Classes Everyone starts at 1st level

[Barastrondo]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

In the old days, one might in my circle encounter "transplants" from Gamma World, Starships & Spacemen, Villains and Vigilantes, Gangbusters, and so on. However, 90%+ of characters were of AD&D Players Handbook types (perhaps slightly different from standard, or subject to reincarnation or other effects commonly encountered in the course of an adventuring career). Spells, magic items, etc., were of course subject to careful scrutiny and potential revision and deletion. There was rarely a barrier, though, to continued play of characters developed over years in other "worlds".

It certainly depended on the group. For example, consider the barrier of a character who has a beloved NPC — maybe a spouse, or a true love, or even just the friendly and distinctive bartender at the local watering hole — that is part of the player's concept of the character. The character isn't the same without his supporting cast. And the new GM might not care about his supporting cast at all, or handle them poorly to the player's mind.

That's a tremendous barrier for some players. I know my wife wouldn't ever consider transplanting a character between worlds, because her character's social ties are a huge part of how she defines the character. You see who the character is based on how she reacts to the members of her church, her family, the local proprietors. The in-character goals are an important part of the play experience, and they're tied to those specifics.

Add in the expansion of more options among more RPGs. It becomes easier and easier to have a large list of characters you'd like to play someday but haven't gotten around to yet. For some, a new game is an excuse to create a new character, not an excuse to revisit a character left out in the pasture. They don't even have to be mechanical options, mind. I'd like to play a Sinbad-esque corsair at some point myself; but I also want to play him in an Arabian Nights-style game that showcases what's fun about the archetype, and would pass on the opportunity of having him go into a megadungeon in a very white-European-inspired setting. I'd want the corsairing, not the traps and suspicious doors and caverns filled with monstrosities.

People have the option to do more, absolutely. But I think that also applies to the play experience they're after. You can't help but see some splintering there. For some, the dungeon is the Descent Into the Underworld, the centerpiece of what the game is about. For others, it's an adventure site among many, fun for a bit but not something you want as the majority of the game. I think it's pretty awesome that we've been figuring this out, too, as more people have the opportunity to find the game that suits them perfectly.

[Remathilis]

Originally Posted by Barastrondo

That's a tremendous barrier for some players. I know my wife wouldn't ever consider transplanting a character between worlds, because her character's social ties are a huge part of how she defines the character. You see who the character is based on how she reacts to the members of her church, her family, the local proprietors. The in-character goals are an important part of the play experience, and they're tied to those specifics.

I think that's also a symptom of the gaming moving out of the "dungeon" into more "social" encounters. Before, when all you cared about was exploring X dungeon of Y stretch of wilderness, it didn't matter much who was the DM. It was just another "stretch of unknown" to explore and conquer. But as the game became more complex (involving plots and politics, re-occurring NPCs, and PCs with more depth and backstory) such things attached themselves to the PCs and their "place" in the world. Heck, try and move a name-level PC with a dominion from one DM to another and you see the inherent problem!

As a side note, I think part of this was the fact D&D never set out to define a "world" as many RPGs do. Palladium Fantasy is an RPG, but its also a setting. Ditto with White Wolf's "World of Darkness". D&D has no one world we all assume to run, we have worlds, some unique (homebrews) some shared (pick a setting). However, I can't assume Remathilis coming from the City of Greyhawk is true for your game just because it was true in mine.

(D&D does foster the multi-verse concept, which allows planar travel from world to world, but that was much more of a patch to allow such game-to-game travel. It'd been much easier to assume the default world D&D used was Oerth (for example) and spend 30 years mapping that out in ultrafine detail, rather than have a dozen settings like Krynn, Toril, Eberron, etc. It'd also be much more boring to have only one "D&D" world. Such is the trade-off.)

[Technik4]

Originally Posted by Hereticus

As one of the higher level characters, my first thought would be regret at sharing the looted treasure and experience with a lower level fodder who did not pull their own weight in battle.

Heh, I find this to be a telling comment. You are sharing experience with a fellow gamer and player at the table. Your regret at sharing experience despite what kind of character you play hints at your own playstyle. At the very least you could look at it as an investment in the future.

