Starting character level?

[zozotroll]

With a level cap, starting higher means less time with the charecters. And if you onmly go to 10-15th, then starting at 3-5 means it wont last that long, unless you group doesnt level, sort of like "Der swartzenAuge"- if I remebered how to spell that right.

 

[tarkhan bey]

With so many different game systems to play and so many variant game styles within each of those games, staying with characters for any length of time isn't usually an issue for us.
Episodic play suits our group better.The only long term characters in place at the moment are our D20 Slaine characters.
Currently trying to find time for Hawkmoon, Cthulhutech,Slaine and Solomon Kane as well as one off Horror and Western adventures. Who knows what Ronzo the Grim,Curly Werebear and Trig have got waiting in the wings.
So many games, so little time....sighs....

 

[maladaar]

I am a huge fan of starting off at 1st-level. The PCs have to struggle to earn everything they get.

In my opinion and experience the guys grow more attached to the PCs and have more of a feeling of accomplishment.

 

[Clovenhoof]

With a level cap, starting higher means less time with the charecters. And if you onmly go to 10-15th, then starting at 3-5 means it wont last that long, unless you group doesnt level, sort of like "Der swartzenAuge"- if I remebered how to spell that right.

"Das Schwarze Auge", but cute try.
However, I don't quite understand how you mean that. In older versions of DSA, you leveled just like in D&D when you reached certain XP thresholds. In the latest edition, the advancement is less abrupt since you can invest the XP directly into character augmentations, but the level count is still maintained for the sake of comparability.

The power curve in DSA was never as steep as in D&D, however; a level (in the old editions) granting you just a small handful of hitpoints and a number of _attempts_ to increase your skills (you had to roll to see if you managed to raise a skill). It's a horrible, haphazard system to be true.

Starting on a higher level in DSA was all but unheard of; however, level 1 characters were a good deal more robust than their D&D counterparts, so there wasn't really as much of a need to start higher.

As for your main point, advancement doesn't have to be linear. In our current Conan campaign, we started at level 3 and practically gained a level every session for the first 4 sessions - i.e. until we were level 7. Then advancement slowed down a bit, to about 1 level per two sessions, until level 10 or 11, and then slowed down even further -- I think it took us something like 4 sessions to get to level 12, which is the current state.

The GM says he wants to keep us in the "Sweet Spot" as long as possible; i.e. the level range where the system works best, and that's (in his opinion) the range 10-15.

 

[zozotroll]

I never played DSA with anybody else. My
german is not that good(as you noticed) so I dont know how it played face to face. my only experience with it was a computer version that only let you go up six levels total. The German hobby store guy that helped me work through the manuel told me the table game was the same way. The books where in his store so I believed him.. From your comments perhaps he was much less knowledgable than he claimed, but knew I was unlikely to catch him.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Hm, that's weird. At first I thought it would have been Die Schicksalsklinge (Blade of Destiny), but my gf just tells me that there was no levelcap in that game and she used to grind up to level 12 during the time limit.

Personally I found advancement in DSA annoyingly slow, though of course that may depend on playing style. I know players who achieved level 10 in about a year or so of weekly playing; others who got only to level 8 in three years (again, near weekly sessions) and then some who went all the way to level 21 in I don't know how many years.
Be that as it may, level 6 is about the time that the stumbling oaf that is a level 1 DSA character has turned into an adventurer of reasonable competence; in other words: when it gets interesting.

 

[treeplanter]

I think anywhere from 1 to 3 is a good start.

I would rank the sweet spot anywhere from 3 to 12. Below 3 you get crushed by city guard, and above 12 you just get arguably too powerful. In fact i think the d20 could cap at level 10, and it would probably be fine.

 

[Demetrio]

I can't abide low level (1-3) play myself.

As I've said before, what we did was to generate characters from levels 6-12 and pick the level most appropriate to the adventure (generally we only have 2-3 players so characters that can hold their own are pretty much essential). this, I find, works tremendously well for episodic play as one can switch from one time in a character's life to another, forward or back as necessary. Much like Howard did with his stories.

And should someone die, no harm is done... all the 'later' episodes of his life that have been played out were lies, part of the legend, not the reality.

 

[treeplanter]

look fun, i would like to try this "format"

One thing we also wanted to try was like half of players play one character, while the other plays sidekick. since we switch GM each game session that would work well, and can be interesting.

 

[Demetrio]

Another advantage is that as you already know what your character will be like at level 12, it removes any feeling of 'wishing I was there already', which some people may like but can sometimes lead to levels being advanced rather quickly in order that players see some progression in their characters. This way you get to play as many level x adventures as your character can survive. And you don't have to wait ages to play him at high level either. You can do that straight away if you want and then 'regress' for a bit. It's a particularly useful feature of a levelling system - it'd feel more awkward in a 'continuous progression' system like Runequest, though you could still do it.

