Prior History - please help!

[far-trader]

OK so choice of initial Class is Belter.

Level 1 Belter and 14 years old. Oh, by the way, the note for Starting Funds for the classes is used for only the first class taken, so the Belter has Cr200 to start with. Just FYI, not sure where it was explained.

Belter specifies the character must take at lease one term of Belter Prior History before any other as part of the initial requirements. So no University at age 14. Your player was correct here.

After the term of Belter Prior History, passing the survival roll but not making the XP bonus roll the Belter has 4000XP which as you say is Character Level 3.

Available Class choices for the 2 levels gained depend on meeting the Multiclass Restrictions. Possibles are: Academic if Edu14+ and Int12+ (I'd imagine correspondance courses for a Belter); Belter of course; possibly Merchant if the ref allows that the Belter is an active crewperson on a working starship of any type (which makes perfect sense to me); Noble if Soc16+ (which would be odd but possible); Professional if the initial Belter level included 4 skill ranks in Pilot, Navigation, Driving, or a Craft, Professional, or Technical skill (again quite possible); Rogue if Connections/Underworld feat is taken in the initial level (another possible); and of course Traveller (open to anyone).

After that and then attending University Prior History the ex-Belter may be able to spend those XPs (from University, for level 4) in a number of different classes, again dependant on the Multiclass Restrictions.

Then she joins the Scouts (good lass

) Prior History and gains 5000XP earning another level. It doesn't actually have to be a level of Scout Class by the way, but the only time she can take levels of Scout Class is while actually in the Scout Prior History term or if engaged in a game of active duty Scouts (or possibly by ref fiat while on Detached Duty).

At least that's the way I understand it. So the possibilities are really quite open for the kid from the belt.

One thing to remember in all this is to be sure you're doing the skill ranks right. Buying as cross-class when it is and watching the max ranks for cross-class skills.

Hope that helps, have fun

 

[MJD]

That idea came in in T4, and I liked it a lot. The Navy guy who came out and worked in merchants dfor a bit, the Scout who went wandering and became a Rogue, etc....

 

[stofsk]

I think that a Belter should have grown up on a asteroid or vaccum world. What would her homeworld feat be? After all the Belter gets Vac suit proficiency and Zero-gee/Low-gee adaptation as the starting feats. Would she not get a Home feat?

 

[Chaos]

I´m not sure why a level of Professional should be necessary; Belters are by necessity good engineers and "Mr/Ms Fix-it"s.

The character had been working for 4 years before starting university, and basically just went to uni to get the background knowledge to go with her practical skills (and the degree to match that knowledge), so taking another Belter level during university would be appropriate.

 

[Laryssa]

Originally posted by far-trader:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Laryssa:
Wonder why they don't have prior history in D&D? You could start with a 10th level fighter or a 15th level wizard ready to take on the minions of Hell!

Actually, AD&D did have a section of the DM Guide that went into how to create high level characters to start a game or campaign without slogging through all those low level adventures.

As for the rest princelian pretty well sums it up.

For my part, his idea of the 20 year reunion is the one I prefer for the conundrum of why are these guys together and so trusting (generally) of each other?

When setting up games in my favorite setting, the Marches post 5FW, I usually just played the ref card and presupposed that at one point they ended up in some action together and became a fast band of brothers then looked each other up after the peace for a reunion.

D&D was always looser and less concerned with why the group was together or what they wanted to do, since none of them had any history or (too often) personalites. Instead they had "alignments", which some seldom seemed to play. They were usually just the first unknowns to answer some random call for help and stuck together out of necessity. And the main goal always seemed to be "kill things to go up a level" which always bothered me as rather pointless.

Traveller always seemed a step or several above this. The characters HAD "character" and usually some idea of what they wanted to do, which almost never involved "kill things" for whatever motivation. It was like D&D was the juvenile game of make believe heroes battling evil while Traveller was the mature game of dreams of real people of the far future in space. Not that there's anything wrong with the first, it just grew tiresome after a time and I could never find a ref that seemed able to take it to another level.

