I'm just curious how other DMs describe, or encourage their players to describe, the level of heroic activities and even general competence of a 1st level character? Do you go on the assumption that they are heroes of great importance right from the start and just overlook their actual lowly status, or do you emphasize the fact that they are barely better than the town guard (if a warrior-type), an advanced acolyte at the local church (clerical), a particularly adept hunter in the woods, and so on?
I tend to start the party at 2nd level and point out that they ARE very weak in the world and emphasize pointing out how they learn different abilities in the lower levels and gain in power as they go up through the ranks.
But, I'm interested in ways that other DMs use to illustrate this to their parties; what methods you use when they're just starting out, and what changes you make over time. Or do you just gloss over that?
hmm; well I have the idea that no player is a run of the mill guy; farmers after all stay home and farm; so peeps in my campaign have higher than normal stats, I believe, than most players in most games as we roll 4 dice, reroll ones or ones and twos; and drop lowest die so most players have an 18 and a few 16s and lowest is usually around 12 or 13. It is my believe that players make the character not the stats and you need decent stats to be a hero.
At first level I have given my characters some background that separates them from the norm; meaning that they have a desire to make a difference in the world or seek to right some wrong; they are not yet heroes; but wannabees; their actions determine if they will be heroes. My characters have a choice of heroic and anti heroic actions to choose from in plot threads, none of which are trivial. After they see the result of their actions, the characters start acting and thinking like heroes. I reinforce this with whomever has benefited from their actions giving them thier lorals; meaning; haveing a feast or dance or something in their name where they are recognised my that community and possilby spies of the enemy. I dont use the same instances, but generally this is my first level formula and it seems to work; if your players dont get the laurels they dont really feel like heroes; I have found over decades of trial that just giving them a reward makes them act very mercanary and generally doesnt have the impact of a small celebration and perhaps a few weeks later having an npc traveler recongnise them in another village and seek to buy the party a round of drinks or some such thing.
I tend to dislike the typical fantasy hero, and so my games are usually pretty close to the baseline. I think the best kinds of characters feel like they're part of the world, with good reason for careful planning, caution, heck even the odd moment of bug-eyed fear. It makes for exciting games. Characters have to get by on cleverness and luck, skating along on the edge of doom. I get bored with high power uber-bad characters who are just so darn cool. I like the diversity of prestige classes and multi-classed characters, but I really like games that are more down to earth in terms of powerscale. I think victories that get handed to characters are pretty bland and not worth winning. Glory should be glorious.
Incidently this is why periodically I like to run games where Prestige Classes are eligable as starting classes (basically ignoring the prereqs). Helps keep a lot of the flavor without racheting up the power scale too much.
Great question. I try to set up low level adventures so that the players have heroic obligations but not heroic abilities, and the gulf between the obligations and the abilities is what creates drama and excitement. The best example I can think of off the top of my head are the hobbits in Lord of the Rings. They may not be heroes to begin with, but they're sent on a heroic quest -- and, by the time they're rallying ents or battling Shelob, they have become truly heroic.
I like 1st leve lcharacter to be relatively weak - not to much better than a commoner - they have better stats, and were able to put together enough cast to equip themselves.
Farmers are not farmers because they are weaker - but because only crazy folk choose the path of adventurer - adventuring is hugely dangerous in my worlds - my worlds are dangerous which is th rationale for how potentats keep power and why they invest in itme creation armies, staff wizards etc. - to keep the monsters at bay. Tats the backdrop (as I see it that make adventuring a viable career choice for the desperate or the foolhardy - and risk equals reward (if you live).
"Hero" 1st level characters never happen in games I run or most that I play. The characters are in the world not the center of it, and would need to be VERY high level to be significant to it. I rarely if ever run save the world campaigns - save the village maybe. Mostly characters are Explorers, agents, spies, mercenaries, missionaries, etc. I think that makes for better story makes more sense - what kind of world is it if it needs saving all the time by 1st level characters.
