Do your characters know what level they are?

[tjoneslo]

Thom's poll of the week. As the question asks, how aware are your characters of the game elements? This is one aspect of the difference between roll-playing and roleplaying, neither of which is better than the other.

 

[Wombat]

Characters don't know their level, in the aggragate -- they know relative ratings, but not actual levels.

Equally, characters don't refer to them by their character class title (no Barbarian thinks of himself as a barbarian, though a few wizards do call themselves wizards).

Fourth wall and all that

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

Characters don't know their actual levels, but they can gauge how powerful they are compared to a monster. Spellcasters know what types of spells are out of their ability and how powerful they can make magic items.

 

[JDJarvis]

Characters should only have a rough guesstimate of relative capabilities.

When DMing I just don't answer level based questions. "what level does he seem to be?" gets no reply from me and sometimes on of the other players will speak up in a character voice "What the heck are you talking about?"

 

[~Johnny~]

I guess my answer is "of course not!" I can't imagine a campaign that did have characters going, "Sorry, first level fighter, I'm level three... and you're going down!"

In fact, I rarely even know the relative power levels of my opponents. For example, when I play in my prequel-era Star Wars game, and my fifth-level hero has to choose betwen fighting against Asajj Ventress or a bunch of droidekas, I couldn't tell you who he'd rather fight. Or in D&D, I'll often be dealing with two humanoid villains working together, or a humanoid and a monster... it's often unclear which is more of a threat. When characters have in-game rankings, they're often misleading... the court jester (not that I've ever run an adventure involving a court jester) might be the highest-level character in the castle.

 

[Psion]

Characters don't know their level, in the aggragate -- they know relative ratings, but not actual levels.

What he said.

If the character sees another in action, or knows them professionally, they probably have a pretty good idea who the newbies are and who the skilled and talented members of their trade are.

Anything as explicit as levels? No. The might know someone as a senior member of their order, or a prodigy of sorts, but not anything numeric.

 

[Talmun]

Thom's poll of the week. As the question asks, how aware are your characters of the game elements?

The players in my game are aware of everything when it comes to their levels/classes. The characters are not, naturally, this isn't a Rose Estes novel.

 

[Victim]

Well, yes, in a way. Spellcasters can determine information based on spell levels, ranges, durations, and effect. Also, spells like enervation or the touches of certain undead could be used to ascertain levels. A necromancer firing maximized (or even better, minimized) enervations into different subjects would produce different results. Same thing for wight or spectre touches.

However, only spellcasters would have pratical knowledge of levels from their spells. Quantum metaphysics is poorly understood by most casters, and research into that area is generally discouraged.

 

[Zappo]

Not really, certainly not numerically. Characters who see another creature fight can get a rough idea of whether they could take it on and how many hits it could take, but that's true in real life as well.

 

[drnuncheon]

Arcanists in my world refer to themselves as a 'Magus of the 3rd Circle' (if they can cast 3rd level spells), but that's about the only in-game reference to it.

J