D&D 5E Followup on "Everyone Starts at First Level"

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

It started with 6 hyenas, 4 gnolls and a gnoll pack leader (or whatever it's called). But the gnolls quickly released a hydra.

Sounds great! Glad to hear that ES@1 is working so well in 5E.

I like the idea of everyone starting a 1st level, a lot. Never tried 4E, but I ran 3X/PF with everyone starting a first level and it worked pretty well (though, we purposefully ran several groups to keep new characters leveling up so that a 1st level character never had to join a group where the average level was 6+ levels beyond 1st).

The scaling of the proficiency bonus from +2 to +6 is initially what drew me toward 5E as I thought it really would work to allow groups of disparate level characters and monsters interact, together, very well.

And, since I have tribes of gnolls near the main location of my campaign, I'm going to have a certain gnoll (whom I haven't created, yet) get the idea to "release a hydra" in order for them to attempt to reclaim an ancient sacred site and burial ground that the gnolls lost in a war, a few centuries ago. Too bad, the PC's don't realize that the inn they own on the main road between the port city and the central city of the campaign is built on that very site.... Mwha hah hah!

 

[Celebrim]

5e is probably the first rules set since 1e/2e where you could reasonably continue with ES@1, and it sounds like you are playing the sort of Gygaxian game (30 players, rotating cast) where ES@1 makes a lot of sense.

The main reason you can't play 3e at ES@1 is that the new recruits never catch up due to the near linear nature of 3e XP. You can't play ES@1 in 4e, because level in 4e determines how good you are at everything so lower level characters basically bring nothing to the table.

But with bounded accuracy and the turn of exponential XP, it looks like ES@1 brings old school play fully back.

For it to fully work, the upper level characters need to agree to shepherd the lower level characters ("power level" in MMORPG terms) until the gap diminishes sufficiently that the lower level characters aren't a huge liability. That gap in 1e tended to be 5-6 levels, so you are right on the edge of it now. (By contrast, the gap in 3e was only 2-3 levels, and a PC adventuring cohort would never close into that range if they didn't start within it.) If you get into situations where you have a core group going, "Crap. I really wanted to go down to the 14th level of the dungeon tonight to see what was behind that wax sealed iron door we found in the ice caverns 6 weeks ago, but it looks like will be shepherding low level characters around the Warren Maze on the 4th level again.", or the reverse where the core group discourages the participation of the players with lower level characters by always going as deep as they can resulting in players having their characters repeatedly slaughtered you may start to have problems.

 

[iserith]

D&D had rules for bringing in characters of lower level to a higher-level party. I believe those are in the DMG2. They work fine in my experience.

In D&D 5e, don't forget that you're going to blast through the apprentice tiers really quickly when travelling with a significantly higher-level party. For example, a party of 3x 10th-level PCs and 1x 1st-level PC goes up against a Medium 10th-level encounter (4800 XP). When that encounter is wrapped up, our 1st-level PC now has 1200 XP - already 3rd-level plus change. Four more such encounters and you're at 5th-level while the rest of the party is likely still lingering at 10th-level.

 

[Tony Vargas]

EW@1 always seemed to work fine in AD&D, because of the way the exp tables worked, with a 1st level character often able to get within a level or two of the party in the time it took the rest of the party to gain a single level.

IIRC, the first few levels of 5e do go that way, Apprentice tier goes very fast. I guess it's one way of compensating for low-level fragility - if you lose a character, it may seem like you're a level behind, but it's just a few hundred exp.

Plus, bounded accuracy means that the basic things you can accomplish - hitting a monster or making skill check or even making saving throw (or an enemy saving vs your spell) - don't change much as you level, so the low-level character is only behind in hps and in the range of things he can accomplish, not whether he can hope to accomplish them.

At least 5E does give you the option of hanging back, since your javelins are guided by Strength, but that still leaves you with a long time where you're not playing the character you want to play.

