D&D 5E New Players same level as Current Players?

[Nytmare]

Let me be a little controversial. If Player A considers it a slap in the face for Player B to start at the same level... start looking very closely at Player A to decide if they are worth keeping. That is not the kind of attitude you want to encourage in a cooperative social game.

I think that a lot of it has to do with when you started playing, and who taught you how to play. From 1980 till about 2001(ish?) the overwhelming majority of D&D players and groups that I met considered it one of the most cardinal of sins to simply "create" a character that was not 1st level. That's from conventions, colleges, summer camps, elementary, middle, and high schools across at least 9 or 10 states, and that was simply just how it was done. The only way you'd start in a new game with a character above first level is if the DM allowed you to bring a leveled character from somebody else's game.

It wasn't until we were pretty much knee deep into 3rd Edition that I noticed that tide of public opinion changing.

[TANGENT!] When I was in middle school, we had a D&D game that was run by one of the Boy Scout leaders in the area. Most of the kids playing felt pretty cheated because one of the other kids would drag his character off to go play in a different D&D game over holiday breaks and he quickly rocketed ahead of the rest of us ability wise. But, thems was the rules as we understood them, and it was just something we dealt with. Eventually he started coming back sporting all kinds of magical trinkets and I think the Wand of Orcus or something, so the DM talked to the parents and called the cousin who had (supposedly) been running these holiday D&D games. He (of course) found out that the kid was lying, so we spent a Saturday afternoon putting the character through D&D court, and locking him up in D&D jail where, I'm assuming, he's still sitting.

 

[TonyP]

I'd add them same level

 

[Arial Black]

With 5e's bounded accuracy, a 3rd level PC in an 8th level group isn't a problem, nor is it a problem in a 15th level group.

Our 4-man party makes it to 15th, and then the tank buys the farm. No problem, I'll create another tank. After all, with Bounded Accuracy, 3rd level PCs can do the job just as well as 15th level PCs, right?

Okay, my new tank is very happy with his AC 19 (best armour he can afford, shield, and +1 from fighting style). Not so happy with my 31 hit points though. The tank I replaced had 169.

Okay, so my best chance to stay alive is to avoid combat, or make a character who can plink away at range. The trouble is that if the four-man tank-including party is changed into a four-man tankless party, it's suddenly not so easy to stay at the back safely, because their is no front line for the baddies to get past.

So it becomes a three-man tankless party, and a hiding spectator, who gains full XPs from the fights!

And you based this 'max 3rd level' rule on fairness???

If I was one of the surviving 15th level guys, I would think it was unfair to saddle us with a 3rd level XP mooch.

Also, we are a team. If one of our 'players' goes down, why don't we hire a replacement who is round about our level of competence. If Peyton Manning goes down, we might not have another Peyton on the bench, but are we really limited to a QB who is still in high school?

 

[Nytmare]

Our 4-man party makes it to 15th, and then the tank buys the farm. No problem, I'll create another tank. After all, with Bounded Accuracy, 3rd level PCs can do the job just as well as 15th level PCs, right?

Okay, my new tank is very happy with his AC 19 (best armour he can afford, shield, and +1 from fighting style). Not so happy with my 31 hit points though. The tank I replaced had 169.

Okay, so my best chance to stay alive is to avoid combat, or make a character who can plink away at range. The trouble is that if the four-man tank-including party is changed into a four-man tankless party, it's suddenly not so easy to stay at the back safely, because their is no front line for the baddies to get past.

So it becomes a three-man tankless party, and a hiding spectator, who gains full XPs from the fights!

And you based this 'max 3rd level' rule on fairness???

If I was one of the surviving 15th level guys, I would think it was unfair to saddle us with a 3rd level XP mooch.

Also, we are a team. If one of our 'players' goes down, why don't we hire a replacement who is round about our level of competence. If Peyton Manning goes down, we might not have another Peyton on the bench, but are we really limited to a QB who is still in high school?

These are all style choices that aren't inherent truths to every type of game or campaign world.

On top of that, bounded accuracy has absolutely nothing to do with a 3rd level character being equivalent to a 15th level character.

 

[Mallus]

If the goal is to "win" D&D by achieving the highest level possible before character death, then I can see people not wanting to "just be 11th level."

Yeah, this isn't a question of fairness. It's a question of what your group wants out of the game; how the campaign is structured and what the 'victory conditions' are. If levels are part of your 'score', then sure, starting a new or replacement PC at the same level as everyone else is poor choice.

...those guys got to play the same character for 11 levels! THAT'S the reward. Newbie gets no experience like that; why punish her/him further?

However, this is the way all my group's campaigns are run. The real reward for playing is playing. The person who starts 2 years into the campaign missed 2 years worth of fantasy-themed shenanigans.

