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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5630006" data-attributes="member: 22424">With the exception of the move from 1st to 2nd edition, ever edition change ever has upped the power level of starting characters. The moves from 2nd to 3e, and especially from 3e to 4e are just more dramatic.The thing is, that actually matches the genre pretty well. We never see 'young Aragorn' or 'young Legolas'. Luke Skywalker is pretty competent from the moment he leaves the farm. Bruce Wayne is a badass as soon as he puts on the mask. And so on.It also matches what most people want to think of when they play the game. Generally, they want to be Conan, or Gandalf, or Han Solo. Most people don't want to be Samwise Gamgee fresh from his garden, or Joe the Guard, or, well, average.I had hoped that WotC would one day provide 'sub-levels' for the people who did want to portray those formative years. It's a shame they never did. But as the baseline for the game, yeah, they got it mostly right.It's all relative. First time out in 4e my players were absolutely disgusted because the game ended in a TPK due to kobolds. Kobolds! In fact, they concluded that they couldn't see any way the game could be anything but insanely deadly.(However, that wasn't why that group eventually rejected 4e. There were other fundamental issues, notably the combat grind, that did that.)I actually agree with you - I never had a problem with the Wizard running out of spells. But we're the minority. The majority view was that they wanted the Wizard to be able to do wizard-y things every round, all the time. Resorting to the crossbow was a no-no.I learned to live with it. Truth was, if a 3e Wizard ran out of spells (including from magic items) beyond about 3rd level, he wasn't doing it right. 4e just makes that explicit, and brings it down to 1st level.(Actually, I think magic missile should never have been added to D&D, way back when. How different would the game look now without that particular spell? <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=":)" /> )You'll note that I said I think 4e gets it mostly right above.Personally, I feel 1st level characters are just a bit too powerful in 4e. Just a bit too super-human. I would prefer 1st level characters to be the equivalent of special forces in the real world - clearly a cut above the norm, but just as clearly still mortal. (A good fictional example would be The Black Company.)In fact, that should be the case right through the Heroic tier, with characters just edging into impossible feats as they near the end of the tier. (Obviously, 'impossible' when not using magic; we'd need to extrapolate to cover the magical world.)In the Paragon tier, then, characters should be clearly superhuman, but not absurdly so - a couple of steps beyond what a normal human can achieve. So, they can wrestle a giant, but not a god.And then, in the Epic tier, they are something else again. Clearly, at this point they are massively larger than life, with all the power and hubris that goes with it. They battle armies single-handed, wrestle gods (or at least demi-gods) to a standstill, conquer entire nations before breakfast, and are generally awesome.(By that count, that makes Luke Skywalker 1st level when he tells Obi-Wan "I want to come with you...", Frodo and Sam low-heroic from The Shire to Rivendell, and Boromir high-heroic. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli would be low-Paragon at the start of LotR, moving to high-Paragon by the end. And Leonidas and Achillies (300 and Troy, respectively) would enter the Epic tier as they go to war.)</blockquote>

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