I am not against calibrating starting PC power for a specific campaign experience. For example, when I am GMing, PCs get to start at 3rd level - not zero-to-hero but adventurer-to-hero. However, Justin Alexander's objections stand - you will not get the same kind of 12th level characters you'd have after playing through a long campaign.

Also, high-level PCs tend to be more complex than beginners, sometimes significantly. We have just concluded a 3.0 campaign where we started with 12th level PCs, and even handling them in session was cumbersome for me - let alone creating that character. We also saw two of the three problems Justin outlined. It was a good campaign but a lot of times, I was thinking along the lines of "I really wouldn't mind if we were just 6th level and didn't have to keep track of all this shit". Of course, now we are switching over to Shadowrun 3rd edition, and what do you know, I am hearing it's a complex system from the beginning.

Quote from: Kaldric;495171BD - we get the point, I think. I just think that the experience of playing a high level character is much, much better if you play the character to that level.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. It seems to me that you're making a judgement call as to what is the purpose of playing a game and how to do so. First you say this:

QuoteThe fun of playing a high-level character is not primarily in the fact that some of the numbers on the sheet are higher. So what? The numbers on the monster sheet are higher as well. That's essentially meaningless.

Some of the fun is in having more options.

This is something I agree on. The whole point is to have more options: more spells, more attacks, higher skills, etc.

But then you say:

QuoteMost of the fun is that you have achieved something. You worked a character up to a high level. It's got a long history of play, many accomplishments, successes and failures. It's got personality, not just because you roleplay it. It's accumulated from all the little crap that goes on when you play a PC. The enjoyment of fighting the tarrasque is hollow, if you just start out there.

That's your interpretation; it's not mine. To me, the only difference in a starting-out 10th level PC vs. a starting-out 1st level PC is that the higher one has more options.  It's still a new character and it will develop the 'accomplishments' and 'personality' you speak of -- just as any PC would do.
In my opinion, it in no way invalidates the PC's potential to gain all the things you are talking about.

QuoteKind of like watching a movie. You can skip to the big action setpiece at the end, and that can be enjoyable to watch. But it's more meaningful, deeper, more nuanced, and just plain more enjoyable, if there was a whole movie's worth of character development before you got there.

Let me use the same movie analogy. Your argument for character development is like the first Matrix movie: Neo starts out as a nobody and, through development, becomes The One by the end of the movie, able to fly, dodge bullets, and such. The movie ends and that's it.

My version (in this thread) is like the 2nd Matrix movie: Neo already has all of his kick-ass abilities and he has to fight a whole new set of bad guys. If you never saw the first Matrix movie, does that mean you couldn't enjoy watching the 2nd one?

Something to think about.

I personally find that characters that have been played for a long time are more enjoyable to play than those that haven't. That's pretty much it, really.

But, to elaborate, because it's the Internet and I'm not doing much right now:

If you want to start high, I don't mind. I've done it. I found it less fulfilling than starting at 1st level and working my way up, is all. The only characters I've ever invested in started at 1st level. Every character I started at higher than that felt like a pre-gen (a custom pre-gen, but still a pre-gen), and I didn't really care much if that character lived or died. No investment - I didn't work it up, it was just handed to me, so... whatever, really. If it dies I'll just make another one at this level.

There's also an arc of play - weak, medium, high. If you start at high, there's nowhere to go. You're probably not going to be playing that character very long. If you DO end up playing that character for a long time (which I haven't seen happen in my games), I'd imagine it would be a very flat experience. You start as high-level and high-powered, you stay high-powered, and that's that.

Like the second Matrix movie - no character arc.

I understand the occasional need to start a character at higher level, to perform some specific task you want to do - play in a specific module, fight a monster, etc.

But I wouldn't want to play in an extended campaign with a character that was pre-gen'd.

Right on. That makes sense.

Isn't it always reduced to an issue of quality, cost, time, pick two?

I agree, an organically grown character, with experience to back up how to finesse their advantages, just feels better. However cost management is a crucial pick, because otherwise stupidly powerful builds will just destroy your game. But honestly, I just don't have the time nowadays. So if I'm gonna run a high tier game cost has to be in, by the nature of how easy it can be to break everything in just about every system. And thus time defaults as my second choice, because that was the point starting at a higher tier in the first place. If only I was so fortunate to have time and reliable players to pull off quality, organically cultivated, higher tier PCs...

As a personal preference, I've got no problem with preferring a particular progression.  

However, I don't like the implication that a bunch of my campaigns are broken or wrong because the PCs started out powerful - like several Amber campaigns, James Bond 007, Star Trek, lots of superhero campaigns, and others.  

Quote from: Kaldric;495275There's also an arc of play - weak, medium, high. If you start at high, there's nowhere to go. You're probably not going to be playing that character very long. If you DO end up playing that character for a long time (which I haven't seen happen in my games), I'd imagine it would be a very flat experience. You start as high-level and high-powered, you stay high-powered, and that's that.

Like the second Matrix movie - no character arc.

Well, but it sounds like you're speculating here with no experience to back it up.  In contrast, I've played plenty of games that don't match up with this.  

For example, I played a Slayer in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign over 3 years.  I thought that worked very well, and there was lots of experience and character development.  Still, she started out as superpowered and just got more experienced and skilled at it.  For me, it wasn't at all comparable to the second Matrix movie and was more like - well, like the Buffy television series, which I felt had plenty of character arc.  

