"Earned" Characters

[WayneLigon]

I'd say they are all equally legitimate. The character played to 12th level might seem more legit, depending on the DM and setting, because the player already knows that character. He knows how he thinks and feels, how he acts. He also knows how best to use that characters abilities in most situations, especially if the other people have never played at the medium levels before. He might be more effective in many circumstances, but he's equally as legitimate as the other PC's.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

This used to be (IMO) a big issue for sorcerers... A tenth level sorcerer which had been played since 1st still had sleep and daze cluttering up his spells known, and very few chances to cast them. A tenth level sorcerer made from scratch has no such clutter. The ability to swap out spells known has helped the problem somewhat, thog feat optimization is still an issue.

I don't place any value judgement of "legitamacy" on it though.... to me level is just the starting power, not indicative that your character has X years of adventuring under his belt.

 

[sniffles]

Interesting question! It had never occurred to me that any of these characters might not be considered legitimate.

The only drawback I can think of at the moment for allowing ported characters is that starting a new character at a higher level might give you a chance to tweak it in a way that you wouldn't have had with a character run from 1st level (as Kahuna Burger points out with the sorcerer spell issue). So assuming you required the ported PCs to be carried over as-is, the newly created PCs might have an unfair advantage. But probably not anything unbalancingly unfair, unless the existing PC had died a couple of times or experienced some level drains or some such.

 

[Squire James]

All three are equally "legit", and the quality of the characters can vary widely even with this kind of group. Some people have a knack for creating interesting characters from scratch and run them well from the get-go. Some people have characters that walked into a dungeon as a level 1 character, left that dungeon at level 5, walked into another one to bring him up to level 10, and remained undeveloped despite his advancement. So all three can be equally "bad" too.

 

[jmucchiello]

I find the question meaningless. If a character is less legitimate than another character how does that affect the game? I don't believe it will. You may as well ask which of the three characters is more orange since it is equally relavent to playing the game.

Far more incredible to me is that people will disagree with one another in this thread and there will be at least 2 polar opposite camps who willl ultimately have to agree to disagree since neither side can "win" this disagreement.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

If a character is less legitimate than another character how does that affect the game?

That's a good question.

For those who believe that one or the other is more legitimate, in what way does that affect the game? I know some have already mentioned such things as, "The player who'd played from level 1 to 10 would know his PC better." What other ways are there?

 

[howandwhy99]

Here's 4 types of legitimacy I can think of:

#1 All three characters are legitimate under the RAW. So how can any one be more legitimate than another? Simple. They aren't.

#2 A character played up from 1st to 10th is going to have a different build than a character made from scratch. They are both legit, but perhaps one style is more open to min-maxing depending your presumptions. Here legitimacy is based on simulationist expectations.

#3 The 1st character is more legitimate because it was actually "Earned" as you say in your title. What was earned? Everything that isn't part of the RAW.

As an analogy, the 1st character is like a 12th grader in High School. They have lived and learned all along, have friends, teachers, an integrated history, 12 years of trial and error studying, knowledge of the world around them, expectations about their school and life, ongoing stories and goals - a real bubbling ball of life. Now take this character back into to their 10th grade year, port them over to a High School in a different country and they are a fish out of water. No deep understanding of their surroundings, no support system, no integration other than their own identity. But they do have that - an identity. Not to mention a good idea of how the next 2 years of their life might play out (10th not 12th level, right?) So they are not so bad off. They have 10 previous years of learning to fall back upon.

To continue the analogy, characters 2 & 3 are like kindergartners with the physical and mental power of 10th graders. Everything is new. They have no experience. But they are starting off with the cool abilities of a 10th grader. Unfortunately, there is no back history on how they work. Or how to best apply them. Not knowing how the world around them works is a given.

#4 This last legitimacy is a confusion carried over from previous editions from 20-30 years ago. It actually doesn't have to do with "character legitimacy" at all, but was often thought to be the same. When it was tradition in the RPG community for ALL new characters to start at 1st level, a high level character was thought to be "Earned". Of course, having one wasn't a sure sign of player expertise, because you could go to any Con and find a kid with a 22nd level necromancer with the hand of Vecna. What was obvious to the DMs of the time was not obvious to the kid. That being, Character level =/= to player expertise. But it was far more common for the two to actually be equivalent. As character experience was more closely tied to a player's accomplishments in game (and All characters started at 1st, right? So it took some effort to get to high levels).

This legitimacy doesn't really carry over to the example you are using. The DM is choosing to begin at 10th level. The notion of players being qualified to run a 10th level character went out of vogue long ago. Now the only qualifications are knowing the rules. This is why some old-school DM's always start campaigns at 1st. I don't necessarily always feel the need. But I respect the reasons for their preference.

 

[tetsujin28]

Are any of these characters more "legitimate" than the others? Why or why not?

They're all perfectly legit, as long as they fit into the guidelines I've established for the campaign. No game balance is going to be upset, and all the players get to play the guy they want. That makes them happy. Happy players = happy DM = a good time had by all.

 

[howandwhy99]

Ahhh, the trials of being a slow poster.

 

[ThirdWizard]

To continue the analogy, characters 2 & 3 are like kindergartners with the physical and mental power of 10th graders. Everything is new. They have no experience. But they are starting off with the cool abilities of a 10th grader. Unfortunately, there is no back history on how they work. Or how to best apply them. Not knowing how the world around them works is a given.

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.

I happen to think that I would be one of those, given my DMing experience.

Really, playing a character in D&D isn't that complicated.