Hit Dice
In ages past, when the worlds were young and the cement of Castle Blackmoor’s basement was still wet, magic users had a d4 hit die. There were no second chances. You rolled that d4, prayed to Lady Luck not get get a nat 1, and tried like hell to survive to Level 2.
Things have changed somewhat since then. Now your eager young magician gets a d6 hit die. Even better, you automatically get max hp at first level. You add your Constitution modifier. You include bonus hit points from your race. You tack on hp from your class. You do everything in your power to try and avoid that massive feels-bad of dying at first level due to being an anemic dork in a bathrobe.
Be honest now: Do you like playing first level characters? If you answered “no” (and if recent experience is anything to go by, many of you did), then I think that original D&D design choice might be the reason why. Magic users had to earn their phenomenal cosmic power by starting the game as fragile little toothpick people. Ever since, the low-level experience of trying to survive an errant crit long enough to feel like a “real adventurer” has haunted the hobby. If you ever meet a GM who prefers to start campaigns at second or third level, this is the reason why.
So for today’s discussion question, why don’t we compare notes on “the first level experience.” I’ve already linked to a number of systems that try to address the problem. Does one of them get it right? Should third level be the new first level? Or is there some other way to solve the problem of extremely-fragile low-level mages? Tell us all about your preferred version of starting hp down below!
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I definitely prefer to start at higher levels if possible. Starting at level 1 means you are just a single bad dice roll from death, not something I want in my heroic fantasy.
Also, in a lot of the editions, you just get more options at higher levels, I feel like lower levels pretty much always come down to:
Mage type: I cast one of like, 4 spells I have. And it’s about the only one suitable for this situation
Fighter type: I hit it with my (weapon)
Like, sure, you can get a bit of extra tactics if you use weird spells and stuff, but it often feels like you only really need sleep or magic missile probably. One of those are probly gonna be good
That too. I do sometime won’t if one of my groups DM’s feel like they can’t handle level 10 or higher characters. The moment we get close to that something ends up happening and we are back to level 1 again.
“Won’t” should be “wonder”. Lack of editing feature strikes again.
House Rule: Player always max HP.
House Rule: Monster always min damage.
What Dice?
I do enjoy starting at first level, as you get that feeling of rising from almost nothing to being a high-level character; that being said, you don’t really get the feeling of hitting those high levels if a crit means you never get to level up at all. I find that starting at second level is good, as it’s very similar to level one, save with a few more hit points to cushion the blow of random crits. Third level, though, is very much a different experience from level one; you may not have fireball or extra attack, but the spell casters now have 6 spell slots, and martials have their subclasses.
All told: I like the level 1 experience if I reach the higher levels, level 2 is similar to 1 but with a bit less dying, and level 3 is quite different in terms of power.
A paper cut, being minor, would likely do the minimum die of damage, i.e. 1d4. A 1st level elven wizard with average constitution (10) and -2 con racial penalty has average 1d4-1 hp, and can’t buff their health as they already spent all of their two spells casting protection from stubbed toe and cat ward. As such, they must avoid paper at all costs, and choose their words carefully when casting speak with animals in order to avoid antagonising any bees in the area.
A papercut will deal no damage, or at most 1 nonlethal damage.
It’s a joke, dear fellow. Not a serious rules proposal.
Also… Depends on where you get the paper cut and whether you have additional medical issues. See link below:
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/can-paper-cut-be-deadly/
In D&D 2e, I did not actually care what level you started off at, it was deadly regardless; ofcourse, hit points of enemies weren’t inflated either, so I generally thought it fair.
In D&D 3.5e, I hated started off at 1st level, not because of hit points, but because if you could generally only do a couple of things per day. If you were a bard, that meant 1 bard song + 2 cantrip slots; If you were a wizard, it was 1 1st level slot, and 3 cantrip slots; Barbarian it was rage 1/day. And not just that, but so many classes had ‘dead level’s (levels where you literally got nothing, or next to nothing). So in D&D 3.5, I preferred to actually start at 5th level, that way you generally had enough features/resources to last through 3 encounters, and were one level away from your first level in a prestige class.
