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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 2939644" data-attributes="member: 1757">To the OP: It sounds like you have a disparity between flavor and mechanics there. Unless everyone else in the game world is a 1st-level NPC-classed individual, your friend's 1st-level fighter cannot be a "super-tough character." Now, one interesting idea might be to make him a former super-tough character. Perhaps he's an elan, or perhaps he fell afoul of a sinister foe, who instead of merely torturing and slaughtering his family, shut him into a cramped, unlit box with a trio of spectres who repeatedly drained his levels until he was reduced from his 16th-level self to a 1st-level fighter. It's an idea...As to PCs being the biggest fish: I've actually always had the opposite problem, where players automatically assume that their PCs aren't the toughest people out there, and that if there's a REALLY big problem, there must be someone else with the power to handle it. I've sensed this a time or two in my current Iron Heroes campaign (which is set in Waterdeep); the PCs are currently 3rd level, and the players have been pretty scrupulous about taking captured foes or pieces of critical information to the Watch or the Lords (the shadowy rulers of the city). I'm perfectly happy with this conduct, but I do worry that it'll erode any sense that the PCs are the progatonists of the entire story. On some level, I don't worry; fantasy literature from Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser to the Lord of the Rings features side characters who are more powerful than the protagonists. The trick is to make the PCs more directly interested in what's going on than the powers-that-be.</blockquote>

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