> The former. It goes without saying.
The "without saying" part has confused at least this punter. It seems silly to discuss what the "skill level" of starting characters is without the small detail of an _entire_ level of mastery.
> No starting character will have a level of mastery relative to interesting
> GM characters or other PCs. I am unaware of whether any of the pregen
> characters in the playtest game still did so at Convulsion. At Germany, it
> was clear that these characters were way more advanced than a standard
> beginning character would be.
The "highest level" ability for any of them was 5/15, with only the free level of mastery which goes without saying, so according to my current (and admittedly, changing on an hourly basis) understanding, this isn't vastly higher than a starting PC would have, right? Most of the PCs had best abilities at 6/14 -- those that didn't have the sage foresight to pick Broadus, that is. ;-) My understanding was that these were effectively "rune level" characters in RQ terms. (In some cases, pretty explicitly so, given their titles.)
I don't want to read too much into these few data from the demo game, though, hence my prodding for hints about the rules proper.
> Of course, anyone who dislikes "the idiotic 'free' level of mastery" can
> simply crank their game down one level. Is there a problem with this?
I'd presume not. It vaguely bothers me that this level seems to be so implicit that it's part of the wallpaper, though. I'd prefer it to be more manifestly stated, to make it clearer when it was and when it wasn't. As it stands, one is left stratching one's head somewhat when contemplating what a group of newly initiated characters would look like; would they not have the free level of mastery (which goes without saying), or would they keep it, since it's not a skill thing, it's a PC thing (you GMCs just wouldn't understand), just having worse target numbers and SPs, instead?
Slainte,
Alex.
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