Someone who has achieved a level in a class is not some nobody farmboy who's never been in a battle before. Being a 1st level wizard or fighter automatically puts you in a league of your own and sets you a part from common farmhands or even experienced soldiers.
Level 1 characters are allowed to have interesting backstories in 5e.
Beyond that most of them aren't even that crazy as far as backgrounds go. We've got:
- A 20 something Githyanki fighter who's never been to the Astral Plane before and worries about dying before she achieves anything worth remembering.
- An amnesiac cleric who might be on her first major mission for her goddess so far as we know currently.
- A 200 year old vampire spawn... Who lived in Baldur's Gate as a servant of a powerful vampire and probably spent most of his time going to parties and spying for his master.
- A prodigy wizard who slept with the goddess of magic, then went on an adventure to win her back and royally botched it. Mentions he is weaker than he used to be.
- A folk hero who made a pact with a fiend to gain the power he needed to become famous. Also mentions being weaker than he once was, suggesting he's not on good terms with his patron or the tadpole is messing with him.
They all have a good reason to be first level ranging from lost power to lost memories or simply not having been on a big adventure yet.
I also agree with this post. I think a lot of the background stories, from a mechanical standpoint, covers someone going from a level 1 commoners to level 1 adventurer class.
The ONLY backstory I'm a little iffy about is Gale's. He was someone, by his own words, "capable of feats even archwizard would marvel at" (from a camp convo). Aside from character power, a huge part of character advancement in D&D is accumulated in wealth and access (social status, networks, etc). We know he lost actual character power and you can stretch it and justify the wealth all disappearing because he spent it all to feed himself,
but he doesn't acted like someone who's had social power.This makes the fact that he's willing to follow and bumble cluelessly around with the PC in the beginning, when he thought transformation was merely days away, VERY jarring.
Given his background, I would have expected him to behave a bit more like Lae'zel (in terms of "take-charged-ness, not so much the hostile attitude"). You'd think he would be the one with the plan (hey I know high-level cleric X, Y, and Z, let's go to them), since at this point, he has far more experience than the main character.
