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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8437101" data-attributes="member: 29398">When held up against a typical commoner (the usual point of comparison when looking at what 1st-level PCs have going for them) they are as beefy as hell.There's a middle ground here.  If one has death occurring at -10, then while getting hit once or twice might knock you out it isn't going to kill you.  And that's the middle ground: in the 4e paradigm the character can take a couple of hits and still be fully functional, while in the 0e paradigm that character is dead; the middle ground is that after those hits the character is on average still alive but somehow less functional.The bolded is one of the biggest holes in 4e's design IMO.  There's about 4 or 5 levels worth of gradation in there between commoner and 1st-level PC that was never really explored or put to any use, which is kind of a shame.Even 1e, where 1st-level PCs are much closer to commoners than they are in 4e, has provision for an intervening 0th level; first seen in UA in both the Cavalier write-up and the rationale behind cantrips.  There's also whichever adventure module it is where each character grows into its class as they go along but doesn't achieve 1st level until the adventure's end, that kinda waves at the concept but doesn't really nail it down.DCCRPG doubles down on this as part of its "funnel method" of character generation/selection.</blockquote>