the best chance of existing at that point. Any setup that doesn't produce playable results after thousands of years of simulation, I'm saying the fault is in the setup, and therefore something needs to be changed.

It really isn't a safe assumption, for reasons already listed. To approach this from another angle: domesticating an animal is just a Handle Animal check in 3.5 D&D ruleset. The simulation can include both an initial population of canids and initial population of humanoids at T=0, and it will take only take as much time for domestic canids to appear as it takes for the two groups to meet and some humanoid succeeding a Handle Animal check. The problem with your argument is that you flip-flop between assumed realistic simulation of the domestication process and simulation of D&D rules, when the target of discussion is only the latter. Again, an alternative comparison can be made to Civilization 6: yes, dogs have to be domesticated, but this is a simple-to-achieve thing that pretty much every civilization in every game manages by turn 60 out 500. Even if nominally, the time from turn 1 to turn 60 runs from 4,000 BC to 1,000 BC, those are just numbers, with basically no relationship to the amount of actions taken by game characters.


So, sure, I'm expecting some churn, expecting some races to have died out when the simulation kicks out into active play at T=X thousand years later, with there maybe being dogs for the OP to train. But I'd say any initial assumptions, any settings for the initial setup and underlying systems (NPC leveling, population numbers, tech tree, whatever) that don't involve at least the majority of the initial races still being "in the game" as playable choices probably produces a suboptimal play experience, and should be reconsidered.

Which races exist as playable option to a player once the player enters the simulation, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what has survived world generation. If the simulation is based on 3.5 D&D core rules, it's safe to assume the player will have character generation choices based on 3.5 D&D core rules. It does not follow every character described by the core rules will survive or be present in the world. That is, if the player chooses to be an elf, it is possible they are the ONLY remaining elf. Talking about "suboptimal play experiences" I consider to be completely absurd. It is ordinary for procedurally generated worlds to only contain subset of possible civilizations in them. This extremely obvious in strategy games both old and new. The appeal of that is that you can then use the same procedural generation rules to create and play in relevantly different worlds.

In Dwarf Fortress proper, the number of civilized races is much smaller (5) than the amount of civilizations world generation can handle (160 for Large worlds). Still, since doubles are possible, smaller worlds might not contain a civilization of every possible race (for example, a Smaller world with Low number of civilizations has only 6, so two doubles would mean one race is missing). 3.5 D&D has a significantly larger pool of races to choose from even if we only include core player picks and their common opponents, for example, humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, elves, orcs, goblins, kobolds, lizardfolk, trolls and giants. That's 11, which would necessitate a Smaller world with High civilization count, or a Small world with Medium civilization count, to have a civilization of every race even at the start of the game.

The more races you want to be present when play starts, the larger the world has to be, and play has to begin at an earlier era, meaning everyone will be less developed.

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I honestly believe that the easiest thing... not the easiest thing to code, but the easiest thing for the poor computer to run cycles on is (modified versions of) the DMG Population Tables.

It is both easier to code and run iterations on DMG population tables, since they were meant to be used by hand, by a human, on pen & paper. If I wanted to automate this, I could do this in Excell, in a day. Dwarf Fortress-style simulation, by contrast, is much more intricate, involving running aforementioned massive zero player strategy game for an extended period and logging the results. Dwarf Fortress-style simulation is borderline impossible to do by hand, or would take a prohibitively large amount of time, and on maximum settings it can be unreasonably slow even on a contemporary commercial computer.

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Oh, and XP are certainly a Gamist abstraction in most games. In 3e, however, where they are spent to cast spells and craft items, figure into payment for spellcasting services, and actively figure into characters' planning and strategies, they pretty much have to be an actual, existent thing in the 3e world, something that's truly part of the Simulation, rather than a mere Gamist abstraction. That's why I worded my statement about them the way I did, because 3e expectations all but mandate it being one of the exceptions to them being a Gamist abstraction.

That's all humbug. Experience points existing in a game world does not make them less abstract or less game-like. They don't simulate anything beyond themselves: a person, in the world, explaining experience points to another doesn't have a better choice than "they're a point score you get for doing things on this arbitrary list of things, which you can then expend on things on this other arbitrary list of things". Their existence in the world is a result of simulating game rules, and a person in the world would reasonably conclude "the world works like a game".

