Everyday Paladin
First Post
In my campaign I'm planning on doing something close to this (everyone will start at level 3 no matter what), but I also plan on giving everyone double XP if anyone in the party is higher level than them and triple if they are the lowest overall. The flavor is that they learn much faster with experienced people around to teach them. With that amount of bonus, new characters should be able to catch up pretty quickly.
If the party average gets to be around 7 or so, I'll probably up the starting level for new characters so they aren't so terribly behind. That will be a bit before I need to deal with, though.
I'm not a fan. Currently I'm 7th level in a campaign. We've had a lot of people join at 1st level as we adventure. Invariably, they either hang out near the back and cringe in fear from danger for the first session, simply trying to survive without being noticed,then auto-level to 3rd from their "share" of the XP. Then they try (and fail) to play a useful role as we are fighting monsters they cannot harm much at all (oh that isn't a magic weapon? Sorry, the monster pretty much ignores it). They invariably take a single hit and get hurled across the room into unconsciousness and death saves (everyone's idea of a good time). After their "share" of XP, they invariably level again, but the contribution of eating a single attack from an enemy is off-set by other group members having to use their actions to keep that character alive and also other group members getting less XP for the privilege because it is divided up more ways.
I am also not a fan because after seeing this, I know I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT to be in the boat that these PCs are in. I've thought "I have this cool alternate character idea in mind, but I cannot dare switch from my 7th level character because I'd be forced to start at 1st." If my PC dies without chance for raise dead, and I had no choice but to start over, I'd be tempted to quit, because "no gaming is better than bad gaming" and from what I've seen (and this is my experience, do not try to deny my experience of what I've actually seen in games I've played), nothing is suckier than being 1st level in a party of higher level people. Constantly failing at everything is not fun. Constantly making death saves and feeling like a drain on the party's XP and resources is not fun. The "Real Role players" may call me a "munchkin" for that, but I want to play BIG DAMN HEROES not someone who needs to be babysat.
Starting at 1st level is great and fine; when everyone else is also 1st or 2nd. But past that, it is a real drag, from my perspective as a player in a campaign using this rule (though I've been fortunate enough to not be on the receiving end of it).
I am in total agreement. The novelty of playing the squire, apprentice or whatnot is far outweighed by the problems you addressed above. This is definitely not for me. I'd have to respectfully decline playing if I had to start over with an arbitrary (in my opinion) level penalty after losing my original PC.