'Late-blooming' character concepts have been an issue in several editions of D&D without unduly hurting their popularity. Magic-users, for instance, didn't really come into their own for at least 3 levels in AD&D, fighters in 3.x could take until 4th, 6th or later to fill out concept-defining feat trees.

 

[Grimstaff]

To flip this around, 5e also recommends starting campaigns with experienced players at 3rd level, which I'm likely to try after my current campaign. The idea interest me more in terms of delivering a more fleshed out character concept and background story than in terms of power level.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

'Late-blooming' character concepts have been an issue in several editions of D&D without unduly hurting their popularity. Magic-users, for instance, didn't really come into their own for at least 3 levels in AD&D, fighters in 3.x could take until 4th, 6th or later to fill out concept-defining feat trees.

There's a significant difference between "I use a greatsword, but I don't have Whirlwind Attack yet," and "I have a greatsword, but if I try to use it I will die horribly."

From what I recall, one of the common complaints about those old low-level wizards was that they had to throw darts or use a crossbow for most of the day, when the concept was a pure magic-user. I think 5E would produce a similar experience, if you really want to get into melee for your concept, but you can't because it's way too dangerous for you.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Those all sound roughly equivalent to me: you have a vision of your character, it takes some levels to realize that vision.

 

[the Jester]

Based on a personal experience I had, I think ES@1 is terrible. The one game was a store game where I was the new player, it was 4e...

And right there you have the problem.

Don't get me wrong, I loved 4e- I just had a fantastic finale to my 4e game, in which the pcs defeated the longest-running npc in my campaign setting and Orcus returned to life- and one of its greatest strengths was also one of its greatest weaknesses: its math was tight.

The problem was that it only worked with a relatively minor range of levels. (Well, it's a problem for some playstyles, anyway.) I never even considered trying ES@1 in 4e; although I'd run my game that way from Basic/1e on up through early 3e, the difference in the math in 3e rapidly taught me that it wouldn't work anymore. I'm very excited that 5e re-enables it.

So, yeah, ES@1- even for me, a guy who really strongly prefers it- only works in pre-WotC D&D and 5e, IMHO.

 

[the Jester]

I'm worried that the choice of new-character rules might affect which characters actually end up being played. If a new character comes in at level 1, then that's fine if you're an archer or a wizard, because the scary monsters are probably just going to ignore you while you're obviously not the biggest threat. If you want to play a barbarian, or a great-weapon paladin, then that's a fairly suicidal choice in a party that will be facing high-level monsters.

So far at least, I have seen a lot more barbarians and fighters than hang-in-the-back types, and they've run to the front. PC durability in 5e is pretty darn high.

In last night's combat, for example, the front line was mostly 3rd level pcs- against a CR 8 monster- and they all made it through. In fact, I don't think a single character dropped in the fight! (But other than the druid and warlock- ironically, the first level pcs- everyone was out of spell slots by the end of the battle.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

I never even considered trying ES@1 in 4e; although I'd run my game that way from Basic/1e on up through early 3e, the difference in the math in 3e rapidly taught me that it wouldn't work anymore.

Yeah, ES@1 is old-school, it works in old-school versions of the game, and in 5e, which closely imitates the feel of those versions. In 3e or 4e it would go very badly once anyone else hit about 4th level - part of the price those editions paid for trying to balance, and have meaningful encounter guidelines, at each level. Perhaps not coincidentally, 3e & 4e both also gave you solid guidelines, including wealth/level, for creating a character higher than 1st level.

Another thing about ES@1 is that it emphasizes a penalty for character death, thus encouraging a more cautious style of play - right up to downright paranoia in some cases. If you can create a new character - complete with magic items - at the same level of the party, character death can be even be regarded as rewarded (you get to pick the right items for you n-level 'build,' just by croaking at the right time). And, of course, by the same token, it (along with the learning curve) punishes new players, which is also pretty old-school. You had to pay your dues back in the day.