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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9262510" data-attributes="member: 907">Second and third edition have randomized starting ages for PCs. For humans in 2e, this is 15+1d4 years, so a starting PC will be 16-19 years old. In 3e, the base is still 15, but the random part varies depending on your class: still 1d4 for "talented" classes like rogue, barbarian, and sorcerer, 1d8 for educated classes like wizards and clerics, and 1d6 for classes in between. That's page 32-33 in the revised 2e PHB and page 109 in the 3.5e PHB. Both do state that you can choose your age, but by offering a random method that generates teenagers it is pretty clear that that's the expectation.Also, a starting character in D&D is, by definition, inexperienced and fairly incompetent. That usually correlates with youth unless you're playing someone who has lived a rather sheltered life.They are not, but they are similar. Characters are more interesting when they are actually good at what they do, and when you have some sense of their backstories. This does not need to be a detailed backstory, but some sense of where they come from. Parker's backstory is basically "bounced between abusive foster homes while becoming good at various criminal activities, until an older gentleman thief took her under his wing and taught her for real."No. I liked the first Critical Role campaign, where we got to meet Vox Machina more or less in medias res at 9th level or so (maybe slightly lower, but I do remember that the first leg of the campaign has them do some underdark stuff, and they flee by means of their sorcerer casting teleportation circle, but they may have leveled up somewhere in between those). I could not get into their 2nd or 3rd campaigns, where they started at 1st-2nd level and had to go through the whole getting to know one another bit, as well as a lot of being separated until they actually meet.My problem is that I don't want to play in a campaign for a year or two before having a character that actually knows what they're doing. I want to play Amos Burton, Parker, John Sheridan, Inigo Montoya, Elim Garak, Han Solo, or Legolas, and be as skilled as they are when we first meet them. And having those kinds of skills should come with at least some backstory. And as a GM, if each character has a reasonably rich backstory on their own before joining up, that's more interesting stuff for me to work with.</blockquote>

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