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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5906730" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Without snark, I think it's unfair to imply that skill points can't mechanically drive quite a bit of story weight. They sure do in my game, as you can see by that list of things that hit die 1 character could do. By players used skills to great effect last session, including one PC who did use Heal to diagnose the wounds that killed someone, amongst many other skill uses that drove the story forward (Negotiation, Survival, Appraise, etc.). Combat did occur last session, too, and the warriors/spellcasters contributed there as well (though the warriors did far more than the spellcasters).But, once again, you can drive quite a bit of story forward if skills give you the tools to do so. Level 1 or otherwise. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Oh, sure, you can hire someone to do this for you. Or get an ally to help. No questions. If you are, though, then you're getting someone to do something for you that is contributing to the party. I was addressing whether or not it's possible for a level 1 PC to meaningfully contribute to a level 15 party, or if the level 1 is capable of "shining" in such an environment. Since we both seem to agree that those skills can be useful to that level 15 party, I think it's fair to say that the level 1 can meaningfully contribute, and even shine.Because, if necessary, you can hire a high level Wizard to cast a spell for your Wizard-less party. That doesn't mean he doesn't contribute if he's a PC. Additionally, most of the time you don't have a level 1 in a level 15 party, so you probably would just hire someone to fulfill that role, and not have them join the party. However, in this hypothetical, it's "can they meaningfully contribute, and can they shine?" And to me, all signs point to "yes".Whoa, when did this turn into me competing with a 3.X party? I loved 3.X, but I left it because it had a few problems I wanted to fix (including teleportation). I'm not trying to compete with the power of a 3.X party. I am saying that a level 1 can meaningfully contribute to a level 15 party, in game theory exercise, and that I'd even be able to do so in 3.X in many games. In all games? No. If it's too combat focused, I won't help at all. If they PCs are exceptionally broadly skilled, I won't really help at all.But, from my personal experience, most PCs aren't playing Persistent-DDM Clerics, or Time-Stopping Shapechanging Wizards. Much of this has to do with level, and much of it has to do with levels of optimization in groups. However, most of the time, a party can always use an extra guy, even if he's that low level Bard who gives them that bardic knowledge that they'd have to go to lengths to learn about.Is it possible for a level 1 to not contribute to a level 15? Oh, certainly. Easily. Is that always the case? No. No, not at all. I think I'd be able to meaningfully contribute to most parties as a level 1, but system does play into this. I think using 3.X is a mixed benchmark, as it had the most power out of the editions, as far as I can tell. It did have skills, though, and I often wielded those to great effect. Maybe it's just my group's style, I don't know.I do know that -as I told pemerton- from a game theory perspective, level 1's consistently meaningfully contributing can be true for a level-based system, even with escalating level-dependent skills. Was it historically true in D&D? Probably not as much. Does that need to hold true for 5e? Definitely not. And thus my point. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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