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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5460316" data-attributes="member: 4937">One thing I've learned over the years is that there is no one right style or way to play.  It's true that a particular style of play can be done very badly, and some styles are harder to pull off than others, but if you have the experience - and you seem to - I have very little fears about you adopting a radically different style for one campaign and just going with it.  In fact, I would strongly encourage you to.  If you have spent most of your time doing a thinking man's dark and gritty game, then you might well have a blast doing a thinking man's over the top uber-epic monte haul game of sword and spell slinging superheros.  Yes, there are tradeoffs that you may after a few years come to miss, but there are things you can do by going crazy with the scope and power level that are fun.  The good news is that you don't have to play just one way.  Campaigns can be radically different.   Maybe on campaign has a sci-fi thing going with alien invasion and interplanetary travel and magic as technology.   Maybe another is set in the stone age with neither magic nor technology known and practiced at a high level.   Maybe one campaign has a huge epic political scale, with massive battles, intrigue, and the fate of the universe at stake.   Maybe another involves small scale murder mysteries and PC's as local heroes on an intimate scale small town scale where everybody knows your name and you know everyone.There is no wrong theme, just bad implementations.   So, after 20 years, if you want to do some thing different, my advice is to just go for it.  I'd probably caution new players from jumping headlong into high level play, but that's not the issue here.  Heck, if you want to start a game where not only everyone is 8th level, but they get free LA +5 either through racial templates or paragon classes that's cool too.My only note of caution that I'll sound is that 'tough guys from the start' doesn't depend on level, but on style of play.   You can start at 10th level and not have the feeling of 'tough guys from the start' because everything is relative.   Conversely, you can start at 1st level and have a feeling of 'tough guys from the start', and in fact I strive for this.   If you are feeling that this element is lacking from your game, it may not be a matter of level that is the issue but style of play and the construction of the setting.  That feeling of not being 'tough guys from the start' is based on NPC's stealing too much focus.  If you start at 8th level and every NPC is a suitable combat challenge for the PC's and every villain has a stat array higher than the PC's could possibly have + four levels on them to boot, and there are mooks in the guard room that are all elite 6th level fighters (to say nothing of finding 10th level mooks latter on), and there is a sense that the NPC mentor/allies could do the job better than the PC's could if they would just bother to leave the castle, then you aren't going to achieve what sounds like your goal simply because your numbers are bigger than they would be at 1st level.</blockquote>

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