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View Full Version : Incentives to start characters below average party level



Yora
2012-12-04, 10:38 AM
There's lots of great stories about groups of characters who are not equally strong and powerful but still work well togehter. And I think it would be interesting for RPG campaigns as well to have parties in which some characters are pages or apprentices of another PC, or the heroes pick up a random slave who stays with them and proves useful over time.

But unless you already have a very cool character concept that you really want to play no matter what, I don't think that there are many people, if any, who would just start their character at two or three levels lower than the rest of the party.

Couldn't be there some incentives or previleges to the players, that make it appealing to begin character creation with the idea of starting at lower level and then looking for ways such a character could be made? Anything that would make it an attractive option to play at a lower power level than other PCs?

nedz
2012-12-04, 10:57 AM
It depends upon the system.

In AD&D you would catch up very quickly, even starting from 1st.
In d20 systems — playing a higher Tier class.
In Paranoia — getting stitched up less; here level = security clearance.

Krazzman
2012-12-04, 10:57 AM
COunterquestion! Why do you have to be weaker in terms of levels to be a page?

Social standing could be one reason. In a one-shot-campaign I started as Sorcerer and wanted to learn the way of fighting with a sword, the other guy was playing a knight (archetype not class or anything) and we agreed that I would be his page and he would show me the way of fighting. It was quite fun as in I made him look better and I myself started to fight with a shortspear and went into melee also, having only a few buffing spells. Although it would've been hard to start under level 1 anyway.

The thing is: it depends on the party. And it depends on the players. Some of them shouldn't have such power over another one. I never thought that the thing we pulled up there were actually that good because I only knew the player as a cheating, lieing bastard...ooc. But it was a blast and really made fun... although we really went on our dm's nerves.

The other thing is... in certain systems the difference between levels equals out after some time. In dnd lower level characters get more experience. But in DnD this is harder to justify as you then have to take more into consideration as a DM. An encounter that for 4 6th level chars is entertainingly hard could be too much for a 3 6th one 4th level char. Depending on what build that 4thlevel char has he could even be stronger than those others. Or other way around, maybe the 6th level character is bored by those encounters. You sometimes have this problem on the same level... with different character levels this could grow a stronger problem.

In DSA you can do this through classes and SO already. Gurps might do for this too... but I'm too unfamiliar with that.

Kol Korran
2012-12-04, 02:30 PM
A thought:
many kind of system make use of luck/ edge/ karma/ action points/ some sort of mechanic that gives characters a source of points or such that it can use to affect many varied circumstances, often representing "the world's favor" or something like that... this mechanic is usually unrelated to level, class and such, and is generic for nearly any kind of character.

characters that begin at a lower level might get such a mechanic when others don't (usually these rules are optional), or get better rules for such mechanics (more points, better refreshing methods or more options). this might go well with the "lucky henchman" stereotype.

true, it could be argued that this makes the character as powerful as higher leveled ones, but only arguably so. and even if it does so- the "power level", is quite different, feels different, and so the purpose is achieved, no?

just a thought. also- you can play a henchmen/ subordinate quite easily at the same level. it's all about roleplay. we've done it twice and it was quite a blast.

interesting question though... :smallconfused:

Knaight
2012-12-04, 02:36 PM
It really depends on the system, but there are quite a few with similar mechanics that already work for this. Generally speaking, they are some combination of meta game currency that allows manipulation of die rolls, and more importantly manipulation at the above character level. Being able to introduce new side characters as a player, spin events, etc. somewhat compensates for the decline in game influence that a lower powered character has.

The best example of this is probably the Dresden Files RPG, where a homeless and debt ridden alchemist who doesn't know that he has magic is a viable part of a party that includes dangerous mythical beings and people with actual resources, simply because of how the game is structured. The options are always left open, and because there isn't a loss of capability to directly influence the game when making a lower powered character, people do so.

Dimers
2012-12-05, 02:44 PM
I've tried it a couple different times. So far, it hasn't given anyone extra joy. The improvement in realism hasn't improved those games. Seems to me like it's better for a book, a movie, a myth ... something that isn't a game.

CarpeGuitarrem
2012-12-05, 02:53 PM
I think there's plenty of systems where this is viable. D&D stands out as one of those systems where level disparity means a corresponding disparity in terms of story centrality. Move your frame of reference outside of D&D, and it opens up vastly.