Or, to put it simply: nothing is expected from being game-like in a simulation, when what you are simulating is a game.

[Quertus]

@Vahnavoi - I'm not sure that our comments even have enough in common to qualify as "talking past one another". But I'll poke at a few places where we might be able to get on the same page again.


It's simpler, yes. It's also a classic case of Spherical Cows in a Vacuum - by lumping everyone without a class into same category to make a problem more tractable, you end up losing details that would be relevant to the end result.

Dwarf Fortress proper, as a game, puts level of detail way ahead of simplicity. Running a massive zero player strategy game on the background to generate a playable world is very processing intensive and clunky. Proposing a Dwarf Fortress- style simulation hence, very like, includes coding you'd deem inelegant.

Can you give any specific use case(s) where you believe relevant details are lost?


It really isn't a safe assumption, for reasons already listed. To approach this from another angle: domesticating an animal is just a Handle Animal check in 3.5 D&D ruleset. The simulation can include both an initial population of canids and initial population of humanoids at T=0, and it will take only take as much time for domestic canids to appear as it takes for the two groups to meet and some humanoid succeeding a Handle Animal check. The problem with your argument is that you flip-flop between assumed realistic simulation of the domestication process and simulation of D&D rules, when the target of discussion is only the latter. Again, an alternative comparison can be made to Civilization 6: yes, dogs have to be domesticated, but this is a simple-to-achieve thing that pretty much every civilization in every game manages by turn 60 out 500. Even if nominally, the time from turn 1 to turn 60 runs from 4,000 BC to 1,000 BC, those are just numbers, with basically no relationship to the amount of actions taken by game characters.

Some races are derived. These include half-elves, half-ogres, half-dragon whatevers - all with pretty obvious cause and effect there, right? As well as infected lycanthropes and vampires... and even breed lycanthropes in Dwarf Fortress, apparently (sadness). And my intention was for none of those derived races (even the highly effective Quasilycanthropes) to be present at T=0.

But here's the thing: "Dogs" are a mutant, derived race, too - the base race is "wolf". If one makes the appropriate Handle Animal roll, they get a trained wolf. Getting a "dog" requires Necromancy spells lost in y2k when the great Wizards of Old went away.

So, barring 2e Necromancy spells, getting "Dogs" from "Wolves" the old fashioned way, likely takes on the order of thousands of years. So, in order for the plan listed in the OP of "raising and training war dogs" to be not just technically possible but sufficiently probable, we've got to have the simulation running for thousands of years before play starts.

Which means the rest of the variables, like world size, population density, level rate, etc, need to be created such that they support this timeframe.


doubles

I had actually considered dumping, say, 100 tribes of 1000 members of each race (so 100 tribes of elves, for 100,000 elves total, 100,000 Humans, 100,000 Dwarves, etc) as simulation start as one way to maximize the odds that a given race had survived to the start of gameplay.


The more races you want to be present when play starts, the larger the world has to be, and play has to begin at an earlier era, meaning everyone will be less developed.

Um... that doesn't follow. I imagine, if I made a Dyson Sphere the size of Jupiter's orbit, and placed 20 races randomly in that sphere, they'd be able simulate longer into being more advanced than what you were picturing with 5 or 6 races. Line up all your variables to get to "advanced enough to have dogs" and "desirable odds of number of races remaining".


That's all humbug. Experience points existing in a game world does not make them less abstract or less game-like. They don't simulate anything beyond themselves: a person, in the world, explaining experience points to another doesn't have a better choice than "they're a point score you get for doing things on this arbitrary list of things, which you can then expend on things on this other arbitrary list of things". Their existence in the world is a result of simulating game rules, and a person in the world would reasonably conclude "the world works like a game".

Or, to put it simply: nothing is expected from being game-like in a simulation, when what you are simulating is a game.

They don't have to simulate anything beyond themselves, any more than the carpet at the tavern the PCs are staying at does, to be a real game object in their world that the PCs can (and do) consciously interact with. But I think we're lost in semantics at this point.

[Vahnavoi]

@Quertus: the overarching theme of my posts concerns this comment from the OP:


The setting is a procedurally generated sandbox-like world (think about Dwarf Fortress) very similar or identical to core Dungeons and Dragons edition 3.5.