My second thought would be that since the lower level fodder was wealthy, that I was looking forward to splitting its stuff when it died.

I specifically designed some of those options to not relinquish an undue amount of treasure to the existing group. A noble start with a large credit won't bequeath the party with his gold, he has family it will go to. If anything, it may leave the party in debt. The artifact will have far more ramifications and are notoriously fickle things at any rate, that comes down to DM fiat.

D&D is a game, and all players should be treated equally.

Sometimes when you are really good at a game, it's fun to play with a handicap.

[Nifft]

Originally Posted by Technik4

Here's some tables of starting points for 1st level characters that are joining higher level parties:

In the Guardians of Order version of Game of Thrones RPG, social standing (nobility & wealth) were implemented as a level adjustment. Being King, for example, put you at LA +5 (IIRC).

Cheers, -- N

[Prisoner6]

Originally Posted by Mallus

My wargaming experience is limited to Risk and a few games of Axis and Allies (does chess count??).

I'm not even sure Risk and Axis and Allies count as war games, so much as games about war.

[Hereticus]

As one of the higher level characters, my first thought would be regret at sharing the looted treasure and experience with a lower level fodder who did not pull their own weight in battle.

Originally Posted by Technik4

Heh, I find this to be a telling comment. You are sharing experience with a fellow gamer and player at the table. Your regret at sharing experience despite what kind of character you play hints at your own playstyle. At the very least you could look at it as an investment in the future.

Every game is different, and upthread I stated (correctly) that another player was of a minority view. And now I saw this as someone who is likely of a minority view. We played an extremely challenging game with a certain DM who would not hesitate to kill a party member who made poor choices, or was just unable to keep up. A weakling character would not have survived, and I'm glad new characters were brough in equal to the weakest member of the group. That style may not be for most, but I enjoyed it at the time. I probably would not want to play it now, but I learned alot about how to make a character survive, even in my recent fourth edition game.

.

My second thought would be that since the lower level fodder was wealthy, that I was looking forward to splitting its stuff when it died.

Originally Posted by Technik4

I specifically designed some of those options to not relinquish an undue amount of treasure to the existing group. A noble start with a large credit won't bequeath the party with his gold, he has family it will go to. If anything, it may leave the party in debt. The artifact will have far more ramifications and are notoriously fickle things at any rate, that comes down to DM fiat.

I remember one game where we were around 12th level, and were in desperate need of a bit more gold. The players tricked the DM into allowing us to hire some mercenaries who had their own equipment, so we could steal from a noble. But instead of continuing the operation, we killed the mercenaries for their stuff and sold it for the money we were short. From that point on, all mercenaries hired in with no money or magic items.

I remember my evil cleric being in debt a few hundred K gold. After accepting the money from a noble with promises of interest, I told him to [can't be said here].

.

D&D is a game, and all players should be treated equally.

Originally Posted by Technik4

Sometimes when you are really good at a game, it's fun to play with a handicap.

To be honest, we had a room full of very good and very competitive players.

[Technik4]

Originally Posted by Hereticus

Every game is different, and upthread I stated (correctly) that another player was of a minority view. And now I saw this as someone who is likely of a minority view. We played an extremely challenging game with a certain DM who would not hesitate to kill a party member who made poor choices, or was just unable to keep up. A weakling character would not have survived, and I'm glad new characters were brough in equal to the weakest member of the group. That style may not be for most, but I enjoyed it at the time. I probably would not want to play it now, but I learned alot about how to make a character survive, even in my recent fourth edition game.

In a game where everyone begins play at 1st level, new players start at 1st level, and characters that die must be raised or you begin a new one at 1st level, death is a very real element of the game and I'd wager you'd need a specific group of people (including a skilled DM) to play that game. While it's true mechanically you can contribute very little to a 12th level party at 1st level, there are still many ways a character can impact a story (even a combat) that are not level-based.

I remember one game where we were around 12th level, and were in desperate need of a bit more gold. The players tricked the DM into allowing us to hire some mercenaries who had their own equipment, so we could steal from a noble. But instead of continuing the operation, we killed the mercenaries for their stuff and sold it for the money we were short. From that point on, all mercenaries hired in with no money or magic items.

