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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5441245" data-attributes="member: 4937">This may be off a bit from what you are really interested in, but my I suggest borrowing an idea from 4e?The biggest problem with 1st level in stock D&D prior to 4e is that either:a) Deaths would be random with little player control over whether they survived.   - or -b) The DM would have to treat the PC's with kid gloves, never throwing a threat at them that did more than 1d4 damage in a round and relying heavily on fairly trivial challenges to pad XP without risking deaths.4e tries to solve this by essentially tripling PC hit points.  That's ok as far as it goes, but its not very 3rd edition-ish.I try to solve this by giving bonuses to creatures based on size.  For example, medium-sized creatures all recieve 8 additional hit points.  For me the nice simulation effects (farmer don't fear house cats) are almost as cool, but it certainly opens up game design at 1st level which can otherwise feel a bit cramped and less than heroic if the DM doesn't expend an extraordinary amount of effort.As for your actual question, I think you are very much missing the point.  At 1st level, the actual differences between classes are pretty small.  The fighter only has 1 more BAB than the wizard.  Worse come to worse, whacking it with your staff may actually work.  At 1st level, more than perhaps any other level, classes are well-rounded in comparison to their peers.  Balance issues are fairly small, and skills are certainly not obselete even in campaigns that don't make an effort to avoid it and yet no one is necessarily useless in a ability or skill check.   More so than at any other level, your character is defined not by what he can do, but who he is and the effort the player puts into characterization.   More so than at any level the skill of the player really shines because you have so few 'easy' buttons.   I'd be much much more concerned about the effort the player put into selecting a concept at this time than I would be about what class they selected or what build they are going for.  Those are 'high level' considerations that will hardly impact you before 4th level or so.If you are just going for power level, everyone in the party should play some flavor of cleric - elf archer-cleric, fighterish-cleric (with War domain), healing-cleric, wizardly-cleric, roguish trickery cleric, etc.  Cleric is probably the most front loaded class, and everyone being a cleric means that a 1st level parties biggest limitation - quickly recovering from problems - is completely taken care of.  However just about everything is playable at this level, so why restrict yourself?  Even stock fighters rock before level 6 or so, and up to third level will easily be the parties stalwart lynchpin.  Get a weapon with reach and the best armor you can afford, and you're golden.</blockquote>

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