D&D 5E Poll: What is a Level 1 PC?

[Cadence]

And how the hell many monsters are there in The Caves of Chaos?

Good old B2. I've seen a lot of PCs find their deaths there and in the return to the keep 25th anniversary thing... and it usually doesn't take many of the monsters acting even vaguely intelligently to do it.

 

[El Mahdi]

Yes, it will be a bias poll that might not be reflective of the entire gaming community worldwide...

...I choose to believe that while the poll *might* not be reflective it *might* also actually be reflective and give me a better view.

Had I designed the poll differently and had a middle of the road option or "depends of the campaign" the poll would have told me nothing. Those would have been the go-to options. With the choice it's easy to see that people swing to PCs being special and extraordinary rather that slightly more potent Everymen.

The problem was only partly your choice of poll responses. Predominantly, the problem was in the explanation and idea you posited in your post, specifically the claim that you were looking for "where the majority falls on this".

No "might" about it, your question and poll choices do not determine an answer to what you stated you were seeking.

All you've gathered data on is where a majority of gamers that have a single preference lean...and that's far from the majority of gamers you were hoping to poll, or even the majority of gamers here at ENWorld, let alone any kind of diverse sampling. The only thing that's easy to see is that, the self-selecting group that has a single preference, are leaning predominantly in a specific direction. Making a poll that is only designed to reinforce what you already believe, doesn't confirm anything other than you know how to engineer a poll for the result you want...

 

[Neonchameleon]

Your tone is unneeded. I almost walked away from the discussion rather than reply.

My tone, I thought, was absolutely spot on for someone shocked and horrified that someone would have kobolds outnumbering PCs.

First off, the difference is one of encounter difficulty and balance. The 8 kobold fight was a same-level fight. In fact, at 475xp it was lower than the threshold and could have had an extra kobold minion brining the total to 9. Likewise, in Keep on the Shadowfell there's an 11 kobold fight that's also level 1 a couple encounters later.

Meaning that the Kobolds are turning out the warrens. The first fight has what? Five minions, two level 1 kobolds, and a level three dragonshield? Or is it one level 1 and two level 2s? And the second has eight minions and three level 1 kobolds?

Level 1 fights in 4e are not designed to challenge. The PCs are all but assumed to win, and potentially win without using daily resources and few healing surges.

A quarter of resources isn't a significant challenge either.

They're designed to be able to chug along and have three or four fights after. You're meant to go hard until Irontoooth.

Keep on the Shadowfell is a crap module. News at 11.

But from story reasons, you get the impression kobolds like 2:1 odds so they can win, which implies it shouldn't be a fair fight. Not the easy odds of a 4e fight.

They think they can win against 0th level warriors (the default), not first level adventurers (significantly tougher).

Plus in 3e and 2e kobolds are roughly one-hit wonders, not the elite forces that are 4e kobolds. While they have a greater chance of dropping a hero with a lucky strike, they're little more than minions themselves.

I don't even need to look at the module to tell you that if there were eight kobolds in a level 1 fight and it was an EL 1 fight at least half of them were minions. In fact between your two fights above, I believe you have thirteen minions to six normal kobolds.

Putting a group of L1 4e PCs against L2 minion kobolds doing 3x damage would be similar. I still don't think 8 or even 10 would be a challenge.

8 minion kobolds doing 3*damage? That's 8 kobolds doing an average of 15 points of damage each. Just about any PC is going down in two hits - and +7 to hit vs average AC of about 16 or 17. Assume one dead Kobold before they act (the Kobolds have good initiative - high dex). That's three and a half hits the kobolds get in reply. Either one dead PC (negative bloodied) or one dying and one bloodied in round 1. If the Kobolds have surprise we're looking at two downed PCs of the Kobolds' choice before the PCs can act.

Yeah, this is going to be a challenge. Especially if the kobolds manage to gank either the controller, the leader, or both.

 

[Cadence]

1. Unified mechanics for a start. If humanoid adventurers have levels then non-humanoid adventurers should to. But instead of learning how to fight they learned how to smith and farm.

I'm working up modified NPC rules for my pathfinder game and agree with your wanting some way of measuring the skills of the background characters that keeps everything on the same scale. But I also like the 4e-ish idea of letting the behind the scenes rules differ from the PC ones whenever its helpful.

So, I'm putting the rules together so that run of the mill NPCs don't get more hit-points or bonuses to hit as they gain non-adventuring/not-combat levels. (Wow! did you see how the full professor, partner at the law firm, master jeweler, and excecutive chef beat up those four trained first level fighters at the bar last night!)

 

[Obryn]

1. Unified mechanics for a start. If humanoid adventurers have levels then non-humanoid adventurers should to. But instead of learning how to fight they learned how to smith and farm.

2. Its a good, fair way to control NPC's and available resources. Why doesnt this small village have a blacksmith that can forge mithril? Well because thats a higher DC then the small town level 2 blacksmith can master.

3. Because sometimes PC's like to start, or inadvertantly start fights with random townsfolk. So there should be good rules for that are dont minion rules (which suck).

4. RP reasons. Sometimes its important to know how many ranks of some social skill an NPC has and just pulling a number out of your butt is unfair. Its a direct, glowing, invitation to railroading.

The unified mechanics is the most important to me though. Things should work they work and work that way all the time.

I don't find any of these at all persuasive.

Unified mechanics aren't a benefit here - they're a hindrance to world-building. If you tie skill in mercantilism, farming, and smithing to combat skill, something's seriously wrong with your world-building.

As for the rest - I am still completely puzzled by how a class/level system helps here in any way. If a DM is going to be cheesy and throw a mithril-smith in a tiny village or give Joe Town Guard serious Bluff defenses, they can assign a crazy level to that NPC just as easily as they can assign a crazy DC or bonus.

If you really need stats, I think the 0-level AD&D ones work just dandy. Don't tie skill bonuses to levels; just give the DM a set of guidelines for NPCs.

-O

 

[B.T.]

I like the commoner class.

 

[delericho]

As for the rest - I am still completely puzzled by how a class/level system helps here in any way. If a DM is going to be cheesy and throw a mithril-smith in a tiny village or give Joe Town Guard serious Bluff defenses, they can assign a crazy level to that NPC just as easily as they can assign a crazy DC or bonus.

I've got to agree with this. I quite like the NPC classes for various reasons, but world-building isn't one of them. Obryn is right - it's just as easy to assign a 15th level expert as to just give a random commoner Craft +18 (or whatever).

 

[JRRNeiklot]

As masochistic as it sounds I think random, brutal deaths at first level are pretty important to the feel of D&D for me.

It's like that old Simpsons episode where Homer goes to college and describes playing D&D:
"We played for 4 hours..and then I was slain by an elf."

*snip*

I don't know that new players nowadays need to be guaranteed an easy, fun first experience.

I think we should work hard to ensure new players a fun experience, but I don't think having a character die is anathema to that experience, either.

 

[Obryn]

I think we should work hard to ensure new players a fun experience, but I don't think having a character die is anathema to that experience, either.

I can agree with this, but it also depends on how it's handled. I'm not arguing for super-easy-mode or what have you. Challenge is good. Random, capricious newbie slaughterhouse is not.

I think avoiding "my elf died so I spent 2 hours watching TV until my friends headed back to town" should be pretty essential, though.

-O

 

[B.T.]

I think avoiding "my elf died so I spent 2 hours watching TV until my friends headed back to town" should be pretty essential, though.

That's a result of bad DMing, not a bad game. If the game's expectations are high lethality / low survival, then the DM should have the players roll up backup characters and plan accordingly. (DCC's "funnel" comes to mind.)