In D&D 4th edition, I once again enjoyed playing at 1st level. Them including At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers to every class made a world of a difference to me. Yeah, I know that many people hated that edition, but to me there were so many gems that I could incorporate into earlier or later editions: minions, bloodied, power source, rituals, short rests, etc. Also, D&D 4e, was the first edition that actually let me build a thematic spellcaster, and either A) not suck, or B) have to convince the GM to let me reflavor X spells or abilities (after all, everything was so balanced, changing the damage type of X or Y At-will or Encounter ability wasn’t going to change the game at all.
Pathfinder, I found to be just like 3.5, but with slightly more resources, and fewer ‘dead levels’, so I preferred to play as 3rd level characters; Atleast until I was introduced to Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might. Now, whenever I participate in Pathfinder games that include those systems, I prefer to start at level 1 (although lets be honest, I would never actually join another Pathfinder game that did not include those systems).
D&D 5e, like 4e included at-will spells (cantrips; and unlike Pathfinder’s or D&D 3.5, these actually scale with level and don’t suck as sources of damage past 1st level). In addition many classes have resources that refresh per short rest. And then there are rituals (not nearly enough of them though) that are castable at-will (provided you have the components, and know it). So 5e, like 4e, I enjoy playing at 1st level.
I am not going to go into every other Non-D&D RPG system I played (Changeling, Mage, Blades in the Dark, Burning Wheel, Shadowrun, etc). This is not because I don’t find playing them enjoyable, but my table generally sticks to varying editions of D&D and Pathfinder, both of which I feel are also more relevant to the comic at hand.
Yeah, 4e and 5e cope with the lower levels much better than earlier editions… characters are still relatively vulnerable, but there’s not much chance of them dying in the first combat. And even at 1st level, you get some options from turn to turn…
I like third level starts more than level 1 starts. There’s just so many upsides to it compared to downsides.
It lets the players have a more engaging session zero, as they’re not completely inept and have a period of time in which they ‘gained’ those levels to justify a better backstory. They’re already established to be better than the chaff of the commoner masses. Did your iconic barbarian single-handedly kill a frost giant? Sure, that’s plausible, when you’re not a lvl1 squishie who would die in one hit from such a foe in actual combat.
It’s the level when almost all of the classes get their key class features and the core class identity manifests. Druids have to wait an eternity to become an animal-shifter, even with a level 3 start, for example. Monks get Ki abilities. You are defined not by limitations but by what your class gives you.
It allows for more leeway in character building, letting the players who rely on a certain amount of feats or class features to ‘go online’, without having to struggle for survival in the early levels, as Wizards often do. Alternately, it lets RP-focused people get a few flavor options instead of pure survival ones. Your pretty snowflake is fine and dandy until they get into trouble at lvl1.
Better survival, especially for those new to the game, or tabletops in general. Nothing will kill Timmy’s first ever RPG game as getting their ultra-cool monk killed by a random kobold with a rusty dagger.
More starting money (optionally), letting players be more equipped for various challenges, have their desired flavor items and appearance, and generally be more flexible when it comes to what you can throw at them.
Offers more options to the players to actually play the game. Level 1 players are piss-poor, sometimes even lacking basic survival equipment, and all but the most optimal of combat actions or feat-empowered moves are harshly punished. Most class abilities aren’t even online yet. It’s so bad that having ‘rich parents’ is practically a broken superpower for those few short levels.
Less suspension of disbelief, how a gaggle of level-1 characters managed to group up and thrive, or gain their initial skills and reputation.
There are downsides, of course, to a lvl3 start:
Harder to gauge party power from the start. You don’t get the same feel of experience through struggle, and the players might have a very strong set of abilities from the get-go, making the DM have to adjust accordingly.
May lack the challenge that some players desire from the lower levels.
