Everyone starts at 1st level

Mallus said:

Out of curiosity, why is it important for characters to start at 1st level?

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Organic character growth and history in a long-term campaign. It's not essential that pcs start at first level, but I vastly prefer it, and it is simply not viable in 3rd and later editions. (In 1st and 2nd it actually worked out pretty well, although much better in 1st than in 2nd.)

Everyone that comes to the game should have fun, if your starting someone at first when everyone else is higher in level, your basically penalizing them for being new to the game.

I don't really think that there's a way to make it fun for the low level guy either, practically every combat is an instant death situation for him.
So, not only does have to deal with the confusion of starting in a new campaign, but he also has to deal with being almost compleatly useless in combat.

It's a lame old school practice that needs to die and stay dead.

I disagree. Old school games are more about exploration than combat, and a 10th level pc is no better than a first in this regard. It's not for everyone, but deveoping a character from scratch is often more fun than starting at 6th level.

I'd say if both the DM and Players were up for the challenge and agree it would be fun it could work. It would be a lot of work though. The DM would need to constantly need to find challenges for the various players at different levels. And the players would have to enjoy taking on the "non-big combat" challenges. I've seen it work, but I do not think the mechanics should be changed if this is your goal. It means constantly tinkering with the encounters.

The 1st and 10th level character should stay out of the level 20 fight. They probably shouldn't even be in the same dungeon. They should go off to keep the kobold from running with the key information while the big boys keep the dragon busy or smooze with the local law to make sure the rest of the party who is off saving the world on another plane doesn't come home to find their lands have been confiscated. Personally I find constantly coming up with split party challenges is very draining, especially for the DM. YMMV.

While I have done this in the past it is not always the game I want to play. I'd be sure the DM and Players are all excited about the concept before making a go of it. I had a blast keeping my low level character alive, but I was also charged up when the next campaign started as now I could join the big boy fights.

As others suggested a game system with a small power curve over time helps with this as well. WHFR & CoC come to mind as the best examples I can think of.

As a player I *much* prefer starting at 1st level, whenever possible. Carefully done, (and with right players and campaign), mixing and matching levels is viable in any version, and could be a great story hook to boot. Mixing levels seems like it would be particularly easy to do in 4e, since the math is so rigid.

Some good suggestions were already in terms of having lower level enemies for the lower level folks to fight, etc. But also consider having places for the lower level characters to take cover, (to boost AC and possibly minimize the number of enemies that would engage).

Also, you may also have a kit for the new meat: an item to boost AC, and/or Fort, Will, Ref, attacks, or something to give an extra daily--anything that would get the new player closer to par with the rest of the group and help him or her to survive. Just have one of the higher-level players toss it to the new one with a "Here, kid. You're gonna need this stuff to survive. But its only a loaner!"

the Jester said:

How would you need to change the game to keep it fun for everyone if you wanted all pcs to start at 1st level, even if the party was significantly higher level?

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Back in my AD&D days, this was what we always did. Start a new character and join in, that's 1st level.

The whole thing about starting PCs at the level of the party, or one level behind or whatever came around in 3e, for the groups I played with anyway.

It was viable compared to later editions of D&D for several reasons:

1. The XP handed out in higher level games meant that lower level PCs would level up very rapidly. In the first D&D campaign I ever played in, I joined a game with 9 PC's averaging about 12th level. I leveled up once per session for the rest of the campaign, when my PC was 14th level.

2. Damage totals were lower, especially melee damage, meaning that PC's were less likely to be killed in one hit even in higher level games. My first PC, the one from the above example, was a Cleric who started with 8 HP, and since the Death's Door (aka -10) rule was in effect, she wouldn't die until she hit -10. In practice this meant that most times monsters hit her she would be at critically low HP or knocked out, but she wasn't killed because the number of monsters that could do 18 or more points of damage in 1 hit in AD&D was pretty small. You had a non-negligible chance of not being killed outright by a min-strength 5d6 Fireball or Lightning Bolt, and you could probably soak up a casting of Magic Missile without dying. This meant my PC was getting knocked out a lot, but I was still getting lots of XP and certainly enough to level.