My two coppers
As far as I am concerned, 1st level characters "show promise". They are sort of people who draw attention in small villages: better stats and unusual training (paladins and mages are different from commoners and experts).
In average size towns they already are small fish in big pool and thus nobody notices them except for the things they actually do.
That's what I was hoping to see. I try to frame up in my head what the average levels of the NPCs running around the world are, so I understand at a glance where my players fall more or less.
1st level- a typical conscript or novice town guard (I don't use the warrior class), a youth who has gone on a few tribal hunts, a guard with some seminary training (paladin), a promising/devout acolyte, a student spellcaster, a youth just beginning to show sorcerous talents
2nd level- typical soldier or town guard, youth ready to prove himself to his tribe (or just did), probationary temple servant, senior arcane student, sorcerer who realizes who and what he is and what he can do
3rd level- heavy infantry, veteran guards, low-ranking military officers, new priest/temple defender, arcane graduate/journeyman, sorcerer the same as 2nd level
4th-5th level- Head of the Watch, typical knight/priest/mage of little fame but with some accomplishments nonetheless, weak tribal leaders
6th-9th level- someone of note within a small region, such as a lord's champion, a reclusive, eccentric wizard in his tower, a city's typical high priest, a chieftan or tribal holyman of great importance to his people and surrounding tribes
9th-13th level- someone of wide fame an accomplishment, a true hero or legendary figure
14th+ level- someone capable of multinational, or even global, significance
20th level- paragons in thier fields, seemingly gods to typical commoners, individuals whose actions can make real differences in their worlds
However, keep coming with what you do to get the idea across to the PCs, if anything. I want to keep hearing what other DMs do in their games.
The conundrum with not making your 1st level characters any more heroic than a typical town guard or aristocrat is that if they're no more heroic than those non-player characters, why would anyone come to them with a job? Why would it fall to them to defend their village or whatever from attack? It really isn't all that fun to say,"Well, the town guard has its hands full so the local lord is turning to you jerks to solve his little problem." If it's something under the table, it could work, but I feel enough like the bottom rung of the totem pole in real life that I wouldn't want to play a character that occupies the same niche.
Of course, that's why advancement is important, but I've found that my players feel a bit more special in the campaign (and they should) if I take the approach that they already have the spark of greatness that seperates them from everyone else in their home town and despite their amateur status, they are looked to as at least having great potential.
And it's hard not to give a heroic description of what happens when the half-orc barbarian sinks her axe into a fleeing dwarf for 40 hit points of damage on a crit at 2nd level, dealing roughly twice his maximum hp in damage.
I always liked the idea of chopping off D&D progression at 10th level--with everything above that being "epic" levels. The idea being that NPCs usually retire at 10th level, and that it marks the benchmark of ordinary accomplishment in the world. You don't run into the 18th level supermage badguy, you run into the 8th level supermage badguy.
Beyond 10th level would constitute legendary people of whom only a handful exist, with magic capable of wiping out armies or who can alter the world with powerfully worded wishes or who walk with the gods in their own realm.
Otherwise you run into a weird kind of power inflation in the world, where there aren't tragedies anymore. Adventurers fix them when they get back. Heck they didn't use half their ressurection spells--so hey who's been good in this town that died tragically in the past 20 years? A few cure diseases? Sweet well I guess that bout with typhoid the village was worried about just got solved. The king of such and such country got assassinated? Well darn, better go rez him again...
Hate that. I can't even tell you.
To James-
I agree wholeheartedly that if the party is only as good as the local militia, it makes it hard to rationalize someone seeking them out. I solve this by not doing it. No one knows who the party is or cares at 1st or 2nd level. I haven't played much since developing the idea, but ideally the first adventure in my campaigns involves everyone having a certain backstory that revolves around a key plot point that draws them together and self motivates them. If the character is inherently part of an organization or has ties to a patron-style NPC, that can work, too.