Off the top of my head, Tenra Bansho Zero does exactly this; all characters are more than capable of being at different power levels. The more powerful ones have less room for all-out blaze of glory tactics, for mechanical reasons.

Captainocaptain
2012-12-05, 06:46 PM
I would generally avoid a direct level difference between characters. Its fine if the levels in the game dont mean as much, but in a game like D&D where level determines everything about your character...
People end up hurt and oftentimes frustrated with the game when they struggle with what another character does effortlessly.

LibraryOgre
2012-12-06, 12:53 AM
A thought:
many kind of system make use of luck/ edge/ karma/ action points/ some sort of mechanic that gives characters a source of points or such that it can use to affect many varied circumstances, often representing "the world's favor" or something like that... this mechanic is usually unrelated to level, class and such, and is generic for nearly any kind of character.

characters that begin at a lower level might get such a mechanic when others don't (usually these rules are optional), or get better rules for such mechanics (more points, better refreshing methods or more options). this might go well with the "lucky henchman" stereotype.


Actually, the Buffy and Angel games did just that. If you were a Slayer-level character (like a vampire, a werewolf, a demon, or an Initiative commando), you had a good number of powers... but only a mediocre Luck (or whatever they called it). White Hats were Scooby-level characters, with more luck and fate.

Xefas
2012-12-06, 01:43 AM
In addition to the meta-currency solution proposed by above posters, there's also the "Losing Should Be Fun" principle that can be built into a game to allow this kind of play.

For example, when you make a character for Mouse Guard, you can straight up just choose to make a character that is older, more experienced, better connected, wealthier, and more talented than other characters. Or you can choose to play someone in the other direction, all the way down to a Tenderpaw, which has a scant few skill points, and isn't even an official member of the Mouse Guard yet.

The former is fun because you get to succeed a lot. And your success allows you to meaningfully change the direction of the story. The latter is fun because you get to fail a lot. And your failure allows you to meaningfully change the direction of the story.

See, in D&D, failure is awful, because it just makes the plot stop. If you fail an Open Lock check, the door just doesn't open, and that's it. If you fail a Diplomacy check, the other person is just indifferent and won't help you. If you lose a fight, you just die, and that's it. So, why would you ever want to play a character that's weak and will fail a lot? It's boring.

If you fail an Open Lock check in Mouse Guard - the door opens. Oh the door certainly opens. But, it turns out that the abandoned outpost cellar that you were planning on scavenging for supplies isn't quite as abandoned as you thought. It's crawling with weasels! It turns out that they've connected this cellar with one of their underground warrens, and now they're preparing to strike into the heart of Mouse Territory!

On the one hand, the Mouse Guard has to know about this! They need to get the towns locked down, their defenses prepared, and their soldiers mustered. On the other hand, you were already on a mission to renew part of the Scent Border. If you turn back now, to warn the Guard at Lockhaven, then the Border will be weakened, and a large predator, like a wolf, might break through and cause even more havoc than the weasels would have.

Not to mention the more immediate predicament of, you were already low on supplies - do you fight the small contingent of weasel vanguard stationed here, risking grievous injury, to obtain food, or do you flee immediately, risking starvation in the drought-choked wilderness?

How do the characters reconcile these options with their Beliefs, Goals, and Instincts? A nice opportunity for some roleplaying (and, therefore, potential Fate/Persona gain).

Or, y'know, if you picked the higher-level character, and they just succeeded on that Open Lock check, you open the lock like a skilled badass, get the food, saving your party like a skilled badass and leave, and everything goes according to your skilled badass plan, and there is no secret evil weasel plot.

(This isn't even going into the Checks mechanic, that gives you more screen time in exchange for making rolls harder for yourself, or choosing to break ties in your opponent's favor. Of course, if you're a Tenderpaw, and there's a 90% chance you were going to fail anyway, you might as well make the check harder and get screen time later!

Complete loss of agency (as in, Death) is also fairly difficult to achieve, and in a complex conflict (like a fight), losing by a small or moderate margin allows you to get compromises, so failure isn't quite as binary as in, say, D&D.

Playing the Failpaw in Mouse Guard is, like, the best.)