Metagaming is fun for some, not so much fun for others. You clearly play with a mercenary group of PCs.

I remember my evil cleric being in debt a few hundred K gold. After accepting the money from a noble with promises of interest, I told him to [can't be said here].

Would you consider campaigns with evil clerics as PCs to be the minority?

To be honest, we had a room full of very good and very competitive players.

The second part sounds very true. D&D can be played many ways, collaboratively or competitively. For the player that enjoys the challenge of playing a video game at the highest difficulty level, a fighting game with less starting health than his opponent, a card game with worse cards, or a D&D game at a lower level there is still much opportunity to excel. You just have to play smarter and have some luck (and in D&D the willing cooperation of the party). As I said above, I would hardly try and institute such a system in the average D&D game, but that isn't really what this thread is about. This thread is asking "If you did want to do this, can it be done (and how)?" not "Would you do this, why or why not?".

[Asha'man]

I personally think the best way to do this, from a mechanical fairness PoV, is to run 4e with all the +1/2 level bonuses dropped. High-level PCs will have more, and stronger, powers, and more HP, but they won't have much higher defenses or attacks than their lower-level compatriots. High-level monsters will similarly have more dangerous attacks, and be much tougher, than lower level ones, but they won't be untouchable by weaker PCs, who will just have to play cautiously.

If the mechanical fairness isn't of central importance (and it probably isn't), anecdotally 1e and 2e are decent for this as well, because of generally lower numbers and greater importance of player skill over character power. But I've never played 2e, and only a little 1e, so I don't know.

I have, however, played some very mixed-level 3e games, and actually, they worked very well. Admittedly that was more a case of a wildly exotic rag-tag bunch of entities as PCs than one weak guy trying to hang with a high-level party, but it was very fun. The key was that the party was large, challenges were complex, often requiring the PCs to split up or do many things at once. This also includes combats, swarms of lower-level monsters with a few burly "centerpieces" was the norm, so everyone had something to fight on an even footing. Also, situations were often set up to let the lower-level characters strut their stuff. (For example, one adventure took place on the Positive Energy plane, allowing the Barbarian PC to tank with almost unlimited HP so long as he didn't lose it all in one fight. In another, the 3rd-level gnome druid had to guide the barbarian (who didn't have survival) and an 18th level sorcerer(who could teleport, but didn't know the destination, and didn't have Etherealness or similar easy-travel spells) through a cavern complex)

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Prisoner6

I'm not even sure Risk and Axis and Allies count as war games...

Risk certainly doesn't. Axis probably does. Anyway, I said that jokingly to indicate how limited my wargame experience was.

(I know that Avalon Hill used to publish them, hex maps were all the rage, and Advanced Squad Leader was really, really complicated).

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Korgoth

I don't always succeed...

True.

But what I said was that in the style of play I favor, exploration and intellectual challenge are the point of the game (challenge the player vs. challenge the character, etc.).

That's all well and good. For the record, I favor that approach to the game too.

There is no permutation of logic I'm aware of where that implies that other styles "lack" intellectual challenge; my point was conerning the "point" or focus of play.

Recall you also wrote "(a focus on exploration and intellectual challenge) are now so removed from what people think of D&D that they doubt it ever existed".

Unless the phrase "so removed from" has a new meaning I'm unaware of, this says contemporary D&D play no longer focuses on exploration and intellectual challenge. This goes slightly beyond a statement of what you, yourself, like. Or did you intend the last part of that sentence to mean something else?

See, in [(p -> q)] and if you've got (p), (q) is implied. Also, (~q) implies (~p). But (~p) doesn't imply anything in that equation.

Using logical notation is the last refuge of those trying to backpedal. Unless, of course, you're using logical notation in an ironic manner, say like the late David Foster Wallace might have, as a means of poking fun at yourself. It which case it is pretty funny.

Anyway, that's how you parse the word "implication".

I parse like Infocom, yo (and apparently I rap like a white man).

So don't get insulted...

No worries. I wasn't insulted.