For example, say the rogue is an street urchin trying to get into the thieves guild, the youth who's handy with a blade (fighter) is looking for his dead father's lost sword, the wizard's master wants to add an obscure conjurer's spellbook to his library, and the cleric's church wants to test the new applicant's faith by pitting him against some real foes.
It just so happens that the obscure conjurer built himself a modest summoning room in a subterranean complex that later served as his tomb. He is buried there along with his magical items and spellbook, and protected by several minor undead and fiendish wardens, more to scare people away than really put up true resistance. The fighter's father tried to tackle this place by himself, but was overwhelmed by the creatures, and died with his gear on.
Now, the rogue wants the magical goods so he can get into his guild, the wizard wants the spellbook for his master, the fighter wants to find his father's body and claim his ancestral sword, and the cleric wants to destroy the fiends and undead. They are all more or less self-motivated by their own backstories, which happen to hinge on this one dungeon, and also give an excellent reason for why they've come together in the first place. Follow-up adventures include the rogue, wizard, and cleric recieving more tasks from their "masters", and the fighter coming along for pay, glory, friendship, or a combination of those. Soon, they've done enough that they've earned a minor name for themselves, so when the local baron petitions the church to help find a cure for the strange malady of his son, the party serve as the reputable go-to guys that travel far and wide to find it. Their fame and position in the world increase from there.
And to begin with, they were hardly any better or more noteworthy than a common guardsman.
I think I just really answered my own question with that example. But everyone keep coming with tales of how you've done it, too, as I like to read them :).
To Grimcleaver-
I agree with you as well, for all the same reasons, although I do populate my homebrew with some people from levels 11-15 as well. The stance I take is that, should the adventure/plot/whatever call for it, there are enough of these people around that one or two can make an appearance... but it's not at all common. I've yet to come up with more than 5 NPCs in the entire world that are of 16th or higher level (save quasi-mythical figures), and only one of 20th.
In my eyes, someone of approximately 10th level is typically supremely confident in their abilities and goes on the default assumption that, if a question of comparing skills arise, they are the better. While there are certainly men and women superior to them in a field, they are rare enough to generally go unconsidered.
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I'd say that a 1st level adventurer of any pc. class is extremely competent in comparison to the general population. The fighter is the toughest kid (of his age group) in the village. The cleric was top of his class in seminary. The rogue is extremely gifted. The rest of the guys on his street were two bit thugs and alley muggers; he was a second-story man.
THEN, they go out into the whole wide world, and find out they are guppies in the ocean when they leave their little ponds.
(edit) I guess pretty much what Magdalena said.
The problem I see with that is that by the time the party is of middling levels, almost every humanoid they fight will be classed. Where were they before? Why didn't people know of them? If they did, why in the world were the PCs viewed to be so special? Aren't these classed guys supposed to be rare? How strange they keep popping up for the party.
Better in my eyes to go ahead and admit those people (those with real class levels) are out there from the beginning and make the world seem more real and dynamic. The PCs aren't so special; they're part of something bigger, rather than the world being their personal stage that will wait for them to save it, since only they and the villains have class levels apparently.
They aren't in some cut-off village that apparently isn't part of the wider world. Even their little village is part of that world, and is affected by it.
Fueling this is my loathing for the warrior class. Experts and aristocrats fill enough of a different niche in my mind that I gladly accept them. But warriors should just be low-level fighters. That's what the difference in training is supposed to amount to- EXPERIENCE points.
Coupling this, I don't give XP for killing monsters. I give it for actually completing a "quest," whether that be talking to the mayor or killing an orc. Thus, it's much more believable that other people do things and advance just like the party does. In order to be special, they can't just sit back and say, "Look at my attack bonus with my sword compared to yours!" They actually have to go out and fight through the troglodyte caverns, face the undead in the defiled tombs, etc. They have to go outside of the realm of everyday experience, and make a difference in the world on some scale, which just having a certain class level doesn't necessarily mean you've done.
