Rolling High Level Characters


Advice


I will be starting to GM a campaign and would like to start my players off at a higher level than lvl 1. I am inexperienced about it and any advice on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Different levels changes the flavor of the game.

If your players are new to high levels, consider it a learning experience. If they are experienced in all levels of play, it should not be a problem.

For me, the levels change the flavor of the game as follows -

1-2: The PCs are more like NPCs that have a story about them. They aren't earth shaking, yet they have dreams and goals.

3-6: The PCs are heroes in their own right, yet can't pull off anything that causes you to suspend disbelief.

7-10: PCs can do amazing things, yet don't have the power to really change the narrative yet.

11-17: Rocket tag - Combat rarely lasts more than 2 rounds (even if it takes all night to go through). PCs have abilities that can change the narrative if you aren't careful, and every so often PCs can do something that is difficult to believe, such as the barbarian wading through lava and surviving without magical assistance.

18+: Fantasy superheroes - Even PCs without spellcasting have access to items that can change the narrative of the story. Most PC groups will have and practiced techniques in divination, travel magic, and other magical combinations that it can be very difficult to plan a complex story since the group might skip through a bunch of your planning. This is the stage closest to fantasy superheroes - not quite there yet, though close. Experience in superhero RPG settings will help a lot at this level in order to handle the over the top potential. (This goes double for epic or mythic campaigns).


1 person marked this as a favorite.

The first question I have to ask is: are you new to high level games or to GMing in general?

If the answer is the latter, my suggestion is stick with a level 1 campaign. Trust me, every GM I've ever seen start with a high level game, or anything beyond 1st level really, has always had a bad first game.

If, however, you're used to GMing and just want to start off at a higher level, here's some advice...

1) Work out why the players are together.

I always do this, but it seems doubly important for high level games. Has the party been adventuring together for a few years? Are they escaped prisoners? Have these heroes been called from across the land to aid some King or Queen of some country with some strife?

2) Determine whether you want high, low, or mid magic / power for the game.

Determining how much magic is in the world will figure out what sort of wealth to distribute to the party. The higher the magic, the more gold you'll give them to determine their starting gear, generally speaking.

It's also important because high levels are a place where full casters (clerics, wizards, druids) are much more powerful than partial casters and pure martials. Fighters aren't going to shine very much without caster help once you hit the high levels, basically. For that reason, it's important to work out with your players what classes you'll allow or suggest for the game to keep people at roughly a similar power level... unless the party is okay with power disparity.

Also note that the power disparity can be virtually ignored if one of your lovely casters focuses on buffing. Suddenly your fighty types have levitation, ability score enhancements, concealment and miss chances from spells. Now they are comparable to the other characters.

Wealth By Level charts are a go!

Seriously, use 'em. Again: go a bit lower for low magic games and a bit higher for high magic games.

Your first session should be a test.

Don't throw too much deadliness at your players for the first session. You'll need to test them in a high level game, figure out what sort of fights they can and can't deal with. Use some encounters whose CR is lower, the same, and higher than the party, as usual; mix things up with mechanics you haven't used before, since the high levels are perfect for that. (Hello poison; hello constrict; hello anti magic fields.)

Let them feel big once in a while.

Okay, that probably sounded condescending, but what I mean is this: not every fight needs to be a life-or-death fight. Indeed, it's good at high levels to show the players just how high level they are.

A good example of this would be presenting a party of 10th level characters with an orcish horde. No, not just a warband, a horde. They've got a whole sleugh of big, green nasties in front of them... and it's going to be a cakewalk. Let your players show off their high level powers and their creativity then; let them drop their AoE spells or set up traps that just annihilate all comers.

This shouldn't be how every fight works. There's obviously a need to put the pinch on players and make them fight strong casters and dragons and things like that. But let them live it up here and there by giving them an encounter that they'll dominate but that would have been impossible if they were just a few levels lower.


This will be my very first time to be a GM, and the adventure I want to present them with being massive in scope ending with a huge boss fight with a monster of high CR. Being as this is my very first time to GM should I dial the scope back and save that adventure until I have more experience under my belt?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
lnknprkht wrote:
This will be my very first time to be a GM, and the adventure I want to present them with being massive in scope ending with a huge boss fight with a monster of high CR. Being as this is my very first time to GM should I dial the scope back and save that adventure until I have more experience under my belt?

Honestly, yes.

The very best thing to do when starting off, in fact, is to either run an adventure path or part of an adventure path. This will give you a feel for what the party is capable of facing, and so long as they've never played the AP before it'll be fun. You can ad-lib whatever you need to as a GM with the AP.

I have a friend that also GMs whose go-to introduction for a group of people he's never GM'd for before is to start with the Rise of the Runelords introductory adventure. He'll take the party to level 2-3, then wrap it up there because he knows what the players' playstyle is, what they're looking for and what they're capable of.

Myself, I design all my own adventures, but I make sure I start with relatively easy stuff unless the players are okay with character death early on. I always ask questions of my players: "What do you want from the game? What sort of playstyle do you want?" I roll the ball on forward from there.

One trick that I like doing: making the VERY FIRST fight the players have rough, but presumably beatable for a party of their level, and see how they perform. I give them a rest immediately afterwards and have a mixture of combat encounters, puzzles, traps, skill challenges and roleplay from that point on. But by testing them out in a rough fight and seeing how they perform, I can determine what sort of monsters I can throw at them in the beginning.

So, yeah. Start at level 1 if it's your first time. My first game was a high level game and it ended really, really badly. Your VERY best bet is to run an Adventure Path, look at how the Devs built it, see how your party deals with its challenges, and build your own adventure in the meantime. By the time you're done with the AP (or however much of the AP you want to do), you should have enough material to start a game of whatever level you want to run assuming you've worked on it in your free time.

Silver Crusade

Novice GMs and players should absolutely start at first level. Everyone will have more fun. Every time I've seen novices start with higher level characters it has not gone well.

If you have your own ideas and want to prepare your own stories that's great! I still advise starting with something simple and pre-made, then switching to your own content once you have a few sessions under your belt. This experience will improve your ability to execute your own creative story-arc.

My favorite 'learn how to GM' scenario for Pathfinder is We Be Goblins. This adventure is available for free download on the Paizo site.

Sovereign Court

yeah don't be in no rush to be high level to be quite honest, right now I'm a level 16 cleric and there is frankly little that can challenge us. I sometime use spells to avoid wasting time all night for some fights, like Holy Word + Bead of Karma to increase my cl by 4, usually wipe out any huge group of enemies.

I mean don't get me wrong, it's fun but not the same kind of fun that you would have had at lower levels.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Rolling High Level Characters All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice
Druid Gear