How many Survives?

[Goolpsy]

Has anyone made a calculation on how many npc's that reach level 20 (always starting at 1st level) out of 100? 1000? or how many npc's does it take for one of them getting level 20.. based on the general encounter level and xp system from the dmg...

is does say something about how special it is to meet a level 20.. and how rare they are (BASed on the tables!).
I know you as a DM decide for yourself how many there are and how common they are... but..

 

[Infiniti2000]

This question is impossible to answer because we would need to define how often the NPCs adventure. If at all.

 

[Goolpsy]

well the time isn't a Factor... i dont care if it takes them 2 years or 200 years.. i want to know how many dies trying to get level 20...

 

[Infiniti2000]

Ah, see there's the rub. It's not that they die trying, it's that most of them give up trying. Adventuring is just way to dangerous for the majority of them, particularly because they are underpowered with respect to the CR system. So, this will artificially color the survivability rate for NPCs.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

well the time isn't a Factor... i dont care if it takes them 2 years or 200 years.. i want to know how many dies trying to get level 20...

Well, consider the possibility that they fight foes of equal CR. To make it simple, start with NPC opponents: your NPC Fighter takes on other Fighters in 1-on-1 combat, with a 50% chance of winning and, if successful, about 4/13 of the XP needed to advance a level. (That is, a party of 4 would need 13 encounters equal to their average level to advance; he's going solo so he gets 4x). Give him a little bonus - he'll need it and it makes the math simpler. He now needs 3 wins to advance, with a 50% chance of winning each time.

So that would be a 1/8 chance of advancing to the next level without being defeated. If he can survive some defeats by running away, surrendering, or stabilizing while unconscious, his chances of eventually making the next level will be better. Let's say that his actual chance of reaching the next level is doubled because of that, to 1/4.

Assuming that he always fought other NPCs of his level, he'd have a 1 in 256 chance of going up 4 levels to level 5, a 1 in 262,144 chance of getting to 10, and a roughly 1 in 275 billion chance of getting to level 20 -- although long before that point he'd have run out of equal-CR NPC opponents to face and so would be taking on monsters and giants.

Clearly, advantages that boost your odds of winning above that 50% without boosting your ECL are most useful. Higher ability scores, good equipment, max starting HP, etc. A safer course is to routinely fight lower-CR opponents, but even a 40-hp Ftr4 taking on an orc Bbn1 (CR 1) could be dropped by a single critical hit.

 

[Goolpsy]

Well why should a level 1 fighter meet a cr1 creature.? lets calculate as if the party consisted of 4 persons... then it would be 4x Cr1 vs a 1st level party.. so acording to the dmg 2x CR 1 could be calculated as CR 2.. and 4 of them would be CR 3... so sure he would die meeting monster with a CR measurement 2 higher than his own level.

But i guess no one ever thought of .. how level 20 npc's came to be ..

 

[Nail]

....because they don't.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Well why should a level 1 fighter meet a cr1 creature.? lets calculate as if the party consisted of 4 persons... then it would be 4x Cr1 vs a 1st level party.. so acording to the dmg 2x CR 1 could be calculated as CR 2.. and 4 of them would be CR 3... so sure he would die meeting monster with a CR measurement 2 higher than his own level.

Yes, PCs usually have the odds on their side. The "typical" encounter is for FOUR PCs to face a challenge equal to a single one of them (because a PC of level X is CR X). A fight against an equal-level equal-size NPC party has approximately a 50% chance of the PCs losing (if the NPCs were as well-equipped and tactically effective as the PCs). But how can all NPCs always have the odds on their side? That doesn't make sense; if two groups of NPCs fight each other (counting, say, a band of orc warriors as NPCs), then one group has the odds on their side and the others are outmatched.

If our lone fighter NPC usually fought foes of CR X-2, as you seem to suggest, then it would take him more battles to advance, with a higher chance of success per battle. But this only applies once he's gotten to level 3, and getting there isn't trivial. I don't know what your normal chance of success is vs. a foe of CR X-2, though I think it's better for a Ftr3 vs a Ftr1 than it is for a Ftr10 vs a Ftr8. And even in a fight with a foe of CR X-2, you might lose, especially if you've had multiple battles that day or if they get a lucky crit.

A full, well-balanced party of NPCs, that routinely fights foes of CR X-2 and rarely has more than 4 battles per day, could indeed stand a much better chance of getting to 20th level. But I view these as "PC advantages" meant to make the game interesting and not overly deadly; I don't regard them as reflective of the typical NPC adventurer experience.

 

[Crothian]

the second edition high level book has this in a very nice table.

 

[Nail]

Let's say the odds are wildly on the "Party of Commoners" side:

Assume a party of 4 NPC Commoners, and they always fight one opponent of CR (X-2). For arguement purposes, that means that four 1st level commoners fight one 1/4 CR creature for an encounter, four 2nd level commoners fight one CR 1/2 opponent, four 3rd level commoners fight one CR 1, ....and the progression to higher levels is self-evident.

Given those constraints, the Party of Commoners require 53 encounters for all of them to get to level 2. Then they require another 79 encounters to get themselves to level 3, etc.

To get to level 20, they require 2876 encounters!

Assume they all always survive these encounters, and furthermore that they have only 1 encounter per day (but no vacations!). That means they are all level 20 near the end of the eighth year.

No problem!