Not to pick on you too much, Heathansson; this is nothing against you, or even what you said, but more the general concept of PCs just being heroes by default.
The party cleric is the head of his class at seminary? Wow. So, none of the others that passed learned how to turn undead or wear armor or cast any spells? Seems like you pretty much have to do those things to be a priest.
What I guess I'm saying is that it seems artificial to me to just plop to PCs down and say, "Okay, you're the heroes and can do what no one else has ever done!"
Think of Diamond Lake in AoW. Valkus Dun, Jieran Wierus, Allustan, Smenk- all these people have class levels and are of quite some power. But they aren't heroes. They don't do heroic things.
I just feel that the party benefits more from having to play out their start into the adventuring career, rather than just assuming they've already got some form of prestige just because they have a +1 base attack bonus or DC 14 save on their 1st level spell. Until they've actually done something, all the other people running around in the world have no reason to look up to them or even give them a second thought.
And assuming that everyone else has some class levels, too, gives a handy way to allow the party to already have their class abilities, rather than having to transfer from commoners to experts to PC classes. If it's assumed that a lot of other people do that, then it's more consistent for the PCs to start as such and still have to explain their introduction to their lifestyle.
The PCs are made heroes by their actions, not their class levels. Making sure there are plenty of other classed people for them to interact with helps keep that in their minds, I think. Before too long, they have distanced themselves from the milieu of everyone else both in actual deeds, and in their statistics.
Starting this thread, I guess I was asking if others feel the same way, by making their party have to "prove" themselves by making their 1st adventure really one of their FIRST adventures, in the character's life. In doing so I've found that I really have some strong feelings towards just glossing over that, and it's clarified my ideas about how to present and build my world and run my games. These boards are great!
My normal city guards are 5th level; veterans or leaders 7th; captains 9th; heroes 11th or so for npcs; subtract 2 levels for towns; and 2 more for villages. Gear for npc guard types is dependant on area and economy; armies are a bit different; young vets 2-5 level; conscripts 0-3 level, old vets; 4-7th level; and +1 for squad leaders; +2 for seargants; +3 for low ranking officers; ect; you get the gist of it; in most towns mages at 5th level are considered danger class and must register at a local offical and wear a registration badge; 9 or wizards must register as hazard class, and 15+ and archmages register as Perilous. Some city guilds require other classes to register but no so much as mages who most general populouses are afraid of. This is to give you guys some idea of the environment that the pc play in when inside cities; militias are mostly 0 or 1 level with a couple veteran types and maybe a retired captian leader.
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In my campaigns (specifically my Iron Kingdoms campaign), the typical city guardsman is a 2nd level fighter. A few of the detectives in the guard are 2 Ftr/3 Exp. The captain of the guard is an 8th level fighter. Mages are uncommon enough that only a few of them have any official positions and those that do are usually well-respected and of fairly high level (at least level 9 but never higher than 14). The highest level NPC any character is likely to run into in town is 10th level and probably is a retired war vet or something of the sort. The characters in the game are currenly level 4, so they don't exactly stand out but they are clearly capable of dealing with things that is a bit too much for your average guard (especially since 3 of the 5 PCs are spellcasters).
To me, first level characters in D&D are "kids with potential". They're not yet great heroes, but as others have mentioned, it's not much fun playing nobodies. I try to split the difference via a plot element: the PCs aren't impressive now but they're (destined/ related to greatness/ forseen) to have potential to change the world. Jordan's Tavreen idea-- sure, Mat isn't the most powerful person at the beginning, but what he does has meaning... the world, subtly, bends around him. Much like the focus of the world often hangs over the PCs...
If I was going to play "heroes from the start", I'd pick a different system or (at least) start at level 3 or higher. The "power curve" of PCs in D&D lends itself well to farmboy -> greatness arcs-- if I wanted heroic characters from the beginning, I'd use a game with more incremental advancement. The old WoD games (for example) were good at heroic from the start.
