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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tectuktitlay" data-source="post: 6821138" data-attributes="member: 82812">No, probably not. But you are removing a huge swathe of potential characters that make sense to be joining your party from a narrative perspective. Combat abilities or no. Even with bounded accuracy, some numbers just get out of hand such that the established PCs will so outclass the "newbies".For example, one of the established PCs trained in Nature and Survival simply because they had the time to gain those skills over the course of the adventure. They are better at those skills than a druid of the Emerald Enclave who is joining your group because your path takes her where she needs to be to fulfill her order's goals, because of the significantly higher proficiency bonuses. Even though it's a defining characteristic of the druid's skill set. Whereas the druid would be better than said PC if they had equivalent proficiency bonuses. Meanwhile, the ranger in the group is better at nature magic than that same druid, and by quite a lot at that. Even though the druid is specialized in that magic. Even though nature magic is one of the central mechanical abilities their character is supposed to bring to the table to make them shine, she worse than someone who has that same mechanical ability as a minor side ability meant to augment their character, not define it. It actually punishes the druid in the context of the game's narrative. See, the thing is when you see a character in a world for the first time, they're not always going to be anywhere close to a novice. The latter will actually be the exception, not the rule. Take any adventure you see, either on the screen, or read about in novels, and think about new characters introduced in that narrative long after it's begun who go on to become important allies or members of the protagonist's inner circle. How often are they some novice? They are usually in situations they are in because they have experience, not in spite of it. They've already been adventuring in the world, it's just that we're seeing their adventure's path cross that of the rest of the group for the first time. Not saying people can't and shouldn't enjoy ES@1 games. But for many, it pulls us right out of the story itself to have new characters so utterly outclassed on so many levels all at once. It is actually, in my opinion, LESS cinematic, and pulls one out of the moment.Ok, thought experiment to put it in perspective: you are only applying this metric to PCs. Try doing it with NPCs and see how much sense it makes. Every NPC added to a campaign from now on gets to start at 1st level; ES@1 now applies to all characters in the narrative. How much sense does that end up making, and how does that play out? Because, and here's the rub, when a PC is introduced to the party, until they become a member of the party, their characters should make sense both lore-wise and mechanically as an NPC filling the same role in the world.</blockquote>

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