Most campaigns and APs don’t support a lvl3 start, forcing DMs to work extra if they want to make a challenging first few levels (rather them just bulldozing through the plot due to them being too strong).
The lower-level enemies stop being a threat entirely, making certain low CR encounters a non-issue or vanish entirely.
Less supportive for a ‘bare-bones survival’ type game, especially if equipment is harder to come by.
Nobody suspects the papercut mimic. It usually feasts on the blood of prickled fingers, a little-bit at a time… But occasionally, it wins a jackpot meal of a novice wizard…
My personal experience is that level 3 is the optimal starting level for a long campaign, at least in 5e (when i go back to playing AD&D, we of course start at 1st level like real men). Most classes get access to their subclass at that point so even if you have two players of the same class, they can differentiate themselves (i have two bards in my current campaign) and nobody is going to trip on a bug and die from blood loss.
My group is toying around with the idea of doing a 1e one shot session though just for the experience of doing so. Ive shown them a lot of stuff from it just to make a point about how the game has improved, and some of them are interested in suffering through the early nonsense just for perspective.
Spell-tome of Bloody Cuts (Cursed Magic Item), CL15
This cursed spellbook is the bane of many wizards and other magical scholars. It comes with a number of magic spells pre-written into it (usually by its previous users) and can change its appearance to better match its surroundings.
Arcane spellcasters who read or skim this spellbook find themselves cursed by a delusion that the book is of superior quality, motivating them to use it as their preferred spellbook to the exclusion of other existing or better spellbooks. Being presented with evidence to the contrary does not dissuade this delusion.
Whenever a cursed individual attempts to prepare or copy spells, the book attempts an attack against the user, treating them as unaware, with a bonus equal to the highest-level spell written in the book. If the attack succeeds, they are inflicted with 1d4 bleed damage, lasting for 2 rounds. A cursed user is unaware of this harmful effect as long as they continue using the book, and any evidence (i.e. bloodstains and pain) is absorbed and dulled by the book’s magic, though witnesses can easily notice the book cutting the cursed user’s fingers and making them bleed profusely.
For every spell prepared or copied in a single reading, the book attempts an additional attack, potentially causing the bleed damage to stack with itself, though any inflicted bleeding immediately ends if the cursed individual stops reading (including from falling below 0 hp).
The spellbook has 100 pages worth of spells, though anyone under the effects of this curse can attempt to add new spells beyond this limit (convinced that the book has far more pages than it seems), causing a random spells written in the book to vanish, leaving empty pages to scribe the desired spell.
Casting ‘Remove Curse’ on a cursed individual removes their compulsion to keep using the book and makes them aware of its true, harmful effects.
This is brilliant, wish there was an upvote button!
And I wish there was an edit button for the typos!
This is an awesome concept. Definitely smuggling that under my wizard player’s nose.
If a papercut was enough to take out Wizard, how’d she survive through the shenanigans of the other handbook?
Character-levels fluctuate based on the needs of the joke.
Fluctuating levels, is that what you kids are calling it these days?
This would mean that Wizard started off a fresh new game as a brand new lvl1 character, as we know that she couldn’t be in her old lvl1 self (or other flashback justification), as she was male and lacking her archmage robe back then.
One of my biggest gripes with 5E is the “Backwards difficulty curve” where L1-2 is the most dangerous thing in the world, whereas L17+ is just reveling in your phenomenal power unless the DM is out to get you. I make a point of always starting at at least L3.
Pathfinder 2’s racial HP seems like a pretty solid solution, even if Dwarves have a Charisma penalty in that system. (Which is just stupid. Dwarves are willful, and innately likable. If they should have a penalty to anything it should be Dexterity) Then again P2 is apparently very heavily based on 4E, even going so far as to have one of 4E’s main designers on-staff, which is ironic considering Pathfinder’s history.
4E felt great at low levels. Everyone had a flat bonus to their HP equal to their Con score rather than getting Con mod x Level. Your Con mod instead determined healing-surges.
