Garhkal wrote:
the 100 level elf wizard (or any other class) is an impossibility. THere's just not enough XP in the world to get to that level..
I've never understood this argument.
It makes no sense, unless your world has an immutable, fixed number of monsters, magic items, etc. In fact,
even then it doesn't make sense.
There will always be more monsters reproducing and therefore new xp being generated. For every orc, dragon, zombie, or umberhulk a wizard slays, there will be dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands more being produced around the world.
Then there's xp for casting spells, for researching new spells, for creating new magic items, etc. If we look at the wizard xp progression from 2E, it tops out at 375,000/level, from 18th level on. Extrapolating, with the wizard needing 375,000 for each level above 20th, he would need to gain 375,000 xp x 80 levels (20th + 80 = 100th level). That means 30,000,000 more xp needed.
Now, if it were indeed impossible for a wizard to gain 100th level due to lack of xp in the world, that means there can only a total of (for example) 21 each of rangers, druids, paladins, fighters, thieves,clerics, wizards, etc. at 9th level. What I'm doing is looking at the xp needed for the "impossible" 100th level wizard, then splitting those total xp up amongst the xp requirements for each class, at 9th level, then taking that total and dividing it amongst the classes to hit 9th level.
So in the entire campaign world, you can only have 27 characters of each class. If we have any higher level characters, there can be
even fewer. Talk about rarity! You'd have one 9th level character of each class per region at best!
In fact, the PHB itself proves how wrong that oft-repeated claim is. One need only look at the druid hierarchy, as described in the PHB.
Assuming one
Grand Druid (15th) (the highest ranking druid - only 1 per setting), he needs 3,000,000 xp alone. Then there are the
Great Druids (14th level). Great Druids need 1,500,000 xp and they rule "regions" of the world. Assuming an earth-sized world with 7 continents and a few large islands and/or remote areas (i.e. Greenland), we can assume there would need to be 10 Great Druids (one per continent, plus 3 remote areas or large, non-continental islands). Keep in mind, the rules describe regions as much smaller, so each country would probably have at least 1, but I'll use 10 total in the world as a minimalist approach. That's another 15,000,000 xp needed. So just for the Grand Druid and 10 Great Druids, we need 18,000,000 xp in the world. The Grand Druid is served by 9 Druids. Three of them are
Arch Druids, so that's 900,000 xp (3 x 300,000). Now we're up to 18,300,000 xp needed. There are 6 other druids serving the Grand Druid, all ranging from 7th to 11th level. So let's set 2 of them at 7th level, the others being one each at 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th level. That's another 545,000 xp needed, so now we're up to 18,845,000 xp needed. The Great Druid has 3 11th-level druids under him, so that's another 600,000 xp, for a total of 19,445,000 xp needed.
Arch Druids are 12th level, and there can only be 3 per geographical region. Let's again assume 7 continents plus 3 other large areas (in reality, there would be many more, but I'm going super minimalist to highlight the absurdity). That's 30 Arch Druids x 300,000 xp = 9,000,000 more xp, for a total of 28,445,000 xp. Each of these 30 Arch Druids are served by 3 10th-level druids. That's 90 10th level druids, who would need 11,250,000 xp, so now we are up to 39,695,000 xp - far more than a single wizard needs to hit 100th level.
That's just for the minimal sized druidical hierarchy of an earth-sized world!
And that does not take into account the numerous 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level druids out there, or all the 10th and 11th level druids out there, who would be in addition to the ones I counted in above. And then we have
hierophant druids. Each of these result from a Grand Druid earning an additional 500,000 xp, then stepping down. So to go from a 15th level Grand Druid to a 16th level Hierophant Druid takes 500,000 xp. To go from a 16th level Hierophant Druid to a 17th level one takes another 500,000 xp, etc. So every 2 levels a Hierophant goes up requires another 1,000,000 xp. Assuming there is only 1 Hierophant druid (16th) in the entire game world, that brings us up to 40,195,000 xp. I hate math, so let's just say all the other 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level druids combined needed only a total of 9,805,000 xp to exist, That brings our
planetary total of xp just to have a
minimalist druid hierarchy to
50,000,000 xp. Almost double what the "impossible" 100th level wizard needs.
Now what about all the rangers, fighters, paladins, wizards, thieves, monks, bards, etc? A single 9th level ranger on each continent and major non-continent area would result in another 3 million xp needed. One paladin per continent, etc would take yet another 3 million xp. That's another 6 million xp. I'm tired of doing math, but realistically even with a minimum number of relatively low level and just a few rare higher level characters of each class, you're talking about many times the number of xp needed for even 1 single 100th level wizard.
So if there are not enough xp in a campaign world to support the existence of a 100th level wizard, then there are also not enough xp in that world to support even a minimalist druidic hierarchy as described in the PHB, even if those druids were the only classed/leveled characters in the entire world (i.e. no wizards, no fighters, no thieves, etc).
I don't know who it was who originated that myth about "not enough xp in the game", but they should have done the math first, so I didn't have to.
And it's all
your fault for making me do this math,
Garkal, because you didn't bother to do the math either!
You trying to punish me?
[
Note: Sigh. I forgot to add in the 3,750,000 xp needed for the wizard to hit 20th level
, so that adds onto the 30,000,000 more needed for the wizard to gain 80 levels and hit 100th. So the actual grand total would be 33,750,000. Doesn't change the point, but I wanted to correct the math. Minor difference at best.]