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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 2948370" data-attributes="member: 12037">As D&D moved away from the dungeon delving, it went into more esoteric aspects as well as larger "campaign" story arcs. 'Twas a slow process, but things got more epic, more story oriented, and more character based. As intrigue developed and PCs started interacting with NPCs in more and more complex ways, forming alliances, making friends, making long term enemies, it became more and more important for PCs to not be lost forever.Backstories, grandiose undertakings, became more commonplace. Ramazalt wasn't just a farmboy who picked up a sword to decide to adventure, no, there was a grand purpose in his adventuring, he was trained by the Grandmaster Tralliath in the way of the sword, and when the dojo burned to the ground he swore revenge on the ones who did it, using adventuring as a means to an end other than gold and fortune. This became the norm.And, so for one you don't want the PC to die so easily, so you start at 2nd level. But, also, 2nd level allows for more things. In 3E you can start with multiclassiing built in if you start at 2nd (before you could at 1st). Now I'm not a rogue who will take a fighter level next level and finally have my archetype completed after the game has started. If we start at 2nd level then I can be a rogue/fighter and pretend I've always been like that. Less clunky.Also, that huge backstory I wrote? Well, it makes more sense if I'm higher level if I've done all this stuff already. So, I'm 2nd level and my backstory was me going from 1st to 2nd level. It works out, there's not some ambiuous gap. It all fits together.And, especially in 3E, a 2nd level character is no hero. He can die, too, to a random critical. He's barely adventured and hasn't made a name for himself. He's not established. He's still just some guy. So, you can have your cake and eat it too. You can start multiclass with a backstory, have it all make sense, and be 2nd level (or higher). It works very well.And, lastly, I don't care about "earning" levels. It's a number on a character sheet. I come to game, not to level, not to get rich, but to adventure and have fun around the table with my friends, roleplay my character and develop him, and enjoy the world the DM provides. Leveling is inherent in the game, and I wouldn't really want to play without it, but its still an arbitrary number. I could start at 2nd, renumber the levels, and call myself 1st level. Doesn't matter to me at all, really.Just last session, had an 11th level PC wizard die before he even acted in combat. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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