NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4830274" data-attributes="member: 3820">Probably a number of factors here.For one, play style has an effect on your character sheet. Even back in the olden times I remember discussions in Dragon about what to do if somebody brings a new character to your group who's higher-level than all the other PCs and has twice the number of magic items, most of which are also twice as powerful. 3e and 4e standardized "magic by level" and to some extent point buy systems specifically to fight against this process, so that people didn't get the idea that their characters were good only for one particular group. They wanted more cross-pollination. Of course, that's also a reason that there are systems to make characters in line with any given group's level, and that they encourage using them. If being 5th level is a bar to playing with a new group at 11th, they don't want you to be discouraged, they want you to be encouraged to jump right in, and the other group to be encouraged to take you. Hence, systems that make generating higher-level characters "fair." I also think setting has come to matter more. With the advent of things like Forgotten Realms, it became more interesting to a lot of gamers to develop their own settings. I can't remember where I read it, but I remember someone discussing the shift from GMs who make their own dungeons to GMs who make their own worlds. As more and more inspiration and published settings emerged, more people became interested in finding the world that fit their particular sensibilities beyond the dungeon. Consider the split between groups that loved Dragonlance and enjoyed having kender in their adventuring parties, and groups who didn't. It's an interesting situation. In order to encourage cross-pollination of gamers, you need a core set of expected sensibilities. But I think in order to encourage a lot of people to stay with gaming, you absolutely need to give them the ability to customize characters and worlds to suit their preferences. Right now the solution would be that it's easy to use expected mechanics to generate a character to fit a customized group.</blockquote>

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