I'm focusing on "think about Dwarf Fortress" bit, using real attributes of the named game to gauge what this world could reasonably include.

You, initially unaware of Dwarf Fortress, have some intuitions and ideas of how the world would be generated that are at odds with realities of the program, and other comparable programs. I consider it relevant to point these out when they cause you to make unsafe assumptions that'd matter for player strategy.

Moving on:


Can you give any specific use case(s) where you believe relevant details are lost?

Most notably, neither children nor commoners nor characters with racial HD are simply "resource sponges" under normal d20 rules. They can be assigned tasks and contribute as untrained labor, as crafters, as survivalists, as animal handlers, so on and so forth. In terms of strategy game, each such unit of early population can hence be given a number for how much they'd produce (in terms of food and goods), not just how much they consume, and this varies based on race.

For a simple example, a 1st level human commoner with average wisdom has extra 4 skill points and 1 extra feat over a 1st level elf commoner with average wisdom. This means the human commoner can take both Self-sufficient and Skill Focus (Survival) feats, as well as spend four points to get 2 ranks in Survival (cross class), to get a +7 modifier, total, to survival checks, while still having 8 skill points left over. The elf can only manage +5 (ranks and Skill Focus) and has only 4 skill points left over.

So, based on Survival rules, we can say that a human commoner assigned to early food production can sustain 1 extra population over an elf commoner assigned to early food production. We can also say the human has more potential to succeed if assigned to another task - since they have more skill points left to improve craft or profession.

These kind of differences add up in a ground-up simulation, during the years when no-body has 1st level in their PC class yet. They also accumulate for every subsequent generation, for the period when those characters are young adults in training. If, instead, everyone is the same kind of abstract "resource sponge" before reaching 1st level, you lose those differences. Effectively, all your wizard apprentices do no useful work. They do not even sweep floors or copy texts for their masters.

In comparison to existing strategy games, the difference is similar to adjusting starting tech levels. If you start a Civ 6 game at an era other than Ancient, the competitive balance shifts: some civilizations lose their competitive edge because the game starts at a point where their special features have already ceased to matter, while others gain a new advantage because they don't have to fight to survive to the point where their special qualities start to matter.


Some races are derived.

Yes, but how they are derived and inherited doesn't have to follow realistic rules. Again, the problem is that you flip-flop between assuming realistic simulation of domestication and inheritance processes and simulation of game rules, but the simulation is only ever of the game rules. Dogs can exist by a fiat decision simply because they are part of 3.5 core, with the only difference between Dog (wild) and Dog (domestic) being whether someone passed a Handle Animal check. Or the number of generations between Wolf (tame) and Dog (domestic) can be significantly lower than reality.

The same applies to various half-creatures. Mechanically, in 3.5 D&D, majority of these are templates. You can slap them on offspring in one generation. Likewise, the time from Lycanthrope (infected) to Lycanthrope (born) is one generation, as the former template can be slapped on an existing creature. It's not safe to assume a world age of thousands of years based on existence of such creatures, because by the game rules, thousands of years are not required.


I had actually considered dumping, say, 100 tribes of 1000 members of each race (so 100 tribes of elves, for 100,000 elves total, 100,000 Humans, 100,000 Dwarves, etc) as simulation start as one way to maximize the odds that a given race had survived to the start of gameplay.

These are unfeasible numbers for Dwarf Fortress proper. In terms of possible starting civilizations, the cap is 160 for Large worlds. You'd need a different type of simulator to deal with these numbers.


Um... that doesn't follow. I imagine, if I made a Dyson Sphere the size of Jupiter's orbit, and placed 20 races randomly in that sphere, they'd be able simulate longer into being more advanced than what you were picturing with 5 or 6 races. Line up all your variables to get to "advanced enough to have dogs" and "desirable odds of number of races remaining".

There is, as of now, no simulator, certainly not Dwarf Fortress, that could simulate a world that big. Meanwhile, the actual reality of Dwarf Fortress is that number of civilizations tends to go down from the initial lineup as a years pass: weaker civilizations often starve or are terminated by competing neighbours or megabeasts. Furthermore, as repeatedly noted, world size places constraints on number of civilizations. From which follows the exact thing I already noted: the more races you want to be around when play starts, the larger the world has to be and the earlier the starting era. In this style of simulation, there is no way to guarantee everyone will always be around, you can only stop the world generation when the results look promising. Notable, Dwarf Fortress proper has special eras for when nearly all or all fantastic creatures have died off, for when every civilization has died off, and for when no civilization actually survived very long.