Doing some D&D "prior history" or using the DM Guide method of high level party building wouldn't change the basic tenet. You'd still have a hack-n-slash game of "kill monsters to go up a level" game. The only difference would be the monsters would be tougher (your minions of Hell) and the level attained would be higher. You have to decouple the whole "levels" and "experience points" from D&D to change the game. While Traveller (at least for some of us who've been around) even in T20 with it's levels and experience points remains grounded in its roots. I suppose that could be quite different for those coming into the game fresh through T20 and expecting a rollicking kick ass adventure game like D&D. And again, nothing wrong with that kind of game, though T20 isn't really set up for it with the lethality of combat and lack of simple good vs evil ideas.

I dunno, now I'm just rambling, 'nuff old codger muttering, fer a while </font>[/QUOTE]Couldn't a Traveller character be Chaotic Evil? Suppose he just wants to kill millions of people with a lethal virus, and its the PCs job to stop him?

Also on the other side of the ledger, if you advanced your character from 1st level, the player has actually had a more active role in creating that characters history, rather than just role a few dice to see what he did before he began adventuring.

If T20 is as lethal as you say, its hardly plausible that said character could have advanced to 10th level by his own efforts. If you can't imagine how your character could have done that, the rolling a few dice and just saying that he somehow got beyond those challenges earlier in life and somehow survived to reach 10th level, but he doesn't quite know how. Sure you can imagine some situation where the PC is in a fire fight and his comrades are being cut down to pieces yet all those laser beams, and projectiles just seem as if by chance all missing him and killing everybody else instead. Such a character is going to have a certain swagger about him, and judging from his die rolled past experience, is just going to wade into combat situations and suddenly be cut down in a fire fight and wonder why.

Alot of people survived world War II, for instance simply because they were lucky, being somewhere else by chance when bullets fly does not help one to deal with the next combat situation. Mr Lucky does not gain much experience by surviving World War II. If you survive by skill and lessons learned, then you can say your character has gained experience. It just seems to me as not much of an accomplishment to role up prior history for your character. Its easier for the GM to make adventures for higher level characters without killing them outright, but its more challenging to make adventures for 1st level characters without slaughtering them all since they are so easy to kill.

My recommendation is to make T20 more survivable by getting rid of lifeblood and converting Stamina to hit points. Never mind the Critical hits, just role damage normally.

 

[princelian]

If that's how you want to run your campaign, Laryssa, then more power to you! I, however, love the Prior History system and will be using it.

I've been a DM or GM, as the signature file says, since 1975, and I've run probably a hundred different systems, from original D&D to AD&D, to RuneQuest (several editions), to Traveller, to RoleMaster (which wasn't called that back then), etc.

And in all of those systems but one <actually, two - there was also Aftermath!>, you start out as a callow youth and barely know which end of the sword to hold. It's so ingrained into these systems that when Dark Sun came out for 2nd Ed. AD&D, with its practice of having 3rd level characters for your starting characters, it was an amazing change.

But Traveller was different because it had the Prior History aspect. And I believe that it was because of that difference that the game became popular. The CT system wasn't particularly special; it was very similar to several other games' approaches to stats and damage. (If you're going to use d6's instead of a spectrum of dice, after all, there aren't very many different ways to slice the pie....) And the CT system had some significant problems. But it was different because your character had done things before his/her adventuring career.

And when Mercenary and High Guard came out, and your military character might have MCGs and SEHs, or might even have been court martialed for poltroonery, well, it became even more colorful.

It was a shorthand, however. You hit the nail on the head, there, because a character you play up from 1-level and take through the career role-playing all the way will be far deeper and more complex than the "die-rolled" version. But that focuses play on the beginning of the character's career and also requires - demands, even - that the whole party follow the same career path.

