D&D 5E Training Wheels

[Black_Staff]

I have recently started a new game with my friends. They are relatively new players and i am still a relatively new DM. My experience as a player has taught me that one of the most discouraging things that can happen is to lose a character that you put a lot of thought and time into creating before you had a chance to see what he can do. With that in mind, i have instituted a training wheels system in my game. it not impossible to die in my game, since stupidity is the silent killer, but it is very difficult in the first three levels. in my experience, one of the failings of 5e is that fights at the earliest levels are either patronizingly easy or ridiculously hard. I believe that training wheels benefits the players by giving them a safety net and helps the DM by allowing him to make fun encounters without worrying if he is going to murder his fresh group of noobs. as an example, i have put a river and lake with healing properties in a central location on my map. the map is big enough that they will need to venture away from it to make progress, but it is there. i couldn't find a better way to keep from discouraging my players without overtly intervening. does anybody else have any comments or ideas of their own?

 

[iserith]

I have recently started a new game with my friends. They are relatively new players and i am still a relatively new DM. My experience as a player has taught me that one of the most discouraging things that can happen is to lose a character that you put a lot of thought and time into creating before you had a chance to see what he can do. With that in mind, i have instituted a training wheels system in my game. it not impossible to die in my game, since stupidity is the silent killer, but it is very difficult in the first three levels. in my experience, one of the failings of 5e is that fights at the earliest levels are either patronizingly easy or ridiculously hard. I believe that training wheels benefits the players by giving them a safety net and helps the DM by allowing him to make fun encounters without worrying if he is going to murder his fresh group of noobs. as an example, i have put a river and lake with healing properties in a central location on my map. the map is big enough that they will need to venture away from it to make progress, but it is there. i couldn't find a better way to keep from discouraging my players without overtly intervening. does anybody else have any comments or ideas of their own?

The easiest way to take death off the table without cheapening the challenge or reducing the difficulty is to just make the stakes about something other than life or death. The first step in thinking about how to set up scenes this way is to consider the goals of the monsters (or NPCs or villains or opposition or whatever). Most DMs in my experience will set the goal of the monster as "Kill All Player Characters." But that's easily changed to something else.

For example, the opening scene of Lost Mine of Phandelver has four goblins attacking the characters. The "safety valve" on that encounter is that the goblins do not kill the characters - only knock them out and take their stuff. What if instead, the goblins had no vested interest in killing the characters at all and only wanted to rob them. Imagine how much different that scene would turn out. The challenge level would remain, but the threat of death would be off the table. Take a look at how I set up this scene here. If the PCs win, they defeat the goblins and don't lose any of their goods. If they lose, they're in the hole to their quest-giver for a certain amount of gold.

How about this one? The Temple of Bazim-Gorag. Here, the slaadi have no interest in killing (most) PCs. They want to implant eggs in them instead and then let them go. So if the PCs win, they get the treasure at the heart of the temple. If they lose, they're now on a timer to get rid of those eggs or die an Alien-style death sometime soon. This gives them time to reverse their losses.

So that's my solution to the deadliness of lower levels - change the stakes! Once they've left the apprentice tier, then it's good to keep having these sorts of scenes, but also mix in ones where life and death are on the line.

 

[neobolts]

Having played 5e Lost Mine of Phandelver and now DMing a homebrew, the low level deadliness is certainly an issue.

1. Be ready for one hit kills.
   I'm worried the healing river ain't going to save them, as the big issue I've found is one hit kills. A CR 1 bugbear critical is insanely deadly...20 average dmg, easily enough to kill a level 1 wizard. You may just have to fudge a die roll or two behind the screen (assuming you are ok with that) or avoid/houserule certain mobs.
2. Try soft scaling the encounter.
   Another tactic is to use waves of enemies to meet your needs, start with 1 or 2 enemies and have more join until the fight "feels" fair.
3. Telegraph the hell out of the upcoming nasty fights.
   I have my players (5x 2nd level) about to do the final encounter in The Buisiness of Emotion from En5sider. It looks potentially TPK if they simply go in guns blazing without a strategy. So every NPC they talk to showers the PCs with rumors about the final boss and how deadly they are in a head-on fight.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I have recently started a new game with my friends. They are relatively new players and i am still a relatively new DM. My experience as a player has taught me that one of the most discouraging things that can happen is to lose a character that you put a lot of thought and time into creating before you had a chance to see what he can do.

One way around that is the old "don't name your character until 5th level" meme (honestly, I don't remember that being tossed around back in the day, but some folks swear it was).

5e presents some nice, thought-provoking RP hooks in Ideals/Flaws/Bonds and Backgrounds, but actually using them all can create a little too much player buy-in while characters are still fragile. You could hold off on introducing those mechanics (other than Backgrounds) until they've survived Apprentice Tier.

With that in mind, i have instituted a training wheels system in my game. it not impossible to die in my game, since stupidity is the silent killer, but it is very difficult in the first three levels. in my experience, one of the failings of 5e is that fights at the earliest levels are either patronizingly easy or ridiculously hard.

