"Earned" Characters

[Quasqueton]

Interesting question.

This question reminds me of an old thread:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=79786

. . .

Saying that a character played up from 1st level is more legitimate than a character that wasn't, kind of says that characters created above 1st level (even 2nd level, like I start my campaigns) are less legitimate. This just doesn't sound/feel right.

As a DM, I'd be wary of a character brought into my campaign from another. It could have more emotional and "expectational" baggage from the other game (unknown to me) than would be good for my game.

But more or less legitimate? Calling any character created within the rules of the game and/or the campaign anything other than completely legitimate for that game just is weird.

. . .

Thinking more about it, I would say that a character created specifically for the given campaign would be more legitimate than a character created for another campaign and brought over -- regardless of the level it was created at or played at. In this situation, the word "legitimate" seems to make more sense.

Quasqueton

 

[The Grackle]

Spoiler

"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!"

.

Spoiler

Oh my God. So, I hope you stole his books on the way out. Or at least burnt his house down or something...

I don't get how a character can be more or less legitimate. It either is or isn't. The DM approves it or he doesn't.

 

[Sledge]

None of them are more legitimate for a new campaign, but the guy who played from level 1 might have more fun I'd guess.

 

[Oryan77]

I would say the first character is more legitimate but that doesn't mean much because for all I know he could have had a munchkin DM that levelled to fast, pampered the character, or allowed him to keep rerolling stats until he got the numbers he wanted. I don't allow premade PC's into my game because of these factors.

 

[Henry]

Define "legitimate."

I wouldn't see any of them as more or less "real" for purposes of the campaign; however, I would expect to see the home-grown one played with more effectiveness and probably more in sync with the original character concept, assuming the other two had never played at that high a level previously.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Define "legitimate."

Well, that's the trick, iddinit?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I would say the first character is more legitimate but that doesn't mean much because for all I know he could have had a munchkin DM that levelled to fast, pampered the character, or allowed him to keep rerolling stats until he got the numbers he wanted. I don't allow premade PC's into my game because of these factors.

... Which is why I specified that the character was made with the same point buy as the current campaign and that it had equipment "in line" with DMG expectations.

Should I have put, in my initial assumptions, that the players aren't horrible munchkins, as well?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Thanks for the link, Quas! Interesting old thread.

 

[takyris]

Oh my God. So, I hope you stole his books on the way out. Or at least burnt his house down or something...

Well, at the time, he was the roommate of another player, so burning down the house would have been bad. Plus, they had, you know, a lot of books. At one point, they had every WotC splatbook, and two copies of Song & Silence, since we had a fair number of sneaky people in the group... And if they ever seemed to be getting bored with the D&D adventure, I'd just pick up the d20 Call of Cthulhu book and start paging through it to get them antsy...

But man, the next time I couldn't DM and he volunteered to run a module, you should have seen how quickly other people stood up to say that they'd be happy to run it this time. And how many of them might have had "stuff coming up" that would keep them away for the next few weeks.

 

[Reynard]

I think there is certainly something to be said for running a character for a long time, moreso from 1st level. Growth can be organic and -- like in real life -- affected by the events of the character's life. That's not to say that the newly created character isn't going to be a legitimate character, but it will likely take a while before the player really finds his/her place in the role. This, of course, assumes you are talking about most players -- the ones that sort of walk the middle road between the munchkin and the actor-wannabe. The former isn't likely to grow into the character regardless of how long he's been playing the character, and the latter is likely to cripple his character from the get go, for the "challenge." Both of those extremes are viable ways to play the game, but not to my tastes.

Ultimately, i think what is more pressing an issue is whether the party has risen through the levels together, or whether they were all created at a given level, or -- as in the original example -- there is a mix and match of characters that, regardless of how many levels they had been played, just got together. Party tactics and general cohesion is something that happens over time. it can be mitigated by players that have been gaming together a long time, but even so the actual capabilities and personas of the characters have a significant impact. It is this, more than issues of optimization versus organic growth, that makes me want to start characters at a low level.