3. We didn't use miniatures, thus in a more narrative-oriented combat it was accepted, even expected for the less powerful PC's to state that they were standing back out of the fight and just running up briefly to heal or something, or staying in the middle of the group if it was a large melee. The DM accepted this and the monsters generally attacked the fighter-types that were attacking back unless it was a huge mob of monsters (like an orc horde or waves of zombies or something) where there were enough to attack everybody.

Thanee said:

In D&D (and similar class/level-based games) this simply does not work (well).

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No, it works great. This is how I run Empire of the Petal Throne (1975/OD&D) and I haven't gotten any complaints.

In the rules, you gain levels based on accumulating Experience Points. These come from two sources: killing monsters (not much) and gaining gold (a ton).

So far, the experience has been that "rookies" have to hang back for an adventure or two and do ancillary tasks: provide supporting fire with missile weapons, guard the flank/rear, use flaming oil (a big tactical component in many battles), hold the light sources and provide additional knowledge (such as languages not already covered in the party).

After a couple adventures, the XP rewards that roll in from the large amounts of treasure bump them way up there. I would expect a rookie to gain a level every couple of sessions on average... sometimes one might gain nearly two levels in a single session.

Very soon, rookies get up to speed and become second-stringers. And soon after that, they're first-stringers just like the old veterans.

Seriously, I think that most people who think this would be a problem are either playing a new school game (no XP for treasure) or have just never really tried it in the first place.

I think that the old-school play technique of "hang around behind all of the tough characters and contribute in minor or nearly meaningless ways" would still work in 4e. A 1st level PC doesn't need much XP to level up, and the character would probably catch up to the others relatively quickly, at least in the heroic tier. Maybe give them a couple of higher-level magic items to help compensate; consider them family heirlooms and remove them from whatever treasure parcels are given out until they've been "paid off."

I've never been a fan of this approach, and I was always allowing new characters (whether new players or replacing a character who died) to start at one level below the party average way back in 1e and BECM games. A new player just trying out the game is likely to get extremely bored hanging around watching everybody else play for the first few sessions; I'd hate to have a potential new player give up on the game because they never had a chance to experience what gameplay was actually like. But I've also lost much of my "make the players work for it" mentality as I've gotten older. Back when we were all in high school and playing every week (or more often), I was often hesitant to "give away stuff for free." Now that we're in our thirties, most of us married, some of us with kids, and all working full-time, we can actually get together once or twice a month to play and I want those sessions to have as high a "concentration of fun" as possible. I don't want anyone sitting around without being able to contribute meaningfully for even one game session, as it seems disrespectful of that person's time to penalize him because his character died or he had to miss four sessions in a row because of family or work commitments.

Not trying to get into wrongbadfun accusations here; I just really dislike the idea now.

I would question how it provides organic character and history building when the character will basically be going from a 1st-level nobody to a hero of the caliber of the rest of the party at the likely rate of one level every session (or two as he catches up). There are already a lot of complaints about how quickly PCs level up in 3e and 4e and how it's not very believable for characters to go from peon to superhero in a year of game time; I find that starting at 1st level with a party of higher level PC and catching up strains the suspension of disbelief even more.

Hmm from my point of view I don't see the point in starting a character at a lower level/points total than the rest of the crew.

The organic experience I get is from leveling up with a party all together from 1-6 is from the shared experience of it, not the leveling process on its own.

I'm 1st and the rest of the party are superheroes at 20th of so, erm no thanks.
The only way I would be willing to do this is if it was for roleplaying reasons or the lower level character had some kind of massive advantage that the higher level characters didn't (political influence, speaking/reading an ancient language, having more money that god etc.) preferably both.

I like everyone in a party to have their unique niche of what they are good at at such a level disparity without an extreme advantage Mr low level xp will only have the niche of being sucky

This is a serious game. (NSFW language)

I really can't see starting well below the rest of the party working real well in 3e or 4e. Even though you tend to asymptotically approach the level of everyone else, you'll always be behind. You're also easier to hit, quicker to die, do less damage, have lower skill abilities, etc. In fact, based on skills, there's little reason for an N+10 level party to take in an Nth level adventurer. The non-trained abilities of the party will be pretty close to the trained level abilities of the new adventurer. At best I could see it working only with <5 levels difference, at which point there's not much of a point to begin with.

That said, I could see possibly doing something like treating the character as having amnesia. Every fight or so, the character recovers more of his memories and abilities such that he effectively levels quickly. But this would be accelerated greatly from standard leveling (especially as he approached party level).