D&D 5E What's the rush? Has the "here and now" been replaced by the "next level" attitude?

[Celebrim]

Would you characterise either character as a single digit level D&D character?

No, but neither would I characterize 1st level D&D characters as being the sort that can survive 200 foot falls.

If I want to play Batman, starting from 1st level, what level would I need to be in order to actually be Batman and how long should it take (as in how many sessions) should I wait until I can legitimately consider myself a reasonable representation of Batman?

If you sincerely want to play Batman, starting from 1st level, then you can do it from 1st level. You start play as the boy Bruce Wayne, orphaned by the murder of his parents and consumed with a thirst for vengeance against all criminals - but still at the same time infused with the idealism of his father. That is a character concept.

And you become the Batman in play. After all, Batman wasn't always the high level hero, the peer of Superman, member of the Justice League. He started out as a crime fighter without a cape, seeking out esoteric wisdom from those masters who knew its secrets.

Is a 1st level character equivalent to Batman? 5th? 10th? Using D&D rules, how long is a reasonable wait until I can claim the cowl?

Batman was a 1st level character once. And he was a 5th level character once. And a 10th. Certainly by the time you are 10th level, you are a superhero and so long as most of the world is merely human, you'll be able to have super-heroic adventures. I honestly think when he conceived of the cowl and took off the ski-mask, he was 7th or 8th level. Although really characters from comic books don't have levels - they all simply have the power of plot. Few superheroes show that better than The Bat.

I think your question misses the point entirely. Batman is a highly experienced adventurer. By the time he returns to Gotham, finds the Bat Cave, and dons the cowl he's already had many adventures and established all sorts of relationships with the setting that will return to haunt him - reoccurring villains and lost loves. To play at 1st level is to start fresh, just beyond childhood or the things of childhood perhaps, at the beginning of a character's career. To start at the Batman, whatever that means to you, is to start in the middle or even past the middle. You start as Batman, and you'll never have an alternate identity to pretend to be. But ok, that's alright. You can start in the middle - in media res - which for you seems to be the start of ones career as a superhero - say 8th or 10th level. But if you want to do that, you can't complain that you can't start as a 1st level character, because 1st level characters aren't meant to be superheroes. You can't complain then that you aren't able to be a superhero by default in D&D at 1st level, because 1st level was never meant to be the start of a superhero career. If you really want to start as a superhero by default, you must play a game where starting at the beginning of a superhero's career is the default - say Mutants & Masterminds or even in fantasy form Exalted. The story D&D tells is the story of becoming a superhero, and then perhaps something more if you continue play - something of a legend or a demigod.

So, again, Batman was a 1st level character once - a young emotionally wounded man named Bruce Wayne. You can play that at 1st level, and that's where I start and that's the sort of characters I create - generally with no idea at all of what their story is going to be because I won't be the only one making the story. If you want to play Bruce Wayne later in his journey, you'll need to start play at higher level. If you want verisimilitude to the superhero genera, you are probably better off with systems specialized to producing that. I recommend Mutants & Mastermind as a comic book simulator, though if your idea of The Batman is the peer of Superman, you can't start at the default PL10 either. GURPS has its charms, though you can't make 'The Batman' as a 100pt character either, you could make Bruce at some point prior to his return to Gotham - though you'd have a longer road to superhero perhaps than you would if you played D&D! Like D&D you'd start with a Superhero's allotment of character points - say 300 - if you wanted to start as a superhero.

In so many threads, you've evidenced a desire to start at the end of the story because you've never before gotten there. I suggest you just do that.

 

[Minigiant]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]

I think you are missing the grand scheme.


The issue is how D&D relies on players to ask for homemade features to be allowed by the DM or for supplemental to be allowed by the DM because the first decent ice spell requires you to 4th level spells and be 7th level.


Basically D&D traditionally has been slow to support making characters whose mechanics match their story. So many players rush to the level they needed to be to get their character's background and mechanics to match. Only DM allowed content can stop that.