In the last Traveller campaign I got to play in (1994, sadly....), our group had a doctor, a diplomat, a marine officer, a scout, a Vargr corsair, and a merchanter. They'd fought on different sides (the Vargr had actually been captured by the marine in a boarding action; the scout was actually a member of the Zhodani equivalent who had to flee Zhodane for political reasons) and it was an interesting hodge-podge of a group.

And as 1-level characters, that would have been impossible. The Vargr would have been 10 parsecs coreward and 8 years in the wrong time period (he was younger b/c the Vargr have worse aging rolls); the Zhodani would have been 30 parsecs spin-coreward; the marine, merchanter, doctor, and diplomat would have been entering their respective careers.

The other problem is that it will take TIME to get them up to mid-to-high-level. My group only meets once a month, and I would be loathe to spend session time in a Traveller setting to actually role-play out their respective careers. I might do some e-mailing back and forth about each character's historical details, but not that precious 6-8 hours I have to play. So the shorthand of Prior History advances the campaign to a more mature place, and gives the players hooks to develop their characters beyond "half-orc with a greataxe who was ostracized by the human village he grew up in and is kinda bitter about it."

 

[Laryssa]

What's the difference between a low level campaign and a mid level one. I'm sure the GM can find an excuse to give the the players a scout ship to fly around in at first level. They won't own the scout ship of course, but they will fly it. If a free trader campaign, the captain suddenly becomes sick and dies, but someone still has to fly the ship, the 1st level PCs move up front and center. Combat between spaceships is just the same, the enemy is wet behind the ears and just as inexperienced as the PCs. Anyway a 1st level character looks just like a 10th level character in Traveller, they are about the same size, their are no dragons to slay, and if there were, a starship can defeat one if not the PCs in hand-to-hand combat. Equipment plays an important role in Traveller, a much greater role than it does in D&D, although magic weapons will give you bonuses, a group of 1st level characters with a starship is a much tougher opponent than a group of 1st level characters without a starship. The GM must balance the equipment of the adversaries with that of the PCs.

There is more of a sense of accomplishment if the players advance their characters through adventuring.

Imagine starting a D&D adventure this way.

DM: "In the halls behind you are the wreckage and dismembered pieces of all the monsters you defeated on the way to this final encounter, and in front of you are the enournous piles of treasure and the ancient Wyrm herself. She rises from her treasure horde and spots your party immediately."

Player: "What are we supposed to do now?"

DM: "Role for initiative, see who goes first."

Player: "How did we get in here?"

DM: "You went in through the dungeon and fought dozens of monsters tooth and nail, collected their treasure. Oh by the way, now that you mentioned it, I forgot to give you this list of all the treasure and magic items your characters have accumulated over their prior history, well here they are."

Player: looks over the treasure list, "Hey what does this thing do?"

DM: "Well that was a cursed item, you managed to remove the curse, but you haven't found a way to get rid of it yet."

Player: "How about that thing?"

DM: "Yeah that's a good item, your characters have slain other dragons in their prior history with that thing, it might come in handy in this situation."

Player: "Good, then I'll use it."

 

[Chaos]

Pure low-level campaigns in T20 are difficult... very difficult.

Take a look at, for example, the DCs for most of the stuff - they´re high. Only very rare 1st-level characters can do more than dream of accomplishing a DC 30 task. They´ll fail often enough at DC 15, for that matter. And this stuff is difficult for a reason - remember, this actually *is* rocket science.

For the same reason, I cannot imagine that most - or any, for that matter - ships the PCs come across are also run by newbies similar to them.


As for your D&D example, of course D&D characters with prior history would choose their equipment, much in the same way as Traveller characters do.

 

[princelian]

I am agreeing with Chaos here - your example would be valid for a set of pregenerated characters handed to the players just before the adventure, but not for a group of characters that have gone through Prior History.

Let's look at Bobthefarmer, who comes from a TL14 Ag-coded world. His parents want him to learn more about genetically engineering crops, so they send him to university.

