D&D 5E Starter Set Tweak -- Starting at a higher level

If you start at level one in 5E (and 0E, 1E, 2E and a lesser extent 3E) just assume everything is more powerful than you and you won't go far wrong. 5E is closer to 3E, but the older editions is was ever so easy to die with one hit. So do everything you can to level up without ever being in the position to need to see if you can take that hit. Trick, cheat, circumvent, run from opponents. Use the environment to your advantage. Get allies (henchmen or negotiate with other monsters) - Charisma was the god stat in 0E!

Once you hit 3rd level (and even Gary Gygax himself often started characters there) go back and pound on those goblins... as long as you outnumber them and they have treasure worth taking.

Start each encounter at full hit points. Each encounter in the starter module assumes the party has full hit points. A total party kill is more likely if you don't. 5E is deadly like 1E.

I have come to the realisation that the chances of a TPK in the starter set are largely down to the actions the party decide to take.

I say this as a totally new DM after having run 3 2-3 hour sessions of LMoP for my wife and two kids (7 & 10) who have never played a session of DnD (or any other RPG) prior to this.

Having watched some various "play throughs" (WoTC, RollPlay one shot & few others I can't recall right now) and read some recaps (CMG Mark, MerricB and others) of the adventure I was worried how the kids would handle a PC death.
So what I did was buff their HPs up another hit die average (5 for a d8, etc.).

What happened instead was they acted as if they had been playing these types of games for years.
Not only did they not get dropped to 0 HP, the only one to even take any significant damage was the mute dwarf fighter DMPC who ran into melee for any fight he could find.
The PCs didn't even take any damage until the last room of the second set of encounters (trying not to cause any spoilers) when the cleric took a bite to the neck. That was it, a single hit against a PC in three sessions of level 1 play.

What they did was to continually move in stealth, look for ambushes and traps, interrogate (nicely if possible) every enemy they could capture, calm any animals they could and they were smart with how they went about combat (getting surprise rounds in on every encounter but the first, which they managed to mostly not get surprised by).

Surprise rounds a major factor in combat.
At least during the early levels, but I assume later as well.

It got to the point were I was questioning myself (new DM) as to whether I was being too nice to the PCs. But after going over how everything occurred I'm mostly just pretty proud with how they handled things.

tl;dr: "lethality" of the starter set is mostly set by whether Players decide to blunder into each encounter without thinking about stealth/traps/surprise/etc.

There is an argument that new players generally have an expectation that life is dangerous - a dagger will kill you, and react accordingly.

It is often established gamers who have expectations of being able to shrug off anything short of an airstrike because - 'Hit Points', and react accordingly.

jadrax said:

There is an argument that new players generally have an expectation that life is dangerous - a dagger will kill you, and react accordingly.

It is often established gamers who have expectations of being able to shrug off anything short of an airstrike because - 'Hit Points', and react accordingly.

Click to expand...

Huh, had not thought of it that way.
That would mostly fit with what I have seen and what I have experienced... ha.