Starting above 1st level - player reaction?

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I generally start PCs at first level, but last year started my Lands of Intrigue game at 4th which worked well. I also started a party at 17th level to play through Bastion of Broken Souls -- this worked less well as the players didn't know their characters well enough, but they wanted to have a go at playing at very high level. They did write good character backgrounds and I was able to work some of this stuff in when we followed the adventure up with some epic scenarios.

Cheers


Richard

 

[S'mon]

In general, for a long-term campaign I recommend starting at 1st, or if the GM can't keep 1st level PCs alive (a common 3e problem), I'd say start at 3rd. I would avoid starting PCs at 5th or higher, Wiz-5s get Fireball, Fly et al. Let them feel like normal, albeit powerful, people before they become mighty heroes. The exception would be if you were running an explicitly high-powered political or high fantasy campaign where the PCs begin as legendary heroes, princes and kings, in that case start at maybe 10th.

 

[The Shaman]

Both as a dm and as a player, I vastly prefer starting at 1st level. Even if it means I die a couple of times before the character who's going to last gets generated. I love knowing that I've made it through the 'delicate' period by my own means rather than via dm fiat.

Me too.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was working on an 11th-level NPC for our Modern PbP game - I created his life history, gave him lots of interesting experiences, dug into his personality. He is a likeable, engaging character, flawed in some ways, extremely competent in others - he'll be a lot of fun to roleplay when the time comes to introduce him to my PCs. Still, something is missing - as interesting as the experiences I created for this character are, there isn't the same sense of "I was there!" that comes from running a character through those levels from 1st to 11th. This to me is the only disadvantage to being the GM, in my opinion - you have a whole world of characters to play, which is great, but only a very few get to grow and change the way player characters do.

Some people want to start out as the hero - I like my characters to become the hero.

D&D characters begin at first level in the games I GM, but in d20 Modern games the characters begin at second level, as that is my default for the run-of-the-mill adult in the campaign-world, not first level.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Both as a dm and as a player, I vastly prefer starting at 1st level. Even if it means I die a couple of times before the character who's going to last gets generated. I love knowing that I've made it through the 'delicate' period by my own means rather than via dm fiat.

At low levels (pre-5), you can easily die. So, if your 4th character dies and you introduce a new, say, 3rd level character... then that character made it to 3rd by DM fiat. I'm curious if you feel less connected to that character 5 levels down the road than you would if your 1st level character survived.

What about character death at level 8, and bringing in, at say level 7, a new character if you can't be raised?

I've never really had a player have trouble with identifying with the PCs in either of these cases. But, I have seen that new players to the group have more problems identifying with their new characters in an existing group that is at a higher level than those that start at lower level with a new campaign.

This might in part be because they're intimidated by joining a group that has already obviously been playing together a long time, but it might have something to do with what you're talking about. Starting fresh is harder than starting with at least a general idea of what has happened previously, even if you havn't been a part of it.

 

[Telas]

First level, definitely.

There's something really cool about having a character start at first level.

As a DM, the first adventures aren't very hack & slash for my players, and I'm pretty generous with the XPs until about 3rd level. I prefer a lot of roleplaying in the town they begin, so they can get a good feel for the next x levels they'll be there.

Telas

 

[Woocash]

I prefer to start campaigns at level 4. The characters aren't then so likely to die by accident (one unlucky roll), but they are not too powerfull. It also gives some place to be filled by background stories - characters had some interesting events in their past, that gave them some experience.

 

[S'mon]

IMC I don't have any trouble with the concept that a Fighter-1 could be a seasoned veteran (maybe even called out of retirement, his Warrior skills rusty), so background isn't a problem. 50% of the population IMC are level 2+, mostly Experts & similar, 50% of professional soldiers IMC are War 2+, but even so a Fighter-1 PC with elite stats is at least as good as a typical War-2 in most respects, so I don't see a big problem there. Although a player wity a 2nd level PC IMC on Sunday did suggest to his 1st & 2nd level companions that if necessary they could take down the 9-man Dragoon patrol they were chatting with, I didn't wish to disabuse him... - in 1e/2e 0th level men-at-arms were a joke, these guys though started with War-2 (6 of them) with STR 15 & 16 hp, with 2 War-3 corporals and a STR 16 War-4 sergeant, the NCOs all had Power Attack, that's about EL 6 and might well have been a TPK.

 

[fuindordm]

I love the idea of starting at first level, but hate the characters that come out of it--their backgrounds are all along the lines of "grew up in a village, picked up a sword" because anything more interesting happening to them implies increased skills.

So I start them at second. A little tougher, but still very much beginners. And much richer backgrounds. For example, in my Eberron game we started with (classes given in the order taken):

A bard/artificer: Came from a well-to-do and academic family, eventually became a professor at Morgrave University.

A fighter/paladin: Went to war when her holder brother didn't come back, and found her faith in the Silver Flame after seeing the horrors of war firsthand.

A fighter/rogue: Son of a Thranish royal guardsman, whose family was assassinated and only just managed to escape. Caught stealing from a Dragonmarked house and forced to spy for them for a while, then escaped again.

A giant(AU)/monk: Tasked with seeming inoffensive and exploring Khorvaire for signs of an extraplanar invasion.

An urban ranger: sword-for-hire and bounty hunter, familiar with the depths of Sharn.

A cleric of Dol Dorn: newly made warforged with little knowledge of the world.

If we had started at first, the first four characters would have had a lot less depth, I think.

Ben

 

[Ibram]

As a general rule I start my campaings between 3 and 5. Not only is first level a bit to fragile for me but you pass through it very quickly (in one game where I gave out XP after every fight the party went from 1-3 in a single session).

The way I see it now is a 1st level character is an apprentice with maybe a few months of training; 2nd takes maybe a year of training; and 3 is reached once "basic training" is complete. A 4th level character is one who has been out in the world a bit, and maybe had something interesting happen while a 5th level character has been around a bit (a soldier who has been on a campaign, a bard who has been wandering for a few years, ect...).

 

[swrushing]

I start my games at around 5th, sometimes at third with very rapid advancement until 6th, then normal progression. The games run thru level 15 or so.