I would.

No, really.

That was the whole point of my statement. Plain and simple, I am after enjoyable RP and, even if I didn't HAVE to start at first level, I still would on occasion. One of my best experiences here has been to take a farmboy out of Geoff and gradually turn him into a fledgling Knight. It was a lot of fun. On the other hand, I would really enjoy the different challenges that a 10th+ PC would face without having to wait 2-3 years to get there.

But even if I didn't want to start at 1st, so what? This is only a problem if all GMs want to run 1st level adventures and no Player wants to play them. This would immediately be self-correcting. Players wouldn't see high level games and would be forced to start at first if they wanted to play.

But by mandating a first level starting point, you are actually making all GM's run low level adventures until we can get critical mass to support higher levels. Given that there's only a handful of PCs above 5th level, this is going to be a long time.

What I keep failing to understand is how does having a variable starting level imply a lack of fairness? If a PC that starts at 10th is given lots of goodies, far more than one who actually RP'ed up to that point, I might be able to see it. But we can have that exact scenario play out between two PCs who do both start out at first level. We've got low level walking magic shops and we've got higher level paupers.

My proposition was to simply use the DMG's guidelines for starting equipment for advanced levels which theoretically is a fair system - at least no less fair than the entirely subjective moderator-based rewards system. My feeling is that permitting higher level starting PCs might even help mitigate some of the XP awards conflict because "inflated" awards wouldn't be as necessary (note: I still agree more than standard is necessary to reward the time and energy spent in creative posts but we're getting inconsistent implementations of this policy which lead to just as many fairness questions).

What other issues of fairness are there between a PC who advanced to 10th and a PC who started at 10th?


When the sirens howl, do you yelp or yawn?