Did you retire characters at name level?

[Plane Sailing]

I'm interested to see how common it was (amongst those represented on ENworld who want to vote) to retire characters once they reached 'name level' - which was about 9th-11th level, the point at which you stopped gaining HD and just gained a few hp each level instead.

 

[Grymar]

No, we didn't. And we kept gaining HD too. We kept the same progression as you had in the first 10 levels.

 

[Crothian]

No, and it was not until the boards discussion on this a few years ago that I learned of people that did. It just never occurred to us to stop playing a character just because of the level they got to.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

We only ever had one party of characters reach name level, and they retired some time later, after finishing Q1. The retirement coincided with one of the core members moving away halfway through highschool, though, and we'd largely moved on from D&D by then anyway, so it's probable they would have been mothballed anyway.

 

[el-remmen]

Never got that far. . .

But probably would've.

 

[Nifft]

Never voluntarily.

Cheers, -- N

 

[WayneLigon]

Yes and no; we didn't retire the characters at those levels because we were no longer gaining HD or Cool Stuff, we retired them because by the time we got a PC to 9-11th level it was 18 months or so since we began the campaign and we were ready for something else. Also, the prospect of level progression slowing down to basically nothing was just too daunting. Only twice or three times in 20 years of pre-3E did we ever have PCs that reached 9-11th level, starting from 1st.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Nope. Most characters I retired were high 20s low 30s when I retired them (I play long term characters - some lasted a decade or more).

The fact that I played 1st ed until 3rd came out helped their longevity.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Likewise yes and no. IOW, never for that reason, no. So I voted 'rarely if ever'.

 

[frankthedm]

Yeah, never got that high back in the day, but since only ther casters really got much out of 11-20, I can't imagine sticking it out that long