The conundrum with not making your 1st level characters any more heroic than a typical town guard or aristocrat is that if they're no more heroic than those non-player characters, why would anyone come to them with a job? Why would it fall to them to defend their village or whatever from attack?
Thats where fate and destiny step into play. Napoleon,Vassily Zietciev (sp) Robert E Lee, hell look up the early history on any historical figure and theres a good deal of "Ratcatching" fate or destiny steps in and "heroes rise to the occasion.
I treat my games as wargames with roleplaying. It the tasks at hand could've fallen to any of 1000 people, but the task at hand has fallen to the PCs.
I agree wholeheartedly that if the party is only as good as the local militia, it makes it hard to rationalize someone seeking them out. I solve this by not doing it. No one knows who the party is or cares at 1st or 2nd level.
I do a bit of a same, except that there are higher-level people who know the characters even when they start: their teachers. So when the villagers come to see that 5th level cleric of Pelor about their problem he has unfortunately other pressing matters at hand but he has this young student who should be able to take care of the problem. Villagers might not be happy when they get stuck with a runt but, well, it is up to the characters to show they are worth it.
Example from literature: a maiden comes to King Arthur's court to seek help and as King Arthur had just made Sir Garteh Knight of the Round Table he appoints him to take care of the problem. The maiden is not happy that she gets a "child" when she was looking for a proper knight...but of course it ends happily :)
Being member of a guild, temple or somesuch is great introduction point for the first adventure, sort of way for characters to prove themselves and also a good way for high-ups to get in contact with these "nobodies".
The other option is pretty much that the characters themselves seek out the adventure.
I actually like the idea Savage Tide laid down - They've done something heroic recently, which will mean they're a kind of local celebrity.
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Not to pick on you too much, Heathansson; this is nothing against you, or even what you said, but more the general concept of PCs just being heroes by default.
The party cleric is the head of his class at seminary? Wow. So, none of the others that passed learned how to turn undead or wear armor or cast any spells? Seems like you pretty much have to do those things to be a priest.
Well, who do you think gets to go to Astronaut Training in the Air Force?
The head of the class. The pick of the litter. The cream of the crop.Therefore, I'd also say that the powers that be would want to send the best and brightest out into the world to strive against the bbeg's. The guy that gets nervous and drops his holy symbol when being bumrushed by a gang of ghouls should prolly stick close to home and do weddings.
When the pc's get out into the whole wide world, that's when they realize that they are small cogs in the scheme of things.
To tell the truth, I consider astronaut a PrC, which requires at least 6th level. :)
I apologize, I was reading into your post that the party cleric should be the head of his class at seminary simply because he was a 1st level cleric. I think what you were actually trying to say is that he was the head of his class because he's the player and should be special. I agree, but I don't think that just being 1st level in a PC class should justify their special nature. Everyone who feels comfortable in most forms of armor and can pick up most common weapons and not feel awkward with it is at least 1st level in fighter. Everyone who passes whatever serves as priestly training is a 1st level cleric. And so on; 1st level characters aren't outside the realm of everyday experience and aren't what makes the party great.
Just because the town guard may be 2nd level and the party 1st doesn't mean that the guard feels inclined to risk his life in a dungeon, or rise to the occasion in a crisis. THAT'S what makes the party special initially; not unusual powers, but unusual willingness to use them and invite risk to themselves for some gain.
By making the party less than outstanding just because they actually have PC class levels, you get my aforementions self-motivation. I like a backstory that isn't finished. The character's history isn't something static, or just has plot hooks to be used sometime in the future. I like to read a character's past, and it all builds up to the opening scene in the campaign, unabridged.
Using a device such as a general call for heroes, or some patron having sought all the party out for some reason, to me, puts a disconnect between them and their backstory. It seems like a forced, inorganic solution to get them started into the game.
Not to mention, if the party is nothing special just because they have class levels, that helps explain where those potions and scrolls they keep finding in orc lairs come from! There are enough low level characters running around to make that commonality actually make sense.