---

Regarding games and simulations:


But I think we're lost in semantics at this point.

The entire point is that GNS terms have bad semantics - the distinction you're trying to make is useless. Your life will be improved by never using "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism" again - as opposed to "game", "simulation" and "narrative", which have robust definitions outside outdated RPG theories. :smalltongue:

[Quertus]

I'm focusing on "think about Dwarf Fortress" bit, using real attributes of the named game to gauge what this world could reasonably include.

You, initially unaware of Dwarf Fortress, have some intuitions and ideas of how the world would be generated that are at odds with realities of the program, and other comparable programs. I consider it relevant to point these out when they cause you to make unsafe assumptions that'd matter for player strategy.


Perfectly reasonable to point out places where I might have misconceptions, especially when I’m a self-reported ignoramus.

That said, even if I knew Dwarf Fortress, I’d focus on “simulating 3e”, considering DF to just be a relevant example of doing so.


neither children nor commoners nor characters with racial HD are simply "resource sponges" under normal d20 rules. They can be assigned tasks and contribute as untrained labor,

Ah, so that’s a misunderstanding and a correction.

The misunderstanding is simple: we’re on the same page wrt everything but “children” (assuming you’re not treating 20 HD Dragons with no class levels as “untrained laborers” :smallwink:).

Yes, I was thinking of children exclusively as “resource sponges”, because that matches other games I’ve played, matches my Simulationist expectations for babies and small / lazy children, and met my Gamist desires not to have “reproduce as fast as possible” be the obvious correct dominant strategy for all races (tied into a Simulationist belief that it shouldn’t be the “always optimal” strategy).

But, sure, had I written such code, it would be trivial to change pre-class Humanoid Children from “resource sponge” status to… “Aid Another” actions, probably.

(EDIT: thinking about it… I think, if I were writing the Simulation, *working* children would end up Commoners; *learning* “resource sponge” children would get (or have a chance at) better classes. Which also ties into my belief in PCs / adventures being “children of nobles”, with the opportunity to study advanced techniques, rather than farm boys who happened to pick up a sword or spell book.)


So, based on Survival rules, we can say that a human commoner assigned to early food production can sustain 1 extra population over an elf commoner assigned to early food production. We can also say the human has more potential to succeed if assigned to another task - since they have more skill points left to improve craft or profession.

Absolutely, Humans are more adaptable, We’ve been on the same page here the whole time.

That they’re also better at specializing at arbitrary things (as opposed to Elven Weapon proficiencies, or Petals and Anthropomorphic Bats beating Humans at Per capita resource gathering) is something I assumed, but didn’t state, because I didn’t know what specific feats might allow such.


during the years when no-body has 1st level in their PC class yet

That’s an assumption I’m *not* making. That is, we could simulate this many ways, *many* of which involve classes being available at the beginning. So my answers are often complex, as they often are designed to address the various ways one might create such a simulation, or conditional, stating their limited scope up front.

Since it keeps coming up, does Dwarf Fortress have class unlocking mechanics?


Dogs can exist by a fiat decision

Sure, races and classes can exist by fiat decision. But if we go down the rabbit hole of allowing derived races at T=0, then I’ll argue Quasilycanthropes are a strong contender.


Yes, but how they are derived and inherited doesn't have to follow realistic rules. Again, the problem is that you flip-flop between assuming realistic simulation of domestication and inheritance processes and simulation of game rules, but the simulation is only ever of the game rules. Dogs can exist by a fiat decision

Flip-flip? Ah, not exactly. I follow a hierarchy, which one could oversimplify to: stated givens, 3e rules, reality.

Even Breed Lycanthropes, which I was willing to consider a “base” race, are considered derived in Dwarf Fortress.

If there were a rule, “dogs are a base race”, it would stick out and be incongruous with the “start at the beginning and evolve a civilization” feel of the question, *especially* if coupled with things like “no classes at game start” and “start naked”,

In the absence of such a rule, we look at how dogs are derived. No rule in our exceptions, no rule in 3e (except the conspicuous *absence* of similar rules from 2e), so we look to reality for our rules for creating dogs.

