Why PCs should be competent, or "I got a lot of past in my past"

[Staffan]

One reason to start small, for a campaign, is that the players need to learn about each other's PCs. You can easily say, "we're a seasoned group of death-defying adventurers," but when you put them up against the Statue-Maker (petromancer) and her Five Minions, will they act like a seasoned group of adventurers with years of teamwork experience? I bet they'll each focus on their solo abilities, and not remember all those encounters from which they ran away (which allowed them to become seasoned adventurers).

Good point. I think an RPG probably works better with experienced characters that haven't necessarily worked closely together before. A group of people assigned to a new unit, or gathered by an NPC that's part of their common background, or something like that.

I would not say the D&D rules make the adventuring group "kids".

Default human starting age in AD&D 2e was 15+1d4. I think 3e kept the 15 but changed the d4 to d4, d6, or d8 depending on how much training they considered your class to need. I don't recall what 4e did, and 5e has thankfully done away with random starting ages. But there's definitely an expectation that a 1st level character is a teenager, or at least fairly young, without all that much experience.

That is more a metagame social thing: most kids that play D&D want to be kid characters. Before 5E the expatiation was something like three years per level in a generic sense. The bulk of the guards are in their 20's and 2nd level, the captain is above 30 and 3rd level and the 40 ish guard commander is 5th level. And like 10th level is a living legend.

I'd say maybe before 3e. Post-AD&D editions have all had pretty rapid advancement. 3e had 13 1/3 on-level encounters per level, with 4 encounters per adventuring day as core assumptions in adventuring design, so 3-4 days of actual adventuring per level. Of course, that doesn't count travel time, time to make magic items, and things like that, but a level per month is entirely reasonable in 3e. For actual adventurers, that is.

It's a bit wrong to compare to Movies and TV shows. Those characters are like 15th or even Epic level and they are in a 1st level world. That is how movies and TV shows make fake fictional drama.

I don't think the crew of Deep Space 9 are the equivalent of 15th level. They are competent professionals, not legends (well, except Sisko who becomes Space Jesus eventually, but that's a secondary progression track to his actual competence). Same with SG-1. Or the Rocinante crew.

I think these folks, and you, both miss the actual point. D&D starts with relatively inexperienced characters because character power growth is a thing that some/many people like to engage in. And the lower you start on the power curve, the longer the game can go with growth of power.

But do they want power growth, or just the power? And does it need to start at the bottom? Do we really want to play weekly for two years to get to 20th level?

Sometimes in D&D and PF2, I feel that I don't really get to explore the stuff I can do at one level before it's time to level up again. But at the same time, I don't want to be a low-level nobody for ever.

If you want a game in which folks start competent, and don't grow much in power over time, may I direct you to Fate? Other rulesets (like Gumshoe, Cortex, and others) also have similar characteristics.

My preference is somewhere between D&D and Fate. I want to start out competent, and have some room for growth.

Yeap, and to go back to the X-men example, they didn't start that way. Not in the comics, and even the movies like First Class show how they built up to it. Proving that compelling stories are possible even at the initiate stage.

That's why I specifically mentioned the All-New, All-Different X-Men – the team that started out with Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Wolverine, Banshee, Sunfire (well, sort of), and Thunderbird. Unlike the First Class, these were adults when they joined, not teens (I think Colossus was supposed to be 19 or so, and significantly younger than the rest). This was even called out in one of their earlier issues, when Xavier was trying to punish Wolverine for improper behavior by issuing "demerits", and Cyclops had to take him aside and explain that these were adults, not children, and had to be treated that way. Some of the team were more experienced than others, but Banshee was an Interpol agent, Wolverine was an agent for Department H (who did not appreciate him leaving), and Storm had been both a master thief in Cairo and a "goddess" in Kenya.

You certainly can start at 3rd level or 5th level or 7th level (some of the more popular advanced starts I've seen) but the problem is always, "If the characters had interesting adventures in the past, why did we play that out?"

Because I don't want to play out a 5- or 7-level prologue with each player before having them join up. Plus, doing so would lock down the backstory and make it actual story, which means it's harder to have "some guy you knew during the war" show up and do something plot-related.

I think it's cool when Hawkeye and Black Widow banter about Budapest. I don't need to know what actually happened.

 

[MNblockhead]

I lean the opposite direction. I like to start with a level zero funnel. The great thing is DND can support both play styles, just chose the level you want to start at.

Personally the over-competence of PCs in D&D was keeping me from the kind of game I've been itching to play and I'm really enjoying Warhammer Fantasy these days.