I’ve posted my experience playing 2E at low levels. It was… Formative.
Willfulness is generally represented by Wisdom, not Charisma. As for dwarves being “innately likable”…that’s, um, not a common portrayal. It’s possible you just like dwarves.
For me, the 1st level wizard “issue” is the ideal narrative counterbalance to their later power. If you want to have an enjoyable medieval combat element of the game, the question of “Where are all the Fireball wizards” is one that must be answered, and is answered well by “all the bespectacled scholars who decide to go and live in a war zone find their life expectancy diminishing rapidly.”
On a personal note, much as I love my 12-player, 30+ character, 17-epic level spread at present mega-campaign, my heart truly lies in low-magic, small scope and low-level games. Warhammer Fantasy roleplay (gut wounds!), Call of Cthulhu (1d3+4-investigators-eaten-per-turn by Cthulhu), Traveller (death during character creation!) and Dread (death as a result of somebody else using up the tower!) rank amongst my favourite games, and I’d very happily play a re-scaled version of D&D wherein level 10 or even 7 was the “legendary” scale.
Level 1 is the level where defeat looms most threateningly – and for me, that means that it’s the level where a character proves that they’re WORTHY of being called a hero. Anyone who can accept a 1/20 likelihood of instantly being dropped as soon as they get within sword range of most boss monsters is the kind of person who one feels would be an adventurer.
The exception, of course, is if the plot is closely tied to specific characters – but even then, a great many gritty fantasy authors have shown that the plot can simply continue in an unexpected direction.
I was okay with low-level magic-users being squishy. The real problem was that with only one spell a day that had to be chosen in advance, playing a lowly Prestidigitator was often boring. And since most of the spells weren’t powerful enough to reliably take down an enemy, the character wasn’t a Glass Cannon, they were simply glass. I usually wound up taking “Charm Person,” and wound up using whatever monster I could charm as my PC.
I love starting at first level. Yes, it has almost always been challenging in almost every rules system, but I feel like that is the point.
I think of a typical adventuring group as the super heroes of the story. But they have to start somewhere. Batman did not begin as the super ninja detective bad-ass that he would eventually become. He started as a dumb kid who hated criminals, but would never resort to killing (depending on your Batman story).
The best stories have an origin story. In a movie, tv show, book, or other media form, that story may be told in a sort of prequel form so you can get right into the adventure, but there is a reason people tend to want that prequel story in the first place. They want to know where their favorite heroes started.
Skipping the first level experience is like never knowing how your characters got started. How they met each other, how they came together to become the super bad’s that they now are. By skipping that experience, you lose out on some potentially important roleplay elements. You might get to be easily survivable starting at 2nd or 3rd (or 4th or 5th for some people), but you lose out on the parts of the story that got you to where you are. You can “make it up” just like your backstory, but then it feels artificial… because it is.
The other aspect to consider when thinking of skipping that early level up is what are you really missing? Aren’t ALL encounters pretty much meant to be deadly? (At least all combat encounters). If you think that you might die, doesn’t that make the intensity better for all levels? Danger of TPK makes you think more, and try to adapt better. Now if you just skip ahead to chapter 3 or 4, aren’t you missing the set up?
And how long does it really take to get to the next level early on? I have played a lot of D&D over the last 30+ years of my life. I have rarely got past the teens in a game, even if we started at level 3 or 4 or 5+. And yet every time I have been in a game that started at level 1 or 2, whether it has been earning EXP or just leveling up “when appropriate” (aka Milestone), the “next level” early on has taken no more than about one or two sessions, three or four for the next, before you know it, starting out at level 1, you are level 5 and have those fireballs everyone wants within a short few sessions anyway.
What’s the rush?
