GM Thoughts: Starting A Pathfinder 1st Ed Campaign At 11th Level (Patreon)

This is a thought experiment, at least for now. And as with many of my though experiments, it began as a chat with friends.

I was talking with a friend recently who has been frustrated by the limited opportunities to play higher-level characters. As I understood their point, since campaigns are much more likely to start at 1st or 2nd level than 7th-13th, they feel like many of their long-term play experiences are working toward a character "just starting to get good," then the campaign ends.

Over decades of play, it begins to feel like a lot of rug-pulling. "Excited that you can cast 6th level spells?! Whelp, hope you enjoyed that one game session, 'cause the cleric's work schedule changed, so that game is dead, and now you need to come up with a new idea for someone who can't have more than 1 rank in any skill."

As a GM, I have found games I start at mid-to-higher level tend not to last as long as those that start at 3rd or less. Some of that is because higher-level games are harder to run as a GM, and harder for players to keep track of their options for increasingly complex characters. (Not, I'll note, an issue for my friend, who I don't think I have ever seen lose track of their options... but if other players do and it stops being fun for them, the game is still likely to shut down.)

Another reason is that since the level-based games we tend to play assume it takes just as many 'typical' encounters to get from 11th to 12th level as it did to get from 1st to 2nd level, starting at what some people feel are the 'sweet spot' of character levels actually means you'll level out of the sweet spot fairly fast. I've played in many, many more games that go from 1st to 7th level than those than went from 11th to 17th.

One solution many game groups use to this problem is the 'E6' answer. You can look up E6 along with the name of the most famous level-based fantasy ttRPG, or 'P6' and Pathfinder, for a full rundown of how E6 games are different, but in a nutshell they begin at a specific character levels (6th is the iconic choice), and never advance past it. Instead advancement comes in the form of gaining more skills, feats and spells, but without all the boosts of power that come with a character gaining a full character level.

I honestly thing E6 is a GREAT idea, and I heartily recommend it for any group that likes the sound of it. However, E6 rules don't work for everyone. For many players, part of the appeal of a level-based game is knowing that your Pc could, someday, reach 13th level. Or 15th. Or 20th--whatever it is that excites you. No, not everyone cares about this. But I know lots of groups who do, and for them E6 feels more like a bright line cutting off fun things to consider, rather than a happy power level you can enjoy for a long period.

So, I began thinking about what might work for this very specific group of people. To start a campaign at a much higher level than most level-based games do, such as starting at 9th or 11th level in a 1st-edition Pathfinder game. To allow progression to even-higher levels, but to slow it so the GM of a game starting at 11th doesn't have to deal with 12th- and 13th-level characters before even really getting used to 6th-level spells and Critical Mastery feats... while ALSO making sure players don't feel like their characters are entirely static for months of real-world time.

Just to slap a name on these ideas, I'm calling them Start-11 rules. Honestly, I'd recommend most people go with Start-7 or Start-9, but if I did this for my home group I'd start at 11th, because I think that's closer to the "level when stuff really gets good' my friend was talking about. But, honestly, other than your starting level and XP, I think these rules are going to be roughly the same regardless of starting level, so if a group wanted to try Start-7 (or, light help them, Start-19) rules, it'd be easy to adapt my Start-11 to that beginning point. 

(Yeah, taking on Huge and bigger dragons is exactly what 11th level characters should be doing. Art by Nyothep)

Experience, Wealth, and Advancement for Start-11 PCs

*Starting Level and XP Progression: Characters start with minimum experience points for 11th level. Level progression will use the Slow XP chart, so characters begin with 235,000 XP, and won't reach 12th level until hitting 330,000. That means gaining another 95,000 XP. A typical group of four 11th level characters characters earns 3,200 XP each from a CR 11 encounter, so it would take 30 typical encounters to reach 12th.

Point is, your character is going to be at 11th level for a while, so try to use a character concept that feels satisfying at this level. This campaign is about being at that potent level and playing with it for a good long time, enjoying what it is at the start, not to get a jump start on a build that really comes together at 15th level.

However, that's also a long time to wait for your character to change or learn anything, so...

*Downtime Points: Every character gains 1 Downtime Point (DTP) for each game session they play in. DTPs represent increases in character statistics, work accomplished, or information that comes from the training, research, practice, carousing, and other minor daily events that adventurers engage in, but that aren't "encounters" from a ttRPG POV.

