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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hairfoot" data-source="post: 2568038" data-attributes="member: 23732">I'm often puzzled that people resent playing low-level PCs. It seems that adventures are rated on what monsters you get to kill, how many of them, and how fast. Is a game interminably boring if your barbarian considers 3 goblins and a dire rat a genuine threat?If low-level adventures aren't fun, that's a critical failure of the players and DM. D&D needn't be about nodding and smiling through the planning and story-telling, then getting involved with the game when the DM obligingly ponies you up to the enemies for a fight.That's reducing D&D proper to D&D Miniatures, with a facile plot to string the the battles together.Taking down an orc camp at level one is a fine challenge. Your skills are meagre, you've only got a handful of hit-points, and even a small pile of treasure is a fortune. Every decision counts. You don't have the option of blithely wading into the fray with 80 hitpoints and a magic weapon. Even if you succeed, it's mostly insignificant in the scheme of things (in FR especially).And that's the part people hate. Players want to topple empires and fight demon hordes in the Abyss. Many would say that the whole point of playing D&D is to produce a character who can do the epic stuff of high-fantasy.Fighting a war or dismantling an evil empire is rarely the work of a handful of super-humans. It's achieved through countless small victories and maneouvres that barely register on the radar. Why are players so averse to being minor actors in their world?Realism is a relative value in D&D. We like physics and encumbrance and non-magical travel to be accurate, while allowing for things like dragons and floating castles. What no-one wants, it seems, is for PCs to earn their stripes through ingenuity and consistency. We all want to rocket straight to the top of the power curve. How long does it take, in game time, for a character to reach epic levels? A few years, at most.The common retort is that if you don't want to be a grand hero, don't play D&D. But that isn't fair. In the brave new world of flexible D20ism, there should be room for "horizontal" campaigns while still using the excellent and well-supported WotC material.Having said that, I've pretty much clocked D&D. I'm not anti-epic, just fed up with the power-focussed game. I've done the god-fighting, used dozens of wishes, and slaughtered the hordes with a +2000 greatsword of planet cleaving. It's been a blast, and newer players should explore whatever they think is fun. But I'd also like to see a D&D "culture" which encourages players to think beyond stacking bonuses and grabbing the next magical power-up. Thoughts? Comments? Flame isn't neccessary - I'm not criticising anyone for running an archmage.</blockquote>

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