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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9264750" data-attributes="member: 4937">I get that.  And there is nothing at all wrong with wanting to skip what is in typical D&D levels 0-4 where you are competent TV police show competent ("You're Crocket and Tubbs"), but not yet up to action movie hero competency ("You're John McClain, John Rambo, and Indiana Jones").  Some systems start you out at "action movie hero" and if you want to do that in D&D you can start at level 5 or level 7 and that's fine and a valid way to play.  That's the aesthetic of "Fantasy" as I describe in this essay: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/towards-a-functional-taxonomy-of-role-playing-gamers.693886/" target="_blank">https://www.enworld.org/threads/towards-a-functional-taxonomy-of-role-playing-gamers.693886/</a>.  But I reject the notion that a 1st level D&D PC is incompetent or deserves to be described as "don't know that the engines are supposed to point toward the ground".  My 1st level D&D PCs are expected to do heroic service and accomplish dramatic things.  It's just that their competency is at the scale of big fish in a small pond.  Whatever they are good at, they are one of the best people in their village at.  If they are archers, they'll finish in the top 3 at the festival archery competition when all the yeoman come in from the surrounding hamlets.   People remark on them and are like, "So much talent for someone so young."  A typical 1st level PC in my game is as competent as a 3rd level NPC, and  much more dangerous than most 3rd level NPCs.  They can kick butt.  They are good at their jobs from the very first session.  Maybe they took that away in 5e as the default I don't know, or maybe you played with GMs that prefer to kick the players around and exercise dysfunctional power fantasies of their own; I don't know.  I just don't get the idea that you can't have backstory and can't be competent at as a 1st level D&D character.What 1st level character isn't yet is competent on a national scale or international scale.  There are NPCs out there that stand head and shoulders above them - already existing famous heroes.  What is true though at least how I play is that they have just as much potential as any NPC in the setting.  I try to avoid creating NPCs with as much point by as a PC.  I won't cheat like in Forgotten Realms or Dragon Lance and stat up NPCs with much higher potential than the PCs merely to make strong antagonists, much less omnipotent forces to force the PCs to behave.   And that problem isn't solved by merely starting at higher level, as if a GM doesn't restraint themselves, they always have the resources to make NPCs cooler than PCs.  You don't solve that problem by "starting at 5th level".  I've been at tables where you started at 5th level and then all the NPCs were 10th level.  There is a problem with comparing your character to Geordie La Forge.  Geordie isn't merely competent at a local or national scale.  He's one of the most competent engineers in the galaxy; the intellectual peer of Einstein and Newton.  If you're Geordie La Forge at the start of the game then you are already at the pinnacle of competency.  You don't get more competent.  You're playing an 8th level character in a system that caps at 8th level.  You're playing a system that doesn't level up or else you are making choices that amount to indulging fantasy to the extent and to the exclusion of other aesthetics of play that it's fair to label that style Monte Haul.  And for a lot of us, starting with a hypercompetent character doesn't even engage Fantasy all that well because it feels unearned.  It feels like playing Diablo with a gear trainer that gives you all the goodies to start with, at which point, why are we still playing?</blockquote>

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