[MichaelK]

If you have the free time, perhaps you could have the player create a first level character and come over on a non-game night. Together you could play through the past 'highlights' of the PC's career. You wouldn't do the entire adventures, but maybe one or two encounters per character level until you've brought them up to the same level (or one lower) as the rest of the group.

Perhaps you could figure out what one of the group's cohorts would have been like at a lower level and the PC can have adventured with him for a while before the cohort joined the group. that would give him a connection to the group and someone who could responsibly vouch for them to the other PCs.

It'd help flesh out the character's history, they could see how their abilities all work and grow the character organically from level one.

Wouldn't that achieve pretty much what you're after?

(hmmm... I think I might use this technique myself.)

[Hereticus]

Originally Posted by Technik4

Metagaming is fun for some, not so much fun for others.

That could be said for most game characteristics, including games without levels.

Originally Posted by Technik4

You clearly play with a mercenary group of PCs.

That was one aspect of our game. Our first few years we played all heroes. Then we learned how much fun evil was, and that dominated our game for a few years. Then we graduated to characters that focused on world building.

Originally Posted by Technik4

Would you consider campaigns with evil clerics as PCs to be the minority?

In all games, definitely a minority. Even so in our games, I seemed to be the only one who could get an evil cleric to survive multiple game sessions. But I was not good with Fighters or Rogues.

Originally Posted by Technik4

The second part sounds very true. D&D can be played many ways, collaboratively or competitively.

By this comment, you are clearly implying that the first part was not true.

And that I find to be an insult.

We were both collaborative and competitive.

Originally Posted by Technik4

For the player that enjoys the challenge of playing a video game at the highest difficulty level, a fighting game with less starting health than his opponent, a card game with worse cards, or a D&D game at a lower level there is still much opportunity to excel. You just have to play smarter and have some luck (and in D&D the willing cooperation of the party). As I said above, I would hardly try and institute such a system in the average D&D game, but that isn't really what this thread is about. This thread is asking "If you did want to do this, can it be done (and how)?" not "Would you do this, why or why not?".

To each their own, but I wouldn't bother with most of those scenarios.

And your repetition of "you just have to play smarter" implies that the level of play from others is not so high. I have been blessed to be able to game with some very competent and interesting people.

[Ariosto]

I think the key is that if "the party" meeting at the same Bat-time every Bat-week is around level X, then a PC too far below that is likely to piss off at least one of the participants in one way or another.

TALK ABOUT IT, and if that problem does not rear its head then you're sweet.

If you're determined to play the demographic odds, then I would second Gygax's advice to have separate low-level and high-level adventures. It may be (as another ENworlder recently put it) "an enigma wrapped in a thesaurus" -- but one reason the original DMG remains a classic is that it really is Old Possum's Book of Practical Dungeon Cats, with more wisdom between the covers than one is likely to learn the hard way in any decade of Dungeon Mastering.

[Ginnel]

*raises his hand*
what is this about playing smarter? I don't understand, you either play an intelligent character or not, you play a tactical genius or you don't.

In a role playing game you only thing to play is that characters role, if I'm playing atypical Beserker I get impatient and want to wade through my enemies without too much concern for my own well being or party, when it comes to figuring out clues and puzzle he is more likely to bring his weapon to bare after being frustrated by literally minutes of waffling about this than suddenly come up with a solution.


To me there is no such thing as playing smarter unless you aren't playing a roleplaying game, take away that role and you're just playing a game.

[Ariosto]

The concept of role-playing in early RPGs (especially D&D) was focused on putting oneself "in the shoes" of one's character rather than on such exercises as pretending to be more ignorant or foolish than one was in real life. The latter sort of play can be facilitated by using dice rolls to have character ratings determine matters from whether a puzzle is solved to whether sound tactics are employed -- but so taking the player's skill out of the loop was contrary to the game concept. It would have been analogous to "playing Chess" by running a computer program to decide one's moves.

Approaches of course have varied from the start, but there's a practical selection pressure against playing characters so unintelligently that they are removed from play by such consequences as death! Likewise, the removal from play of actual mysteries, puzzles, parleying, strategy and tactics and so on may (for some players) significantly reduce the scope of interest in the game.

