Li Shenron
Legend
If you take a look at your total experience of playing/DMing campaigns in any D&D edition, how often have you started a campaign exactly at level 1, rather than a higher level?
This question assumes you normally start a campaign with all PCs at the same level, otherwise replace "how often" with "how many PC".
The only edition of D&D I can say I've played extensively enough to make a conclusion on this topic is 3e, in which case after just a couple of years we pretty much settled to normally starting at level 3 to get a little more freedom in character creation. Occasionally I've also played in campaigns starting at much higher level, but these were practically always PbP, not tabletop.
This question assumes you normally start a campaign with all PCs at the same level, otherwise replace "how often" with "how many PC".
The only edition of D&D I can say I've played extensively enough to make a conclusion on this topic is 3e, in which case after just a couple of years we pretty much settled to normally starting at level 3 to get a little more freedom in character creation. Occasionally I've also played in campaigns starting at much higher level, but these were practically always PbP, not tabletop.