One consistent process that terminates at various levels, not arbitrary flip-flopping.


These are unfeasible numbers for Dwarf Fortress proper. In terms of possible starting civilizations, the cap is 160 for Large worlds. You'd need a different type of simulator to deal with these numbers.

I have no intention of limiting myself to the limitations of the Dwarf Fortress Simulation, merely to what could be simulated. Granted, the Dyson sphere wasn’t realistic to simulate, it was merely an example to exemplify how tweaking variables can change outcomes.


number of civilizations tends to go down from the initial lineup as a years pass: weaker civilizations often starve or are terminated by competing neighbours or megabeasts.

Wandering megabeasts? That sounds cool.


The entire point is that GNS terms have bad semantics - the distinction you're trying to make is useless. Your life will be improved by never using "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism" again - as opposed to "game", "simulation" and "narrative", which have robust definitions outside outdated RPG theories. :smalltongue:

I may need to research this further…

[Vahnavoi]

The misunderstanding is simple: we’re on the same page wrt everything but “children” (assuming you’re not treating 20 HD Dragons with no class levels as “untrained laborers” :smallwink:).

Untrained labor is a specific rule governing earning money using Profession checks without any actual ranks in the skill. Yes, even 20 HD dragon will count as untrained labor if they have no actual professional training. Far more relevantly, dragons in 3.5 D&D tend to be LA:- races, so they aren't available as player options. In a Dwarf Fortress-type simulation, they are more like to be counted among megabeasts (more on those later).


Yes, I was thinking of children exclusively as “resource sponges”, because that matches other games I’ve played, matches my Simulationist expectations for babies and small / lazy children, and met my Gamist desires not to have “reproduce as fast as possible” be the obvious correct dominant strategy for all races (tied into a Simulationist belief that it shouldn’t be the “always optimal” strategy).

Population is power no matter how you try to twist the base rules. The actual limits to "reproduce as fast as possible" as a strategy are food production, available space, neighboring hostiles, opportunity costs, etc.. As noted in the earlier tangent about Create Food & Water items, trying to naively maximize one thing isn't necessarily the smartest thing to do. Relevantly, some of the faster-reproducing races have Wisdom or Intelligence penalties, so they are more likely to bump into early limits of food production due to lacking Survival, Profession, Craft etc. skills.


That they’re also better at specializing at arbitrary things (as opposed to Elven Weapon proficiencies, or Petals and Anthropomorphic Bats beating Humans at Per capita resource gathering) is something I assumed, but didn’t state, because I didn’t know what specific feats might allow such.

Quick checking d20 SRD is an easy way to check what options would reasonably be available to 1st level characters, as those options are 1) core, 2) what would be reasonable available to simulation maker as source material. See also: aforementioned Incursion roguelike, which does just that, taking material from 3.0 SRD under OGL.


That’s an assumption I’m *not* making. That is, we could simulate this many ways, *many* of which involve classes being available at the beginning. So my answers are often complex, as they often are designed to address the various ways one might create such a simulation, or conditional, stating their limited scope up front.

I agree there's more than one way to set up the initial conditions, the specific subtopic was which kinds of details are lost doing things the way you suggest, versus the way I suggest. The group that is most relevant to that discussion is not children, it's young adult character who haven't achieved a class yet. Giving a human Wizard apprentice the abilities of a 1st level commoner makes them an economic factor for the 2 to 12 years they spend in training - they can effectively earn their own keep, even if it's only 1 silver piece per day. Sidenote: work done during training is also an explanation for where starting money for class comes from. The alternative is that wealth is created from nothing upon reaching class.


Since it keeps coming up, does Dwarf Fortress have class unlocking mechanics?

If I recall right, Dwarf Fortress has an intricate combination of point buy and learning by doing. That is, if your Embark points weren't enough to make your dwarves sufficiently cool, you have to build them a shooting range or training weapons and then have them play around with those, hopefully without killing each other. It's a sufficiently different system that you cannot directly draw conclusions from it and apply them to a system such as the OP proposed, where character advancement is based on 3.5 D&D style experience point acquisition. This said, Dwarf Fortress does have analogues to some of the strategies discussed here, such as the toad farm, trap obstacle course and the village wrestling tournament. They just have different implications: the Dwarven Wrestling Champion is the best wrestler. This doesn't also somehow lead him to become the greatest wizard. Additionally, skills in Dwarf Fortress can become worse if not used for extended periods. So the Dwarven Wrestling Champion cannot just lock themself in a tower to study wizardry for years and expect to remain the best wrestler. So on and so forth.