TL14 = +2 Edu, and he put a 13 there, so his Edu is 15. Admission roll is an Int check against a DC of 22-15 = 7, and he has a 14 Int. He rolls the 5 or better to get in. He needs that same 7 to graduate, 13 to graduate with honors, but before that, he decides he hates farming and trys for Officer Training Corps instead.

He wants to be a Marine, so his admission check is an Int check vs. DC 12, and he rolls admission just barely with a 10.

He rolls a 12, so he fails to graduate with honors, so he gains 3000 xp for graduation plus 1000 xp for OTC. He also, because he has a 12+ Edu, graduates in only three years; he is now 21 and a Lieutenant in the Marines. He has 4,000 xp, and is 3rd level, but he cannot take any levels of marine because he wasn't actually in service yet.

He decides to take one level of Academic two levels of Professional, in keeping with his original goal of being a better farmer/agro-geneticist.

He now rolls a 14 for duty assignment, and his first term is spent in Internal Security. He decides to take a -4 DM on survival (asking for a riskier post, or taking chances), giving him a survival DC of 4, which he makes. His promotion roll is a DC of 2 ((6) indicates that that's the roll for enlisted personnel; +2 because he's an officer, and -4 because of the survival modifier and his +2 Edu mod), and he rolls a 10 so he is promoted to Captain. His decoration DC is 20-4 = 16, and he misses it by *that* much with a 15, and he cannot gain an XP bonus in this assignment.

He gains 4,000 xp, bringing him to 8,000, and another 1,000 xp for the promotion, bringing him to 9,000 xp. He is now 4-level, and takes a level of marine. He is now 25 years old.

That's enough to make my point.

Bobthemarine already has some backstory, some skills, and had a somewhat dangerous assignment doing internal security work, which the GM should encourage him to fill out.

If Bob were a 1-level character and 18 years old, he would still be a green recruit - certainly not an officer - and would be in basic and MOS training for the first six months, not out doing combat drops or alien ruin investigations (depending on your campaign).

You could artifically say 1-level characters still have a background of some kind, that they're not necessarily 18 years old with no experience. The 1st Edition AD&D rulebooks Unearthed Arcana and DragonLance Sourcebook both provided a mechanism for sub-1st-level characters (UA used it for the cavalier, DL used it more extensively) if the DM wanted to focus on the cavalier's squirehood, for example.

But I think you'll be limiting your players' choices if you eliminate the whole Prior History system from T20. It's just my opinion, but it's one of the very coolest parts.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by stofsk:
I think that a Belter should have grown up on a asteroid or vaccum world. What would her homeworld feat be? After all the Belter gets Vac suit proficiency and Zero-gee/Low-gee adaptation as the starting feats. Would she not get a Home feat?

Stofsk:
IMT20-TU, I would in those circumstances listed above give those as homeworld feats, and allow said Belter to choose two other ones from the remaining list of the Belter class feats.

In MO & MTU, if the homeworld environment warrants it, like an asteroid system Z000123-Y or W104567-X Va As Na etc.., then one can interpret the 0-Gee/Low Gravity Feat as the +1freebie generic human feat, and the Homeworld one as Armor Prof./Vac suit. Then he gets starting feats..from the Belter List. Easy to reckon & easy to do.

Hope that helps.

Game On!

 

[Laryssa]

Originally posted by Chaos:
Pure low-level campaigns in T20 are difficult... very difficult.

Take a look at, for example, the DCs for most of the stuff - they´re high. Only very rare 1st-level characters can do more than dream of accomplishing a DC 30 task. They´ll fail often enough at DC 15, for that matter. And this stuff is difficult for a reason - remember, this actually *is* rocket science.

For the same reason, I cannot imagine that most - or any, for that matter - ships the PCs come across are also run by newbies similar to them.


As for your D&D example, of course D&D characters with prior history would choose their equipment, much in the same way as Traveller characters do.

