My main question is: In your worlds of D&D, is there a certain frequency of the different types of arcane spellcasters for NPCs/Villains? I.e., 80% are wizard if arcane, sorcerers are few and war between, warlocks/bards are in the middle.
I'm asking because I have a villain idea in my campaign (Bandit Lord that is also a Draconic Sorcerer), but I am concerned that sorcerers would be too rare to run into like that for a party. Would it be more believable if he was a Wizard/bard/Warlock compared to a Sorcerer?
I'm speaking in general terms for D&D mind ya, I get that I can tweak the frequency as I see fit for my world. I just am curious is there is a general acceptance to what kind of casters appear as NPC/Villains.
Any answers can extend to Divine casters as well, I just had my specific example in mind for a question.
In my world Sorcerers are rare, they're hunted down and if they aren't willing to join the forces hunting them, they're killed. Wizards are a little more popular but reclusive or hired by royalty. Divine types are about as common as Wizards, the Gods being in a state of recovery after a massive war with the titans. Lastly are the "natural" casters, Rangers and Druids, they're a bit more common in my world since the area they're in is inhabited by mostly nomadic or indigenous people who are very in tune with nature.
I personally try to keep NPCs from attaining high ranking status, I want the players, and the NPCs who are powerful, to feel unique and special.
As you already mentioned, this is definitely world specific. If you want to go with like published adventures, D&D lore, etc, I've personally gathered spellcasters come at a moderate-low in frequency. It takes a real gift and innate talent to be a spellcaster of any type. Taking a general stab in the dark...I think in like a real typical setting maybe 1 in every 30-50ish individuals have some sort of minor spellcasting ability, and then 1 in every like 1000 are pretty good with magic, so like level 6/7 plus, and then like 1 in 10000+ are over 11th level. This is a real rough guestimate and I wouldn't want to be quoted on it, haha, but that's how I typically imagine it would maybe be. In all that, yes, wizards and bards are probably more frequent and sorcerers and warlocks are probably less, as the first two require practice, and the latter two require being born with it/chosen to have that power. But unless you have sorcerers running around in like every encounter and city, I think peppering in spellcasters is not an issue at all. I run a homebrew campaign and I would say it is a world with a "moderate" level of magic based on like those tables in the DMG. Many important NPCs are spellcasters, two of the three big bads are high level casters, and a decent amount of low level cult members are weeny casters; there of course are a ton of non-caster folk in there too. The frequency or infrequency of casters in the story has never been an issue to me or my players, so again, unless they're everywhere and you made it seem like your world was in a "low" magic setting, I don't even think it will go noticed. I would really never let something trivial like "mathematical/logical proportion of wizards-sorcerers-noncasters" get in the way of you and your players have a cool encounter with an interesting villain. So make that dope Bandit Lord Draconic Sorcerer!
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Hello all,
My main question is: In your worlds of D&D, is there a certain frequency of the different types of arcane spellcasters for NPCs/Villains? I.e., 80% are wizard if arcane, sorcerers are few and war between, warlocks/bards are in the middle.
I'm asking because I have a villain idea in my campaign (Bandit Lord that is also a Draconic Sorcerer), but I am concerned that sorcerers would be too rare to run into like that for a party. Would it be more believable if he was a Wizard/bard/Warlock compared to a Sorcerer?
I'm speaking in general terms for D&D mind ya, I get that I can tweak the frequency as I see fit for my world. I just am curious is there is a general acceptance to what kind of casters appear as NPC/Villains.
Any answers can extend to Divine casters as well, I just had my specific example in mind for a question.
In my world Sorcerers are rare, they're hunted down and if they aren't willing to join the forces hunting them, they're killed. Wizards are a little more popular but reclusive or hired by royalty. Divine types are about as common as Wizards, the Gods being in a state of recovery after a massive war with the titans. Lastly are the "natural" casters, Rangers and Druids, they're a bit more common in my world since the area they're in is inhabited by mostly nomadic or indigenous people who are very in tune with nature.
I personally try to keep NPCs from attaining high ranking status, I want the players, and the NPCs who are powerful, to feel unique and special.
As you already mentioned, this is definitely world specific. If you want to go with like published adventures, D&D lore, etc, I've personally gathered spellcasters come at a moderate-low in frequency. It takes a real gift and innate talent to be a spellcaster of any type. Taking a general stab in the dark...I think in like a real typical setting maybe 1 in every 30-50ish individuals have some sort of minor spellcasting ability, and then 1 in every like 1000 are pretty good with magic, so like level 6/7 plus, and then like 1 in 10000+ are over 11th level. This is a real rough guestimate and I wouldn't want to be quoted on it, haha, but that's how I typically imagine it would maybe be. In all that, yes, wizards and bards are probably more frequent and sorcerers and warlocks are probably less, as the first two require practice, and the latter two require being born with it/chosen to have that power. But unless you have sorcerers running around in like every encounter and city, I think peppering in spellcasters is not an issue at all. I run a homebrew campaign and I would say it is a world with a "moderate" level of magic based on like those tables in the DMG. Many important NPCs are spellcasters, two of the three big bads are high level casters, and a decent amount of low level cult members are weeny casters; there of course are a ton of non-caster folk in there too. The frequency or infrequency of casters in the story has never been an issue to me or my players, so again, unless they're everywhere and you made it seem like your world was in a "low" magic setting, I don't even think it will go noticed. I would really never let something trivial like "mathematical/logical proportion of wizards-sorcerers-noncasters" get in the way of you and your players have a cool encounter with an interesting villain. So make that dope Bandit Lord Draconic Sorcerer!