Razzin' frazzin' sports

Tonight's session with the grognards has been canceled because the Illini are playing in the men's NCAA basketball championship this evening. I guess now I have a little taste of what it means to be a sports widow.

Here's an interesting article by D&D numinary Sean K. Reynolds on the subject of NPC classes. In short he ties levels in NPC classes to age, using the following breakdown:

Up to age 20: Level 1
21-22: Level 2
23-25: Level 3
26-29: Level 4
30-34: Level 5
35-40: Level 6
41-48: Level 7
49-60: Level 8
61+: Level 9

I'm somewhat interested in this research because I've been statting up soldiers and conscripts for my upcoming Arcana Evolved project. Given their similarites in longevity the above chart should work not only for humans, but also for Dracha, Sibbecai, and Verrik. Faen and Giants mature much more slowly, so their chart might look something like this:

Up to age 60: Level 1
61-66: Level 2
67-75: Level 3
76-87: Level 4
88-92: Level 5
93-110: Level 6
111-134: Level 7
135-167: Level 8
168+: Level 9

Two special cases are the Litorians and the Mojh. Litorians have lifespans somewhere between the shortlived human/sibbecai/verrik/dracha group and the longtoothed giant/faen group, but according to their racial write-up they reach maturity just as quickly as humans. My solution is to just use the chart for humans. Watch out for old lion men: any Litorian showing grey in his mane is going to be 8th or 9th level. And as far as mojh go, I'm not sure how useful it is to even worry about how manny levels of commoner a mojh might have. Willingly undergoing the mojh transformation strikes me as something only a crazy adventurer type would choose to do. Maybe they have some experts or adepts or hedge mages among their numbers, but my guess is that most mojh are adventurers and that any attempt to build a table for them is pointless.

While I'm on the subject of The Dragon War project I ought to mention the miniatures. I am seriously considering getting fielding miniatures for this campaign. Bewteen MageKnight and the D&D miniatures game there are a lot of excellent prepainted figures available for relatively low cost. As the DM my main concern would be a sufficient quanitity of dragon men to fill the ranks of the draconic armies. Given availability of the Kapak archer in the Dragoneye expansion for D&D minis and the Draconum faction in MageKnight there seems to be enough d00dz for sale to make this work. The new style halflings in the D&D material ought to work fine as Faen PCs. Humans can be painted red for Verrik. Mojh can be represented with lizard men, troglodytes, yuan-ti, etc. For sibbecai some gnoll sculpts will work, as well as the anubi from Wargods of Argyptus. Giants abound in nearly every fantasy figure line. And let's not forget the official figures from Iron Wind Metals.

I wonder if Pat still has that big bowl of MageKnight figures somewhere?