Sure, races and classes can exist by fiat decision. But if we go down the rabbit hole of allowing derived races at T=0, then I’ll argue Quasilycanthropes are a strong contender.

There's a pretty strong difference between assuming mundane animals as baseline versus late generation lycanthropes. Even in D&D, a background of mundane, non-templated animals is usually given, but the selection of monsters and especially templated monsters varies by setting. Undoubtedly, a D&D simulation includes some monsters that you'd consider "derived" from the start, but majority of these are LA: -. They aren't candidates for player characters nor candidates for initial civilizations. They are obstacles for those civilizations (again: see megabeasts).


Flip-flip? Ah, not exactly. I follow a hierarchy, which one could oversimplify to: stated givens, 3e rules, reality.

[ . . . ]

If there were a rule, “dogs are a base race”, it would stick out and be incongruous with the “start at the beginning and evolve a civilization” feel of the question, *especially* if coupled with things like “no classes at game start” and “start naked”.

That's the same thing. There is no good reason to assume the simulation will at any point realistically model timespans involved in domestication and inheritance, and many good reasons based on limitations of simulations to assume otherwise. Majority of games of this genre cut corners such as this at the early end. In D&D 3.5 itself, literacy is the best example: a character not specifically marked as illiterate, knows how to read. There is no extensive learning process behind this, even an illiterate character can become literate with token cost of 2 skill points, and this applies to every language the character is able to speak.

So, while in reality, invention and learning of reading and writing are long and involved processes, in the simulation, we can expect the capacity to be there at T=0 and the limitation is building the requisite infrastructure to produce and store books. Same applies to majority of Craft, Profession and Performance skills: we can except "new" goods and professions to appear at the rate at which characters hit the relevant skill modifiers, not however long it took in reality.

You can call it "incongruous", but such incongruities are normal for the genre.


I have no intention of limiting myself to the limitations of the Dwarf Fortress Simulation, merely to what could be simulated. Granted, the Dyson sphere wasn’t realistic to simulate, it was merely an example to exemplify how tweaking variables can change outcomes.

Of course tweaking variables changes the outcome, but once the variables are sufficiently far from what the OP posited, no useful information can be gleaned from them for purposes of answering the OP's question.


Wandering megabeasts? That sounds cool.

Yes, Dwarf Fortress has various extremely powerful monsters that influence course of history. This pool includes classics such as Titans and Dragons, also present in D&D, as well as procedurally generated monstrosities - think randomized Arch Demons and the like. A world has limited population of these and the world's historical era will change depending on how many are left. For example, if one singularly powerful Dragon is present at world generation, you may quickly get either "Age of [Foo] the Dragon", acknowledging it as the defining great power for remaining civilizations, or "Age of Emptiness" if that same Dragon kills off early civilizations in the crib.


I may need to research this further…

From the Wikipedia article concerning GNS theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory):

"On December 2, 2005, [Ron] Edwards closed the forums on the Forge about GNS theory, saying that they had outlived their usefulness."

It was never a good theory. It was internet forum posts level, built on earlier internet forum posts level musings. Its successor, the Big Model theory of roleplaying games, did not fare much better. Here is what RPG museum has to say on the topic: (https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Model)

"The Big Model has been significantly criticised and is no longer widely used, even by many of the people who liked it when it was new and current. For example, Vincent Baker has said that, while it was a useful tool to diversify thought around what role-playing games could be (i.e. that there was more than a single type of RPG that could be played), the attempt to categorise all RPGs and all players (e.g. using the GNS creative agendas) do not hold up, and furthermore RPG design has moved on and left the Big Model behind."

The only lasting legacy these theories had was the use of certain phrases, such as the words "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", by people who happened to be part of early 2000s internet hobby discussion. Majority of people who use those words, use them wrong, with no significant relationship to their special definitions in these theories. Outside of these theories, there isn't enough settled common usage for them to even net their own dictionary definitions.