It's an issue with the encounter design guidelines, yes, they don't give terribly consistent results. You'll get more of a feel for encounter design as you gain DMing experience...

as an example, i have put a river and lake with healing properties in a central location on my map. the map is big enough that they will need to venture away from it to make progress, but it is there. i couldn't find a better way to keep from discouraging my players without overtly intervening. does anybody else have any comments or ideas of their own?

Some possibilities:

• Start at 3rd level.
• Start at 4th level.
• Start at 5th level.
• Give 1st level characters HD + CON score hps, instead of CON mod. (But CON mod thereafter.)
• Give all characters proficiency in all saves.
• Don't roll monster damage.
• Play monsters a little 'dumb' - most notably, don't focus fire, and don't prioritize attacking the party healers and casters, just charge up and fight the toughest melee-types.
• Give PCs more HD (as a healing resource) at 1st level. 3 HD instead of 1, for instance.
• Reduce the time needed for a short rest (to 5 or 10 minutes, say), make it automatic at the end of every combat, or just pace things so that there's often an hour between combats, so they can use said HD.
• Let PCs 'rally' as an action, and spend HD.
• Maximize HD used in a short rest (but roll them for the above 'rally').
• Fudge rolls, number of monsters, and monster HD on the fly to keep encounters feeling challenging, while pulling back difficulty if the PCs get in trouble.
• Just play a different game/edition that is more forgiving at 1st level and easier to DM, then migrate to 5e when you've gotten the group established.

 

[doctorhook]

Levels 1-3 in 5E aren't so bad, but characters initial HP totals are so low that everybody is hella squishy. In my group, I've been giving everybody their first three levels of HP right off the bat: calculate HP as if they'd level'd up to 3, even though the characters are at 1. When they finally do reach 2nd level, they get everything except new HP; ditto 3rd level. Once they reach 4th level, characters gain new hit points as normal.

In my experience, character death isn't necessarily the worst thing. The true worst thing is an unfair character death, where the player doesn't feel like they had a reasonable shot at winning. "Loaning" some extra HP early on definitely helps players get a chance to earn their characters' deaths...which can be pretty satisfying if the players are psychologically prepared.

 

[fba827]

Hmm

Taken to an extreme
As the basis for the campaign maybe anytime they die ( so this extends beyond just apprentice levels) they awaken in a large nearby body of salt water without their equipment (the loss of equipment being the 'penalty') and maybe they don't awaken right away if you want some time delay. Like the next morning or the next midnight. And then tie that yo an overarching story idea that really they are send by or children of gods of some immortals sent to the material plane to learn humility or to learn about mortals or just to champion for the obvious weaker mortality. And so in addition to whatever other story idea the pcs can have side quests trying to understand what makes them so different. ( it becomes part of the mystery if the players don't know anything about this special ability of theirs only learning about it after th first occurrence). Of course be sure to include some kind of penalty, such as the equipment loss, else it'll get abused at some point with purposeful kamakaze actions and such depending on your players.




Or taken to a much smaller scale...
when starting their quest have some benefactor give them each some special item. Give it some small constant property ( maybe fire resistance) and then when the wearer dies, they burst into flame and ashes and rise back the next round - Ie thematically the item has Phoenix properties. And it's a one time use consumable for each pc

 

[bgbarcus]

I prefer to start new L1 parties in outdoor settings. That typically gives them only one or two encounters per long rest as opposed to dungeons that can easily overwhelm low level parties. The outdoor encounters also lend themselves to the waves of enemies mentioned earlier. If two goblins is too easy, have a third start shooting arrows as it catches up to the two scouts. Having the extra monsters attacking at range also leaves the door open for the party to flee as soon as the hand-to-hand fight ends.

The other thing to remember is that losing a 1st-3rd level character is far easier to accept than a higher level character. Those training wheels could easily prevent your players from gaining the experience they need to protect their characters at higher levels.

To mitigate the disruption of losing a character, I prefer to have each character hire a henchman early one, even at 1st level. That henchman is run mostly as a second character by the player. I step in if the henchman is being sent into unreasonable danger as cannon fodder or otherwise abused but that is very rare. The players get to design their henchman so the NPC can be a ready replacement if the PC dies. It also allows players who decide their original character isn't as fun as they hoped to retire that character and switch to the henchman without disrupting party continuity. Such switches have happened three times over the last year in my campaign.

 

[Unwise]

For new players, I borrow from Firefly. At zero HP you are "out of the scene", that is it. Any death or other consequence happens as a result at the end of the scene, based on the logical outcomes and cinematic/story needs.

 

[Gronin]

I had been thinking that it was actually fairly hard to lose a character in 5th. Barring catastrophic damage you would have to fail three death saves (or two if you manage to sneak a 1 in there) which should give ample time for a party member to do something about your condition.

Compare this to some of the earliest editions where 0 was dead and gone and this isn't too bad.

Personally as a player I don't mind the fear that comes with being squishy. Of course for me the tone was set in my first session (35 or so years ago) when my very first character lasted 15 minutes (and he was the last one standing).

 

[Dausuul]

Provide a limited-use resurrection magic item with, say, 5 charges.