 

[Celebrim]

Again, no one is saying to play batman out of the gate. But is it unreasonable to want to achieve the character you do want to play in under about 200 hours of play?

You keep insisting on 'characters' being only things that do things, not things that have stories. If you don't want a story that involves the whole heroes journey, but instead starts only after Beowulf has gained renown and the throne and now must face the Dragon, then by all means start at that point.

Which brings us back to the op. It's not a rush to want to achieve goals in a reasonable amount of time. I have zero interest in playing a campaign for more than about two years. And I'm certainly not going to apologize for that.

Ok, sure. If you have zero interest in playing a campaign for more than about 2 years, figure out how much story you can fit into two years and actually enjoy the freaking story. Stop rushing to get somewhere which will end up being no where and meaningless. Instead of rushing through 20 levels of play in two years, start at 12th level as established legends in the world with suitable backstories and play through 6 or 8 levels in two years as high level characters. Don't wait for the thing you actually want if you know what you want. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. If high level play is what you want, linger in it. Luxuriate in it. Take the time to tell a good story by all means. But stop thinking to yourself that the destination is the goal; the journey is the goal. There is no fun at all in the destination. The destination is when you reluctantly lay that character you've built down and say, "It's finished. We reached the end." At that moment, any fun you are having will be looking back at the journey. If you rushed through it, you are going to be bitterly disappointed. The levels themselves are meaningless. They exist only to provide appropriate scope to certain chapters of the story. You can rush through the levels, but the story is not something you can rush through so easily. If you rush through the story, I think you end up with a thinner story. It takes time to play an RPG. That is probably unavoidable. There is probably a point where the pacing of a story can be too sluggish - Robert Jordan or GRR Martin come to mind. But mostly that results from having PC parties of 20-30 characters.

I honestly feel you gain nothing by a fast rate of leveling. The only reason to level at all is to match up with the character's growth in their journey. If I'd leveled my player's characters more quickly, it would have only meant that the NPCs were also leveling more quickly. The PC's relative station in the world wouldn't have changed. It would have meant that the Champion didn't become a Knight until 9th or 10th level instead of 5th or 6th, and it would have meant his peer knights were probably 9th or 10th as well. I could have sped up the leveling, but I couldn't in doing so have sped up the story. The story has taken as long as it has taken because its a lot of story - and there is a lot of story still to go, both that I want to tell, and that is implied in the PC's backstories. That much has been seen when we brought a new player in to the game to replace someone who moved and tried to get him up to speed. The absolute powers of the PC might have increased, but he really wouldn't have noticed because his relative power would be unchanged or even decreased. If everyone is a superhero, then no one is. You are only superior, above the norm, if you are actually superior and above the norm. It's the difference between being a somebody at 4th level, and being a nobody at 10th (see Forgotten Realms). When I played as a PC in 3e, I was frustrated by the fast rate of leveling - which is probably faster than any level of 1e except the first two or so. I literally sometimes wouldn't even get to use my new feats and spells before leveling up again. But if you really want to do it, no one is going to stop you.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]
I think you are missing the grand scheme.

The issue is how D&D relies on players to ask for homemade features to be allowed by the DM or for supplemental to be allowed by the DM because the first decent ice spell requires you to 4th level spells and be 7th level.

I'm missing this because that's not my experience of D&D, in any edition. By the end of 2e, D&D had what, 5000 official spells plus 25 years of dragon magazine?

How long did it take for the Elemental Substitution feat to become canon in 3e? How many splat books did 3.5 have?

Do you have a DM or what?

PC: "Can I take 'Icy Spray' instead of 'Burning Hands', does the same thing but cold instead of fire?"
DM: "Yes."
PC: "How about 'Freezing Grasp' instead of 'Shocking Hands', same thing?
DM: "Err... Ok, sure."

Done. Why are we pretending this is hard?

 

[Minigiant]

I'm missing this because that's not my experience of D&D, in any edition. By the end of 2e, D&D had what, 5000 official spells plus 25 years of dragon magazine?