ALL that being said, my DM for our most recent game does like to set up fairly deadly encounters and so while we started at level 1, he gave us all a slight HP advantage based on our racial size. small gets 4 extra HP, medium gets 5, “large” gets 6 (large player races do not actually exist, but a few have “powerful build” as a feature and we used that to determine if our race “should be” large). So, you know, if you as players or DM are worried about killing off your characters in the first real encounter, tone down the first encounter, level up after it no matter what happens, give a slight boost, or… start at level 2 (as many seem to prefer), but try to remember what you might miss out on if you skip ahead. Those early sessions are the place where your group gets to know each other, take that away, and… well, it is all personal choice, but give it a serious consider next time you are starting a new game.
(obviously if you only play one shots, none of this matters 🙂
I personally preferred “campaigns” that started with level 1 (or the equivalent) – it was the expectation of the time, and when we wanted to play higher level characters we could use the pre-generated samples given in the modules…but home campaigns were about building your character/party from the ground.
However, it was generally conceded that kid gloves were also the norm for the first couple of levels…it served as character tutorials and getting the feet wet…so I now view that as a compromise that worked well.
Worth noting that AD&D was one of probably 5-6 games we played, though…and the rest were mostly level-less.
M
Rather, why should combat get less potentially lethal just because you’ve leveled up? It might be interesting to play where neither heroes nor monsters gained HP from being higher level – perhaps other defenses, and certainly their attacks scale up, but if a fireball can roast anyone including someone at 20th level, that might impart a consistent approach to combat across the levels.
Just a thought for an alternate take on this.
I recommend trying out Savage Worlds. High level characters have the same three wounds that low level characters have. And a non-magic arrow has a chance of felling even the mightiest of dragons in a single shot (albeit, only a slim chance).
First you discuss broken glasses and now you remind me of all my paper cuts? How many of my scars will you poke until you are happy? 🙁
Just kidding 😛
But please can we done down the flashbacks to my injuries? 🙁
Do you know a manga called Ajin? It’s all about how much horrible is to be immortal. And i a game i made just that, an immortal character. Human-shield was quite the popular tactic and it was to actually trigger any trap. Making an advantage, immortality, into a hindrance was fun and completely worth it 🙂
I haven’t DMed with this rule yet, but I do have an alternative.
First, determine the max level you want to run the game at. I like the idea of E6, but I’d personally make it E9 or so. Then, determine the maximum ‘possible’ health for your lvl1 PCs.
Ex: Wizard with a d6 +1 Favored Class and +1 Con = 8. Times 9 is 72. Now just write that down somewhere for that character, recalculating if they multiclass from wizard.
If they get knocked into negatives far enough to die, let them ‘borrow’ hit points from their higher level, at the cost is permanently losing them.
Ex: Wizard has 12 Con, so dies at -12hp. They get taken to -15. Instead of dying, put them at -11 and take away 4 points from their 72.
When they get to level 9, they will only have 68 hit points maximum. Hopefully they can be stabilized before taking more damage next turn.
The goal is providing a big bucket of hit points as a safety net for lvl1’s, but also having long-term effects for burning the safety net. If the campaign ends before max level, then you were a more merciful GM, and that’s fine. If the players don’t like having stunted high level PCs, maybe allow the permanently lost HP to come back with Restoration / Greater Restoration like ability drain.
In Pathfinder, the answer is small-sized creatures with weapon finesse. Even on a crit, 1d4-1 should never be enough to one-shot even a d6 class.
The Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG has a really nice system in my opinion because there aren’t “levels” exactly. You spend your xp (earned for completing tasks or adventures with bonuses for different things, rather than just ‘defeating’ NPCs or traps) on skills, talents, etc. so you can start the game with better attributes which make you better overall, but not specialized or cool yet, or you can start to go after skills or talents to pick up unique abilities. It makes for a very varied character.
As for HP, it can knock you out of a fight but is highly unlikely to kill you. You have about a 1-5% chance of dying after suffering 5 untreated critical wounds, which can be hard to come by to begin with. So even if a fight goes horribly wrong chances are you aren’t likely to just scrap the character and pick a new one.
