Always Low Level

[NotScaryBats]

The highest level character I have ever had in any D&D is my level 12 Succubus (3.5e) on a PbP game here on Gitp. She started at level 12.

I have been playing RPGs for the better part of two decades, now. All the time, I see people talking about really high level stuff, from the 'this will suck until you hit Paragon' to the 'loop this power and this power to win -- but it only works at level 18.'

Playing with my friends and family, we almost always start 'by the book' meaning either beginning characters with 15 Freebies in WoD, level 1 in D&D, standard points in BESM, etc etc.

So, from my experience, all those level 5+ spells, Vorpal Swords, rank 5 Disciplines, are cool to look at, but I will never see them in play.

Has this been your experience as well?

[Mikeavelli]

It's excellent to start off your first campaign, or your first few campaigns, at very low levels. You're learning the rules, balance is easier to manage in the beginning, etc.

But to remain that way forever? That's like having a mansion filled with toys, and going, "no, don't touch. Those aren't for you. Go out back and put the triangle block in the triangle-shaped hole."

[Knaight]

So, from my experience, all those level 5+ spells, Vorpal Swords, rank 5 Disciplines, are cool to look at, but I will never see them in play.

Has this been your experience as well?

Broadly speaking: No. I generally play comparatively low powered games, so there's nothing like D&D high levels, but within the framework of those games there tends to be a variety. Most campaigns end up short (if for the simple reason that you can fit a lot of short campaigns in the same amount of time as one long one, bringing the average down), so there isn't necessarily a lot of character growth in a mechanical sense, but this is mitigated through a high variety of starting points. Sometimes the starting characters are established heroes with a history, sometimes they are largely interchangeable grunts embroiled in things much larger than themselves.

[NikitaDarkstar]

Not really. I've started characters at level 1 and ran it up into the epics (I think we quit at lvl 29.) and we frequently get up into the mid and late teens level wise. And just as often we start at higher levels, simply because we're sick and tired of playing through the "travel to get more powerful so the campaign can actually start" levels.

So no, I've never really had the problem of not seeing levels that high, but I don't exactly enjoy the instant win button either.

[Exediron]

Not at all. I have characters right now ranging from level 55 to level 74 (I think). We started this campaign in 2004 with 1st level characters.

In other games, I typically play low-level characters, because I consider it proper to start a new campaign world with low (usually first) level characters.

[Yora]

Has this been your experience as well?
In short: Yes.

When I started working on a D&D setting a year ago, I decided to simply cut away everything above 10th level since almost all of it would never come up in games anyway.

[Kol Korran]

So, from my experience, all those level 5+ spells, Vorpal Swords, rank 5 Disciplines, are cool to look at, but I will never see them in play.

Has this been your experience as well?
Sort of, but so far we liked it that way.
Our group usually plays D&D, and we have long campaigns startign from 2-4th level up to 12-13th. We were usually comfortable in these levels, so it worked for us I guess.

that said, the current campaign (Which we're still feeling out) may continue to high levels (currently level 3, just started), or we might do a specific high leveled campaign, since some players voiced interest, and I may have a few ideas in mind (Eberron's Argonessen, here we come!)

But that is still a long time to come. Our gaming frequency is quite low.

[shadow_archmagi]

Yeah, my group has an issue with starting games at level 5 and then ending them at level 10 or so. We just always feel that 5 is a good starting place, and then the game falls apart of natural causes.

THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT THOUGH I AM GOING TO RUN THIS THING INTO THE EPIC

[Sir Enigma]

Yeah, this has happened to me a lot, frustratingly. I've had a lot of games that started at low levels and just fell apart before the high levels. The best I ever had was one that ran the Red Hand of Doom, and so survived until level 12, but usually getting past 5-6 is unusual for me unless we start at higher level.

Fortunately, the guy who's DMing the next game has got fed up with it too, and is planning to start around level 6...

[Siegel]

I've no real interest in trying longer-form games anymore; indeed, I see the long-form assumption as a serious impediment to the hobby.

When you want to do high level stuff then do it. You don't have to earn it.

[Jay R]

Of course. I want every character of mine to start at first level, simply because the experience and background a high-level character has is primarily the adventures he had to get there - the people he's met, the lives he's saved, the enemies he's made...

Not every campaign will make it to fifteenth level, so it follows that there are more first level characters than fifteenth level characters.

I also like the original Gygax assumption that adventuring is for the young, and that an experienced enough adventurer will eventually settle down, build an army, and start fighting battles, not skirmishes. Just as a general doesn't lead a small squad on a raid, a high-level character doesn't go dumpster-diving dungeon crawling.

People are free to think differently, and play differently, but I prefer to play a mid-range adventurer, having taken him through the experiences that got him there.

[Urpriest]

I'm going to echo others that it's perfectly reasonable to start at higher level. Also, especially these days in 4e you're going to run into games with accelerated leveling precisely because people have limited time and want to interact with the increased complexity of Paragon.

[Jarawara]

Always ?Low? Level...

12th?

Jeez, back in the old days, "low level" meant 1st to 3rd, "mid-range" was 4th to 7th, and "high level" was 8th to 12th level, maybe all the way to 14th. 15th and beyond was epic level, and nobody I knew ever bothered with that.

So at 12th, you're already on the high end of high. But I guess the game has changed since the old days. Though I haven't. In 33 years of playing, I have never seen a character get above 6th level, with the brief exception of one shot games where we played high level (10th) people just to see what we thought of it. They didn't feel real, so we went back to our regular guys.

Stick to the by-the-book characters, you'll enjoy them better. Especially if you do get to the high level stuff... you'll really feel you earned it then.

[Heart]

In any of the campaigns I've been in, the lowest level we've stopped has been three. Every other one has spanned into epic, but the only DM in my area besides myself really loves the super powered games.

[Kiero]

I have a simple red line for D&D games: I will not start at 1st level (and preferably somewhere around 5th as a minimum). The last game I played (D&D4e) started at 7th level, and was much better for it (though I'd prefer if it caps at 10th level). The previous D20 game, Star Wars Saga Edition, started at 4th level.

Same goes for other systems, no matter what the "by the book" novice level is, I want to play an experienced character from the start. We started DFRPG with "Chest Deep" characters, for example.

I should add, I don't like the top levels, they tend to be overly complicated, take too long to do stuff and not be terribly interesting either.

