5. Think on an Epic Scale It’s easy to think of low-level characters as people who have dangerous jobs. Depending on your campaign style, low-level player characters might frequently be called upon to do heroic things, and well-played characters often have goals more complex than merely slaying monsters and accumulating treasure, such as social recognition, romance, political power, and the like. No matter how well-developed a low-level character is, the character’s chief goal essentially remains making a living and surviving to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

High-level PCs, as the proceeding section on demographics shows, are the foremost heroes of their age. They are the people who bards sing about and who poets write about. Stories of their adventures are told and retold for generations after the PCs are gone. Whether they like it or not, the PCs are larger than life. They have larger-than-life friends, larger-than-life foes, and larger-than-life problems. Practical details such as where the character’s next meal is coming from or how the hero is going to get armor or weapons repaired become petty when compared to the real issues of the character’s life.

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