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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8020969" data-attributes="member: 18">The simple problem with OSR stuff and survivability is a math one, that's hard to work around.In most OSR games, at lower levels, particularly L1, you are very likely to have few enough HP that you can be downed in a single non-critical attack. Some OSR games have that as death, others make a few modern concessions (or 2E concessions even) and make it merely hard to recover from.And whilst you can play smart, and avoid as much combat as possible, and ambush where you can't avoid and so on, it's still quite likely even a smart player, in a smart group, is going to have their PC killed in typical OSR rules, simply because of literally one unlucky (and not even crit) roll.I mean, I'm surprised people are trying to argue around this. Anyone who played older editions or who has played OSR games know that it's basically true. Unless you manage to almost entirely avoid combat until around L3, the chances are quite high that some PCs will die (barring generous death rules).The only good ways around this are:1) As the OP suggests, start at a higher level (L3 is usually good).2) Adopt modern rules on HP/death (i.e. max HP at L1, death saves or similar, etc.).3) Run relatively combat-free adventures until L3 (I've seen it done).Honestly, if I was going to run an OSR-type game, I'd go with fixed HP like 5E. I've never, ever, in thirty years, seen random HP make for a better or more fun game. Occasionally they make for an amusing anecdote, but overall they are simply deleterious to gameplay as a rule, and produce terrible scenarios where a good character is ruined by a couple of bad rolls they can do literally nothing about. No other single roll in the game can so profoundly weaken or ruin a character, particularly as there is absolute no mitigation, no "bad luck control" or anything of the sort, unlike a lot of other stuff.</blockquote>

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