[Hylas]

The highest level character I've ever gotten to from level 1 is level 5. The highest level character I've ever played is level 6. He was a wizard. I felt like a god.

All of this high level stuff seems pretty wacky to me.

[Remmirath]

That hasn't been my experience, certainly. I typically start new games with first level characters, but I've run first level to twentieth and over a few times, and I believe the longest running character I had went from third to fiftieth.

I've also been in a few games that started at much higher levels as well, but I don't prefer to do that.


Always ?Low? Level...

12th?

Jeez, back in the old days, "low level" meant 1st to 3rd, "mid-range" was 4th to 7th, and "high level" was 8th to 12th level, maybe all the way to 14th. 15th and beyond was epic level, and nobody I knew ever bothered with that.

So at 12th, you're already on the high end of high. But I guess the game has changed since the old days. Though I haven't. In 33 years of playing, I have never seen a character get above 6th level, with the brief exception of one shot games where we played high level (10th) people just to see what we thought of it. They didn't feel real, so we went back to our regular guys.

Stick to the by-the-book characters, you'll enjoy them better. Especially if you do get to the high level stuff... you'll really feel you earned it then.

The game has changed since then, certainly. My longest running first edition character went from first to tenth level, and that certainly felt rather high level then. Levels are gained much faster in more recent editions, and to me at least, they don't feel like they count for as much. I expect that, in a first or second edition campaign, I'd still feel as though twelve was high level, but in third it feels fairly low level.

[kieza]

Having tried both high-level and low-level campaigns, I really prefer low-level. In the one campaign I ran that went from level 1 to 12 (in 4e), the growing character complexity started getting in the way around level 7-9.

[holywhippet]

The highest D&D level I've ever reached was level 5 and the campaign ended just as we reached that level. There aren't that many games I can get involved in locally though which is the main problem.

Still, some people feel 3rd edition D&D is fairly balanced up to about level 7 - after that the power inbalance kicks in and only gets worse as levels increase.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Depends on whether you mean low level or low power.

My 3.X games are almost invariably at high level because most non-caster character concepts need to wait quite a while before they start to actually function as advertised.

Other than that though, I prefer to run games at middling power. The idea is competent, but not story-breaking. If you choose to be a character who's good in a swordfight, for instance, you should be able to defeat almost anyone you like in a one-on-one duel (NPCs who can stand up to you in your area of expertise should be rare, and when they do occur they should be personal rivals or other major players in the story, not random mooks who appear in random encounters to rob you on the road). You should *not* be able to say "Okay, I conquer the country by defeating the King's army by myself."

[Kaun]

I know a lot of my games don't get to far into the later levels for one main reason;

DnD starts to become annoying to run in the later levels IMHO.

There is just to much going on and to much to take into account, it starts to become like homework rather then a fun hobby.

[Arbane]

Stick to the by-the-book characters, you'll enjoy them better. Especially if you do get to the high level stuff... you'll really feel you earned it then.

No, no I won't. I'm sick of the "Earn Your Fun" mentality that seems to think that spending the first six months playing as an incompetent scrub is necessary so that us stoopid playerz can really SAVOR our marginal ability.

But, I like games like Feng Shui and Exalted that start characters out at a high level of competence and then go up from there.

[Grundy]

We typically play low to mid level campaigns. Personally, I like the low levels. The powe of high level play is appealing, but by the time any character is that powerful, they tend to have all sorts of obligations, complications, and general hangers-on. That isn't my kind of escapist fantasy.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I've run several campaigns over several editions that went from 1st to "max" level (Immortal in BECMI, 16thish in 1e and 2e, 20th in 3e) and many that have started in the 3-5 range and went up that high. Haven't played in more than a handful, though, since I've always been my groups' main DM. I was fortunate enough to have groups that met during and after school for several hours multiple times a week, from elementary school through college, though, so we leveled much faster than the norm. Things that get better/get worse/change a lot/etc. around 14th+ level are a very real concern for my groups, and ensuring that characters are fun and viable for the whole level range (or at least most of it) is important, since we run lots of long campaigns and don't change characters until they die or the campaign ends.

[Jack of Spades]

I for one prefer games that start at low levels. I like the feeling of a character who I've made over the course of a campaign, if only because I feel like he's better tailored to the game. Playing a character from a relatively low level means that just about every mark on my sheet was fought for and earned over a long period of time. To be honest, it just feels a bit wrong to me to start out at mid-to-high level and dump a bunch of abilities and stats on the sheet.

However, a big part of that is probably the fact that I don't tend to play games with classes, in favor of those games where XP is currency and you buy what you want for your character. In those games, making a high-level character can get downright exhausting. I should know, I'm in the middle of making a replacement character right now :smallyuk:

[Craft (Cheese)]

No, no I won't. I'm sick of the "Earn Your Fun" mentality that seems to think that spending the first six months playing as an incompetent scrub is necessary so that us stoopid playerz can really SAVOR our marginal ability.

The prospect of losing a character and spending 6 months being incompetent again is supposed to scare you to death into being super duper careful so you take the super safe routes and never try to have any fun. It works for old-school D&D style games but not really in anything else.

[DigoDragon]

Has this been your experience as well?

For me yes. When I run a D&D 3.5 campaign, it tends to go for a good while. The LOWEST level my players ended at in any campaign was 14th. So I'm quite disappointed that as a PC, the highest level any of my characters has achieved is 5th. So yeah, I haven't even gotten to experience a Prestige class yet. :smalltongue:

With my case, the issue is my group not having anyone else who wants to be a GM with any regularity.

[some guy]

With my case, the issue is my group not having anyone else who wants to be a GM with any regularity.

This is also a big issue for me. The highest level I ever played in a campaign was from level 5 to level 8. The longest I ever played was from level 1 to 7.

But then again, I also run low level campaigns. The highest a player ever reached in a campaign of me was level 10. But nowadays I usually run reasonably short campaigns that go from 1 to 4-6. I run short campaigns because of a larger player base and I like to give everyone the chance to play in a campaign every once and a while.

But then again, again, I just started a campaign at level 5. I expect the players to reach level 8-9. I was a bit tired of low level. But this is probably an exception.

[Andreaz]

What I notice happening in my groups is that leveling a character from 1 to 20 doesn't really happen, but we do play long enough that it should.
So when a game ends we just start another at a higher level.