I'm not against playing heroic fantasy games. Heck, I've backed the MCDM RPG. But I don't want to ALWAYS play heroic fantasy. My default preference is zero to hero and with 5e I had to homebrew in the zero.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Default human starting age in AD&D 2e was 15+1d4. I think 3e kept the 15 but changed the d4 to d4, d6, or d8 depending on how much training they considered your class to need. I don't recall what 4e did,

i don't believe 4e had random starting ages.

 

[Umbran]

But do they want power growth, or just the power?

Growth. This is a pretty well-known pattern in modern game design, whether it be Candy Crush or D&D - one way to keep players engaged is with the Kool Powerz they'll get at the next level.

Not every game needs to have it all the time, of course, which is why there are games that don't. But the success of, say, Blizzard's Diablo line of games makes it hard to argue that they've pegged the market all wrong.

And does it need to start at the bottom? Do we really want to play weekly for two years to get to 20th level?

Well, no. But D&D hands you a pretty simple way to not start at the bottom - start at 3rd or 5th, or wherever you want.

And, while the game goes up to 20th level, it has been known for decades now (at least since the 1999 Market Survey, IIRC) that most campaigns don't generally reach the top anyway - aside from game design, there are real-life limitations on most players that tend to suppress super-long-term play. The bulk of the official published adventures go from starting around 1-3, and go up to around 12th level, for practical reasons.

Sometimes in D&D and PF2, I feel that I don't really get to explore the stuff I can do at one level before it's time to level up again. But at the same time, I don't want to be a low-level nobody for ever.

My preference is somewhere between D&D and Fate. I want to start out competent, and have some room for growth.

Start at level 3 (or 5, if "competent" means "can throw fireballs around"). Play to level 12, or whatever you like. If it moves too fast, cut XP awards in half.

Not all that difficult to manage. Doesn't really call for much redesign.

That's why I specifically mentioned the All-New, All-Different X-Men...

Yeah, but superhero comics have their own genre-patterns for handling power growth, that don't necessarily coincide with what you see in epic fantasy fiction. One of my favorite supers games doesn't have character advancement mechanics at all in the core rules - they are part of a possible future expansion.

 

[Tonguez]

Travellers lifepath character creation minigame was superlative, though maybe too detailed for DnD. Backgrounds go part of the way towards it, and Kevin Crawford has essentially a Life path system.

 

[uzirath]

The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (a GURPS variant focused on D&D-style tropes) starts characters at 250 points, which many people liken to level 5-7 in D&D terms. Some folks, including me, like this a lot. Others complain that it doesn't allow for the "zero-to-hero" story. Thus, Gaming Ballistic released the Delvers to Grow supplements to support quickly building lower point characters.

In the broader GURPS world, starting character power and growth (if any) depends entirely on the genre. Superhero games can start at 1000 points or more. I've played in some campaigns where characters didn't use points at all... you just built the character with the abilities that made sense for their role and backstory. This required a robust Session Zero where we could discuss how the team would work together dramatically. Any character growth in this game was just whatever the story produced. There was no set "rate" of progress.

It's fun trying out different ways of managing this.

 

[Celebrim]

Because I don't want to play out a 5- or 7-level prologue with each player before having them join up. Plus, doing so would lock down the backstory and make it actual story, which means it's harder to have "some guy you knew during the war" show up and do something plot-related.

Again, I've never had a problem with 1st level preventing the inclusion of relevant backstory that is actual story with events with allies, foils, contacts, villains and mysteries. You can always have NPCs in the backstory show up and do something plot related. All it precludes is you being powerful, which I do recognize is a deal breaker for some people. But you could totally do Firefly where all the characters are 1st level to start and not already badasses without any real changes in the backstory.

I think "leveled" characters as starting characters works better for gritty campaigns than fantasy campaigns where "levelling" up is colored as a realistic increase in experience. For one thing, it works hard against the typical fairy tale tropes and bildungsroman that is the basis of so much fantasy literature to do that in fantasy. For another, too much backstory and too established of a life raises the question of why the character is suddenly going to make new best friends. For another, the levelling up in a gritty setting probably involved doing mundane things like going to college or working a trade that doesn't actually make for interesting story.

But as a general rule, you should always start the story when it is about to become interesting.

And also as a general rule, how much backstory is valuable to a campaign depends entirely on how many players you have. If you just have one player, the whole campaign is about their backstory and personal goals. If you have two or three players, then the campaign can be heavily influenced by each player character's personal goals and backstory. By the time you get up to six or eight PCs, backstory is secondary to the group goals.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, but unless you also do the work to determine that "the length of the campaign" is the same in both cases, that's not a meaningful comparison.