People don't start out as a veteran star pilot. Most of the PCs adversaries should be inexperienced as the PCs will cut them down in short order. If their shooting down enemy fighters, then those fighter pilots will of course be new to their profession as they won't live very long. Yes it is rocket science of course, but you don't have to build the rocket to fly it.

My reasoning is this: If 1st level characters don't make viable PCs, then how did they get to mid-level in the first place? They must have started out at 1st level somewhere in the game Universe. I find it hard to believe that someone can reach 10th level simply by going to college, attending classes, and taking tests, that is not what I call experience. I certainly can't list my college degrees as experience on my resume, so why should PCs accumulate experience points by going to college? A person can of course be a veteran in one of the services, but rather than just role out the background, why not play it out?

Why should a PC be a retired scout, why not a scout instead? I really don't see much difference between the two, except that a retired scout has to pay the expense of his used scout ship. A 1st-level scout character might be issued a brand new TL-15 scout ship which he doesn't own, and he could be given orders to go to such and such a planet and check it out. Being an active duty scout is alot like being a character in Star Trek, only with smaller ships. Whatever the character needs to do his job, he is issued.

A 1st-level navy character could be a fighter pilot right out of the academy, they put him onboard a carrier, and every once in a while he gets a mission and has to patrol a certain area. This works best when there is a war going on, then the pilot can earn experience by shooting down enemy craft.

 

[Rover]

Personally I find the Prior history is a boon to game play.

I just started up a campaign and my players really got into it. They wove events from character gen into thier backstory. They planned out the kind of characters they wanted, and adjusted as gen proceeded. It was a very involved process. Much more so thay saying you are 10th level here are some majic items. They started play with a good idea who thier character was.

As for why they got together as a group, it wan no more or less contrived than any meeting of first level character. They got in a shootout at Starbucks. (They are everywhere you know) and that lead them on the trail of a 10MCr Job. That much cash can build a lot of teamwork. (Too bad they will never collect)

I, and most of my group have been playing various games for almost 30 years. To be honest playing a 1st level character holds very little appeal to me. I recently declined an invite to play in a new D&D campagn B/C it was starting at 1st level. I've done it a hundred times, and once more holds no interest for me.

If you want you forego Prior history IYTU, hey more power to you. If done right I am sure it can be fun. But there will be limits on what class characters can take levels in. Players can only get levels in Belter, army, navy, marine and Scout while on active duty in those classes. If you start gaming at first level then you cut off those options. (unless your game is a sqaud of boot marines starnded on an alien world.)

To me, not using PH is missing out on one of the best aspects of the game.

 

[Laryssa]

How do you get an army, navy, marine, and scout together while they are doing official duty?

Well for one thing they are all serving the same government, and if that government orders them to work together, then they work together.

The Marines are of course a branch of the Navy, they are the shipboard fighting force, Army soldiers of course need to get around using starships, and of course the Navy gives then excorts as they travel around. The Army is more geared to fighting planetside, and they have heavier equipment than the Marines who are more adapt at making landing and holding ground while the Army deploys planetside setting up their heavier equipment. The Imperial Walkers, such as in the Empire Strikes Back would be Army equipment for instance, but you need the Marines to set up a beach head first.

Scouts do scouting work for the Armed forces during war time, they often conduct operations behind enemy lines and gather intelligence, so its not impossible to imagine all four types working together at 1st level on a single mission. Merchants are of course private contractors, assigned to deliver special equipment for the military. So you see, they don't have to be retired out of work ex-service members hanging out in a Bar looking for work.

 

[Rover]

Originally posted by Laryssa:
How do you get an army, navy, marine, and scout together while they are doing official duty?

Well for one thing they are all serving the same government, and if that government orders them to work together, then they work together.

The Marines are of course a branch of the Navy, they are the shipboard fighting force, Army soldiers of course need to get around using starships, and of course the Navy gives then excorts as they travel around. The Army is more geared to fighting planetside, and they have heavier equipment than the Marines who are more adapt at making landing and holding ground while the Army deploys planetside setting up their heavier equipment. The Imperial Walkers, such as in the Empire Strikes Back would be Army equipment for instance, but you need the Marines to set up a beach head first.