[Thialfi]

More like that lately since we have had a couple players join our playing group. We never allow a character to start at anything other than 1st level, so we had to reroll several new characters to fit in with the new players.

In our 32 years of D&D, we have played everything from 1st to 30th. We went an entire decade without playing a character below 15th level, so it varies. I actually prefer characters with several levels on them, because low level characters are entirely too fragile in our 1e/2e campaign. Some classes, like mages, are next to worthless before they hit 7th level.

[Andreaz]

[...]We never allow a character to start at anything other than 1st level[...]Why?
(obligatory character limit filler)

[Zombimode]

I actually prefer characters with several levels on them, because low level characters are entirely too fragile in our 1e/2e campaign. Some classes, like mages, are next to worthless before they hit 7th level.

Not if you know what you're doing. Level 1-2 mages are in a pretty tough spot, but after they are pretty good. Spells are very powerful.
In any case even a level 1 mage is far from being "next to worthless".

[Jarawara]

No, no I won't. I'm sick of the "Earn Your Fun" mentality that seems to think that spending the first six months playing as an incompetent scrub is necessary so that us stoopid playerz can really SAVOR our marginal ability.

I... ah... wow. I like your reasoning. You win an internet, earn a cookie, and get a 'like' on your facebook page. You have your way of playing (different from mine), and you're not afraid to state what you prefer. I wholly endorse!

It reminds me of my early days of playing D&D - we kinda did it different. Most groups had the usual DM, 6-9 players each with a character. We had a DM (me) and a single player, and about 60 some characters on the board at any one time. Everyone told us we were playing it wrong; tell us how to play it right. We'd look at them like they were crazy and say 'Why? We're having fun playing it our way. Leave us the **** alone'.

So turnabout it fair play - I think the game is best at low level, but who am I to judge if you prefer starting at high level and going up from there. Enjoy your game, and rock on!

[Kiero]

No, no I won't. I'm sick of the "Earn Your Fun" mentality that seems to think that spending the first six months playing as an incompetent scrub is necessary so that us stoopid playerz can really SAVOR our marginal ability.

Agreed, it's a tedious meme that somehow slogging through boring sessions waiting to get to the meat of playing the way you wanted to is superior.

Low level D&D (and by that I mean sub 5th level) is dull. It's training wheels milk-runs until you are ready for actually playing a hero. I've done that countless times over the last 20-odd years of roleplaying, I have no desire to do it again.

I should note, I think high level (level 10+) is also boring, for a different set of reasons. For me the sweet spot is "high heroic" not epic.

[Zombimode]

Agreed, it's a tedious meme that somehow slogging through boring sessions waiting to get to the meat of playing the way you wanted to is superior.

Uhm, I think you may misunderstand such statements.
Have you considered that some people actually enjoy working their way up?
Why assume that any kind of superiority complex is involved?
That doesn't even make sense at the gaming table ("Harr, we start a Level 1 so that we can feel superior to those instant gratification kids that... actually have no way of knowing what we are doing here and probably wouldn't even care...").

[Kiero]

Uhm, I think you may misunderstand such statements.
Have you considered that some people actually enjoy working their way up?
Why assume that any kind of superiority complex is involved?
That doesn't even make sense at the gaming table ("Harr, we start a Level 1 so that we can feel superior to those instant gratification kids that... actually have no way of knowing what we are doing here and probably wouldn't even care...").

The frequency with which words like "earn" come up deliver exactly the intended connotation that Real Roleplayers start at the bottom and like slogging their way up.

[IncoherentEssay]

Always low level? Sort of. Highest we got was one lvl 14 party and another 10+, most being in the 3rd-8th range. This is mostly due to rotating DM duties, so each party sees a bit less play than in a "dedicated DM" setup. We also reset the levels in case of party wipe or everyone switching to a new character. The lvl 14 party got to where they were through a relay-race of sorts: the first members were the first D&D characters we had and every party had at least one member of the previous one in it.

Also seconding the distaste for the "earn" attitude. The game starts at whatever level it is best to start at for it's needs, low or high. Personally i don't start mine at 1st, preferring to start at 3rd+ to avoid the initial rocket tag.
Though starting low does make sense for less system-savvy players, since it is easier to run a character you've built from the ground up over time and are thus more familiar with. Some players just feel lost if they're handed a character with lots of options, which competent high-level characters tend to have in spades.

[JadedDM]

As a player, the highest level character I've ever had was level 5 (and he started at level 4). Starting at level 1, though, I've never made it further than level 3, tops.

As a DM, the highest level my players ever reached was...7, maybe 8. I can't recall exactly. But that took over a year to get that far from level 1.

Generally speaking, in both instances, the game falls apart before going any further than that (player drama, the DM quits, lack of attendance, etc.).

Those are my experiences, at any rate.

[Jarawara]

The frequency with which words like "earn" come up deliver exactly the intended connotation that Real Roleplayers start at the bottom and like slogging their way up.

Yeah sorry, I never meant to imply that with my original comment. Sorry if it came off that way.

I still stand by it, **as opinion only and as a reflection of my own preferences**, in that I only enjoy the higher level stuff if I saw my character develop from the ground up.

I participated in a playthrough of the old Slaver Scourge module the other day, we took the pre-gen characters of 4th to 7th level. I was 'playing dumb', since I knew the module, allowing the other players to experience it for the first time. We got into the ambush hall and were surprised by the slavers posing as prisoners. Surrounded, we had to think fast to keep them from overwhelming us.

Well, they were new players. They didn't think so fast, they just drew swords and started hacking, didn't think about spells to clear the area or pull-back tactics or nothing. Just hack at the guy in front of you and don't worry what's happening elsewhere. That kind of thinking can get you into trouble; you have to think in terms of the whole battlefield, not just what's in front of you.

And... it didn't matter. My Dwarf was cut off, facing the enemy cleric mano-e-mano, but with two other orcs hacking at me and two archers targetting me. Smash, smash, smash, I killed their cleric. I move, even as two orcs hacked away. I smash an archer. I smash the other. I turn on the two orcs. Smash, smash. I killed them all. They didn't even lay a hand on me.

Now that might have been a bought of amazing die rolls, but really it wasn't that spectacular. At my AC they would have needed a 20 to hit, and I was nailing them about 70% of the time, and my damage range was instant kills for them. Only the cleric was a threat, and I was lucky enough to end up facing him first. DMing error, he left the path clear for me.