Perhaps it is easier to understand if one has experienced the problems that can arise when players take "chaotic" or "evil" alignment as warrant for extremely disruptive behavior. It is a game, and that gives some considerations importance that might not be relevant to staging a play (a notably different kind of "role-playing" that is sometimes conflated with the traditional RPG kind).

[haakon1]

Originally Posted by Hereticus

When my company looses an employee (like an adventuring group), we try to replace that person with someone of approximately equal experience. We will not replace a 12th level engineer with someone fresh out of college.

That's how the world works.

Yes, like in World War II, after D-Day, when they sent replacements to the 82nd Airborne to replace the guys who got killed, they always choose people who had good experience in airborne invasions, so they'd be just as good as the veterans who survived . . .

And when Steve Jobs dies, Apple will just hire another guy who co-founded the first company to make PC's for the masses . . .

I dunno, saying being an Xth level adventurer makes you imminently replaceable from the never ending supply of similarly experienced yet mysteriously unemployed adventurers implies adventurers just aren't that special.

[takasi]

Like others have said, in D&D this is basically giving players a 'time out'. They suck because they died, for whatever reason, so now they have to sit through encounters where they can't do squat and need to cross their fingers that their sorry asses don't die again.

[Hereticus]

When my company looses an employee (like an adventuring group), we try to replace that person with someone of approximately equal experience. We will not replace a 12th level engineer with someone fresh out of college.

That's how the world works.

Originally Posted by haakon1

Yes, like in World War II, after D-Day, when they sent replacements to the 82nd Airborne to replace the guys who got killed, they always choose people who had good experience in airborne invasions, so they'd be just as good as the veterans who survived . . .

And when Steve Jobs dies, Apple will just hire another guy who co-founded the first company to make PC's for the masses . . .

I dunno, saying being an Xth level adventurer makes you imminently replaceable from the never ending supply of similarly experienced yet mysteriously unemployed adventurers implies adventurers just aren't that special.

I found the content of your post to be a deliberate exercise in comparing apples to oranges.

For the sake of generalizations, there are three types of replacements that can be made.

1) Cyclical replacements happen when you have a constant improvement of people, and by design you need a mix of new and experienced people. This works best in a macro situation, like our population in its entirety, the military as in your example, and a campaign world as a whole. It is not made for task driven small groups like adventuring parties.

2) Equivalent replacements happen when you have a need for continuity of effort, such as a project team at work, or an adventuring group.

3) Upgrade replacement happen when your task gets more difficult. This can be in the form of adding new members, or replacing ineffective members with upgrades. This really only happens in RPGs a new person joins, or a more powerful NPC is needed.

In the work world, the newby first level engineer is not compensated as well as the paragon executive. And it would absolutely suck to give both the same task.

And it would be just as bad or worse to put a much lower level character in with higher levels (assuming a combat-based game). The lower level character would be ineffective, and in a fight the rest of the party would see it as either dead wood or fodder.

It would be so simple to keep everyone at approximately the same level. Why not do it? Unless a player wants to play a lower level.

[haakon1]

Originally Posted by Hereticus

I found the content of your post to be a deliberate exercise in comparing apples to oranges.

Comparing combat replacements into veteran units seems pretty darn apples to apples to me.

Ideally, of course, in the real world, you would only pick veterans who are equally skilled to replace the guys who retire.

But that's not always possible -- in war, it's rarely possible. Instead, you have to have replacements who are green. To be more effective, they have to survive and learn -- they have to earn their stripes. All pretty basic stuff, if you've read accounts of war, whether factual or fictional, and whether it's WWII or Vietnam or probably any other war.

So the question, from a role-playing perspective, is how prevalent are veteran replacements. In my view, they should be vanishingly rare, because PC's are rare and special. That's why in my campaign, you have three choices for a replacement/midstream add-on character:
1) Start at 1st level and earn your stripes, just like every other PC.
2) Take over an existing NPC. Most likely, it's going to a somewhat weaker character, since PC's are pretty powerful, most of the time.
3) Start a 1st level character with ECL's from a "monster race". You need to earn your stripes, but your power level is closer. Of course, there are big role playing challenges to this choice.

