Starting Characters above 1st Level. HELP!

[MThibault]

For what its worth I give the players their full wealth per level, but restrict purchases in two ways:

1) No single item can be worth more than half of the starting wealth (this is mostly to save them from themselves, overspecializing can be a killer).

2) No more than 20% of the starting wealth can be spent on single use or charged magic items. This is more important if the campaign is a short one, or a one-shot, but you can get a much better ROE on potions and scrolls (and wands) of Bull's Strength than for Gauntlets of Ogre Power. If the campaign is intended to last more than 5 levels, I would raise that to 30%.

Cheers

 

[Grand_Director]

When starting characters are created at a higher level, I allow them to select items straight from the DMG. I only have two criteria though. One is a gp limit based on the average gold by level. The second is that no item bought can have a caster level higher then 10 to build. This last one is to cut down on powerful items that should be, based on caster level, rare. I like to control the introduction of such items in my game.

I have to say though, that I have never begun a campaign higher then level one. These guidelines are based on replacement characters in an ongoing game. In these instances, I have the characters start two levels lower then the lowest member of the group. I give these lower characters 1.5x the xp the higher members get. This simulates growth and familiarity that comes with leveling at the same time as getting them up to speed in a faster amount of time. And the higher level members gain extra xp as well based on the lower average party level.

 

[Rackhir]

One possible method that just occured to me is to cook up something akin to the old Traveler Career tables. You picked a specialty (in this case class) and then rolled for various types of deployments durring that "year's" service. Based on that type of deployment you would then have various rolls to survive, get a skill, medal, promotions, rewards (money/items/skills) etc. Also they could be modified by skills/spells/class abilites or things like taking greater risks (lower's chance of survival, but raises chance of promotion/awards).

One useful side effect of this if crafted properly, is that it could reduce the tendency to build from High level down, rather than first level up. For example a sorcerer played from first level is going to have a significantly different spell selection than one started at 9th, because the 9th lv one doesn't have to take lower level spells that are surpassed by more useful higher level spells that the first level character would have to take to survive to higher levels (ie. fireball, but not burning hands).

 

[hunter2112]

One possible method that just occured to me is to cook up something akin to the old Traveler Career tables. You picked a specialty (in this case class) and then rolled for various types of deployments durring that "year's" service. Based on that type of deployment you would then have various rolls to survive, get a skill, medal, promotions, rewards (money/items/skills) etc. Also they could be modified by skills/spells/class abilites or things like taking greater risks (lower's chance of survival, but raises chance of promotion/awards).

One useful side effect of this if crafted properly, is that it could reduce the tendency to build from High level down, rather than first level up. For example a sorcerer played from first level is going to have a significantly different spell selection than one started at 9th, because the 9th lv one doesn't have to take lower level spells that are surpassed by more useful higher level spells that the first level character would have to take to survive to higher levels (ie. fireball, but not burning hands).

Now this is an interesting idea. Character creation in Traveller really helped establish who the PC was and a similar concept could go a long way towards bringing in new PCs to an existing campaign by giving them an established history in it. Now if only I had the Traveller books to try and make my own version of the tables.