The battle left a sour taste in my mouth, wholly unsatisfying to me. Way to easy. I know that later rooms will be a challenge, I know that part of the challenge is that we have to get through all the rooms in one run... but jeez, we just waltzed into the middle of an ambush flatfooted and the cleaned the floors with them without breaking a sweat. Where's the fun with that?

(I could go on about that and how a more level-appropriate encounter would have been better and so on, but let me finish my point here...)

"Where's the fun with that?".... I then suddenly remembered the end of my Tiatia campaign we just concluded last spring. Party goes into the final mass battle with the Tal'khed to free the Raliskan prisoners. Jaran leads a few men onto the catwalk above the main fray. Tal'khed charge him. Whack, smack, twack!!! Down go three in three short rounds. Other Tal'khed come running, but Jaran looks down and sees an Ogre running rampant in the battlefield below. He turns to his lieutenant and says "Take care of these Tal'khed, soldier". Lieutenant asks "Where are you going?" Jaran responds "I'm going down there", and then climbs over the railing and drops, one-shotting the Ogre on the way down and landing in the midsts of a group of Tal'khed alone. He proceeded to lay waste the them in short order.

That was a hell of a lot of fun! But what was so different than of what my Dwarf did? Well for us, the difference was that Jaran had fought these guys for months and months, learning their tactics and their weak-spots, honing his own skills, and by the time we were fighting this battle, this was sweet, sweet revenge! Heck, the first time Jaran fought these guys, they were burning his town and he failed to kill a single raider in the whole battle. Now it was payback time. He had evolved from a poor farmer kid who stood up to defend his village, into a combat veteran leading an army. It no longer seemed 'unbelievable', nor did it feel like an 'undeserved pushover'. It felt like revenge, and my players were eating it up. They cleaned the floors with these guys and loved every single minute of it.


That's the spirit of what I meant by 'earning' it. Not that you have to play the way us 'old grognards' did it, but that it will be more enjoyable if you can see the growth of your character over time. If you choose to have that growth be from 5th level and going up to 20th, and your enemy of choice is pit fiends instead of orcs... go for it, and enjoy your game!

I did however get the impression that the OP was more into the earlier levels and so yes, I still suggest he'll enjoy high level more if he gets there by his own hand rather than by simply pregen-ing some high level dudes to run a game.

*~*~*

Edit to add: I do find that starting at 2nd level can greatly improve survival rates. Anyone else experience that? I've lost more people just out of the starting gate than of any other level of play. I don't know if it's a flaw of our gaming style, or just a flaw of the game, but 1st level guys are **fragile**!!!

[Darius Kane]

I like high levels, but I don't mind low if it's somehow relevant to the campaign (for example if we specifically want a "From Zero to Hero" game).

[valadil]

After the first couple campaigns with a system we usually start new campaigns above level one. First level fighters don't vary all that much. We'd rather just skip to where the characters have some mechanical variety.

Starting at 4 is pretty normal. I've gone from 1 to 24, but we're more likely to quit in the mid teens. By that point the power level is so high and the combats are so tedious that I don't really find the game that interesting.

[Knaight]

Well, they were new players. They didn't think so fast, they just drew swords and started hacking, didn't think about spells to clear the area or pull-back tactics or nothing. Just hack at the guy in front of you and don't worry what's happening elsewhere. That kind of thinking can get you into trouble; you have to think in terms of the whole battlefield, not just what's in front of you.
...
That was a hell of a lot of fun! But what was so different than of what my Dwarf did? Well for us, the difference was that Jaran had fought these guys for months and months, learning their tactics and their weak-spots, honing his own skills, and by the time we were fighting this battle, this was sweet, sweet revenge! Heck, the first time Jaran fought these guys, they were burning his town and he failed to kill a single raider in the whole battle. Now it was payback time. He had evolved from a poor farmer kid who stood up to defend his village, into a combat veteran leading an army. It no longer seemed 'unbelievable', nor did it feel like an 'undeserved pushover'. It felt like revenge, and my players were eating it up. They cleaned the floors with these guys and loved every single minute of it.

This seems more like a case of believability and expectations to me. In the first case, there was an ambush that you expected to lose with the tactics in play, and expectations were broken in a bad way where believability was also compromised. There is also the matter of narrative flow, where things just seem wrong because of how story conventions influence thought - a surprising, clever ambush that is reacted to poorly should succeed when there is still some level of the fish out of water connection between characters and this portion of their setting. The second of these doesn't have any of those problems. It's believable that a veteran general in high fantasy who has fought a particular enemy for some time does so well, expectations were met, and the typical interaction of characters with their enemies in major battles near the end of a fantasy work is one where they go around kicking ass. It all fits.

Take the first situation - would that have bothered you nearly as much if you were better armed and better armored, and the importance of armor and it's role in the setting regarding the technological base and wealth of societies and aspects within them was practically a theme in the setting? I doubt it, because that fixes believability, that fixes expectation, and the narrative convention is thus shifted to a display of power via technological base and wealth of parts of society, the scene becoming exposition behind a theme rather than an action scene per se. Note that this wouldn't actually require the characters to have been in play for a while.

Added to that, the narrative conventions underlying your example of characters who have grown is largely independent of where, exactly the starting and ending points are, provided that the ending point is one where the character is better at what they do. Your example is of a farm boy growing to a general, where the repetition of scenes which then vary in outcome operates as a narrative device, with the character first losing to, then defeating what is effectively the same challenge. This is a trope commonly employed in fantasy, and it works just as well for, say, a guard who failed to apprehend a criminal once after they fought, with the failure giving them sudden motivation to improve, probably with some sort of crisis of self and growth of character thrown in. It's a much smaller growth, where it isn't from a total novice to someone going around smashing military squads, but from someone who is a capable guard who just wasn't good enough at one thing, to someone who's better at that thing but still unable to pull off anything spectacular. In terms of a game, that means it's not about starting at low level so much as improving, while also being more invested in the game; none of this is dependent on starting at low level.

[Asheram]

Even though I'm very fond of the E6 format, I'd never Only play E6. There are some fun things on higher levels even though they tend to be difficult and overpowered.

[Arbane]

I still stand by it, **as opinion only and as a reflection of my own preferences**, in that I only enjoy the higher level stuff if I saw my character develop from the ground up.

