The Vault wrote:
You believe that each Arc should have a minimum level requirement so everyone is on the same playing field, and be about the same power level. This allows writers to only ever have to make a single set of stat blocks for monsters and traps. It also means that player who never play to together but come to Convention shouldn't have a problem finding a table with similarity powered PCs. This means you never have to level secondary characters, and new players have to feel inferior to long time players.
I disagree with that arrangement for multiple reasons. I believe that people who spend time and money deserve to be rewarded for that by being higher level, having more gold, or having special certs that are provided from those events. But the story should not be denied to those who can't attend.
I strongly feel that we do need leveling certs that come close to matching the publicly released adventures in XP and (to a lesser extent) gold. If we use the 1.5 cert as an example, the XP is too low (in my opinion) and the gold is maybe a little low (it gives
far less gold than playing the adventures). Even if the XP and gold were equal then there are still lots of items, favor, and special things on the adventure certs that aren't granted by a leveling cert.
The Vault wrote:
People who join the campaign later should not be given a leveling cert so they are same as someone who has been playing from the beginning, or just slightly lower. A new character should always start at 1.1 to learn how to use the character's abilities, and get a feel for where they want to go with own personal story.
There are two huge problems with this approach:
- It can be very hard to find games for very old adventures. This will tend to drive new players away from the game if they can't find games/groups to play in.
- (Some) established players will be bored replaying/rerunning the same adventures over and over just to try new character concepts. If a character died and then the player was forced to restart at 1.1, some players would then leave the game.
I know a
lot of people that refuse to play in PFS at least partially because they force any character to start at level 1.
You do not need to start at 1.1 to understand a character's abilities provided you have a good grasp of the mechanics. Even a new player can have a pretty good grasp of the mechanics (it depends on the player).
The Vault wrote:
I know it creates more work for whomever does the monsters of the module, because it basically brings back Average Party Levels (APLs) but the Tier system I feel can handle that and I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that it was designed to limit it to 5 levels. 5 Tiers = 5 levels of difficulty for PCs.
As I said previously, I disagree. A full tier spread is too large for the mechanics of Arcanis. Given the multiple half-tier stat blocks, a GM can utilize different stats vs different characters but it is a lot more work for the GM.