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2018-07-07, 10:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
On the other hand, saying 'you're standing on a railway track and it looks like you don't really know how to get off of it. There's a train coming. If and only if you agree to worship me, I'll rescue you' is, if not a threat, at least a form of extortion.
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2018-07-07, 10:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
They need an extremely high density of mid-level Clerics to make this work. Very few settings posit that density. Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk do not posit a world where every god has level 9+ Clerics in every city, or even a large number of them. Waterdeep-style massive trade centers have this kind of density of mid- and high-level religious figures, but most cities do not.
If fact, the god can come down just once..do a couple miracles and say somethings and have their faithful believe in that for 2000+ years. Though in D&D a god could pop down every couple years too.
Some, like the Forgotten Realms or Planescape, have more clerics above 1st level in a single temple, then the whole Ebberon planet.
"High level NPCs are rare" is not a 3e thing, it's an inevitability of population statistics. 3e wrote down specific math, but no major D&D setting posits high level NPCs being significantly more common. It can't, because if they were, there'd be no room left for ordinary people nor any need for adventurers.
Long range communication is not a problem for mundanes: see history.
And you might note from history that religious communication does spread very well among the commoners.
As I said above, this will only work if the god can somehow get rid of all the other gods from that city, and also get rid of any 'neutral' powerful beings that know the truth.
Dead people who get a body and aren't just floating soul stuff that merges with its plane become petitioners, which can't gain levels and certainly plane shift.
Being that this is both horrible and dumb, very few other settings copy it, and even the Forgotten Realms rarely remembers it. Something more or less similar to the depiction in Order of the Stick is more common (as depicted in 497).
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2018-07-07, 10:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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2018-07-07, 11:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
I'm just going to repeat my main point. If it's known that prayer empowers good gods, good characters should generally be quite happy to do so. The idea that good characters would not pray if they knew that simply being good people was sufficient to get into heaven, and thus deprive good gods, seems like the author being way too heavy handed. This is the case whether the gods are lying through their teeth about the whole "prayer is the only way to get into heaven" thing (the case with the post I first replied to), or if it's built into the metaphysics (wall of the faithless, where everything about it is dumb).
What percent of earth's population can run high energy physics experiments? For that matter, how many playgrounders do you think are currently working at the bleeding edge of any scientific field? Now swing by the science and tech forums, and see how many knowledgeable people can chip in when something newsworthy comes out. Turns out that when reliable experts can give proof, there's a lot to be said for trusting that over expecting them to keep re-proving it to everybody who shows any level of skepticism.
And evil deities could try to muddy the waters, but why would they? The resources you're devoting to making sure that a group of people don't worship anybody are resources not spent getting anybody to follow you. Evil gods would have just as much reason to want prayers and followers too.
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2018-07-08, 12:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
This is simply not true, for the Forgotten Realms of 1,2, or 3E(3.5E). Now they might have ''made the Realms like Ebberron'' in 4e and 5E, and I don't know about those editions.
Not every place has a temple to every god...after all FR has like 200 gods. But most cites does have at least five temples or so, with a mix of high level characters.
Though I don't know much about Greyhawk, I don't think they are that low in clerics either.
Well, the gods sure are active in some D&D settings like Dragonlance, Greyhawk Planescape and the Forgotten Realms.
And sure any god can try and ''trick'' followers away from another god...but they still have to do the miracles to make those people their own followers. So why take the effort to do the trick?
It is impossible to say this as a general statement for the dozen or so D&D settings spread over as many as five editions of the game.
True, Sigil is a puny city.
Not exactly ''no setting''....The Forgotten Realms of 2E does this exactly. Most folks are usually well above fifth level in a class that are innkeepers or blacksmiths, though the world has weak folks too. Plenty of Innkeepers are above 15th level too, and a couple are liches, dragons or even gods.
Otik Sandath, the innkeeper at the Inn of the Last Home, in ''low powered'' Dragonlance was a 6th level fighter in 2E
I can also point to the 2E Dark Sun setting as having characters of at least 3rd level.
Well, we can go by what is printed in the books, not what ''you think''.
It very much is. Even in generic 1E and 2E they did not say much about ''levels in the world'', other then to say, in the spirit of those editions that ''A DM can do whatever they want''.