5e has, in my opinion, a very well-designed early-level experience. You get some iconic abilities, just enough to keep an unskilled player engaged and thinking without overwhelming them with options. Not only that, but there’s plenty of options for keeping players alive when the wizard goes down to a single lucky goblin arrow, ranging from a basic healing spell to a Medicine check to a healing kit to betting on enough roughly coinflip odds of stabilizing on your own.
After that, each level gives you a few new toys, expanding out to your full roster of iconic class features by level 3. It’s a good learning curve for new players, and since D&D is probably the most common entry point into the TRPG hobby, it’s important that D&D be designed to work well for them.
But this newbie-friendly experience is probably part of why experienced players prefer to start at level 3-5 over 1. At level 3, everyone has all their essential abilities; level 5 gives them their first big tier boost. And, of course, they’re all too ready to start toying around with the bigger toolboxes available at that level.
Other TRPGs with similar level systems have similar designs, of course, but 5e’s is some of the best. Then again, the other class/level systems I’m familiar with are mostly based on D&D 3.5, which had a bad habit of frontloading its classes…
I do often prefer to start at 3rd level or higher these days, but that’s because I often play a lot of 5th edition, and it’s nice for everyone to start the game with their basic signature abilities. It’s not really an HP concern for me.
Yeah, as far as 5e goes starting at 3rd really should be the default standard since that’s when everyone’s character becomes… whatever the goal is and not just… waiting to get there. Heck, in a few rare cases you actually have to build you character in a non-functional way for those first two levels to work as you desire for the rest.
It’s also just no good that those first two levels the GM can accidentally kill your character by doing double your max hp in damage to you in a single instance of damage. That’s a lot harder to pull off and becomes less and less possible as you gain in levels. Which really makes me wonder why it’s there. Does someone at WotC think people enjoy low level characters dying more often than high level ones? Did they just fail to think the math on that through?
Admittedly I am pretty biased on this topic as I’ve made so many low level characters at this point that I just want to make high level ones solely to experience something new. That’s probably not as big of an issue with live games that don’t have the extreme turnover rate I deal with in play by post games.
I know I’ve said this a billion times by now, but this sure is a problem Blades in the Dark and its related systems sure doesn’t have. You might feel like you desperately want one or two more dots of stuff to be really be pulling off what your goal is, but you don’t feel like you’re just not doing it at all right now. Or that it’s at all far away.
I sure love creating 1st-level characters. Got a whole backlog of those I’d like to try.
Being an anemic toothpick lady, in my opinion, forces you to think before acting. Hiding behind your beefier companions, using your few spells creatively. Learning to “adventure” with this specific toothpick. Watching your ways to influence the game increase organically.
When you arrive at that sweetspot where you can single-handedly solve any problem of your party by scrolling through your massive spellbook, you can think back at how you earned every single bit of that smug.
I don’t find the concept of starting at a high level appealing. Level 3 dumps so much information on a new player, that it quickly overwhelms them. The three experienced players who had to retire their character in my campaigns, also didn’t enjoy their new PCs starting at level 14, just to catch up with the rest of the group. It cuts out the time you need to grow fond of your character. And it does kinda feel like cheating (I’m not playing until I get that paladin oath/those fighter maneuvers/the monk’s Deflect Missiles).
I understand that there are people who want to fireball things right now, but as there’s no actual point to D&D, the journey itself is its own reward and you’re deliberately cutting parts of that journey by leaving the starting levels out.
I’d propose the middle path of every single PC starting out with a feat.
Speaking as a perennial DM, I enjoy starting characters at 3rd level not just because they don’t feel like they’ll die in a stiff breeze, but so I can throw more interesting adversaries at them. There are only so many ways to spin rats, 1st-level humanoids, and other things that don’t have any more interesting options than the players.
I am glad for more recent versions often having canaries so you don’t just have one spell and then be a really bad dagger wielder the rest of the day.
Did you mean cantrips? Not gonna lie, though; I like that mental image of wizards getting battle canaries as familiars.
