D&D is not a supers game.

[Mercutio01]

[MENTION=7175]jadrax[/MENTION] - Those aren't the only two options. You could make the woodland critter even below the base power. You could have a house-cat that is effectively a minion. You could not sweat the small stuff and just leave it out of the mechanics entirely. There are other options. And of the two you list, I'd pick option a). But given my druthers, I'd probably do something like my option a or b.

 

[jadrax]

"Needing squirrel space underneath them" is perhaps the most poetic explanation of this I've ever seen.

*bows*, I thank you.

It just goes to show what you can achieve by posting at 3am with far to few cups of tea.

 

[molepunch]

Sorry OP I'm with Dannager too. Let your taste for grittiness be an option and not the core rules. The crowd that likes the grittiness and challenge is more niche, I reckon. I also feel like there's some level of gaming elitism going on.

It's like saying we are too soft to play "real" D&D so "go ahead and give yourselves some handicap and bump your happy selves up to level 7 where the at-will magic missiles and Reaper features are... Me? I'll frakking EARN my level 7 thank you very much. *epeen*"



The way I see it, you start off with a Class and that already implies a local hero of some measure in terms of capabilities. Normal Joes don't even have a Class.

It's fine to have zero to hero tastes though. I certainly enjoy it.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

This is a distinction without a difference. If you start at Power Level X and later reach Power Level Z, then you've earned Power Level Z.

You might as well ask, "Why do 1st level character start out already knowing how to use weapons or cast spells?"

You're not making a broad argument about "earning" power. You're making a targeted argument about how MUCH power they should have to begin with.

Actually I am. I am arguing that I want to start with very little and then earn more power as I gain levels.

 

[Li Shenron]

Yeah, everybody knows roleplaying isn't important at 1st level!

I mean, what?

Really? You're tired of it? I'd love it if my players invested time into their PC's like that. If it was super-duper deadly, 1 bite from a rat kills you, well I'd expect them to play paper-thin PC's and be bored as a DM with no hooks to draw from.

I didn't really write anything extraordinary with that sentence... It just means that when players overdo their characters' "great personality and background" (and by the way, writing the personality and background is not really roleplay, it's character design, but of course it's very much part of the game) maybe they should be reminded that if they're playing at 1st-level their personality and background is going to come from how they play (i.e. roleplay indeed) the upcoming adventures... If you want to play someone with the character and history of a king, perhaps you should consider higher level play.

Lethality however is truly orthogonal. You can have a high-mortality game at low level which becomes low-mortality at high level (like some older editions) or viceversa. One way to adjust lethality is just to control the size and CR of encounters and their frequency per day, or tinker with treasure/wealth levels.

What I'm trying to say (and I wonder how many times do I really need to rephrase that...) is that the only problem is at the "floor", the 1st level, where I think that there is absolutely no need for the designers to give too much stuff at once to the characters, except for non-design motivations (read: marketing). Giving too much stuff and too high survivability just takes away one valid gaming experience, that of what used to be the typical dire situation of a 1st-level D&D PC in earlier editions, with their combination of limited resources, low flexibility and higher risk of death. Why removing that option for the game? The opposite option would still be there after a couple of levels, and is generally easier to house rule than removing stuff (although not impossible, and the 5e draft it seems indeed easier than 3e to remove some stuff as a house rule).

IYKWIMAITYD

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

2¢.

For me, powerful options for D&D PCs are like properly seasoning a dish. If the dish tastes wrong, it is very easy to add seasoning, it is very difficult to take it out.

...Which is why I prefer a D&D where the default is 1st level characters that are only slightly more powerful than the commoners they protect; a game where Wizards are wary of cars and keep their crossbows in rop working order. A game like that can easily support characters who start a campaign at higher levels, like the original DarkSun.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The complexity of character creation created this need/desire to make character survivability a requirement. If you could knock out a character in 5-10 minutes without an online tool we would not be having this sort of conversation.

The two certainly go together, no question. Complex characters require a low lethality game, high lethality requires fast PC generation.

You can see signs of increasing PC complexity as far back as 1e, with weapon proficiencies, secondary skills, and methods of attribute generation that involve more dice rolling than 3d6 in order. 1e PCs also have more survivability than in OD&D, as death is no longer at zero hit points.

But it's the Dragonlance style of Tolkien-esque epic quest play, that first appeared in published material in the early 80s, that most strongly requires a much lower lethality than traditional Gygaxian D&D. It should be noted that in DL1 Dragons of Despair the PCs all start at 5th level.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see what's wrong with having characters starting the heroism at level three. It's much easier for the DM to say, "We're going to start at a higher level" than it is for the DM to say, "We're going to start with half HP."

As someone else said, I don't see how one is harder then the other.

But I think it's a serious design flaw from the point of teachability to have the game start at a 1st level that will provide an unsatisfying play experience. Because every new player is going to begin at level 1. It's a natural and default starting point - if you weren't meant to start there, why would it be labelled "first"?

if we will ever see an official version of D&D where beginning characters are actually vulnerable in a fight again?

This is a red herring in my view. 4e PCs are highly vulnerable in fights at low levels - it's just that it will take multiple blows to drop them from full to zero hp. (Thereby reducing the Russian roulette factor.)

some players apparently don't feel fulfilled unless they are given a bunch of powers they feel they are entitled to from the get go.

Correct. When I sit down to play chess I don't feel fulfilled unless all the pieces are there (if I want to forfeit a piece, that's my choice).

When I sit down to play 500 or bridge, I don't feel fulfilled unless I'm dealt a complete hand.

