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Message: <blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 6820689" data-attributes="member: 12377">Why start anyone at 1st level, ever? Why not start the whole party at level 15, or level 8, or level 20, or whatever? Why have levels and advancement at all -- why not start every character at level 11 and just keep them there forever? The answer to those questions should strongly inform your decision of what level to start new PCs. For example, if you start the party at level 1 with the intention of advancing to level 20 because "advancing from 1 to 20 is fun," then you should start new PCs at level 1 so that they can experience that fun too. Alternately, if you start the party at level 1 with the intention of advancing to level 20 because "it's fun to face a variety of challenges," then start new PCs at the same level as the rest of the group so that they are well-matched to the challenges they will be facing. If you start the party at level 1 with the intention of advancing to level 20 because "that's the kind of story we want to tell," then the starting level of new PCs should be based on the kind of story you want to tell about those new PCs -- the new member of the group might even be a higher level than the rest (in such stories, often the relative power levels of the main characters converge over time -- so a lower-starting PC might get XP quickly, while a higher-starting PC gets XP slowly).</blockquote>