Fair enough.



Edit to add: I do find that starting at 2nd level can greatly improve survival rates. Anyone else experience that? I've lost more people just out of the starting gate than of any other level of play. I don't know if it's a flaw of our gaming style, or just a flaw of the game, but 1st level guys are **fragile**!!!

Yeah, that's been my experience. Plus, some classes don't even start getting their signature abilities until level 2.

[some guy]

Edit to add: I do find that starting at 2nd level can greatly improve survival rates. Anyone else experience that? I've lost more people just out of the starting gate than of any other level of play. I don't know if it's a flaw of our gaming style, or just a flaw of the game, but 1st level guys are **fragile**!!!

True, that's why in one-shots, I let players be 2nd level. In campaigns I like the fragility of first level.

[Emmerask]

The highest level character I have ever had in any D&D is my level 12 Succubus (3.5e) on a PbP game here on Gitp. She started at level 12.

I have been playing RPGs for the better part of two decades, now. All the time, I see people talking about really high level stuff, from the 'this will suck until you hit Paragon' to the 'loop this power and this power to win -- but it only works at level 18.'

Playing with my friends and family, we almost always start 'by the book' meaning either beginning characters with 15 Freebies in WoD, level 1 in D&D, standard points in BESM, etc etc.

So, from my experience, all those level 5+ spells, Vorpal Swords, rank 5 Disciplines, are cool to look at, but I will never see them in play.

Has this been your experience as well?

Well the Highest level was from level 2 to 15 for us, in a 2 year running campaign.
I did not particularly enjoy the higher lvls in d&d mainly because everything done so far becomes pretty meaningless...
"so you have taken part in the war against the orcs and ended their reign of terror in the north? yeah... why didn´t they just send in one level 15 cleric/wizard whatever who could have taken care of it all in a few days?"

In Systems where the power-difference is just that huge I prefer the lower levels where you still have a feeling of being part of the world instead of being a god walking among ordinaries.

[EccentricOwl]

After years of being repressed by GMs who never got us past level 5, I've sort of acted out. I practically make my players level up every session now. Sort of like a kid who isn't allowed to drink so he becomes an alcoholic.

[Stallion]

Coming late to the party, but I recently finished a yearlong campaign in which I played a druid from 1-20. The optimization was pretty much restricted to core and what the DM felt like using, and I can tell you that by the end of the game, it was pretty crazy. I mean, time travel was a regular thing. I can honestly say that I had more fun with the game before we hit level 10. Then everything hit the fan and it just... wasn't as good. Everything was either a breeze or impossible. Towards the end of it the DM had to homebrew things because we'd wipe almost everything in the book. I highly advocate low level play, not only from playerside, but from DMside. It isn't a headache for bookwork and you actually have something to work up to.

[Grundy]

Agreed, it's a tedious meme that somehow slogging through boring sessions waiting to get to the meat of playing the way you wanted to is superior.

Low level D&D (and by that I mean sub 5th level) is dull. It's training wheels milk-runs until you are ready for actually playing a hero. I've done that countless times over the last 20-odd years of roleplaying, I have no desire to do it again.

I should note, I think high level (level 10+) is also boring, for a different set of reasons. For me the sweet spot is "high heroic" not epic.

Is there something about this statement that is any less condescending? You're staight up saying that real role playing is about heroic characters, not playing with "training wheels" until you're "ready for actually playing a hero."
Or maybe BOTH you and Jarawara are talking about how the game feels to YOU, not other people... But you're in the same boat, here.

[holywhippet]

Not if you know what you're doing. Level 1-2 mages are in a pretty tough spot, but after they are pretty good. Spells are very powerful.
In any case even a level 1 mage is far from being "next to worthless".

I think he meant squishy more so than worthless. A low level mage has so few HP they can conceivably die from a single unlucky hit. Of course, that could a problem with play style rather than wizards per se. The player could be putting themself into danger to much or the DM might be sending too many ranged attacks in their direction.

[TuggyNE]

I think he meant squishy more so than worthless. A low level mage has so few HP they can conceivably die from a single unlucky hit. Of course, that could a problem with play style rather than wizards per se. The player could be putting themself into danger to much or the DM might be sending too many ranged attacks in their direction.

Moreover, that's arguably true of any level 1 character; wizards and sorcerers merely exist in that danger zone a level or so longer. (For example, a bog-standard Orc Warrior 1 with a falchion, straight out of MM I, has a 58% chance of taking a raging Barbarian 1 with 16 base Con into negatives on a crit; a falchion cannot outright kill that Barbarian, but a greataxe can, with a 14% chance on a crit).

[Gamer Girl]

So, from my experience, all those level 5+ spells, Vorpal Swords, rank 5 Disciplines, are cool to look at, but I will never see them in play.

Has this been your experience as well?


No. But it's common enough. A lot of games keep it low level to keep it simple. I've run games of every level 1-40, and more. I run a high level(of fantasy and magic) game anyway, so the characters levels don't matter at all.

[Arbane]

"so you have taken part in the war against the orcs and ended their reign of terror in the north? yeah... why didn´t they just send in one level 15 cleric/wizard whatever who could have taken care of it all in a few days?"


In D&D, if there ARE any level 15s around, that question remains whether or not the PCs are some of them.


In Systems where the power-difference is just that huge I prefer the lower levels where you still have a feeling of being part of the world instead of being a god walking among ordinaries.


If there's gods walking among men, I want to be one of them.

[Yora]

There is always the option of the PCs not single handedly saving the world.

[DigoDragon]

There is always the option of the PCs not single handedly saving the world.

I've had a group of PCs destroy the world at 18th level. Though that was mostly "The Dumb" on the Druid's part for not following his own battle plan for defeating the BBEG (which would have worked fine).


This reminds me of a great idea for a campaign hook I had recently--
New campaign, everyone makes level 1 characters. Then they put those away and break out their level 14 characters where I run them through a dungeon inspired by "Tomb of Horrors" (PCs start at the entrance, location of the tomb is withheld). They get to the end, find the BBEG of the dungeon, begin epic battle. Halfway through the battle...

Everything goes blank.

Scene is now an old man at a tavern telling this battle as a tale of forgotten lore to a bunch of newcomer Adventurers (the new level 1s). Old man says it's been 200 years or so since that battle and no one knows what the outcome was or had heard from those heroes of legend. Even the location of the tomb is a mystery.

