Nytmare
David Jose
Which is fine to a degree, except that it starts to break down significantly once the core characters are many levels in and new PCs are introduced. While it's great to want the characters to grow, at the same time WHY would a group of characters be ok with someone coming in to their group who is considerably outclassed? From a strictly narrative perspective, a group of people have been adventuring for a while, and in comes new character X. X seems interesting, has a vibrant personality, looks like they have potential. But. Time and time again, out of combat (using skills and non-combat spells), they don't actually appear to bring nearly as much to the table as even random NPCs comparable to them are bringing. In dangerous situations, they aren't merely ineffective, they are a liability. The rest of the group, you know can take a hit or two, even a nasty one, and pull through. But damn if X doesn't keep getting dropped over and over, even when protected by the group, from what should be minor threats to the party.
A group of people would only put up with that for so long before saying look, you are just not a great fit. I'm sorry, you're a nice person and all, but having you is a liability, not a benefit.
Do you not see how every game of D&D isn't going to have this setup? Or that maybe the new character has information the group needs, knows how to find a thing, can introduce them to a person, has the same enemies, or one of a million other uses that don't boil down to what their stats are or how much damage they can deal and soak up? The challenge is to find a character who fits, not to keep finding characters who don't fit.
Like I said, even from a narrative sense, it doesn't actually make sense.
For some narratives. For other narratives it works fine.
There's a reason I brought up (and notice you didn't address) NPCs. Apply the ES@1 to NPCs, and see how well it works. Because, again, every PC is an NPC until a player takes control of it. They should exist within the game world on their own in a way that makes sense from both mechanical and narrative perspectives.
I didn't address it cause I thought it was kind of nonsensical, not because I was stunned into silence by how clever it was. Proponents of starting-at-first-level-play are imposing a mechanical rule on what players are allowed to play, just like how a DM might say "no characters with wings" or "no starting your character off as a king or queen".
Plus, as a player? As someone who has DMed large numbers of players over the years (working at a FLGS for ~13 years can do that; you see a lot of new faces)? Yeah, this kind of campaign would likely be a deal-breaker quite quickly for a great many people. Hence the results of the poll itself. And if over the course of an adventure a major character dies? That player, too, will have to bring in a PC at level 1. I suspect, based on a lot of experience, that a player that has that happen might just see how profoundly unfun it can be to be shoved so far in the mechanical hole, so to speak. To go from this epic hero doing epic deeds to being potentially downed by a lone goblin with a single hit, and a profound liability to the rest of the group.
I am happy that you have found a way that works for you and the people you play with.
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