Haruspex_Pariah
2012-12-06, 02:21 AM
There are only two real incentives I can see:

1. As a challenge for the player.
2. As an equalizer for a strong optimizer and/or an overpowered class.

Otherwise, why bother?

lesser_minion
2012-12-06, 07:54 AM
Ars Magica has a system where each player creates several characters, and the players take turns to play their strongest characters.

The game is also designed so that this makes some kind of sense -- characters advance over time rather than with experience gained from adventures, so there's an incentive not to send your best characters out on adventures all the time.

Thialfi
2012-12-06, 09:04 AM
Our incentive for starting a character below the party average?

You want to play and you don't have any characters available that meet the party average.

With the exception of 2e Dark Sun, we never allow characters to be created above 1st level. It just feels like cheating to us and by cheating, I mean you are cheating yourself out of valuable character development time and an investment in the game where character death means something.

docnessuno
2012-12-06, 09:33 AM
Our incentive for starting a character below the party average?

You want to play and you don't have any characters available that meet the party average.

With the exception of 2e Dark Sun, we never allow characters to be created above 1st level. It just feels like cheating to us and by cheating, I mean you are cheating yourself out of valuable character development time and an investment in the game where character death means something.

It must be really fun in 3.5, when the party reaches level 6-10 to enter in with a 1st level character, who will just get one-shot by almost everything a lvl 6+ party should face.


Couldn't be there some incentives or previleges to the players, that make it appealing to begin character creation with the idea of starting at lower level and then looking for ways such a character could be made? Anything that would make it an attractive option to play at a lower power level than other PCs?

In 3.X one incentive can be item crafting feats. Spend a level worth of XP to craft items, and while you will be lower level then the rest of the croup, your WBL will make up for it.

obryn
2012-12-06, 09:45 AM
There's lots of great stories about groups of characters who are not equally strong and powerful but still work well togehter. And I think it would be interesting for RPG campaigns as well to have parties in which some characters are pages or apprentices of another PC, or the heroes pick up a random slave who stays with them and proves useful over time.
Leaving aside the interesting suggestion that the PCs should have a slave, I don't think this is a good idea in D&D at all, and especially not in 3e/4e. Not everything that works in fiction works in D&D, and "Low-level Hobbits + Gandalf and Aragorn" is one of them.

A system that's designed for vast power disparities between PCs - such as the aforementioned Buffy/Unisystem - can make it work. But not a fairly rigid class/level system.

-O

Morph Bark
2012-12-06, 11:22 AM
In a game with other people, I don't think this is a good idea. Even a new player should be allowed to start at the same level as the average party level. The only time a character should start lower is if it's a new character from a player who was already in the game, if only to disincentivize dying a lot or constantly remaking characters.

LibraryOgre
2012-12-06, 11:40 AM
In a game with other people, I don't think this is a good idea. Even a new player should be allowed to start at the same level as the average party level. The only time a character should start lower is if it's a new character from a player who was already in the game, if only to disincentivize dying a lot or constantly remaking characters.

Actually, Hackmaster has an interesting bit on this.

As a player, you can choose for your character to have a protege. You devote some of your XP to increasing this protege's level, you give the protege treasure and money, so, when you die, you can come in with a semi-established character of greater than 1st level. If you HAVEN'T created a protege, then you start at 1st level.

CarpeGuitarrem
2012-12-06, 11:48 AM
I think that one of the biggest reasons this doesn't work in D&D (and does in other systems) is because you can potentially gain so many different abilities over the span of just a few levels, not to mention the fact that all the numbers scale by level.

In Pendragon, when a knight dies, they're succeeded by their heir. The heir is definitely not as powerful as his father's comrades-in-arms, but when he joins up with 'em, there's not an overwhelming power disparity. The characters are all in roughly the same tier, the newbie is just at the lower end of that tier.

That's the sort of game that winds up taking this and working it really well, making it a cool part of the game. (Campaigns are generational affairs, because each session covers the One Adventure the knights went on that year. Your knight isn't expected to live to the end of a campaign; you play to watch your knight's grandson rise to prominence, for instance.) The reason why it works is this: it covers a span of ability that roughly corresponds to one or two D&D levels.