You cannot have more DTPs banked than your character level. (Once you reach this max, you stop earning DTPs until you spend down or gain a level.) Normally DTP can only be spent at the end or beginning of a game session. Downtime Points can be spent in the following ways:

>1 DTP: Gain 1 skill point in any skill. You are still limited to your level in ranks in any skill.

>1 DTP: Gain fluency in 2 languages. (In case you don't care about Linguistics, or have already hit your cap).

>1 DTP: Perform five 8-hour days worth or work on crafting, Item Creation, research, or spellbook scribing. You must pay all normal costs other than time. You cannot use this option more than 1ce a week, but you can spend it if you are actually doing days of crafting or similar work in the same week.

At minimum, Research allows making 1 skill check per hour of research to Gather Information or Recall Knowledge. If you spend 20 hours on such a check, you can Take 20. You must have access to appropriate resources to do such research (but if you only get an hour in a library, you can spend 1 DTP to do 40 hours 'worth' of research, you just got super-lucky with your research results). - Other research rules might get added as well.

>1 DTP: Remove one status effect on your character after a full 8 hours of sleep. This could be one level loss, one ability score drain, one ongoing disease, even one curse. In many was this is an expensive use of a DTP, since you are removing a drawback rather than gaining a benefit, but it also allows players to not deal with hobbled PCs if they really, really don't want their (truthfully precious and limited) play time spent on feeling screwed. Life is harsh enough without a PC who can't go adventuring for 4 months.

>5 DTP: Gain a bonus feat. You must meet all the feat's prerequisites. The feat must be a General, Armor Training, Blood Hex, Item Creation, Item Mastery, Meditation, Teamwork, or Weapon Training Feat. The feat cannot also be of a type not on this list (so you cannot, for example, take a General Feat that is also a Monster feat). The exception to this is Teamwork feats, which you can take even if it is also of otherwise-prohibited feat types.

*Starting Wealth: Each character begins with the standard wealth for an 11th level PC (82,000 gp). No single item can be worth more than 33,000 gp.

*Consumable Stipend: To prevent characters from ending up with way too much wealth for 12th level character by the time they reach 12th, the treasure per encounter in slow-progression games is lower than medium or fast progression. At the time time, 11th level PCs should be able to use a certain number of consumables without being afraid they are spending treasure value they'll need to upgrade "big 6" magic items when they DO hit higher levels.

To solve this, each character receives a consumable stipend of 700 gp each game session. This is based on the idea that a single game session will average 3 CR 11 encounters, and that in a normal wealth progression game 20% of total wealth is used up in consumables. Average treasure per CR 11 encounter in slow progression is 4,650 XP. If you had three of those encounters a night, that'd be 13,950 XP. Divide by a typical party of 4 PCs, and that's 3,487.5 gp each. Take 20% of that and it adds up to 697.5 gp (rounded up to a round number).

A consumable stipend represents things a character acquires by means other than buying. You might be an herbalist who gathers materials for ancient elixirs your order of hex-hunters knows, each attuned to a specific person. Or perhaps your church gives you blessed sacraments you can use in prayers. Or maybe you just have fans who send you gifts. Work with your GM on defining this.

You can only use your consumable stipend on nonmagic ammunition, material components with a GP cost, oils, poisons, potions, scrolls, spell tattoos, wands, and the cost to scribe spells into spellbooks. (If an item works like one of these items--such as a Muffin of Jump that works just like a potion of jump, the GM may opt to allow it to be bought with consumable stipends).

You cannot sell items bought with your consumable stipend, and they cannot be used by other characters (including other PCs, though you can use them on other characters if you could do so with a normal version of the item). You cannot use it to buy things with an item level or caster level above your character level. Using these consumables takes the normal requirements (fighters can't cast scrolls without Use Magic Device, for example, although see Magical Tattoos). You can normally only spend your consumable stipend at the beginning or end of a game session. You can bank your consumable stipend, to a maximum of 1,200 gp worth per character level.

What Else?

Those are my BIG thoughts on how I'd do a Start-11 campaign. I'd likely do some other things, because I know my group- of players and I love playing with stuff, but these are the most universal adjustments that come to mind.

So, what do you think? Would you enjoy playing in a Start-11 campaign? As a GM, would you enjoy running one?

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