D&D 5E What IS a level 1 Fighter?

[PsyzhranV2]

You invented that word "professional" out of thin air, for the purpose of disinforming people.

5e has never called a Level 1 character a "professional".

Indeed, "apprentice adventures" presumes there are teachers who are still teaching them how to adventure.

A 1st-level character is inexperienced in the adventuring world, although he or she might have been a soldier or a pirate and done dangerous things before.

Starting off at 1st level marks your character’s entry into the adventuring life.

Mod Edit: Insulting image removed. ~Umbran

 

[Yaarel]

Young, underaged, "soldiers" have older soldiers looking after them.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Yaarel]

Level 1, is the first year in college.

This puts the finger on what is going on with Harry Potter.

These are high-preforming high school students who are in a college-level ‘Advanced Placement’ ‘Bacheloriate Program’.

They are still underaged, but they are preforming as if in college level.

Indeed, these high school students have already been on some ‘adventures’.

Around the time of their graduation, around the time when they would officially be in ‘college’, they got drafted into a real war. But their professors were still looking out for them.

Harry Potter and his friends are ‘apprentice adventurers’ while in high school.

 

[Umbran]

Level 1, is the first year in college.

This puts the finger on what is going on with Harry Potter.

These are high-preforming high school students who are in a college-level ‘Advanced Placement’ ‘Bacheloriate Program’.

Harry Potter is canonically 11 years old when he first goes to Hogwarts. In a school in the US, he'd probably be starting 7th grade.

 

[Salthorae]

You invented that word "professional" out of thin air, for the purpose of disinforming people.

5e has never called a Level 1 character a "professional".

Indeed, "apprentice adventures" presumes there are teachers who are still teaching them how to adventure.

I mean, no. I didn’t invent the word professional. It’s a real word and everything.

Professional: having a particular profession as a permanent career a professional soldier

I also never said that 5e has called them professionals.

But by inference, it implies it.

A level 1 PC of any class could, instead of adventuring, reliably earn a comfortable lifestyle on the lifestyle table.

Therefore they have the skills to earn a living doing it. Therefore they are professional level in their fields by our modern understanding of “professional”

To the “journeyman” word offered earlier by @Umbran ... I guess you could use that in the context of: they are in the middle ground between the other two other common terms that go with journeyman, apprentice and master.

The more modern concept of “professional” occurs to me first though.

 

[Yaarel]

There is a difference between ‘labor’ and ‘skilled labor’.

Someone who graduates from high school, can ‘labor’.

Someone who graduates from college, can do ‘skilled labor’.

Level 1 is ‘labor’.

Level 5 is ‘skilled labor’.

Level 1 is still learning, still a student. At apprentice level.

 

[Salthorae]

Harry Potter is canonically 11 years old when he first goes to Hogwarts. In a school in the US, he'd probably be starting 7th grade.

I would also point out that Hogwarts isn’t teaching people in that world to be a wizard.

You are born as a wizard, full stop.

Hogwarts is teaching them to safely harness their magic, but even still they have to go through additional training in many of the wizard of professions to learn the spells necessary for those jobs. Or so it seems.

 

[Oofta]

By definition, veteran is either someone who served in wartime or who has held a position for a long time.

Is a first level fighter a veteran by either of those definitions? Maybe, if they have the soldier background. Certainly they are not a veteran fighter, they haven't been doing it for long.

That doesn't mean they don't haven't spent a significant amount of time in training.

 

[Lanefan]

Voted "something else entirely" as there needs to be an option in the poll between "Someone who just started training with weapons" (which might be 0th level) and "A veteran who turns ... to adventuring" (which might be 1st or 3rd or 17th level but implies much more experience than a raw 1st would normally have).

I'd have voted for something like "Someone with basic weapon training but no field experience". EDIT to add: and that basic weapons training wouldn't necessarily have been formal.