Scouts do scouting work for the Armed forces during war time, they often conduct operations behind enemy lines and gather intelligence, so its not impossible to imagine all four types working together at 1st level on a single mission. Merchants are of course private contractors, assigned to deliver special equipment for the military. So you see, they don't have to be retired out of work ex-service members hanging out in a Bar looking for work.

If a first level game is what you want to run, then run it. Your abilities as a game master will have more an effect on enjoyment of the game than the level of the characters. If you like it and your players like it then that is what counts.

As for the special mission you describe above, how is an Imperial government taking a couple of recruits from each service fresh from boot camp, teaming them up with an apprentice assistant deckhand and a shoplifter any less contrived than a group of retired military men getting hired to do a job fresh after surviving being on the wrong side of a shoot out in a coffee shop? The game is played as a group, there has to a pretext to get them together. Reality should flavour the game, not be the prime objective.

First level characters, esp in traveler are very limited. If continually getting their ass handed to them is something your players like fine. Personally I would rather play a skilled and seasoned adventurer. PH is just a means to en end. Fundamentally what is the difference if players spend 1 year playing a 1st level character up to 8th, or the same year playing an 8th level character up to 12th? They have the same year to develop their character and bond with the other PC’s.

 

[Laryssa]

Perhaps because the Imperial Government couldn't spare them for the mission. They needed someone more expendible. You don't fill you armies with seasoned Veterans. Seasoned Veterans lead those armies, the people filling the ranks are raw recruits, they do the actual fighting and because they get killed so often, they have to be replaced with new raw recruits hence 1st-level. All that fighting and adventure is what brings them to second level. If the hardest part is going from 1st to 2nd level, aren't you cheating the players of some of the fun if you substitute a few die rolls for all of that?

 

[princelian]

Aha! The clouds clear!

Laryssa:

If the hardest part is going from 1st to 2nd level, aren't you cheating the players of some of the fun if you substitute a few die rolls for all of that?

You're assuming that Prior History isn't FUN!!! I will tell you that it is one of THE most fun aspects of Traveller, be it CT, MT, TNE, T1248 or T20. (And a plug for Hunter's product: T20 handles it best of all the versions, IMHO.)

That's my opinion of course, but there it is.

 

[Rover]

Originally posted by princelian:

You're assuming that Prior History isn't FUN!!! I will tell you that it is one of THE most fun aspects of Traveller, be it CT, MT, TNE, T1248 or T20. (And a plug for Hunter's product: T20 handles it best of all the versions, IMHO.)

That's my opinion of course, but there it is. [/QB]

Agreed!
Prior history can be fun and T20 does it best. If the player has in mind playing a streetwise rouge, a battle hardened merc, grizzled space captain, or brilliant but absentminded professor, all can easily be achieved with T20 PH. The system provides a comprehensive formalized set of rules for developing a fully fleshed out character. If your players come to the game with character concept in mind, is not making them slog through 10 levels also cheating them? I can honestly say with almost 30 years of playing Traveller under my belt I’ve never felt cheated out of anything by starting play as an experienced character. (ok those time I died in char gen in older systems kinda sucked.)

Prior History is part of the game, embrace it, or al least give it a shot.

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by Chaos:
I´m not sure why a level of Professional should be necessary; Belters are by necessity good engineers and "Mr/Ms Fix-it"s.

Because she wanted to go to university and leave with a professional qualification.

Belters are more than good engineers. They're also prospectors who's aim is to find an asteroid rich in just about any metal he needs. They want to strike it rich. If they can't make money with asteroids they make money with salvage. Hence why the two exclusive class feats are Junkyard Dog and Midas Touch.

None of that fits her character. She's a talented young teenage girl (at this point in her prior history) who has less interest in prospecting for rocks than she has in fine-tuning the drives. When she departs for University she learns engineeering but not prospecting or business/mining related knowledge.

