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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6286086" data-attributes="member: 4937">No.  My PC's leveled for the first time about 6 sessions in, and then again about 16 sessions in, and then I think hit 3rd about 30 sessions in.  Since that time we've been doing about 10 session per level.  But I'm also not playing a published adventure path that has to make sure that at the end of it you've leveled up sufficiently to play the next one.  If I was going to play 'Whispering Cairn', as written, it would play pretty quickly.  The thing is, I almost never use anything as written.  If I was going to actually use the module, I'd probably adapt it to my setting and expectations most likely by having the narrative of 'Whispering Cairn' overlap narratives specific to the PC concepts (adding 10-15 challenges along the way to the finish) or else tone down the final encounters to scale them to 2nd level characters.  I might also be tempted to make certain areas of the tomb a bit larger.  I love the tight design into 3-5 encounter easily digestible blocks, and it reads in many ways exactly like a dungeon that follows my idealized rules for dungeon building, but a few or the areas could use to move up to 5-7 encounters IMO because they feel a little cramped.  Also I'm not a fan of the wolves lair at the beginning.  Wolves to me remind me too much of giant rats - too generic of an early foe.  In short, I'd tinker. LOL. Ok, you can play a fighter.  I did say that you could play the same game I outlined in RAW.  So play a fighter.  But if you were going to play in my rules and you wanted to be a pirate, you'd likely want to play an Explorer - since the class (<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?300112-Playing-Like-Celebrim-The-Explorer-Class" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?300112-Playing-Like-Celebrim-The-Explorer-Class</a>) was designed with that sort of concept in mind.  But I don't tell players what class to play.  Building a fighter pirate would be really easy under my rules as well.  Or you could dip fighter or explorer since they play so well together multi-classed.  The real point though isn't about classes, but rather that Pirate Captain is a profession and not a class.  It's a color and story you give your character - aft and fore.  You could be a wizard, cleric, fanatic, champion, sorcerer or rogue - and if I was designing the sandbox for a pirate game I'd probably have NPC pirates of every sort.  You could be 1st level or 10th.  What matters isn't what powers your character has, but that he has a ship and he robs other ones.  That's a story we don't have to wait until 7th level to have. Regardless of how you build the character, under my outline you are a pirate captain no later than 2nd level.  Technically you could put on the hat in the 1st session, but probably at first you'd have no way to pay a crew and no money to dress the part, so the only people calling you captain at 1st level would be the other PC's.Look, my last word on this thread.  Yes, there is no one right way to do things.  I think I've made that clear.  There isn't even one right way to do things for me, as my goals in a given campaign might change.  But on the other hand, there is a right way to do things.  It's the way that works.  My way makes me abundantly happy.   Your way makes you want to hurry up and get to 'the good stuff', makes you complain that you can't be what you want right from the start, makes you less than fully enjoy the first 80 or 160 hours of play, makes you mystified that people would be happy to play slowly, and makes you - from your abundant testimony in this thread and others - quite unhappy.  So even if my way wouldn't necessarily be the right way for you, it's very clear to me that how you percieve 3e as working is incorrect.  Not in the sense that it couldn't work that way or that it would be always wrong to work that way, nor even in the real sense that you impose restrictions on the system that aren't actually found in it, but it is certainly wrong for you to insist on it working in ways that frustrate you when no of that is necessary.   How you think about the system is more important than the system itself.  Many people believe systems of every sort, whether 3e or 4e, have inherent limitations that they don't actually have.  What's changed isn't the system but how they think about it.  IIRC, you've moved on to different systems and through that given yourself permission to think differently about them and started enjoying play more.  That's all to the good.   But I think you should go ahead and give yourself more permission to think differently and enjoy the game.  Then I think you might understand why so many of your complaints - like "You can't be a pirate captain until 7th level" - sound like strawmen.</blockquote>

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