In D&D, a few levels constitute an entirely new tier of ability. That's just asking for trouble when you have power disparity and no way to balance it. (Also the same reason why putting post-3E casters and non-casters in the same party is asking for trouble, unless they're tier-balanced.)

Thialfi
2012-12-06, 12:16 PM
It must be really fun in 3.5, when the party reaches level 6-10 to enter in with a 1st level character, who will just get one-shot by almost everything a lvl 6+ party should face.

As opposed to 1e/2e when a 1st level character will just get one-shot by almost everything a lvl 1 party should face.

Our using the optional bleeding and bandaging rules to -10 have saved absolutely every character ever played in our group.

Knaight
2012-12-06, 12:36 PM
Ars Magica has a system where each player creates several characters, and the players take turns to play their strongest characters.

The game is also designed so that this makes some kind of sense -- characters advance over time rather than with experience gained from adventures, so there's an incentive not to send your best characters out on adventures all the time.

I'd also note that troupe play can easily be applied to other systems, even without time advancement effects. It doesn't even have to be Ars Magica styled troupe play, as all that is really necessary is for everyone to be playing a variety of characters, so that the relative weakness of a character only affects them sometimes - troupe play does this, but so does swapping between, say, several completely different and largely opposed groups all over the setting during a war (though admittedly this can get weird when players are killing their own other characters off).

Hopeless
2012-12-06, 03:53 PM
In 2e I had a paladin at first level in a party led by a halfling fighter thief of about 17 combined levels as i recall she was killed in the first adventure was raised and earned enough xp to go up to 5th level...

Last d&d character I started at 1st level was halfling sorceress who I was trying to make use of a third party book for an alternative take on a familiar (A Copperbell that granted extra feats at certain levels like a wizard) ended up swapping that entirely out for a single feat so she could gain Endure Elements as the party was travelling through a desert only the dm allowed the party to buy armour that resisted the heat making my decision pointless!

The party I started with were pretty much all 3.0 based save for the paladin who made use of 1e rules so his paladin had a starting suit of full plate armour and a masterwork weapon.

There's only so far your idea will go I'm afraid especially if the dm isn't prepared to keep the playing field level for everybody.

Jay R
2012-12-06, 04:10 PM
If somebody thinks it would be fun to play, then you don't need incentives. If not, why try to find a way to bribe them into doing what isn't fun?

NotScaryBats
2012-12-06, 04:27 PM
I think White Wolf Games, which don't have 'levels' but have 'amounts of Freebie / XP points' would work well for this.

Player A is an Elder Vampire, Players B-D are Younger Vampires. Since its difficult to just 'be the best at everything' odds are very good that B-D will all have at least some things they can do that A can't -- thus validating their existence. Not to mention the roleplay they bring to the table.

obryn
2012-12-06, 04:33 PM
If somebody thinks it would be fun to play, then you don't need incentives. If not, why try to find a way to bribe them into doing what isn't fun?
Probably in the hope they will find it fun afterwards.

But if the incentives are good enough, then you start to wonder what the point of starting them at 1st level is.

-O

Knaight
2012-12-06, 05:28 PM
If somebody thinks it would be fun to play, then you don't need incentives. If not, why try to find a way to bribe them into doing what isn't fun?

Given that there are currently a whole host of disincentives in a great many games, the incentives are mostly there to get them out of the way when people do think it would be fun to play.

Yora
2012-12-06, 05:53 PM
By incentives, I am thinking of things that make it just as fun as taking the maximum allowed level.

Dimers
2012-12-06, 08:42 PM
As I said before, I'm against the idea in general because it's better for a STORY than for a GAME. That being the case, the incentive should be based on story value. Xefas's description of Mouse Guard play shows how being less capable doesn't hurt the story potential of the character at all in that system, so there'd be no incentive necessary. In D&D, incentive would probably have to be highly fluff-oriented, improving the character's contribution to the story being told, since mechanically there's very little besides species and level that could improve interaction with a given subset of the game world.

Sometimes story value can be built into the character's purpose for being in that little slice of gameworld. E.g. the object of an escort quest -- the less-empowered PC is horribly endangered by the things the PCs face, but has to be there for story reasons, and both the escorts and the weakling accept that.

I guess all my responses are based on the world being dangerous. If that's not the case, being less powerful doesn't need much incentive, because that can be fun just as easily.