And, as said above, the 2E settings are full of high level characters. (Except for Ravenfloft, as that was 2E's ''Eberron''.
Only in 3E and above(unless 5E fixed this?)
This is not how the Realms afterlife works.
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2018-07-08, 12:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
At the very least, worshipping any of the competing gods would logically do the same. And in the given example, it was the case of a setting where souls do go to an aligned plane but the gods felt the need to convince people to empower them by telling a limited version of the way the cosmos works. So, yes, extortion.
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2018-07-08, 12:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
Hardly at all. An evil person can potentially still go to a good afterlife by choosing good, rather than evil. You may not go to any particular god's domain if you don't worship them, but according to the outer planes alignment transfer of souls, an evil person can repent and turn good and then go to a good plane in the afterlife without the "extortion" of a god.
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2018-07-08, 12:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
The promise of the afterlife isn't really about motivating people to be good, it's about encouraging people to keep going when it looks like none of their efforts are accomplishing anything. Things might be awful for you right now, but they won't be forever. Just hold on a little while longer and then your part in the great struggle will be finished, and you'll be able to rest easy in the arms of Heironeous, knowing that you did everything that was asked of you.
You're assuming the gods believe that's how the cosmos works. Many of them probably don't. And since belief shapes reality on the outer planes, the cosmos probably doesn't work that way for their followers.
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2018-07-08, 01:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
Up to a point, that is true, but according to Fiendish Codex 2, repentance is not enough to remove corruption - atonement is needed - the combination of the giving up of the material gains of the evil deeds, apologies to those wronged, and an atonement quest.
Without those, corruption points remain.
A being who dies and would normally go to another plane due to nonevil alignment, but to the Nine Hells due to Lawfulness and high corruption, who is repentant, gets transformed into a Hellbred - they get an opportunity to "ransom their soul from the Hells" by doing great good - but it must be great good. And a point is made that most hellbred don't succeed in doing this.Marut-2 Avatar by Serpentine
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2018-07-08, 03:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
It's not a threat, because gods don't decide an evil person goes to the Hells, it's a fact of the workings of the Multiverse. Succu/Incubi and Night Hags wouldn't bother to corrupt souls before consuming them unless there was a tangible effect of evil upon the soul.
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2018-07-08, 08:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
How many FR cities can you name with 9th-level Clerics to more than one god besides Baldur's Gate, Waterdeep, and other massively influential metropolitan trade hubs? Phlan capped out at around 6th to 8th level for almost every class, with only a handful of stray high-level characters, none of whom were Clerics (although Bishop Braccio's exact level is never given).
Well, the gods sure are active in some D&D settings like Dragonlance, Greyhawk Planescape and the Forgotten Realms.
And sure any god can try and ''trick'' followers away from another god...but they still have to do the miracles to make those people their own followers. So why take the effort to do the trick?
It is impossible to say this as a general statement for the dozen or so D&D settings spread over as many as five editions of the game.
True, Sigil is a puny city.
Not exactly ''no setting''....The Forgotten Realms of 2E does this exactly. Most folks are usually well above fifth level in a class that are innkeepers or blacksmiths, though the world has weak folks too.
Plenty of Innkeepers are above 15th level too, and a couple are liches, dragons or even gods.
Well, we can go by what is printed in the books, not what ''you think''.
It very much is. Even in generic 1E and 2E they did not say much about ''levels in the world'', other then to say, in the spirit of those editions that ''A DM can do whatever they want''.
This is not how the Realms afterlife works.
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2018-07-08, 08:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
In present-day D&D, the only petitioners that are specifically mindless are lemures. Manes are almost mindless, but most of the other planes have petitioners with perfectly normal intelligence.
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2018-07-08, 08:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-07-08, 08:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
Alternately, evil people think that they're somehow exceptional. Just like how criminal gangs have lots of people signing up expecting that they'll make it to the top with all the attendant riches and glory, when in reality the vast majority wind up in prison or dead. All you need is the potential for one soul out of countless billions to eventually claw their way up to archfiend status, and you'll find evil people who are sure that they'll be that one. It's a selective sales pitch and it counts on people being bad at math, but is not out of line with setting cosmology.