Besides, keeping the level disparity between PCs low-to-nonexistent just makes a campaign easier to run. I like that, since I usually do the majority of the DM'ing!

As for when & how you were introduced to D&D/gaming affecting your opinion on this subject, I started in the early 1980s. I never encountered a group that mandated: you always start at 1st level. The common rule was: average party level -1. So more of a token than anything else.

I'm also skeptical of using the word 'earn' when discussing leveling, or any rhetoric that makes gaming sound more like a job than a hobby. A lot of XP is handed out merely for showing up. Where it's a gold star for attendance. And that's fine. The gaming table isn't a workplace or a competitive sport.

Which isn't to say there aren't good, solid reasons for structuring a game around wide level disparities, with a hard 'you start at 1st' rule. They just have nothing to do with fairness or deserving anything.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Our 4-man party makes it to 15th, and then the tank buys the farm. No problem, I'll create another tank. After all, with Bounded Accuracy, 3rd level PCs can do the job just as well as 15th level PCs, right?

Okay, my new tank is very happy with his AC 19 (best armour he can afford, shield, and +1 from fighting style). Not so happy with my 31 hit points though. The tank I replaced had 169.

Okay, so my best chance to stay alive is to avoid combat, or make a character who can plink away at range. The trouble is that if the four-man tank-including party is changed into a four-man tankless party, it's suddenly not so easy to stay at the back safely, because their is no front line for the baddies to get past.

So it becomes a three-man tankless party, and a hiding spectator, who gains full XPs from the fights!

And you based this 'max 3rd level' rule on fairness???

If I was one of the surviving 15th level guys, I would think it was unfair to saddle us with a 3rd level XP mooch.

Also, we are a team. If one of our 'players' goes down, why don't we hire a replacement who is round about our level of competence. If Peyton Manning goes down, we might not have another Peyton on the bench, but are we really limited to a QB who is still in high school?

As I said in an earlier post...the whole "hp inflation" thing is the biggest "problem" we have with 5e. We like just about everything else in the core game rules. So I do empathize with you on the whole 31 v 169 hit points thing.

I base my 3rd level max rule on multiple things. Fairness to other players, yes, but also campaign logic and personal (and group) preference to like starting characters at low level (preferably 1st). I (we) generally find starting a character off higher level than 1st to be like playing someone elses character; you don't know what the character did or how he handled it for his prior levels. Sure, you can make up "He did X, Y and Z to get to this level", but we weren't there for the ride...and, IMHO, the ride is half the fun. It all seems...cheap to us I guess.

So far the highest level anyone has gotten a character in 5e in our group was 6th, so the HP thing hasn't even been an issue, but it's one we do have our eye on. As of right now, my only possible house rule for that is to allow a new character to have "free hp's" as if they were higher level; so a character may start off as a 3rd level Fighter, but have the HP's as if he was an 11th level fighter. He wouldn't gain any new HP's until he hit 12th level. This has a bit of a bad taste for everyone...which means it's probably the right compromise. As I always say... "You know you've made a good compromise when nobody is happy".

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Seramus]

You'd be looking long and hard at me, probably, as if I (and the other long-time players) have been earning my stripes in a game since day 1 I'd be a little peeved if every new character came in at the same level as we are. Including my own new characters; they have to earn their colours too.

• Why do you get satisfaction from the suffering of others?
• Why do others have to suffer because you desire satisfaction?

 

[Nytmare]

• Why do you get satisfaction from the suffering of others?
• Why do others have to suffer because you desire satisfaction?

Ascribing negative connotations to somebody else's neutral actions makes for a bad discussion.

 

[The Human Target]

I will never get the jock/hazing/competitive aspect some people bring to D&D.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

In general, I want characters to start at 1st level. I want to be able to see the arc of their adventuring career, not just handwave them as having one. Also, in my campaign, "adventurers" aren't a regular phenomenon and high-level characters are very rare, so it's something of a strain on verisimilitude for the party to just happen to run into a powerful hero whom nobody's heard of before and strike up an immediate friendship.

However, I see a potential distinction here between introducing a new player and introducing a replacement character for a current player whose old character has died or retired.

For replacement characters, my implementation has gotten a little bit involved. When not everybody can make it to a session, those of us who can run a "second-string adventure". Characters start in the second string at 1st level, but they level up normally, so when the time comes for them to move up to the first string they've got at least a few more levels under their belt. They've also got an established backstory and might even have met the other PCs before.

For new players... frankly, when my table composition changes like that I've always just taken that as an opportunity to begin a whole new campaign. Everybody is at 1st level. But if for some reason I wanted to add someone to an existing campaign, I might make an exception to my normal preferences and start them at a higher level. A current player has had the opportunity to level up their character in both the first and second string, and the opportunity to keep their first-string character alive. A new player hasn't had those opportunities, so it doesn't seem fair to act as if they had.