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View Full Version : How close to peak should a character be able to start?



Anymage
2019-11-12, 05:34 AM
I was reading some threads on preferred stat generation methods in 5e, and something stood out to me. Some people like that a lucky roll and an appropriate race can let you start at first level with a stat at its maximum, while caps built into point buy mean that a character can only hit that point roughly a third of the way through their career.

Which got me thinking more generally. How much do you like a system that lets you build characters near or at the peak for their specialty, with the only room for growth being adding breadth, vs. how much room for growth do you want there to be between a freshly made character and complete mastery of their specialty?

DeTess
2019-11-12, 05:44 AM
This depends a lot on the general story you're looking to tell. a Zero-to-hero high fantasy story should leave plenty of room for growth. Conversely, in a story about modern-day thieves performing heists, or in a military sci-fi story or something like that, I'd expect the characters to already be highly competent, with growth being more in widening specialization than in becoming better at what you where already good at.

Knaight
2019-11-12, 05:56 AM
What is the system intended to do? Sometimes a zero to hero power progression is part of the point. Sometimes you're instead playing already competent characters who stay more or less static. Sometimes you're playing already competent characters who change, but don't necessarily improve (King Arthur, 60, has much higher skills in various leadership tasks than King Arthur, 20, but he's not remotely as athletic), sometimes you're even playing characters who start at their peak and just deteriorate from there (especially in horror games).

Kaptin Keen
2019-11-12, 08:17 AM
I always feel weird when not starting from scratch. So generally, if I'm the GM, it'll be from level 1. The only really interesting way to start from high level is if it's a sort of challenge: You are slowly deteriorating, and need to win before you become too weak to have a chance.

Oh, and I've played a few games of ... you know, you're woken from stasis, thrown into combat, die - and your next clone is woken from stasis, thrown into combat, now slightly better prepared for what's next. Those usually aren't level 1 games.

Ken Murikumo
2019-11-12, 08:57 AM
Another thing to consider is that max stat at character gen is rarely ever "peak". Sure it's peak at level 1 or even whatever level you start at (or the game's equivalent of level), but most mechanically sound games allow you to keep growing after that point.

Lets take 3.5 (or pathfinder) for instance. Getting an 18 in strength at level 1 and picking a race that puts your STR over 20 is cool and all, but look at the same character at level 20. That strength should be over 30, maybe even getting close to or exceeding 40 by then.

Mutants & Masterminds allows you to max you stats from the beginning but you can only use up to your power level (PL) and no more (exceptions exist but im not going to get into the mechanics). When you increase in PL you can utilize more of the stat. However with limited character building points you really end up gimping yourself when you max a stat.

Anima just straight up laughs at your "peak" by having limitations on what you can achieve without getting the "inhuman" or "zen" abilities that the GM has to give the OK to take. Inhuman allows you to to put more points into stuff and get results that the name implies. Zen allows you to do the same but to the point where you can break the laws of physics.

Jay R
2019-11-14, 07:04 PM
I enjoy games where you start with very low power and increase rapidly, like D&D.
I like games where you start at a basically competent level and then become elite, like Flashing Blades.
I like games where you start with powers far beyond those of ordinary mortals, and improve very slowly, like Champions.
I like one-shots, where you won't improve at all.

It's not true that there's only one way to have fun, or even that there is a best way to have fun. It's not true that we all want to have fun the same way.

Everything is good if the game is fun.

Yora
2019-11-15, 04:23 AM
I think that ideally a first level character should be no lower than 50% the strength of a max level character. Can't think of any system that does that, though.

Khedrac
2019-11-15, 04:25 AM
I think that ideally a first level character should be no lower than 50% the strength of a max level character. Can't think of any system that does that, though.

Traveller - where characters usually start with their skills as good as they will go and all adventuring does is acquire gear and/or wounds (usually fatal ones).

Mechalich
2019-11-15, 07:42 AM
I think that ideally a first level character should be no lower than 50% the strength of a max level character. Can't think of any system that does that, though.