According to what? Because sourcebooks write about specific blacksmiths and innkeepers who have class levels? That doesn't mean they're typical. Just the opposite, the blacksmith "secretly" being a 9th-level retired adventurer was initially meant to be a surprise, it just got run into the ground to the point where it was no longer surprising, ever. It still wasn't meant to be indicative of a typical townsperson. If the average dude was level 6, the denizens of a level 1 dungeon would be unable to threaten anyone. Low level modules would be completed by random townsfolk long before anyone would bother entrusting them to wandering vagabonds.
It's a problem that goes back to early in the hobby. You need the setting to be a place where there's room for adventurers to go adventuring, but you also need there to be people in town powerful enough that the adventurers can't just beat up the questgiver for the rewards and possibly the shopkeeper for everything he has in stock as well. These two issues work at cross purposes, and D&D has a long history of resolving that by just not thinking about it at all.
Besides which, what's to be gained by either having the few experts lie, or there being some antivaxxer level "truther" campaign? As I keep saying, good gods have little to lose from telling the truth. If good people knew that their prayers had a concrete impact on increasing the power of the forces of good, most of them would do it freely. Even if there were no personal benefit attached. (That's kind of Good's shtick.) Evil gods offer power in this world and the promises of a better position in the next, even if the reality isn't quite as rosy. Even neutrals, assuming a rule of "go to your god's domain if you have one, somewhere general on your alignment's plane if you don't", would probably prefer to wind up on a domain matching their passions rather than just some random spot on the plane. So who benefits enough from lying to make it worth their while?
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2018-07-08, 09:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
According to the rules in the DMG 3.5, any city of 12 001 inhabitants or more will have at least three 10th level clerics, whose level could go up to 15th level (1d6+9 x3). Any city of more than 5 000 will have a good chance of having one or two 9th level clerics (1d6+6 x2). Even a town of more than 2 000 has a 16.66% chances of having one 9th level cleric (1d6+3 x1).
Any city of 25 000 inhabitants or more will have four clerics of at least 13th level, which gives us 8x 12th, 16x 11th, 32x 10th, 64x 9th for a total of 124 clerics able to cast 5th level spells at the very least (that is, assuming that you roll a 1 on the level generator of the four highest level cleric NPCs).
Now, I don't know about other editions or specific settings, but generic D&D 3.5 has a lot of high level NPCs pretty much everywhere.Last edited by MrSandman; 2018-07-08 at 09:44 AM.
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2018-07-08, 12:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
How many? A lot. Remember, The Forgotten Realms is D&D most detailed setting of all time. As I said, just about every city has at least five or so temples, and each temple has characters of all levels, some high and some low.
Phlan has no clerics? Phlan? What are you going by some wacky video game version of the city? Did you miss the Temple of Tyr there? Tarl Desanea is a 15th level cleric of Tyr.
A lot of the Dragonlance gods did ''descend to the earth'' though. I don't know much about Greyhawk, but Izu was in that war and was a god, right? And, well, you know the gods cause the apocalypes in Faerun, right?
I guess if you don't count ''doing things and taking actions'' as as ''being active'', then sure, no gods ever do anything...except when they do things and take actions, of course.
Except that is NOT how the D&D afterlife works. The D&D afterlife is ''be true to your alignment'' and ''follow a god''. There is no ''one true path', there are many roads to the afterlife.
Not true. This is the modern Eberron way of looking at D&D: The whole world must be zero level wimps so the PC's can feel special.
Again, some settings like The Forgotten Realms, Planescape and Spelljammer are FULL of high powered, high level characters and things like dragon innkeepers.
From 2E sure, once you get into 3E you get the modern ''E'' idea to make everything small and wimpy.
Well, sure, according to lots of soursebooks. But again, guess you can look at a whole pile of soursebooks with high level people like innkeepers and say ''oh, just as there are tons of them, that does not mean they are typical."
I think your ''version'' of D&D is just your own personal tastes, and not what is found in the rules.
I'm saying they exist and are at least uncommon. I'm saying the average innkeeper is around 5th level.
I'm not filling in anything. The books say X. You the one who is running around saying ''oh, what that book says is wrong or does not make sense".