“Go, Cheepatrice! Get that goblin, then sing him a nice dirge!”
Autocorrect got me. Cantrips yes.
Next mage is going to be a mountain dwarf mage with his people’s traditional familiar though.
Intellectually, I prefer starting at level 1 (in 5e, since that’s the system I’m familiar with). I can understand why others might want to start at different levels — in my group’s campaign, our rogue did get knocked down by a goblin crit in the first round of the first combat (she survived, though, because everybody else had her back and dropping to 0 isn’t as lethal as in some of the older editions). Plus, the one-shot I played a hobo wizard in started everybody at level 3 and that was still fun.
I guess I just prefer the idea of experiencing the entirety of a character’s journey, despite how a run of bad luck might result in a new character.
The first couple levels aren’t bad… it’s just that when there’s a significantly increased chance of death by a hilariously bad accident prior to actually getting attached to your character, there’s greater chance that the group may fall apart. Plus there is so little you can actually do those first couple of levels. You have almost no hit points, hardly any spells, and no gold for the equipment you need.
However, I think that with a solid group that you’re pretty sure will stick together but that are perhaps not as familiar with the mechanics of their character yet as they should be, starting from level 1 isn’t a bad idea.
Between the fragility of starting at first level, and my own poor ability at judging proper challenge ratings I had a lot of TPKs when I started out. Fortunately being the GM, I could just say that the players were captured instead.
It became so common that my returning players would tell new ones not to worry and just to expect to lose the first few encounters because that was how I set up my plot hooks. I did not correct them, though I did try harder to set up proper combat encounters that were in line with the player’s abilities.
I eventually got out of that phase not because I got better at combat planning, but because I got bored of running level 1 characters every time, and started campaigns out at higher levels.
Low hit points, no real weapon proficiency, and the Vancian magic system made low level mages a real challenge to play.
I remember playing a mage who would routinely not engage the enemy. After all, when your so frail a stiff breeze could kill you, it’s best to remain unnoticed.
However, my GM would refuse to award me experience. When I asked why, he said that if I don’t participate, I don’t get xp. And no amount of arguing about my character having trouble tearing wet tissue paper would persuade him.
So I started throwing rocks. Yep, rocks. And sure, it lacked the flashiness of swinging cold sharp steel. And was typically less effective than if I had chosen to just insult the enemy. But it worked. I got my experience.
It was this experience that makes me ever so glad that up and coming wizards now days have access to attack cantrips. Young apprentices have no idea how easy they got it!
I have found that, while Pathfinder 1st Edition has one of the worst 1st level experiences in tabletop that I’ve played (Granted, I have limited experience and haven’t played the old editions where things like d4 hit die were a thing), both its 3pp subsystem Spheres of Power / Might and Pathfinder 2nd edition have WILDLY better low level experiences.
I actually run into the opposite problem with Spheres of Power and Might, where I go to start picking features for level 2+ and go ‘wait, my build is… already functional? I don’t need random feats to survive at a core level?’
and end up making weird hodge-podge builds where I take features because they look neat, not because they make me better.
pathfinder 2nd has a really nice low level experience for a similar reason; builds just… kinda work, even at low levels. Even fighter has interesting options at low levels with things like Raise Shield, or Sudden Charge. The days of ‘I step into melee and full-attack’ from level 1 to level 20 are gone, now.
The things I dislike about 1st level starts – A) people have only slightly better skills than untrained amateurs. Original D&D was much worse than later iterations in this respect, but rpg’s still often make success at a basic level a much more difficult proposition than is needful. There’s little point to having a discussion of skills/careers/professions when the odds actually determine outcomes. B) Many campaigns’ stories are essentially “coming-of-age” plot lines, and Piers Anthony’s Xanth fantasy book series, for example, illustrates the shortcomings of said technique. The first book in the series was fine, but the next thirty or so reworkings really were yawn inducing. Star Wars’ A New Hope was an ok B movie, but the Phantom Menace was a horrible piece of crap even though both told essentially the same coming of age story. Experienced players do not need repeated practice in getting their first big break in the World of Adventure.