The hook: Let's find out what really happened to the Players previous characters. Onward to adventure!

[Deepbluediver]

The groups I used to play with did a lot of one-shot or short campaigns, because getting everyone's schedule to work out the same week after week was a task on par with resolving hostilities in the middle east.

We tended to favor lower to medium level characters (5-12), because as you increased the level, character creation became exponentially more complicated and took longer to complete. A lot low level stuff started at either level 3 or 5 so we could jump right into the action, but we also tended to finish up and start something new well before we got close to the level cap. I don't think I have ever played a character above level 16.


On a slightly related topic: I recently started a thread where I suggested adjusting the age-categories (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=254756) for humanoids so that all adults start at level 3 or above. This is a fairly common scenario or houserule anyway, so mostly what I was doing was adding fluff to support it.

[Hal]

I'm currently running a 4e game where we started at 11th level, and none of this group's previous games (in any edition) made it past 10th.

Part of this is a story consideration. If the GM is telling a story that requires novice PCs, or at least aren't already established badasses, you can't start with mid-level characters.

I think a bigger part of this is that the systems are designed around slow growth of the characters. Assuming you're taking on "appropriate" challenges and the GM isn't tossing around other extraneous XP rewards, it's likely to take 2-4 sessions to go up a level. If you play a weekly game, that can mean that going all the way from 1-30 could take more than a year at the fastest pace, likely taking much longer than that. I've rarely had games that lasted more than a year; I suspect most gaming groups don't have the attention span for such long-term campaigns.

[Zombimode]

I think its funny that some people think of the level progression of 3e/4e as "slow" :D

Its is, in fact, incredibly fast compared to older editions.

[Narren]

I mostly DM. We've had a 2nd edition and a 3rd edition campaign go from level 1 to epic levels. Same world, too (but they were ten years apart in real life, and several hundred years apart in game). We've had MANY campaigns in between and since then that either fizzled out or started at various levels. We've started at at level 3, 6, 7, 12, 15, 20, and beyond. I've always found it to be most gratifying and organic when the characters build themselves up in-game, instead of mapping it out before hand. You never know what turn the characters, the players, or the campaign will take.

One of my players ran a paladin, who had a younger brother that was also a paladin. He was an NPC among many, and would occasionally adventure with the group if we had a guest player. In one plot line, The evil wizard / petty lordling took the paladins family hostage, holding them in exchange for a necromancy artifact he needed to acquire. Two problems...1, giving up the artifact would result in MANY innocent people being killed, and 2, there was ZERO reason to think that this bad guy would release anyone after getting what he wanted. The paladin brothers (one a player, one an NPC pretty much taking the players lead) decided that family was more important than honor, and they did some pretty heinous things to find out where their family was being held. Pretending to prove your loyalty to an evil regime is a quick trip to Fallsville, but they didn't hesitate.

Long story short, they infiltrate the castle posing as mercenaries, find that their family was killed weeks ago, and go on a rampage. There are numerous people working at the castle ONLY because their families were also being threatened. But everyone was butchered indiscriminately by the angry ex-paladins. The PC showed slight restraint, but I had the younger brother just go nuts. And to be fair, it was a little difficult to ascertain who was good and who was evil (not like they could detect it anymore) and everyone was too scared of their boss to surrender.

So after storming the castle, killing pretty much everything, and not even bothering to loot it (the other party members were happy to, though, even if they were slightly icked out by the behavior), the brothers decided they needed to go their separate ways. The NPC just left in the night and the player decided to keep his paladin and not even bother trying for atonement, he didn't think he deserved it. He bounced around with some fighter and rogue levels (my group CLEARLY doesn't care about optimization, and I adjust the challenges accordingly). But he always stuck to the code of a paladin after that...he never took another action that would cause a paladin to fall, and regularly put himself on the line to help others.

About 7 or 8 months later (in real life, it was years in-game), the gang hears about some bandit leader that gathered together all the local monstrous races (orcs, various goblinoids, etc) and was actually getting them to coordinate with each other AND the human bandits in the area, and he was pretty much terrorizing the outlying areas, and becoming too much for the local lord to handle. Matter of fact, when the lord DID send out his men in force, one of his children was killed in bed as retaliation. And when the small town hero tried to rally up a militia, his whole family was killed before they even left town (some of the bandits lived in town, obviously). This strikes home for the paladin, and he insists that the group check it out (I usually throw out several leads for adventure, and this one was less lucrative than the others, but the group went along with it anyways). Once again, long story short(ish), they battle to the leader, and discover it to be his little brother, now a Blackguard. The rest of the group is busy fighting the various bandit leaders and mooks, and it's just brother against brother. They talk for a minute, little brother blames big brother for what they did and what he's become, yadda yadda yadda. They fought for a few rounds, the younger brother having the clear advantage, and when the player rolled a crit, I thought "why not?" and turned it into a smite evil. No one ever cast an atonement spell, but he wouldn't let them. Considering that he played as a Lawful Good paladin without any of the (few) benefits for SEVEN months, I thought he had earned it. He smites him down to -4 hp, disarms him, binds him, and heals him so that he can face the local lord's justice. Little brother is manacled (yes, the paladin carries several sets). While crossing a bridge, he tells his brother that it wasn't his fault, asks for his forgiveness, and jumps. It was 40 feet to the bottom, but he only had 2 hp at the time.

That was WAYYYY longer than I meant it to be (I even cut out quite a bit). The point that I was originally trying to illustrate was that without having a long campaign in which the brother is an established NPC that the group knows and likes (he was like a little brother to everyone, and wasn't even 1st level until the group was 3rd or 4th.) and then turns into the bad guy, that whole story couldn't have happened. Well, I suppose it could be run, but it wouldn't be as effective if I just told the group what they had experienced instead of them actually experiencing it over the course of a year. Reaching high levels, and seeing your accomplishments, and knowing what it took to get there, makes the whole thing a lot sweeter.

[Jarawara]

Bravo to you and your group, Narren! Bravo!!!

And of course, I fully agree. It is much more effective to introduce the characters, NPC and PC, early on and let them develop, rather than to set them up with pre-exisiting 'histories'. It wouldn't have the same impact to read it on paper than to have seen it develop as you play.