What's the basis of measure campaign length? Amount of in-game time that passes? Number of real-world hours played? Number of sessions of play? Number of "adventures" (and what constitutes one "adventure)?

Number of hours played and advancement cycles.

I know games that, by published design, have no power growth at all, but allow for what a literature professor would call "character development" by allowing a character to change over time, without ever gaining in absolute power. How are these considered over a campaign?

Not terribly relevant to what I'm talking about is what they are.

My point is you can still have visible power advancement, start at a non zero-to-hero model, and have it work. Zero-to-hero is a combination of a tic in the D&D-sphere, and a price of having a big linear die; its not a necessity.

 

[aramis erak]

I agree with your general thesis that a D&D style party generally works better with characters who are "experienced" than with a bunch of farm kids on their first journey outside the village.

The complication, of course, is that the core mechanical conceits of D&D are based around starting with very few abilities and quickly rising to have a lot of abilities.

I have noticed, though, that my games that have been most successful story-wise have been those where the characters started at higher levels (anywhere between 5th-10th) and only gained a few levels throughout the campaign.

That sounds like you're playing AD&D 2e or later; Core D&D before then was largely devoid of new abilities by level other than 1st and 9th... but constant increase for extant ones. Exception being Monks (even in OE). The AD&D 1e had paladins with several levels getting new abilities, but not every level; UA moving them to Cavalier subclass didn't much change that; Barbarians and Cavaliers are almost as special ability heavy as monks. Until late in 1E, there were no core rules nonweapon skills other than the thief, monk, and assassin specials; the "secondary skills" option is essentially a background career, and you don't get new ones in play.

And, weapon skills were VERY limited. With pretty notable non-proficiency penalties.

But also, under AD&D 1E PHB/DMG/MM (no expansions) and OE, Holmes, BX, BECMI, and Cyclopedia, Normal people are 1HD in all the PC races... Noting that skills are added in M of BECMI and are thus in Cyclopedia. In AD&D, they're added in OA, WSG, and/or DSG... The Grayhawk setting folio has some kings as low as 5th level, perhaps lower.

I think these folks, and you, both miss the actual point. D&D starts with relatively inexperienced characters because character power growth is a thing that some/many people like to engage in. And the lower you start on the power curve, the longer the game can go with growth of power.

QFT.
But there's a bit of an oversimplification - if one shallows the curve, the growth can start higher on it for the same duration...

One of the crazy things about D&D is that it generally has players create characters who get threatened by something like a giant rat or a bandit but who are also already strictly superhuman - they have far better stats. far more power, a much wider range of abilities, and heal vastly more quickly than any of the people around them.

Only in later editions - OE, Holmes, BX, BECMI, BBB+Cyclo+Wrath all presume and suggest only 3d6 in order... AD&D1e presumes that, but lets the GM (and only the GM) decide to use the other, higher, starting points. The AD&D[1e] Grayhawk boxed set has some kings being only 5th level (ISTR 3rd for one or two)...

The thing is, D&D before 2E was intended to be essentially demi-god level heroes in a world of fragile humanity... the issue isn't so much that mid to high levels are too powerful nor that level 1 is so incompetent as that level 0 is so incompetent - the normals are fragile. Too fragile.

3.X, by introducing NPC classes and making most of the population actually having classes, really changes the baselines. No longer are 1st level hero classes better than the average NPC being on the street... and the average being on the street is still a fragile level 1...
3.X also is the point where every class was getting something new every other level or so. 4e and 5e have something every level.

The issue in D&D isn't the growth paradigm, it's the normal man paradigm.

5E normal men are actually considerably more competent than prior editions, simply due to the way checks work. Still, they're fragile - not as fragile as early editions - a non combatant OE/AD&D 1e/BX usually having 1-4 HP... vs 1d6 or more in 5E...

To quote one of my players last night, "Even with a Con bonus, rolling a 1 on a HD really sucks!" (We're doign Cyclo+Gaz+Wrath).

They didn't start incompetent at 1st level 16 weeks ago - they started competent; capable of facing any normal human or ork with a slight edge (all PC's start with the same tohit as fighter 1 - but normals are fighter 0 - 2 points less competent. The wizard with sling and staff is a better than normal man fighter.

The problem is that the default "0-level" is so incompetent, not that the level 1 is weak by comparison - because they're not weak. And it takes a swarm of rats to do significant damage. The hyperbole doesn't do the rhetorical position much good.

 

[Minigiant]

One can be competent but inexperienced.
Rookies have been to the Academy/

The core base flavor of many RPGs is that you are educated or trained in some way. How much on the field training without your teacher's guidance is different.