Well, it's quite common in point buy systems for player characters to be roughly bounded in this way, with it being highly unlikely that a character will double their total capability during any reasonable character lifespan (extremely long-running games are the exception, but such games are rare). However, it is common for settings built using such systems to incorporate NPCs with an unreasonable number of points leaving PCs doomed to never equal them. White-Wolf was notorious for this, particularly in Exalted, which included statted-NPCs with literally thousands of XP in a system where a given character would be lucky to earn even 100 XP during the course of a campaign.

Anonymouswizard
2019-11-15, 10:22 AM
Traveller - where characters usually start with their skills as good as they will go and all adventuring does is acquire gear and/or wounds (usually fatal ones).

To be fair, you could raise a skill roughly every year or so. But yeah, that's the case.

As to the thread title, it depends. In most games I want some form of upwards advancement, but I also don't want a SUE System situation where you start at level 1 with maximum stats of 18, but you need to be level 15 to have enough skill ranks to tie your shoelaces and 5-dimensional maths requires an INT score of over thirty. Unless I'm playing a Farce of Cthulhu game, in which case both things are appropriate.

False God
2019-11-15, 10:42 AM
The room for base stat growth is too narrow in most editions of D&D to be meaningful to me.

Gaining one or two points in any score, which only amount to half that when used in the majority of the game, represents to me so little as that it might as well not exist in the game at all.

Psyren
2019-11-19, 03:37 AM
Being able to start the game at or close to peak stats to me screams "bounded accuracy", which is not my preferred state of play.

What I prefer is for there to be one range that you can get to without magic, but a higher ceiling that is achievable with. In D&D for example, the absolute max stat for a given race without magical increases tops out in the 25-27 range. But magical and alchemical increases can boost this much further, to something like +12-17 more.

Knaight
2019-11-19, 04:02 AM
Being able to start the game at or close to peak stats to me screams "bounded accuracy", which is not my preferred state of play.

They're pretty unrelated - bounded accuracy is more the relationship between the top and bottom of the bonus range relative to the range on the dice (taking into account the distribution of the dice, a 1-20 range uniformly distributed is a very different beast than a 1-20 range that rolls 8-12 90% of the time, where a +5 vs. a +0 is a really big deal) than anything, and starting at or near peak usually corresponds with a fairly wide range, where any given character is all over the whole bonus scale from the start.

ezekielraiden
2019-11-24, 09:16 AM
Mu: the question is malformed.

I don't want a character that starts "close to their peak." That's boring. I want my peak to be pretty far off, so that it's something I can build toward.

What I do want is a character who starts with their core kit already in place. Elaborations, enhancements, extensions, alterations, all of these are fine, but for the love of God and all that is holy, stop enforcing hyper-weak training-wheels levels. Let characters start competent. Not peak--competent. A first-level adventurer should be a bloody adventurer, with all that entails.

If you want the experience of playing from genuine zero to hero, add zero-level rules. That way, players can spool out the "you became an adventurer!" process as long as they like, and people who want to, y'know, actually start off as adventurers aren't forced to play with less game-space.

Jay R
2019-11-24, 10:15 AM
This question does not exist in a vacuum. All mechanics of a game should mesh.

Your character's abilities should grow at roughly the same rate as your challenges do, so the risks are always serious but not insurmountable.

If stats rights greatly in a game, so should the need for them. If they rise slowly, or not at all, that should match the level you need.

There is no rate of growth that is inherently "best". But it needs to match how the game changes over time.

Friv
2019-11-24, 01:03 PM
I think that ideally a first level character should be no lower than 50% the strength of a max level character. Can't think of any system that does that, though.

Most Cortex Plus games will do that, as will many Fate variants. Arguably a number of Powered by the Apocalypse games, especially Monster of the Week, but that's sort of a weird case because judging strength in those games can be a bit tricky (like, if your ability to succeed without penalty only goes up by 20%, but you also started with four interesting game-affecting widgets and ended with nine interesting game-affecting widgets, are you twice as strong? More? Less?)

I've gotten pretty bored with games that have an extensive "you can't do your core concept" phase to them. D&D applies here, as do many of the White Wolf games. I'd much rather start with characters who are at least very competent in their core things compared to the people around them.

What I'd really like is a system in which you almost never gain personal power; instead, XP is exclusively spent on your connections, allies, and influence in the world. You grow by branching out and meeting people and such. I don't think that system really exists, although you can hack a few existing systems to do it.