The character had been working for 4 years before starting university, and basically just went to uni to get the background knowledge to go with her practical skills (and the degree to match that knowledge), so taking another Belter level during university would be appropriate.

Well, either can be appropriate. There's nothing wrong with multiclassing. You get your education to match your education; in this case her education applied to starship engineering. Nothing specific to Belting. So it was a door that was made open to her.

She then went and joined the Scouts because they were looking to recruit a starship engineer for one of their couriers. I have to talk to her about her character sometime this weekend, but i think she's happy with it.

 

[Laryssa]

Originally posted by Rover:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by princelian:

You're assuming that Prior History isn't FUN!!! I will tell you that it is one of THE most fun aspects of Traveller, be it CT, MT, TNE, T1248 or T20. (And a plug for Hunter's product: T20 handles it best of all the versions, IMHO.)

That's my opinion of course, but there it is.

Agreed!
Prior history can be fun and T20 does it best. If the player has in mind playing a streetwise rouge, a battle hardened merc, grizzled space captain, or brilliant but absentminded professor, all can easily be achieved with T20 PH. The system provides a comprehensive formalized set of rules for developing a fully fleshed out character. If your players come to the game with character concept in mind, is not making them slog through 10 levels also cheating them? I can honestly say with almost 30 years of playing Traveller under my belt I’ve never felt cheated out of anything by starting play as an experienced character. (ok those time I died in char gen in older systems kinda sucked.)

Prior History is part of the game, embrace it, or al least give it a shot. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Well, its kind of simple:

If you start your character at 1st level, you have 20 levels to slog though. Now if you started at 10th level you have only 10 levels before your character reaches 20th. Now you can dicker over whether a character should be retired at 20th level, 30th or whatever, but you must admit that the more powerful you start your character, the sooner he's going to be overwhelmingly powerful and difficult for the GM to make challenges for.

High level characters require high level opponents, those opponents have more skills, feats, more levels and better equipment and resources, this means that their stat block gets longer and longer and in the end the power levels balance out, so why not start with low level characters and give them low level opponents? Why would you want to start at mid-level immediately, can't you wait? It just seems to me that a whole lot of adventuring possibilities are missed by skipping over the lower levels. In a word its power inflation.

If you start your characters at 10th level veteran status, then he will have to combat legions of 10th level opponents, then it seems at all the PCs are at 10th level or higher to sufficiently challenge the players, so why bother to have the lower levels if you are never going to use them yourself or encounter any but the most minor fucntionaries at 1st level? That's power inflation!

If simply surviving and making small personal accomplishments for your character is too trivial next to saving the galaxy, that's your personally taste. On the otherhand you can simply start as a more powerful race with built in creature levels, such as a 12-foot tall humanoid at 1st level.

 

[princelian]

Power inflation isn't as much an issue with Traveller (of any flavor) than it is for D&D. Believe me, I've seen the power inflation firsthand for many many campaigns. I've had campaigns where the whole game blows up because of the geometrically multiplying effect of powers and magic items, and I've had high-level endgame campaigns that worked.

But in Traveller, the 1st-term pirate with the SMG can cut your 9-term super-veteran in half if he rolls well and the veteran isn't in armor. (That's true for any flavor of Traveller.) The 100 ton Scout/Courier that's working for the pirates can get a lucky hit and knock out your power plant.

In D&D, the 1-level orc, even if he critically hits the weakest (mage/sorcerer) opponent with a greataxe (1d12+3, x3 = 3d12+9), isn't a significant threat past about 5th level. Even a mage/sorc is likely to have a 14 Con, so at 5th level, he has 6 + 4.5x4 = 24 hit points, and the average 3d12+9 hit is 6.5x3+9 = 30. If he's unwounded, it probably didn't kill him.

(And that's assuming the orc survived to reach melee range with the wizard...)

Anyhow, it's just a different game.

MONEY is far more important a factor than experience, insofar as power inflation.