Characters 1st level but the background is 5th

[Arnwyn]

arnwyn: It is for that reason that I never allow a player to put attributes, classes, levels or other gaming content in backgrounds. If you want to say that your Dad is heroicly strong fine, it may turn out that this was your childlike admiration and he is only unusually strong especially given his age. If you want to say your parents were mages, fine, but I get to decide on the level etc. But in general, I'm pretty free with allowing you to have connections to the society, even important connections, just so long as you understand that those connections are devices which I will use largely for my benifit, not unrecorded and unpaid for advantages to be used to circumvent obstacles. Yes, your mentor may be there to provide aid, but don't expect your 'dad' to 'give you the keys to the car' just because 'you've got a big date tonight' (as it were).

LOL! Hear hear! That one player of mine doesn't put levels or stats or anything else - usually just a class or multiclass combo. He knows I'd nix anything that has too much mechanics in a character background.

And your policy pretty much fits mine as well - that the player should *expect* nothing (but might get something). Sure doesn't stop him from continuing to write those type of backgrounds, though.

 

[takyris]

I am deeply suspicious of people who write backgrounds and then ask for additional XP. As a DM, I'd be fine with "this guy rolled a 20, and killed the ogre, and realized it was what he'd always wanted to do, fighting for justice, and then decided to become a fighter." Heck, I'd even be fine with "Let's just say I killed the ogre by surprise, tricking it with a pit and a rope and a lamb leg hanging from a tree, and that I did it outside the framework of the D&D system."

In d20 Modern, which was the original setting we were talking about, try this on:

Steve grew up hunting with his father in the woods outside the small town in Montana where he lived. He was never the marksman that his father was, but he could get off a lucky shot now and then. His light build, which his burly father mocked, made Steve even better at keeping quiet and sneaking up on the deer or bear that they hunted. He began doing gymnastics, which his father hated, and was better at tumbling than he could ever have been at football or "a man's sport."

When Steve got accepted to an out-of-state college and offered a scholarship, he and his father had a shouting fight. Steve told his father that hunting was stupid redneck idiocy, and that he was never coming back, and he was going to make sure that his own child never had a gun in the house. Steve hasn't seen his father since.

Gymnastics got Steve through college, although gymnasts peak early, so it never became a profession. He'd majored in science and chemistry, and is now working at a CSI Lab in an intro-level position.

Game Info: Steve is a First-Level Fast Hero with personal firearms proficiency and ranks in Tumble, Hide, and Move Silently. He used to be a much better athlete, but a few years of not practicing has taken the edge of his tumbling ability -- and years of not shooting a gun has made him little better than the novices practicing on the shooting ranges. For my first few levels, when I roll well, I'm going to play it as though I "remembered" how to shoot well, and when I roll badly, I'm going to beat myself up later about making stupid mistakes. As a child, he probably had the equivalent of a +6 to hit (through practice, though he was a 0-level character), and at his peak, he had something like a +12 to tumble (right now, with Dex, he has a +6). So Steve is going to be remembering these great shots he made, but it's been years since he's pointed a gun at anything beyond a paper target.

The background can be as game-breaking as you want, as long as the character you end up with follows the rules.

-Tacky