At the other end, I've been playing in a monthly Call of Cthulhu campaign for about five years.  My character has had a lot of development - and has had his body altered in a strange ritual, joined forces with a group trying to avert the coming apocalypse, got married, and had a few crises of faith.  Still, while he may well play an important role in saving the world, he's not in any way a superhero - and is no match for most monsters.  

There have been tons of other campaigns as well, like all my superhero campaigns, Amber, James Bond 007, and Star Trek - that bear out my observation.  Some of my favorite characters are ones that started out high-powered.  I think there's generally plenty of room for character arc without having a shift like in D&D from 1st guy-off-the-street to 20th level epic super-powered hero.

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I thinks it's almost a requirement, depending on your players. What I mean is that after years of gaming, I don't want to be afraid of a crippled, blind gnome. I want to do cool shit and feel like I'm not going to be killed by a strongly-worded insult from an NPC. This applies to being a GM as well, since it allows you to "bring out the big guns".

OTOH, as a GM, there's fun to be had in the smaller adventures that often surround lower-powered PCs and you don't have to get crazy or go with larger plots.

I find that, depending on the system, some seasoned but not high-level PCs are just about right. It lets the players tackle bigger things and be cool and viable, while allowing for growth.

One "snag" is when you're playing a new game/system and aren't sure just how powerful to let your PCs be out of the gate. For example, Far West uses D20 levels to gauge character capability. We've discussed characters and such and what we'd like them to do, but since we've never played the game I'm more wary to just hand-out bad-assery right off. So, we're thinking that 4th level might be good and then, if things go well, we can always ramp it up.

In the end, it all depends on the group and as long as you're having fun, it's the right thing to do.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;495155I think you & Pundit are missing the point.

Creating a 10th level character for a game is about being able to play at a higher level of risk with the abilities to combat that risk. All this talk about the character being "shallow" I don't buy. The new 10th level PC is no different than a new 1rst level PC except that they are tougher and have more abilities. They're still a new character that will develop organically just like any other new character.

Besides, it's just for fun. My players and I do this every so often and usually for a relatively short campaign (say 2-3 months tops).

In another thread, I asked what was the "toughest monster" in D&D 1e and many people said the Tarrasque from MM2. However, I'd guess that the vast majority of players out there (including on this forum) never actually had to fight a Tarrasque -- simply because they couldn't; it's too tough with low to medium level PC's. However, if someone were running a game with high-level PC's then it's a monster that they could face and possibly beat.
That's the point of a high-level game: to face threats that you couldn't normally face.

I think the thing is, though, that if you want to start with a character who's already more powerful, there are many fantasy RPGs that do this well, where the intent is to do exactly that from the get-go.  D&D is not built that way, and while it can certainly be done, you run into some flaws (different flaws in different editions) from basically "jumping ahead" rather than progressing through the actual playing of a low-level character becoming high-level.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;495469I think the thing is, though, that if you want to start with a character who's already more powerful, there are many fantasy RPGs that do this well, where the intent is to do exactly that from the get-go.  D&D is not built that way, and while it can certainly be done, you run into some flaws (different flaws in different editions) from basically "jumping ahead" rather than progressing through the actual playing of a low-level character becoming high-level.

I know that D&D wasn't designed with starting higher-level in mind, but in general, I think that D&D - like most RPGs - is frequently and successfully modified to do things it wasn't originally intended for.  i.e. It isn't like a well-oiled machine where if you change any one thing then it all breaks down, despite all of Gary Gygax's protests.  

I can think of a few potential tricky points with starting at higher than 1st level, but I suspect it's largely a matter of taste what the flaws are and how important they are.  (For that matter, many people feel that D&D starting at 1st level has many flaws.)

Yes, its true that D&D is immensely versatile, and you can certainly do a kind of "high-level from the start" campaign. Though of course it won't be able to effectively match the feeling of actually having gotten to high level characters through play.

I'm just suggesting that the people considering this might want to just try one of those fantasy games that are similar to D&D but already allow for starting at medium-levels of power.

RPGPundit

And, as already mentioned, until late-WotC D&D, slow leveling and precarious survivability at low levels were meant as balancing factors.

Skip those things, and you're messing with the balance of the game - don't complain if classes that only very, very rarely get played to high level suddenly dominate the game completely when you skip all the parts that kill them off.

Quote from: Opaopajr;495317Isn't it always reduced to an issue of quality, cost, time, pick two?

I agree, an organically grown character, with experience to back up how to finesse their advantages, just feels better. However cost management is a crucial pick, because otherwise stupidly powerful builds will just destroy your game. But honestly, I just don't have the time nowadays. So if I'm gonna run a high tier game cost has to be in, by the nature of how easy it can be to break everything in just about every system. And thus time defaults as my second choice, because that was the point starting at a higher tier in the first place. If only I was so fortunate to have time and reliable players to pull off quality, organically cultivated, higher tier PCs...

This is the main reason why "organic" high tier games are a rarity these days for me.  Many games end up collapsing at low levels due to unreliable players, lack of time, etc ...

In recent times, the few games where we got up to higher levels starting from level 1, frequently involved modifying the XP tables or leveling up by DM decree to significantly speed up the leveling.

Drastically accelerating the leveling up timetable, isn't much better than starting the game at a higher level.

Quote from: ggroy;495697Drastically accelerating the leveling up timetable, isn't much better than starting the game from a higher level.

I've done this before... it may not be "much" better, but I think it is better. Even just playing one adventure at 1st, one at midlevel, before starting highlevel play. Make these adventures memorable, difficult, lethal, etc, and at least the characters will have some played history.