Why PCs should be competent, or "I got a lot of past in my past"

[HaroldTheHobbit]

One of the reasons Savage Worlds is my main game is that while there are levels, kinda, that create a familiar sense of progress for the players, a fresh character can kill a very powerful foe, and vice versa. It's a sweet take on character progression imho, without the D&D style level rigidity. So no need to face giant rats at start.

 

[dragoner]

This is a question of system I think, I mean in kosmic (cepheus) characters are fully developed out the gate, so one jumps straight into role playing. No level grind or anything.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's the positives and negatives of "leveling" as a character advancement. In order to make leveling seem worthwhile you have to make noticeable jumps in power with each level, but doing that widens the gap between either end of the leveling system that it turns the narrative of these character into something goofy and you can't create anything remotely realistic.

Look no further than World of Warcraft where you have bears your PC can fight that are 3rd level in starting zones, as well as bears that are 60th level in the latest expansion. Those levels mean absolutely nothing related to story-- bears are bears and there's absolutely no reason why one bear can be killed when you first start out as a PC, but another bear would decimate you with a single swipe. It makes no narrative sense, it's only there for game purposes.

And this is true across the board. There's no way there can be any universal system in D&D that aligns levels and leveling to the in-world story of the characters. There's just too many places where one gets forsaken to the other.

 

[payn]

It's the positives and negatives of "leveling" as a character advancement. In order to make leveling seem worthwhile you have to make noticeable jumps in power with each level, but doing that widens the gap between either end of the leveling system that it turns the narrative of these character into something goofy and you can't create anything remotely realistic.

Look no further than World of Warcraft where you have bears your PC can fight that are 3rd level in starting zones, as well as bears that are 60th level in the latest expansion. Those levels mean absolutely nothing related to story-- bears are bears and there's absolutely no reason why one bear can be killed when you first start out as a PC, but another bear would decimate you with a single swipe. It makes no narrative sense, it's only there for game purposes.

And this is true across the board. There's no way there can be any universal system in D&D that aligns levels and leveling to the in-world story of the characters. There's just too many places where one gets forsaken to the other.

Pretty much this. I think bounded accuracy was an attempt to move away from level 1 bear and level 60 bear existing int he same setting thing. Though, you still have noticeable differences between early level encounters and later ones. Its how D&D works for better or worse.

 

[Celebrim]

You certainly can start at 3rd level or 5th level or 7th level (some of the more popular advanced starts I've seen) but the problem is always, "If the characters had interesting adventures in the past, why didn't we play that out?" I've never had a problem where first level constrained you from having a back story. Mostly it just prevents you from having a backstory where you state how cool your character is, which is frankly a pretty lame backstory. I get that there are Fantasy aesthetics of starting out hyper-competent and just staying that way, but I've never found it necessary and in general consider it a failure of design if your 1st adventure is rats in the basement. It's possible to design epic bangs for even low-level characters, you just make them part of a community and what they are doing at that moment is intensely important to the people around them. An example of this in published modules is the opening adventure in "Rise of the Runelords", and while the execution of it is flawed to some extent, the general structure of the opinion of "Shackled Skull" is pretty awesome as well. I'm a big fan also of "Of Sound Mind" opening adventure, as well as of course "Whispering Cairn". And again, while there are flaws in the execution, "Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh" is also an excellent take on making a low-level adventure epic. Indeed, there are probably more good epic introductory adventures out there than good higher-level ones.

 

[Corinnguard]

Another thing to consider here is which areas your character is particularly competent at. Some characters are going to particularly competent in combat thanks to whatever class/subclass they happen to start out at 1st level, but they aren't going to do well at exploration or socially interacting with others. Other characters are going to be particularly competent at helping the party find the quickest and safest route from point A or B, or they are very good at convincing others in order to get intel or giving up their money. But they aren't going to do well in a fight.

A solo hero has to strive to be competent at combat, exploration and social interaction. A group of heroes otoh can complement one another in these areas. One of them might not be good at combat, but there is someone who is in their group who is. And so forth. A group also has the advantage of learning from one another.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think these folks, and you, both miss the actual point. D&D starts with relatively inexperienced characters because character power growth is a thing that people like to engage in. And the lower you start on the power curve, the longer the game can go with growth of power.

More accurately, the longer it can go on with a steep growth of power. There are other games that have ongoing power growth and can go on quite some time, its just that their growth is more measured.

 

[Umbran]

More accurately, the longer it can go on with a steep growth of power. There are other games that have ongoing power growth and can go on quite some time, its just that their growth is more measured.

Well, "steep" is relative to something (and we don't usually explicitly say what - like you didn't here), and is dependent on how you play, not just the ruleset.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, "steep" is relative to something (and we don't usually explicitly say what - like you didn't here), and is dependent on how you play, not just the ruleset.

I think my point stands, however, since I can think of games that start well above the typical D&D starting power level, but will allow you to increase your capability regularly for the length of the campaign (and some such campaigns are longer than typical modern D&D and adjacent ones). They typically just don't have big linear step-ups in one fashion or another, and the steps may be slower.

 

[Umbran]

I think my point stands, however, since I can think of games that start well above the typical D&D starting power level, but will allow you to increase your capability regularly for the length of the campaign (and some such campaigns are longer than typical modern D&D and adjacent ones). They typically just don't have big linear step-ups in one fashion or another, and the steps may be slower.

Yeah, but unless you also do the work to determine that "the length of the campaign" is the same in both cases, that's not a meaningful comparison.

What's the basis of measure campaign length? Amount of in-game time that passes? Number of real-world hours played? Number of sessions of play? Number of "adventures" (and what constitutes one "adventure)?

I know games that, by published design, have no power growth at all, but allow for what a literature professor would call "character development" by allowing a character to change over time, without ever gaining in absolute power. How are these considered over a campaign?