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My short answer is no I don't.

I expect a lvl 1 character to have all the components of their niche, but I don't expect all of them to be at their full potential. In fact, I'm disappointed when they are.

At leel 1, a PC is "good" at what ever their class and race is good at. "Expert" is possible but it should require extreme specialization.

What I would want the general game assumption to be is that a character is qualitatively a member of their class from level 1, but quantitatively a very weak one. An example of doing this right (even if the design has other issues) is the 3.5 fighter. The 3.5 fighter is, from level 1, a fighter. He has a (small) attack bonus and an extra capability related to combat, plus the ability to use all of the weapons and armor. He's clearly a full fighter, just a weak one. The most prominant example of messing this up is the 3.5 druid. Whether or not you think that sahapeshifting should be one of the druid's most defining abilities, it was one in 3.5 -- but it wasn't something you got until well into your career as a druid. When combined with how spellcasting scales in 3.5, the end result is that a level ten druid wasn't remotely identifiable as being a member of the same class as a level 1 druid. If a level 10 druid is a dire-tiger-shifting dire-tiger-summoning dire-tiger-commanding badass calling down the wrath of nature on their foes, a level one druid should have a limited-but-relevant ability to turn into a bobcat, a bobcat companion that's barely more than an ordinary bobcat, and the ability to call on the forces of nature to aid in combat in limited ways. It shouldn't be a dude with the bobcat, but other than that just a sling and an alignment restriction.

It's fine for classes to evolve as they level up, and in some cases that's essentially inevitable. They should just not, where, possible, transform significantly. A level one elephant should be a baby elephant, not an elephant with two of its legs and its trunk lopped off.

Note that this is not the same desire at all as the desire to play superman at level 1. It's the desire to play a scaled-down version of superman at level 1 - one scaled down enough to be a level 1 character.

I also recognize that there's some cost associated with this. Part of managing the game's complexity is introducing new options and systems to a player not all at once. Druids in 3.5 have just an absurd amount going on - they're prepared spellcasters who prep from their entire spell list (and can then spontaneously convert to a broad-utility spell), they have an animal companion to deal with, and their spells/day is shrimpy enough that a druid player has to understand how physical combat mechanics work fairly well. That's a ton for a new player. It's totally understandable that a designer would look at that and decide that a uses/day mechanic that utilizes one of the more complicated and confusing game subsystems in the whole edition and exposes a bunch of DM content to the players is the last thing that such an already complex character needs to have dropped on them at level 1. There's always going to be a tradeoff of sorts between concept pacing (how fast you introduce new concepts to players) and class realiztion pacing (how long it takes before the class actually is what it is instead of a trunkless elephant.) Carefully pacing the rate at which you expose players to new mechanics is something that's taken for granted as something you should care about in electronic game design, and I hope that it's something that D&D designers think about as well. It's very, very difficult for a lot of people to get into the head of a new player, especially one that's taking a little longer than average to pick up on how the game works, but pacing of new mechanics is at least somewhat important.

Nov 22, 2012 -- 1:35PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Full potential:No

Be able to perform in their archtype from level 1:Yes

Agreed.  Although I fall closer to the turnip-approach than many, the level 1 character still needs to be able to perform the same role as it will perform at level 5 or 15.  

Particularly egregious failures in 3.5 include the druid (as mentioned), the paladin (who lacks healing of any sort until level 2), the savant (a sort of generalist that crams 7 levels of fighter/rogue/wizard/cleric into 20 levels, but doesn't gain arcane spells until level 5 or divine spells until level 10), and the dragon shaman (a marshal/dragonfire adept/paladin who was just an aura until picking up an at-will breath weapon at level 4, and then healing of any sort at level 6).  Failures in 3.5 or 4E include any sort of multi-class character concept.

Even with my cantrips and backstab, though, I don't expect my level 1 fighter/mage/thief to survive more than a single hit, but neither would I expect the same of my foes.  (I would also expect the rules to make unconsciousness survivable, especially at low levels, but that's tangential to the matter at hand.)