How long did it take for the Elemental Substitution feat to become canon in 3e? How many splat books did 3.5 have?

Do you have a DM or what?

PC: "Can I take 'Icy Spray' instead of 'Burning Hands', does the same thing but cold instead of fire?"
DM: "Yes."
PC: "How about 'Freezing Grasp' instead of 'Shocking Hands', same thing?
DM: "Err... Ok, sure."

Done. Why are we pretending this is hard?

I had 2 DMs who banned it because "that's how it was balanced. There are fewer cold resistances so you can't sub Fire for Cold."

You act as if all DMs allow everything or even make good house rules.

 

[Nagol]

I had 2 DMs who banned it because "that's how it was balanced. There are fewer cold resistances so you can't sub Fire for Cold."

You act as if all DMs allow everything or even make good house rules.

Yeah, I'd be a third DM that would say "if you want spells like that go ahead and try to acquire them in-world, but you can only start with what is on the menu".

For me it's not about game balance though. The number of low-level critters with any form of energy resistance is negligible. It's about the game atmosphere and expectations. The setting expectation is spells known by casters are not strongly linked by theme..

The list of spells provided in the PHB are the common and codified spells that exist sufficiently widely in the universe that a starting character can access. The game does have methods of creating singular spells though every edition has effectively put that cost out of the range of starting characters.

If I wanted a game with tighter themes, more singular effects, or simple spell creation, I'd be using a game engine that supports easier construction of such spells like Ars Magica or Champions.

 

[Celebrim]

I had 2 DMs who banned it because "that's how it was balanced. There are fewer cold resistances so you can't sub Fire for Cold."

You act as if all DMs allow everything or even make good house rules.

No system can compensate for bad GMs. Maybe bad GMs are more common than I think.

And frankly, I think I'm pretty darn strict on what I allow. But, "there are fewer cold resistances so you can't sub Fire for Cold"??? Seriously? Wow.

The only energy resistance that needs fixing in Elemental Substitution is sonic, which is actually a notably rare resistance and is what most power gamers substitute for. That imagined conversation above probably should and would go differently if the player was power gaming for a sonic (or force) damage. But even so, direct damage is far far from the most broken thing you can do in 3e with spells and it's the easiest part to balance. Save or suck, shapechanging, and summoning/calling are far more problematic.

But ok, so you've got a DM who isn't a rule smith and is a moron, just take Lesser Cold Orb, Elemental Dart, Frost Breath, Ice Dagger, and/or Icicle as your low level spells. At least a couple of those should pass muster, and if they don't well it sucks that you have such an idiot for a DM.

 

[billd91]

Is a 1st level character equivalent to Batman? 5th? 10th? Using D&D rules, how long is a reasonable wait until I can claim the cowl?

I think there's a pretty good case for 4th or 5th. It all depends on setting expectations well. Famous characters don't have to be high level to stand head and shoulders over normals. An E6 style game handles Barmanic characters well.

 

[herrozerro]

I had 2 DMs who banned it because "that's how it was balanced. There are fewer cold resistances so you can't sub Fire for Cold."

You act as if all DMs allow everything or even make good house rules.

That's why I love savage world's trappings. All powers are pretty generic and players get to pick the trappings they wish to use.

 

[Celebrim]

For me it's not about game balance though.

Ok.

It's about the game atmosphere and expectations. The setting expectation is spells known by casters are not strongly linked by theme.

Where is that written? Your setting is your setting, but that's a homebrew setting and not a tightly woven expectation of the system. My setting assumes only that spells known by casters do not have to be strongly linked by theme. That is something different. How in the world can you say that D&D didn't expect spellcasters to have spells linked by theme? Bigby?? Otiluke???

If I wanted a game with tighter themes, more singular effects, or simple spell creation, I'd be using a game engine that supports easier construction of such spells like Ars Magica or Champions.

Didn't I just prove how easy tighter themes and spell creation was in this trivial case? I think your justification for saying, "No.", here is pretty darn thin - and I say that as an advocate for DM's saying "No."