No ''book'' states that high level NPCs are common place, like a 3E ''rule''. But lots of settings do have lots of commonplace high level NPCs.
Sure, low level people are more common then high level ones....but that does not mean their are no high level ones. The whole ''oh in all the land their is only one arch wizard, Zombut the 6th level one" is a 3E thing, and worse, an Eberron setting thing.
It does? What page? My copy does not mention what happens to a petitioner...
Just about all criminals think ''they won't ever get caught'', for example.
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2018-07-08, 12:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
The Mod Wonder: A reminder: Avoid comparisons to real-world religions.
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*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
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2018-07-08, 02:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
For a comparison: it only took about 1 climate scientist in 20 to turn global warming from "completely settled" to "controversial" in the public imagination. Here 1 cleric in 3 is evil: "hear the lie Big Celestia doesn't want you to know about" is an easy sale.
Last edited by Chauncymancer; 2018-07-08 at 02:38 PM.
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2018-07-08, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2018-07-08, 03:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
Out of curiosity, what lie are the evil clerics telling?
If it's that you don't need to pledge yourself to a god in a cosmos where not pledging yourself to a god can really screw up your afterlife, those evil deities are turning off potential converts to their cause as well. Since worshipers tend to empower their deities in the setting, that's shooting themselves directly in the foot.
If it's that you do need to pledge yourself to a deity in a setting where you don't, I again don't see how that won't just cause even more people to flock to the worship of good, or at least neutral, deities. Again, not a big win for team evil.
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2018-07-08, 03:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
The only place where you need to pledge yourself to a god is the Forgotten Realms, and it's got problems.
Core D&D only has your behavior determining the state of your soul (including casting spells with alignment descriptors).
Eberron has a mysterious afterlife with mysterious divinity whereby nobody knows if the gods are even real.
The "need to pledge yourself" is not a thing in most of D&D, just that one place.I want you to PEACH me as hard as you can.
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2018-07-08, 03:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
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2018-07-08, 03:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
There's also the fact that each deity's realm seems to have a bunch of that deity's own worshippers as petitioners, rather than randomly assigned petitioners of the correct alignment. And death gods like Hades seem able to grab every follower of their entire pantheon except for those who merited special attention from a different deity. This suggests that deities can suspend the rule that souls go to the plane of their alignment for their own worshippers, and at least some of them can do it for followers of a different god in the same pantheon.
Telling an evil person that if they repent they'll end up on an upper plane is uncertain; they may or may not be able to fully change in the time they have left. But if a gods says, "worship me and I'll save you from the Abyss," that's probably something that the they can guarantee.
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2018-07-08, 04:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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2018-07-08, 04:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
An easy lie would be "you're good enough how you are. No need to worship a stuffy, self-righteous god and toe his line. You can worship this more exciting, less demanding god and as long as you're good enough, you'll get the good afterlife."
With this, they get more worshipers for their evil god (as long as they're not cartoonishly evil) and more people not trying too hard to be good. Being truly good, according to most cosmologies, is hard work. Being evil (or at least neutralish) is easy. So you mix a bit of truth (that you don't need to worship a particular god to get the good afterlife) with a bit of a lie (that they can just go along doing whatever they feel is good and not really worry about being "too good" and still get there). It takes away the safety rails that good gods provide, increasing the amount of people that will fall into serious error.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2018-07-08, 06:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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2018-07-08, 06:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
No. They don't. There are dozens of churches, multiple sects for the larger ones, and myriad cults all pushing their own narratives on what The AfterlifeTM is supposed to be and the "proof" available is sparse and gated behind being a moderately powerful caster / highly capable adventurer to know those places actually exist at all and a search through an "infinite" space for the soul of -somebody- you once knew to confirm that it's actually the afterlife and not just a very exotic locale.
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Praise I've received A quick outline on building a homebrew campaign
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2018-07-08, 06:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
* The greatest good for the most people is accomplished automatically by the market through the efficient allocation of capital. That means greed is good, and you don't need to worry about the consequences of your actions -- the market will handle all that for you, more efficiently than you could.
* There is no morality, just power. The thing they call "good" is just the current status quo which keeps them in power. You deserve better than these lies which enslave you. Try this one weird trick which they don't want you to know.