But of course... your whole story could have been done from 5th to 20th level, instead of from 1st to 20th. In fact, the Dragonlance saga did exactly that, if I remember correctly. The PC's just start out at 5th level on the expectations that they had done some small-time adventuring before the story really got going. That part was just skimmed over as unimportant and they got to the meat of the game. Your younger brother Paladin could join up as the party is reaching 8th level and your storyline would have developed the same way.

And of course, on the opposite spectrum is my Tiatia campaign where the PC's started as farmer boys defending their town, and over the course of nine years of play developed to the point of being leaders of an army, liberating their nation, defeating their enemies, and even imprisoning a god. And reached the high and mighty level of... 6th.

It's the development that's the key, not the start point nor the destination.

*~*~*

But seriously... Your story... BRAVO!!!

[Knaight]

And of course, I fully agree. It is much more effective to introduce the characters, NPC and PC, early on and let them develop, rather than to set them up with pre-exisiting 'histories'. It wouldn't have the same impact to read it on paper than to have seen it develop as you play.
You can develop their back story just like anything else. Just drop bits of it in, in character, as you play, rather than coming up with one long back story at the beginning.

[ghost_warlock]

In the past, I've played in 2nd ed. campaigns that went up to about an average of 9th, give or take (different classes advance at different rates). In 3.5 I played in an awesome Eberron campaign from 3rd to 15th level. I've DMed a 4e Dark Sun game that went from 5th to 15th and played in a 4e Spelljammer game that went from 3th to 11th (and then ended right as I was really starting to feel like my character was reaching what should have been his baseline power level :smallfrown:).

However, recently I've only been playing 4e Encounters so I feel like I'm perpetually stuck cycling through levels 1-3. :smallsigh: Getting soooooo sick of games that end at 3rd level. :smallfrown:

[PersonMan]

Personally, I find it unusual that people seem to think that every high-level character got there via adventuring. Several mid/high level character concepts of mine are people who are just starting to adventure. It's just that they have the training and equipment of an elite [soldier/guard/mage/whatever] instead of being a novice out of How To Not Kill Yourself 101.

I enjoy mid/low-level games, with the occasional more high-level one for particular concepts.

[IW Judicator]

Personally, I've gotten to that point where starting at level 1 isn't satisfying without some reasoning from the plot. That being said, I can't imagine starting at more than 3-4, 5 at the most. 2 to 3 is quite comfortable to me. I like to actually experience the character's growth from still a little wet behind the ears to nigh-unstoppable (or wherever the campaign ends). As other have said, it does largely depend on the campaign in question, but even then I like starting out a bit lower.

Thinking back, the highest I ever started out was actually as a level 20 sorcerer. I was very late entering the campaign and actually hit epic level before meeting the party. I spent about 3 weeks putting the character together (as I was pretty new to D&D specifically at the time) and the campaign didn't see out the second session; the other members of the party ended up destroying the planet. It really wasn't in any way satisfying; I was all power without rhyme or reason and I never got a chance to use it.

As for power earned through actual gameplay...well, there's always my rogue, who (by the numbers) should have killed a paladin-esque god of battle (I did still win that fight...though the campaign fell apart shortly after that). She started out just about where I liked: around level 3 and for most of the campaign wasn't all that great (ran into a lot of monsters that I couldn't damage properly). But once I got some more appropriate equipment and caught up on exp I was probably the second most powerful player in the party (next to the wizard). Why did it end up being this way? We (the party) were surviving a meat grinder campaign in which we weren't supposed to survive for more than a couple hours, a couple sessions on the outside. A campaign that had apparently been thrown at a lot of other players who didn't survive. But we just kept going, all the way to the top and doing beyond impossible things like god killing.

In the end it's a matter of choice; I just like starting out smaller and then I like staying in a mid range for a good long while until I start getting really and truly powerful (Plot dictating what that may actually be of course). At a certain point, I think it gets tiring being the almighty super being and want to go back to where those small, seemingly inconsequential skirmishes against kobolds, goblins, low level bandits and what have you mean everything in the world, the party, and a few NPCs who see you as their eternal savior. Fun shouldn't be dictated by a shortage of +5 Flaming Vorpal blades. :smalltongue:

[Jack of Spades]

For me, the difference between starting out at mid to high level and starting out at or near rock bottom is the difference between a build and a character. It has nothing to do with earning a powerful character. It probably has everything to do with the fact that I'm not really an optimizer (and tend to avoid optimization-heavy games).

When you start at mid to high level, you are putting a partial build on a piece of paper. You have several levels' worth of stat increases and abilities, straight out the door. All of them are probably planned in conjunction with the other advances you're taking at the time.

When I start a level 1 character in a game, I don't tend to look ahead. I just look at the choices given to a level 1 character, and start from there. Even if I know what's coming up in later levels, I'm not going to bother planning ahead until I've played the character for a few sessions and know how he acts and feels. What results is the feeling of a character that has grown organically, with me taking whatever choices are viable and helpful at the time as opposed to spending too much time worrying about what those choices unlock in the future. When I make a mid to high level character, I end up planning out those levels I already have, and it feels weird when the character arrives in the game half-built but I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to end up playing him (I always have a character's personality planned, but their personality always tends to defy my planning).

The broader takeaway from that block is this: in low-op games, or at least games where you don't know for sure what your character's build will be from the moment you write their name on the sheet, characters often end up taking suboptimal or simply out-of-left-field choices that are entirely the result of the fact that you're playing the game as you make the choices. Maybe those choices are for survivability's sake, taken at low levels after one too many brushes with death. Maybe those choices are because the DM seems to favor a certain skill check, and you want to invest in that skill. Maybe you find a weird exotic sword with some sick enchantments, so you make yourself proficient with weird exotic swords. To me, it's those imperfections that make a character who started at low level feel more organic and real than one who started at a higher level with a better-balanced and better-planned set of skills, even if that sort of thing develops later in play with the higher-level character.

To me. Dear God, to me. I don't want to accidentally start a Stormwind Fallacy thing in a perfectly good thread.

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm going to echo others that it's perfectly reasonable to start at higher level. Also, especially these days in 4e you're going to run into games with accelerated leveling precisely because people have limited time and want to interact with the increased complexity of Paragon.

The only 4e game I enjoyed was set at Paragon tier. My Warlock was so badass. Then they nerfed Student of Caiphon and I vowed to never play 4e again.

