What level do you start your campaign at?

[Umbran]

Consider: how do you create a viable 1st level adventure in an area and then logically also set up a higher level adventure? Do you mean that only a couple of Orcs are in the district and then suddenly someone realizes that there is a dragon there later? I find this incongruous. 1st level characters are so fragile that there is no way they can take on any serious opponents, yet vastly powerful monsters and perils then pop right after the removal of these pests, if the character is to advance further.

Consider: in New York City, there's a wide variety of crime. There's two-bit muggers, there's slick grifters, there's low-end drug pushers, there's middle-level drug suppliers, there's drug lords with loads of minions, there's mafia dons...

Does a rookie cop get sent after the mafia don on his first night on the force? No. Those tough things exist, and the rookie may even know about them, but they are not his concern until he's got the stuff to deal with them.

Similarly with D&D adventurers. It isn't that the tougher threats don't exist before the PCs reach high level. It's just that while the PCs are low level, those threats are either left unopposed, or dealt with by other people. The fact that the story centers upon the PCs doesn't mean that there aren't other events happening in the world, you know.

 

[Nightfall]

Similarly with D&D adventurers. It isn't that the tougher threats don't exist before the PCs reach high level. It's just that while the PCs are low level, those threats are either left unopposed, or dealt with by other people. The fact that the story centers upon the PCs doesn't mean that there aren't other events happening in the world, you know.

Yeah I mean my god, how horrible is that the PCs aren't world shakers at 1st level.

 

[Wombat]

Consider: in New York City, there's a wide variety of crime. There's two-bit muggers, there's slick grifters, there's low-end drug pushers, there's middle-level drug suppliers, there's drug lords with loads of minions, there's mafia dons...

Does a rookie cop get sent after the mafia don on his first night on the force? No. Those tough things exist, and the rookie may even know about them, but they are not his concern until he's got the stuff to deal with them.

Similarly with D&D adventurers. It isn't that the tougher threats don't exist before the PCs reach high level. It's just that while the PCs are low level, those threats are either left unopposed, or dealt with by other people. The fact that the story centers upon the PCs doesn't mean that there aren't other events happening in the world, you know.

True, but conversely it is possible that the rookie cop could be forced into a situation where he might have to confront said mafia don, not through assignment, but through no fault of his own. In most D&D campaigns, conversely, it is highly unlikely that a 2nd level character will just happen to be caught by a dragon because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time; instead, the GM will hold off the dragon until the timing, level, and competency of the party seem appropriate.

As was said in a comment to me, I also have no wish to be confrontational. I just find the logic of many D&D encounters to be quite contained and artificial; of course the same could be said for other types of games, but I have found it less common. I am not calling for wildly random encounters (I rarely use these in any game), but there is seems to be an oddly "boxed" quality to the nature of D&D encounters.

For all this, I still enjoy the game, albeit with certain limitations. Each of us, I believe, has our own way of running and/or playing the game.

 

[Nightfall]

True, but conversely it is possible that the rookie cop could be forced into a situation where he might have to confront said mafia don, not through assignment, but through no fault of his own. In most D&D campaigns, conversely, it is highly unlikely that a 2nd level character will just happen to be caught by a dragon because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time;

Not if the dragon is hungry.

 

[Emperor Valerian]

Three. Gives some options for possible ECL characters, while not being so high that things become too item focused too soon.

 

[Wombat]

Not if the dragon is hungry.

I bow to the logic

 

[Nightfall]

Thanks. I try.

 

[S'mon]

IMC (Gaxmoor) the 6th level PCs once wandered unknowing into the lair of the CR 20 BBEG. They quickly realised they were outmatched and fled, only losing 1 NPC ally.

I voted '1st' as I'll tend to start a new game there, and it's what I did recently with my new Conan game. OTOH my Gaxmoor/Borderlands campaign has been going long enough that a new starting PC in it would come in at 11th, and several new players have joined it with PCs in the 9th-10th range. I tried starting that campaign at 1st but everyone kept dying, so another DM ran a homebrew for a while with PCs getting from 1st- ca 5th, then I restarted my campaign with the new PCs beginning at ca 5th, levels & XP taken directly from the other campaign, but new PCs. So not sure what that counts as.

 

[Janx]

We always begin a campaign at 1st. If some one dies (or newbie joins) we usually let them in at 2 levels lower than the lowest PC (minimum 1st level).

In my current campaign, I've designed it such that the real campaign begins after 5th level or so. So the first five levels represent the PC getting started as an adventurer, doing th basic crawls and odd jobs (in our case military service).

Thus, after about 5 levels the PCs are experienced enough to be taken seriously, that we enter the bigger phase of the campaign.

This makes a lot of sense from my perspective. I've seen too many players make a 1st level PC and try to think of him as the "king" of their professsion with good reputation and respect from all the NPCs. Its fine if you want to be a swashbuckler, but at 1st level, you are not a swashbuckler.

Janx

 

[The_Gneech]

Y'know, as a player, I must admit I'm pretty tired of having to start at the bottom every time. It's like the town quests in a CRPG ... pretty soon I find myself saying, "Can we please just GET TO THE GOOD STUFF? Yawn city!"

All of the character concepts I seem to come up with assume a character who's been around the block once or twice anyhow ... and it gets very irritating to have to play this veteran with the stats of a rookie. (Not world-shattering superhero, mind you ... just competent.)

-The Gneech