* Those people who claim to be good murdered your ancestors. You can't let the sacrifice your ancestors made be for nothing. Revenge is just setting things right, and righting a wrong isn't wrong.
* There's no prize for second place in a war, so you're justified in taking any measures, no matter how horrible, to ensure yourself victory. After all, you're just protecting the people you care about. The enemy would surely do the same thing you're doing if they were clever enough and had the opportunity.
* Asmodeus will build a wall and make the orcs pay for it.I want you to PEACH me as hard as you can.
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2018-07-08, 09:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
Going by this statement, I'm pretty sure you've never played in, or read sourcebooks regarding the demographics of, Eberron in particular or 3e in general. Or if you have, then the DM had modified the setting beyond recognition.
It's a pretty unfair characterization, in two ways. Firstly, Eberron is not at all full of zero-level wimps, it just has a higher proportion of NPC classes so you run into more adepts/magewrights/warriors/experts than clerics/wizards/fighters/rogues on average, and there's a dearth of politically-active and well-known NPCs at high levels so most monarchs, Dragonmarked House leaders, etc. are in the level 8-12 range instead of 16-20, but there are plenty of high level monsters and NPCs in the setting. There are articles on the WotC site talking about making PC-classed NPCs and high-level NPCs rarer than in the standard rules, but they're talking about randomly-generated NPCs; you can have plenty of PC-classed and high-level NPCs Eberron, they're just expected to be named, powerful, and influential figures rather than "Joe Bob, the 12th-level wizard with no backstory I just rolled up."
Secondly, don't blame the level treadmill of 4e and compressed level range of 5e on Eberron; Eberron no more inspired that aspects of those editions due to its level range than Greyhawk gods being core in 3e meant Greyhawk inspired the 3e mechanics, and if anything FR being the default setting in 5e should make for more of a gap between high and low levels, not less.
No ''book'' states that high level NPCs are common place, like a 3E ''rule''. But lots of settings do have lots of commonplace high level NPCs.
Sure, low level people are more common then high level ones....but that does not mean their are no high level ones. The whole ''oh in all the land their is only one arch wizard, Zombut the 6th level one" is a 3E thing, and worse, an Eberron setting thing.
And that's just on average (it's a 1d4+X roll, so metropolis wizards range from 13th to 16th level by the DMG, for instance), and the same level range determination holds for all the other PC classes. Now, certainly, most settings don't follow those guidelines exactly, either because they're older settings with grandfathered-in level demographics or DMs want to tweak them for their campaigns. But the idea that 3e says anything close to "6th-level wizards are powerful and special" is ridiculous.
Where exactly did you get the idea that 3e makes high-level characters exceptionally rare?
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2018-07-08, 11:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Do Most People Understand How the D&D Afterlife Works?
One of the big selling points of Eberron was that it is the anti- Forgotten Realms. The setting has no gods, no high magic and few high level NPCs. Oh, and it's cool Steampunk...with no steam.
What I meant was that Eberron rode the wave of ''make D&D low level" and was the cap stone. Part of the general design of 3E, along with ''removing most of the penalties for power" and ''removing the unfair things" was ''re making D&D low level".
A Lot of the 2E settings were full of powerful magic and NPCs. One of 3E's big goals was to nerf that. It's the same sad story: Billy was gonna play D&D, but he read a book that had a high level character in it....a character far more powerful then his second level gnome. So Billy, figuring that all the powerful high level NPCs would just ''save the world'' before his second level gnome could even put his boots on, just decided to not play D&D as it was ''no fun". And then he complained to the D&D company ''I can't play the game, as everytime I do (in my mind) a high level NPC saves the world, before my character can do anything!" The vast majority of players did not have Billys problem, but they went ahead and listened to the Billys of the world anyway.
So enter 3E, and eventually Eberron, the perfect game and setting for Billy. "help, help" would cry the game and setting(in Billy's mind) "There is a Giant Rat attacking the farmers barn! And the game/setting has no high level NPCs to save the day! Billy! We need your second level gnome to save the day!" Then Billy can finally play D&D, and have his second level gnome 'zap pew pew' that giant rat with a color spray spell.