[Knaight]

For me, the difference between starting out at mid to high level and starting out at or near rock bottom is the difference between a build and a character. It has nothing to do with earning a powerful character. It probably has everything to do with the fact that I'm not really an optimizer (and tend to avoid optimization-heavy games).

When you start at mid to high level, you are putting a partial build on a piece of paper. You have several levels' worth of stat increases and abilities, straight out the door. All of them are probably planned in conjunction with the other advances you're taking at the time.

Optimization is really kind of irrelevant here. You're putting together a character regardless of whether it is level 1 or level 4, or has 150 points or 200. This doesn't influence what you do with further levels/points/whatever, or whether a plan is involved or not. There's also no real reason to expect that higher level/point/whatever characters are somehow designed to be more specialized. Hell, a whole host of systems have character creation systems where that level of specialization doesn't even make sense, and quite a few have lifepath systems where you have a character who has been several things and is changed as a result, which fits just as well with organic growth.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I never start at really low levels-- it's my opinion that it takes a few levels before characters have enough options and stamina to make things fun, and I usually wind up running things, so...

My last campaign went from 6-8 over one semester, jumped up to 10 over summer (my mandate), and from 10-14 the next semester, with a mystically-fueled jump up to 20th for the climax. (Didn't work so well. Would not try again).

[Skaven]

I feel a little annoyed at this myself. WHenever we start getting to the levels I really start to enjoy (13+) We always end up starting a new game because of some other players in my group who seem to have their boats floated by finding Orcs and Goblins a credible threat and who can't seem to come up with a reason for their high level characters, not quite getting that when you start getting to higher levels its up to you to find a goal/purpose/direction for your character not the GM.

Me, I want to fight the real big bads, I want to save the world not a village.. I get frustrated at it. I never get to use those really awesome level 8 and 9 spells outside of a single player RPG like NWN.

[Stallion]

Eh. They're alright, but the first time you get truly desperate and PAO the barbarian into a great wyrm gold dragon to solve your world-crushing dilemma, you tend to lose all sense of "Oh this is challenging. My character is actually really having to try and stay on his/her toes".

[Grundy]

The highest level character I've played as an adult peaked shortly after gaining teleport. That was a total game changer, since I basically always had a way to pull the party out (we weren't fighting high level spell casters). While it wasn't an "I win" button, it was the "I can't fail" button.
The campaign was still fun, don't get me wrong, but the whole thing changed like flipping a switch. It really made nova tactics work, but more importantly, it totally changed the feel of the game from "we're doing this" to "let's have our guys do this" since in my head, I couldn't quite suspend disbelief as well.
Which is not to say that I think I can throw fireballs IRL:)

[Skaven]

The highest level character I've played as an adult peaked shortly after gaining teleport. That was a total game changer, since I basically always had a way to pull the party out (we weren't fighting high level spell casters). While it wasn't an "I win" button, it was the "I can't fail" button.
The campaign was still fun, don't get me wrong, but the whole thing changed like flipping a switch. It really made nova tactics work, but more importantly, it totally changed the feel of the game from "we're doing this" to "let's have our guys do this" since in my head, I couldn't quite suspend disbelief as well.
Which is not to say that I think I can throw fireballs IRL:)


I thought this way too for a while.. I got cocky. I was like 'I can teleport, i'm pretty safe now.'

I learned the hard way how deadly teleport error can be. These days I am afraid of the spell. Truly truly afraid. It doesn't matter how small the percentage error is.. I learned that a couple of bad roll is all it takes. :(

source: I lost my highest level character ever to a repeat roll teleport fumble chain and splinching.

[Tyndmyr]

The highest level character I have ever had in any D&D is my level 12 Succubus (3.5e) on a PbP game here on Gitp. She started at level 12.

I have been playing RPGs for the better part of two decades, now. All the time, I see people talking about really high level stuff, from the 'this will suck until you hit Paragon' to the 'loop this power and this power to win -- but it only works at level 18.'

Playing with my friends and family, we almost always start 'by the book' meaning either beginning characters with 15 Freebies in WoD, level 1 in D&D, standard points in BESM, etc etc.

So, from my experience, all those level 5+ spells, Vorpal Swords, rank 5 Disciplines, are cool to look at, but I will never see them in play.

Has this been your experience as well?

It is...unfortunately common. I have rolled a ridiculous amount of level 1 chars. I couldn't even put a number on it. Maybe...two have made it to epic play. And neither of those started at level 1. The most I've ever played is around 16 levels back to back, and even that's unusual.

Which, really, is a shame. Killing yet another batch of goblins at level 1 bores me to tears.

[Grundy]

I thought this way too for a while.. I got cocky. I was like 'I can teleport, i'm pretty safe now.'

I learned the hard way how deadly teleport error can be. These days I am afraid of the spell. Truly truly afraid. It doesn't matter how small the percentage error is.. I learned that a couple of bad roll is all it takes. :(

source: I lost my highest level character ever to a repeat roll teleport fumble chain and splinching.

Ouch. What's splinching?
Otoh, a few bad rolls is all it ever takes. I just lost my barbarian to one failed hold person roll.

[only1doug]

I do find that starting at 2nd level can greatly improve survival rates. Anyone else experience that? I've lost more people just out of the starting gate than of any other level of play. I don't know if it's a flaw of our gaming style, or just a flaw of the game, but 1st level guys are **fragile**!!!

We tend to play from 3rd level up, Last campaign went from 3rd to 18th before ending.

which ever gaming sytem we play we normally end up fairly high powered, it just takes years (of real world time) to get there.

[joe]

I have both played and DM'd a campaign from start into epic levels. All and all, I can say I prefer low level gaming a lot better. This is a bit hypocritical of me since I love to level up my characters and plan them out to absurdly high levels, but I find the experience of gameplay starts to wane as the level gets higher.

Around level 12 the system seems to lose structure I feel, and I enjoy the play smart aspect over the blow everything up with fireballs, which is pretty much what the game becomes at high levels. That and turns seem to take forever at point, making battles slow to a crawl.

As a DM I'm currently running an E6 Gestalt game with no multiclassing. It's running very well thus far. Battles tend to go at a manageable speed and the characters are still powerful without being overly so. If this campaign stays as successful as it is, I'll probably continue using this format until everyone gets tired of it. (The players are fond of it too.)