Of course, whether I play chess well or poorly is independent of starting with all the pieces. And I've played cards with people who would barely know what to bid even if they picked up a single-suit, Ace-high hand.

But, as I said upthread and as others are saying, it's about having the necessary components of a PC to actually play the game as advertised!

Archetypes exist for a reason. When I choose to play a warrior type I'm saying I want to engage in meaningful combat encounters where my decisions have a direct bearing on the party's success. If an encounter is reduced to Russian Roulette where matters like target selection, choosing to stay back and ready an action to attack anything that comes near the wizard, etc. have no effect I'm not playing the game I signed up. When my rogue has no meaningful ability to sneak about or unlock traps I'm not playing a rogue. If the careful application of spells isn't meaningful than I'm not playing a wizard.

This is a big issue in B/X and AD&D. The Basic rulebook talks about Hercules and Merlin, but it is impossible to play such a character using those rules. Hercules cannot be one-shotted by a kobold, and Merlin is not a snivelling weakling who can cast a single (randomly determined) spell.

The foreword to the game even has a narrative about rescuing a princess by killing a fire-breathing dragon tyrant with a single swing of an enchanted sword - a feat that it is impossible to replicate using the game mechanics, given max damage would be 16 (10 for 2h sword +3 for enchantment +3 for STR) and no fire breathing dragon tyrant in the game is going to have so few hit points (I think red dragons in basic have 9 HD).

I'm condemning people for using this as a reason for refusing the allowance of lower-powered modes of play that used to be the norm at low levels in previous iterations of the game.

I'm happy to be frank about this: in my experience, 1st level play in B/X D&D and 1st ed AD&D sucks. The game expects you to fight (there are fights within the first couple of rooms in the examples of play in both sets of rulebooks, and most of the rules are about fighting) but you don't have enough hit points to confidently have your PC enter a fight. A wizard has almost no magic. And a thief's success chance for special abilities is crap (AD&D is a bit better here with DEX and racial bonuses). In AD&D (but not B/X) a 1st level fighter also has the worst saves of any character.

Just making it to second level doubles your hit points. Making it to 3rd level gets fighter (in AD&D, at least) onto a better attack chart and a better saving throw chart.

The one time I really enjoyed a 1st level AD&D PC was in 2nd ed. But that PC was an uber-cleric built using the broken rules from Skills and Powers. So although I was technically 1st level, in functional terms I was probably closer to 3rd in all respects but hp (eg I had access to Evocation spells while using a cleric's spell table, including bonus spells for WIS; and the +/-2 to stat rules ensured that my relevant WIS score was 18).

I would strongly encourage the designers to avoid building a game which will repicate classic 1st level D&d play as the default.

It's also conflating Characters and Players. I am a fat nerd sitting at a table rolling dice and eating Cheesy-Poofs. Bruno the Warrior is an imaginary character being put into motion by said overweight nerd - his choices driven for the sake of entertainment and constrained by all manner of meta-level concerns and mechanics. Bruno is an imaginary engine to pretend at heroism. At best he's the Lone Ranger a character in a story. He doesn't really earn anything - it's a contrivance. I'm a gamer rolling dice - I certainly didn't earn any status on my end either.

<snip>

Simulating an arc of dirt-grubbing peasant to competent warrior in our little game of imaginary men and plastic polyhedrons is all well and good. It's for amusement purposes only, after all.

Nicely put.

 

[pemerton]

And I am sometimes tired of players who invent a great personality and background... for a freakin' 1st level PC!

When I learned D&D (3 beige books plus Greyhawk) we would make 20 characters at once, and we never named them until they made second level, because most of them never did. Yeah, magical times, but remember that at the time we were also pretty amazed by Pong. I'm not interested in going back to that

In the first game I ever GMed, my brother rolled up 14 PCs, and named them all after the character in the hobbit.

Only 1 survived to 2nd level. Thus, it came about that the lead PC in that game was "Gloin Baggins".

As you say, magical times that I never want to go back to!

The PCs are, according to the rules, veterans. But they have the lowest available stats on the scale because they are basically footmen from Chainmail and that's as low as that system ever needed to go.

The problem is, stuff then gets added to the game which chainmail never needed.

<snip>

So either, you end up living with house-cats that can mechanically take on a wizard in a fair fight, or you lift the PCs starting level a bit so there is squirrel space underneath them. Out of these two, I take option b every time.

Good post.

To me, even high lethality, highly gamist old school D&D (the style I'm intending to run next) isn't grim-n-gritty.

I've been re-reading Best of White Dwarf scenarios (copyright 1980 - I assume they're from the first dozen or so numbers of the magazine).

Don Turnbull has a dungeon where there is an "immovable" statue, and underneath the statue a dial marked from 120 to 400. The numbers represent total STR points required to move the statue, and the design intention is that when the players work this out, and move the dial down to 120, they will be able to get enough STR together to move the statue (a party size of 8+ is assumed).

That's highly gamist, but it's not remotely gritty!

There are a number of other scenarios in the collection that are much closer to Whiteplume Mountain then to Runequest. The exceptions, unsurprisingly enough, are the Runequest, Chivalry & Sorcery and Traveller encounters. These are much grittier. (And the C&S one is surprisingly good, I think, with a nice Arthurian vibe. If I'd noticed it back when the PCs in my 4e game were 2nd or 3rd level I would have tried to run it. The RQ scenarios, on the other hand, seem pretty ordinary.)

 

[Steely_Dan]

Again, this my way or the highway malarkey, why not let different groups decide what 1st level HP values they are comfortable with (the core rules could of course have several options).