Your favorite adventure starting level

[Driddle]

Pick your favorite level for adventuring. This could be the character level at which you most enjoy starting a campaign, or the point in an ongoing campaign when things get really interesting, your choice.

The overall response curve should prove interesting. I might keep bumping this thread to get additional feedback for the graph.

 

[francisca]

I enjoy the play from 4-10-ish the most, but prefer to start at 1st level.

 

[GlassJaw]

As a player, if I know it's going to be a long campaign, I like starting between levels 1-3. I have no problem with level 1 but starting at 2 or 3 is nice because an extra level or two really help the survivability at the low levels and help to flesh out your character's background a bit as well.

 

[donbaloo]

I voted 5th, because that's when I've historically been capable of really opening up plot and utilizing interesting opponents. My whole group has always preferred the 1-7 range. And most people find this a little weird but in 20 years of playing D&D we've never started at anything other than 1st level. There's been a couple of exceptions where we've maybe picked up an interesting module that was higher level and just ran it with the pre-generated characters as a one or two session game. But we've always started campaigns at 1st. We love it.

 

[Psion]

For some reason 4 resonates with me. Seems to give enough multi-class and LA race options, and you don't have to trudge through low level orc bashing (which has never been my favorite adventuring mode.)

 

[the Jester]

I always start my games at 1st level.

 

[Khairn]

For me its 6th.

The players have just received their free feat and are now better able to actually "be" the character that they planned for when the game began, yet htey are not too powerful.

As a GM its the perfect level where the balance of party ability vs challenge is easier to reach.

 

[TheGM]

My campaigns tend to be long, and to best facilitate that I like to start them at 1st level. It also gives more time for the character's personalities to evolve and build up arch enemies

 

[Driddle]

For me its 6th.

The players have just received their free feat and are now better able to actually "be" the character that they planned for when the game began, yet htey are not too powerful.

I feel sorta the same way about 3rd level, because you've been able to establish your character's concept by preliminary mix of skills, feats and, if necessary, multiclassing, without fretting so much over which class you should pick first. So 3rd level to me represents sophmore year of college when you've set your feet on a likely career path.

 

[Andre]

For me its 6th.

The players have just received their free feat and are now better able to actually "be" the character that they planned for when the game began, yet htey are not too powerful.

As a GM its the perfect level where the balance of party ability vs challenge is easier to reach.

Yep. For gameplay, I find levels 6-10 to be the sweet spot.

At lower levels the characters tend to be one-trick ponies and rather fragile. The opponents tend to have a sameness to them. At higher levels, combat tends to turn on who wins initiative and spells become problematic.