"Earned" Characters

[billd91]

I don't think any one of them has more legitimacy. But I think one has, I dunno, more street cred, I guess.
They all are DM approved so legitimacy isn't really a question. But I think PC that are actually played up rather than arbitrarily made up are more respectable. They've withstood the slings and arrows of outrageous DMs to get where they are and that's not always a small feat.
So I'd say that the character run up to 12th level has the most respectibability, the one run up to 5th and then jumped to 10th is next, and the characters whipped up at 10th have the least.
I don't think that should have any impact on the actual play of the game, but I think the player of the 12th level character has reason to take greater pride in what he plays.

 

[howandwhy99]

I'm willing to bet that there are a good number of players who have never played, lets say, a cleric who would do as good a job if given one than most players who actually played a cleric from 1st level. Since player ability wasn't touched on in the initial post, I think it is safe to assume that they all have the same ability in playing D&D.

Yep. It's just a fact of life that some players are going to be better at the game than others. Whether they grew their characters to 10th or not doesn't make much of a difference.

I think understanding this type of character legitimacy though can be seen by anyone who has suffered character death in a long term campaign. Everyone else has their 10th level characters integrated with the game. My new one only has a history & some store-bought magic items. It's going to take a lot of gameplay to get more integrated.

 

[Arnwyn]

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.

Yeah, that (given the parameters in the original post.)

 

[ThirdWizard]

Everyone else has their 10th level characters integrated with the game. My new one only has a history & some store-bought magic items. It's going to take a lot of gameplay to get more integrated.

I agree about integration. A new player joined my campaign 8-10 sessions ago, and his character still isn't as a part of the world as the others. They keep getting their story lines furthered that began at the outset, and his plot arcs are still almost non-existant because of the concessions the campaign is having to make to accomodate him. I don't really think of his character as less legitimate, however. Just less fleshed out.

In a new campaign, that particular thing wouldn't be a problem. What might be a problem is the player with the old character having expectations based on his previously playing the character. That would worry me a bit, and I would be sure to go over what I expect out of the camapaign with all the players to be on the safe side anyway.

Not that the others don't share their problems. The newly made up 10th level character might be hard for the player to get a grip on if he isn't used to starting up a high level character. Last time we did that, we just started making up random adventures from the past that never actually happened. "This reminds me of the time we stopped that tribe of grimlocks from destroying the Keep of Roxinburry" "Yeah, but who would have thought they were being led by the vampire lord of the keep itself!" "I know, good thing we discovered the doppelganger spy before it was too late." "Amen to that, brother. Aha, got the lock picked, lets move on."

 

[tetsujin28]

Really, playing a character isn't that complicated.

Edited for more emphasis