I mean, it’s not a problem in Pathfinder 2
That would be why I linked to the pf2 SRD in the blog. 😉
But more generally, I think it’s a mistake to think of this as a “problem.” It’s a design choice, and the the cost of survivability is the feeling of accomplishment when you do survive low level long enough to attain ultimate cosmic power. For a lot of gamers that’s an easy choice to make. But I suspect that the OSR folks have other opinions on the subject.
It is a problem when you get a “Backwards difficulty curve”. Games should get harder as you get to later content. The inverse just creates a high barrier to entry.
Yet character funnels are a blast to play.
Again, the key is to think about give and take in design, not finding the one “correct” solution.
Not gonna lie, at first glance I thought this was one of those eccentric mages protecting their spellbook by putting deadly sigils on every page ending in “2” so they know which to skip.
Then I saw the finger blood and thought maybe it was poison ink.
Then finally, I saw the page corner, and realized Wiz was at 1hp and got a papercut.
This happened in the span of a few miliseconds, and my compliments go to Laurel for this wonderful whodunnit art piece. Every stroke, a mystery.
Ran a level 1 adventure recently that lasted five sessions. I just included two level 1 NPCs as extra party members, and had the enemies attack them first. They actively made bad decisions that made enemies target them, like running out in front and readying an action to attack the first enemy to enter their threat range, and thus they served as HP buffers for the PCs. They had low damage output and annoying personalities, so their entire purpose was to make it feel like the game was deadly in that way that I actually really appreciate about low level games – just not deadly to the players. Losing the NPC allies would make the game get a lot tougher, though, so the players worked hard to keep them alive.
Well, it turns out they worked too hard. Also three of the four players were melee characters. So when one of the players sacrificed herself to protect one of the NPCs, I just sighed in disbelief and told the player that she had her choice of which NPC she wanted to play as her new character for the rest of the adventure.
4th edition is really good about this. You start with a couple of class features, a solid suite of powers (including a racial power), and your Con score added to HP.
So not only are you not nearly as squishy (and dedicated tanks actually feel tanky), there’s none of that waiting until level 3 to actually feel like a competent member of your class instead of some apprentice in way over their head.
I personally think everyone should start D&D with premade characters, and specifically have the DM willing to kill you when you make stupid choices and don’t take any of the hints the DM drops you. There are still plenty of people who are used to being able to restart in video games, or think they have plot armor like the anime they watched. Dissuading them of that notion with characters they DIDN’T spend hours putting together will still help them learn that important lesson of “You CAN die permanently” without completely ruining the game for them.
When I started my first session as Derrik Darkluster; Gentleman Adventurer!(tm) I had already DMed the module before. I also realized that I had designed him to multiclass, which provided a great deal of both offense and defense, none of which kicked in by level 1. Despite that, he was the type to take the initiative and take the lead even in a risky situation.
I had been racking my brains to figure out how he would survive BEING on the front when the first encounter kicked off, and sure enough, Derrik Darkluster; Gentleman Adventurer!(tm) was downed in the first 2 shots fired. Fortunately the Paladin opted to come with, and brought him back up from 0.
That said, even 3rd level doesn’t always help. Our mage thought he was sitting pretty with a staff of defense, but that doesn’t do much good against an Orc rolling a brutal critical with max damage. Max HP past 0 = permadeath, which our mage found out the hard way.
Well, 1st level is better to show new players from a steady progression having a few features and go bit by bit scaling, 2nd level I see at the point where you get some useful features but are still weak but not so much to get 1 crit kill which sucks pretty badly and over 3rd level is if you want a fully fleshed adventurer that’s quite hardy and also everyone has the subclasses. I pwrsonally prefer 2nd level so that I can put certain monsters to send chills down their spine or at least more than 4-5 goblins