But I think you're approaching the question from a complete different point of view. I think you're not asking what makes sense in the game world and how the world should work. I think what you're asking is what will make the player of the character who died least unhappy about that, and will have the best "game balance". You're the one who said, afterall, that having attack modifier than the other PC's would upset you -- not at all a role playing concern, but purely a gamist approach.

Originally Posted by Hereticus

For the sake of generalizations, there are three types of replacements that can be made.

1) Cyclical replacements happen when you have a constant improvement of people, and by design you need a mix of new and experienced people. This works best in a macro situation, like our population in its entirety, the military as in your example, and a campaign world as a whole. It is not made for task driven small groups like adventuring parties.

2) Equivalent replacements happen when you have a need for continuity of effort, such as a project team at work, or an adventuring group.

3) Upgrade replacement happen when your task gets more difficult. This can be in the form of adding new members, or replacing ineffective members with upgrades. This really only happens in RPGs a new person joins, or a more powerful NPC is needed.

In the work world, the newby first level engineer is not compensated as well as the paragon executive. And it would absolutely suck to give both the same task.

And it would be just as bad or worse to put a much lower level character in with higher levels (assuming a combat-based game). The lower level character would be ineffective, and in a fight the rest of the party would see it as either dead wood or fodder.

It would be so simple to keep everyone at approximately the same level. Why not do it? Unless a player wants to play a lower level.

In HR terms, what we're talking about is a build v. buy strategy for talent acquisition.

You need a build strategy -- hire junior people and train them internally -- when you're in a new field or a highly specialized/rare field where the talent doesn't exist or won't change employers. To give some clear examples of situations where you need to go with "build": Hiring PC software engineers in the 1970s; companies had to hire electrical engineers or hobbyists and grow them, because that's what talent existed, since the field was brand new -- there was no existing talent pool. Amateur kids like Bill Gates were as good as it got -- some few of them turned out to, like my vision of PC's, have great potential, but there's was nobody sitting there ready to go as a seasoned PC software engineer. Or "hiring" Olympic swimmers for your country's Olympic team -- many dozens exist globally, but few can be "induced" to change countries/teams.

What I'm saying is it makes more sense to me that adventuring parties would primarily need a build strategy. In my view of the D&D world, there aren't a lot of other parties developing the talent you'd need, and there are virtually no characters who want to change parties (in a super dangerous profession, it's not good for your life expectency to work with people you don't know and trust very well indeed -- that's why it's hard to infiltrate terrorist groups and mafias -- they won't just pick up any yahoo who applies, because they want only loyal people on their six).

By contrast, I think the buy strategy (let's pick up another 9th level wizard) makes one of the following assumptions about the game world:
1) We abstract it and don't care where they came from. It's just a game.
or
2) There are multiple parties running around the area, such that it's easy to lure people to change parties and people of the right level and class are available on demand. It's about as hard as finding a 9th level wizard for your party as it is finding a good sushi chef for your restaurant in New York City -- maybe not a dime a dozen, but a talent you can easily advertise for and likely find in a few weeks. (Doesn't fit my campaign, but possible).
or
3) There are multiple unemployed adventurers without parties. Again, doesn't fit my campaign, but it could make sense -- either sole survivors of near TPK's (implying even more parties are around) or just a generalized high level environment (the next guy you meet is a 9th level wizard and "he looks trustworthy").

Oh, and BTW, if you do go with a "buy" strategy, you often need to give inducements to get top employees to switch. It's often a bit more expensive than "you look trustworthy, join us" to get a Major League closer off the free agent list, or a CEO, to join your party instead of one of the many others that exist and train up your talent for you. So, if you have a "replacement comes with levels" view of your game, the party should have to pay the new PC's a signing bonus or offer a better share of the treasure to get them in the party. Otherwise, why wouldn't they stick with folks who raised 'em?

[Hereticus]

What you are missing is the difference between macro and micro.

In our general population and in large groups like the military, new people are always entering as older and sometimes not so old leave. That also holds true in an RPG world.

A small (gaming) group need not follow that rule, and in most cases it does not. In the real world, and in D&D.