In my case they're technically all equally legit. But as a DM I'd be slightly aprehensive that cases 1 and 2 might have pre-built expectations from their previous DMs. It really annoy me to have to explain why their character can't do this or that IMC.
Now, in my case I'd also be more aprehensive because I don't use Point Buy for abilities. As long as the PC doesn't have broken scores though, It shouldn't be an issue.
About the equipment: I don't like tailored shopping lists. I'll probably have a bigger say on their equipment than other DMs would.
The character that had played through all 10 of the levels (option 1), is more legitmate than the others, especially the guy from scratch.
Here's why. Basically the guy that played his character through, made choice for his character one level at a go. He was able to try things out and modify his character to some extent as he played it. His personality has been developed over the course of play.
The guy who makes a character from scratch, can min-max that guy perfectly. He has perfect control of where he wants the "end result." He can play with the statistics of the skills the character takes, and in some smaller degree, the feats. Furthermore, this on-spot character had not had 10 levels of play to develop its personality.
Regardless of the rules uses, and assuming that all is fair, I'd start the from scratch character lower than one who has played through the levels legitimately. Give the guy who played through the levels, a character who is 11th, the guy who played some of charcter through, a normal boost to 10th, and the newly created guy a 9th level character. Then use the method of experience where each character is awarded XPs based on their own level. Eventually the 9th level guy will catch up, earning more each session while he develops his character somewhat like the other two.
The only "legitimacy" that matters is that the GM requires 10th level characters for the game. If there are no other table rules understood by the group that bear on the situation, that is all that matters.
Frex, if this was my game, and the character that was 12th level was also in my campaign, I might not allow it. Why? Because I am a continuity fiend and if the history of my world has that character somewhere else, then he was somewhere else. Nothing in my stated or implied rules about xp/levels only being earned during actual play.
None are more legit than the others.
You can min max from scratch and through playing. (I don't change character concepts based on the settings, I change application of the concept based on the setting).
The only edge that the from scratch character has is magic item selection, but depending on the campaign the ground up character came from this may or may not even be noticeable.
As long as the three characters conform to the RAW plus any house rules clearly stated up front, then none are more "legitimate" than any other. Previous play does not validate them in any way.
They all conform to the DM's rules for character creation as outlined by his new campaign. There's nothing inherently more legitimate about playing up a character than one you just put together. There's no indication that the one that gained his wealth through play has any more realistic (whatever that means) magical items and equipment than the one that was made up just for the game, either. In fact, it could be the reverse for all we know.
I've seen several builds that are suboptimal for long periods of time in order to become hugely powerful at a given level -- some combinations of feat choices and class abilities that clicks really well once you've gotten to the right level. In fact, I've done it myself:
When I played the horribly DM'd "Speaker in Dreams" game, we made 5th level (I think) PCs, and I made a 5th level guy that I had wanted to play for awhile, a paladin-monk. Lots of fun, great to roleplay, and he died fairly early on because our awful DM (he DMs another group, but only DM'd our group this one time, and was never asked to do so again) overlooked several skill possibilities and just tossed us into combat. (For those of you tempted to hijack the thread by attacking my attack on the DM, let me just ask if (blacked out for spoiler purposes)
a) You've ever played Speaker in Dreams with three bone devils, not one, because the DM didn't understand that there were three different places where one might meet the singular bone devil and instead had us meet the bone devil in all three places, b) You've ever had the DM declare that your once-per-day attacks, big-money spells, and expensive-ammunition attacks automatically fail, only to later say that "you think they might work now" because he didn't want to have the fight happen right then, so he just arbitrarily had everything we did fail, and then later admitted doing that, or c) You've had the DM actually raise his hand and declare, "This is the hand of plot! The hand of plot says that you cannot get into this building until you've cleared the Temple of Pelor!"
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So, when my fun paladin-monk guy got ignominiously killed, I came up with a completely minmaxed character who would have, well, stunk at lower levels, and had just reached the level where he had everything I wanted him to have. He was a dwarven fighter4/cleric2 with: Magical Armor with Magical +1 Spikes, Weapon Focus:Armor Spikes, Weapon Specialization:Armor Spikes, Improved Grapple, and a fully charged Wand of Silence. His tactic was to cast Silence on himself, charge an enemy spellcaster, and grapple the poor fellow to death. It worked pretty much every time I did it, and made several encounters laughably easy.
That character was legit on paper, but, had I come into a campaign where everyone else had built up their characters from level 1, I would have been more powerful than those people, most likely, because I built the character with the concept of Level 6 in mind the whole time, and, in the backstory where this guy was level 2, he was pretty lame, since had some weird feats that didn't really help him a whole lot yet.
It's not a problem that a DM can easily solve, since I think that the problem of having an organic Level 10 guy be less powerful than a planned Level 10 guy isn't as bad as the problem of having a Level 10 guy adventuring with a Level 1 guy. But it's one that I do watch out for. At the very least, I tell my players that the characters will be around for awhile, and that it might not be a bad idea to make a hypothetical 20th-level build of themselves and work toward that. Some players hate doing that kind of thing, and I certainly don't force it, but other players benefit from that kind of planning -- at least enough to mitigate the effect of playing with guys who *always* have that kind of planning.
There is no such thing as previously earned "legitimacy" for a character, and I am supremely annoyed when someone comes into my campaign and expects his 10th-level whatever to sweep across the stage and wow me with his brilliance simply because he supposedly played the character all the way up from first level.
Legitimacy is earned. I've watched people come in with brand new characters hot off the press, and put good thought, lasting creativity and more solid backstory into their character than Joe Schmoe next to them who has simply been rolling dice for two or three years.
The character that had played through all 10 of the levels (option 1), is more legitmate than the others, especially the guy from scratch.
Here's why. Basically the guy that played his character through, made choice for his character one level at a go. He was able to try things out and modify his character to some extent as he played it. His personality has been developed over the course of play.
Not necessarily.
I've run games for guys that literally knew every skill, feat, spell and equipment choice they would make from levels 1-20.
A powergaming min-maxer is going to pimp his PC no mater what.
That said, I'd need to see the character's equipment to really decide.
If the first example PC was played in a game where the DM just gave out random treasure, and you got what he chose to give you, that's one level of legit.
If he was played in a campaign where magic-shops are readily available, and he bought whatever equipment he wanted, that's a different matter.
Either way, as long as the character is close to standard, and fits my house rles, I'd allow any of them.