 

[LucaCherstich]

As someone who started gaming in 1980 with the Moldvay edition Basic Set I can sympathise with your enjoyment of hazardous low level play. That said, the endless cycling through characters that typified my early experiences isn't something I care to repeat today. To each their own.

But with Fate Points you wouldn't be. Other than Coup de Grace's and some one hit kill spells it's actually quite difficult to kill a PC in this game.

Not so sure about it...
20 points Massive damage is very easy to do.
Armours should be rare as in usual stories and there are many ways to deal high amount of damage:
- 2-handed Power Attack
- Reckless Attacks
- Finesse Attacks vs armour.
- Thieves & Pirates all have good sneak attacks and if they are smart they should exploit flanking and surprise
- furthermore a good Feint can cheat even a barbarian with Uncanny Dodoge (usable only if he is flat-footed, not fooled by feint, so sneak attacks works..)
- etc...

Furthermore Fate Points cannot completely save you.
I've noticed that many people misunderstand the use of fate points.
Howardian heroes "must still accomplish those goals by their own strength and wits, not simply by spending Fate Points!" (Conan 2e page 76).

Please, check Conan 2e (pages 75-76):

1) page 75: "Left for dead" stabilizes you....but what's the use of being stabilized at -9 hp and maybe left by your friends in a terrible place? e.g. the wild savannahs of Darfar, etc... You'll die if your friends do not bring you back home.

2) Page 76: Destiny. It says that: "This change must be one that is plausible, minor and not overwhelmingly beneficial to the Player Characters."
Regarding the situation above I do not think that spending another fate point will bring a good Darfari Cannibal to help you while you are left for dead...This should be too much " overwhelmingly beneficial " and so against the rules...

 

[flatscan]

Yup, that's my reading of Fate Points too. Essentially your character is still alive but useless for any occurring battle until some medical attention is given and will die if someone doesn't give aid. But the point is, the character is still alive. No misunderstanding here.

As to the ways to apply Massive Damage, sure those are some ways but the most common in my experience are 2-handed Power Attacks and Finesse Attacks. But even then, at 8th level the Fort saves my PCs have are high and even if they fail the roll they can spend a Fate Point to reroll. Even at starting levels the PC can spend that Fate Point to reroll a save and if they're Barbarians they're going to have good Fort saves. The odds are way more in the PCs favor than they were in old school D&D. You can say I'm doing it wrong or whatever, but I assure you I'm not. Also, a Fate Point can still be used for Left for Dead on a failed Massive Damage save.

 

[Ichabod]

I am a huge fan of starting off at 1st-level. The PCs have to struggle to earn everything they get.

In my opinion and experience the guys grow more attached to the PCs and have more of a feeling of accomplishment.

Struggling should be true at every level. Other than camaraderie, I see overcoming challenges as the point of playing RPGs.

I completely agree with the second paragraph. Playing at 1st level isn't about mechanics - probably going to be 2nd level at the end of the first session, after two sessions at most. It's about establishing character and party identity and beginning the character's/party's history.

We are about 15th level (having taken another long hiatus), but I look back fondly on the early adventures. Not because of the struggles* but because the best thing about our campaign is the history or our adventures and that had to start somewhere. It's funny to me that people want to blow through early levels quickly and slow down later, when I'd do just the opposite. I don't have any real sense of the difference between level 12 and level 13 and would have to look up which adventures happened then, but the low level adventures are when so much is developed about the characters from a nonmechanical standpoint.

And, the ability to compare where you are at now with where you once were is cool. It's the one thing that I can appreciate about a (real) level system - the long term advancement of a character from a nobody to a badass. Don't want to do it all (most) of the time as I like characters who are better than normal people in pretty much every way, but it's a standard in fiction.

* I do believe that the first few levels are rough. But, that works due to how many Fate Points characters start with. Start with a bunch of Fate Points, burn through them all in the first couple of sessions, for the rest of the campaign have hardly any so that there's a real sense that death might happen. How the characters burn those FPs is often quite interesting. In one of our side campaigns, my Nature Sorcery-focused scholar burned one (as part of some magic thing I think, I'd have to look at my notes) to have a NPC falling into a pit land on a giant worm that was coming up and ended up acting as a temporary bridge to flee the hordes we couldn't fight. As most of the FP expenditures should be early, again, you get more notable history early on.

As to how hard it is to kill a character, our experience is that taking someone down is easy but killing someone is highly unlikely; however, it's not that difficult to achieve "total" party kill if so desired where the path begins with one or two characters going down (generally true of most RPGs involving challenging fights).

 

[cbrunish]

Personally I like starting my players out at 3rd level. I think that this makes it easier to get a story on why they got together. Plus it easier to set up adventures (for me that is). Just more fun for us.