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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8399713" data-attributes="member: 29398">The question then becomes - when comparing a starting-out PC to a common member of the same population - one of how exceptional is acceptable; and my own answer is &quot;not very&quot;.Sure, PCs tend to become exceptional as they level up, gain magic items, and so forth; but IMO it's a bit much to assume they start out that way.Were you never in an art class where the teacher said &quot;today you can only use purple paint&quot;?&nbsp; Or a writing class where the prof said &quot;for this essay you must keep it grammatically correct without use of the word 'the' if at all possible&quot;?I know from my own experience that constraints engender creativity; in that you have to figure out how to work within those limitations.&nbsp; A very simple example is if I want to write a poem* but all I've got on hand is a small scrap of paper.&nbsp; Clearly this forces me to keep it short, meaning that whatever I want to say I have to say it in very few words.&nbsp; The limitation of paper size forces me to think in ways I might otherwise not have, and thus directly causes me to be more creative in my thinking.* - I'm usually good for a few hundred a year.Fine.&nbsp; As long as the PC had the potential (i.e. could go to Orcus and present a case), consistency is maintained even if Orcus tells the petitioner to get lost.Gandalf is a PC member of a very-highly gated class.&nbsp; The Witch-King, in D&amp;D terms, roughly equates to an undead monster; and as this is not PC-playable the only thing it needs to be consistent with is other Witch-Kings...and there ain't too many of those. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Someone else in the setting could quite well have become Sauron if Sauron hadn't got there first.&nbsp; Saruman was certainly trying, though he clearly still had a long way to go.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8399713, member: 29398"] The question then becomes - when comparing a starting-out PC to a common member of the same population - one of how exceptional is acceptable; and my own answer is "not very". Sure, PCs tend to [I]become[/I] exceptional as they level up, gain magic items, and so forth; but IMO it's a bit much to assume they start out that way. Were you never in an art class where the teacher said "today you can only use purple paint"? Or a writing class where the prof said "for this essay you must keep it grammatically correct without use of the word 'the' if at all possible"? I know from my own experience that constraints engender creativity; in that you have to figure out how to work within those limitations. A very simple example is if I want to write a poem* but all I've got on hand is a small scrap of paper. Clearly this forces me to keep it short, meaning that whatever I want to say I have to say it in very few words. The limitation of paper size forces me to think in ways I might otherwise not have, and thus directly causes me to be more creative in my thinking. * - I'm usually good for a few hundred a year. Fine. As long as the PC had the potential (i.e. could go to Orcus and present a case), consistency is maintained even if Orcus tells the petitioner to get lost. Gandalf is a PC member of a very-highly gated class. The Witch-King, in D&D terms, roughly equates to an undead monster; and as this is not PC-playable the only thing it needs to be consistent with is other Witch-Kings...and there ain't too many of those. :) Someone else in the setting could quite well have become Sauron if Sauron hadn't got there first. Saruman was certainly trying, though he clearly still had a long way to go. [/QUOTE]

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