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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7890847" data-attributes="member: 7006">One does not necessarily equate to the other.  I didn't say rolling 1s makes someone look stupid... I said your PC will roll a whole heap of 1s (meaning they do not succeed in what they are trying to do a whole bunch of times), and occasionally your PC will look stupid.  Which is true.  Like occasionally your PC will drop to 0 HP and "fall unconscious", which for the "greatest swordsman in the land" seems to happen quite often and could easily be defined as "looking stupid".  The way the game works, all PCs are meant to fail via mechanics much more often than they usually do if we were looking at them purely in a fiction or story sense.Which is what I originally said.  Many players (like you apparently) fall into the group that equates game mechanics with ability.  But by that way of thinking... the "best swordsman in your land" has to be like a 20th level character because that's the best mechanical definition you have available in this game of Dungeons & Dragons.  Or at the very least-- the best swordsman has to be the highest level sword-wielding character in your campaign setting.  If you can't take a +3 / 1d8 PC seriously as the "best swordsman in the land"... then the numbers of every other character level are just as poor and ill-defining up until you reach that final character who is the highest level in your game, and thus gets the title of "best swordsman in the land". Which if that is what you wish to play, more power to you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I, however, find that way of thinking needlessly restrictive, because it means that any character you start with at like 1st or 3rd level , is by definition a piece of garbage, because their mechanics suck compared to most other leveled characters in the setting.  By equating mechanics to story, every starting character HAS to be an "Apprentice" type of character.  Which, granted, is how WotC kind of defines the Levels 1-4 tier so it does have its place... but personally I think that's a stupid way of looking at it.  Doing that means your narrative goes all over the place.  You make a level 1 character that you describe as 10 year veteran in the military before becoming an adventurer?  Well, that PC must have really blown as a soldier if they're only level 1 at this point and by the mechanics they suck compared to the other level characters in the setting.  Doesn't matter that they are a 10 year veteran... if the mechanics define how good they are, then this level 1 veteran adventurer just blows.  Not exactly how I prefer to look at things.So I just get around that whole thing by not equating game mechanics to the fiction of the world.  You can be a well-known swordsman even at 1st level in the narrative, because narrative doesn't care about mechanics.  It is what someone does in the story (before, during and after the campaign) that determines how good they are, and how well-known they are, and how well-respected.  If you make a PC and define them in the story as a 10 year veteran in the military, then that PC has the status, knowledge, and skill of a 10 year veteran and gets treated as such, regardless of whatever level they start at for purely game purposes.As I said... most of you don't seem to play that way.  Which, hey... whatever.  You do you.</blockquote>

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