D&D General At what level(s) do you start your D&D campaigns?

[Imaculata]

Almost always at level 1. But recently for a Call of Cthulhu campaign, I started the players at level 2, so they would have a few more hitpoints.

 

[DammitVictor]

I prefer to start in the 1-3 range. If my idea would involve starting at much higher than 5th, I'm probably not going to try to run it in D&D.

I've had a lot of fun in games starting at higher level, though. I remember one PBP on GitP that was Level 20 Gestalt set on Earth, play as yourself, go nuts.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I voted for one and three. In 5E I generally start them at 1, but the longer I play 5E, the less benefit I'm seeing to this.

I used to think the 1-3 leveling in 5E might introduce people to the game well, but actually having played with new players, it seemed like it introduced more confusion as they suddenly got a lot of significant new stuff, than it solved. Whereas just starting at 3, you can explain everything once and people don't miss stuff or get confused. The only downside is people potentially taking a bit longer to select spells.

Also 5E is at it's most wonky and unbalanced from levels 1-3 (as has been kind of discussed in other threads), and that can actually set expectations for newer players that don't hold at higher levels, so I find that's not very helpful.

For older players I don't think there's any real benefit beyond tradition. If I made a new edition, I'd be very tempted to basically make what is level 3 now, level 1 (in pretty much all regards), and in the DMG offer an optional "level 0" experience, which was heartily disrecommended for new players and designed as an OSR/nostalgia-trip deal.

In 2E we just always started at L3 in all campaigns after Dark Sun. In 3E, we tried starting at level 1 like twice before deciding it was pretty pointless. 4E's level 1 was about as sturdy and functional as L3 in other editions, so we did start at L1 there.

 

[Coroc]

1 with full hp for vanilla campaigns or if playing with feat, 2 with full hp for hard campaigns e.g. full ravenloft, 3 with full hp for darksun

 

[shesheyan]

For older players I don't think there's any real benefit beyond tradition. If I made a new edition, I'd be very tempted to basically make what is level 3 now, level 1 (in pretty much all regards), and in the DMG offer an optional "level 0" experience, which was heartily disrecommended for new players and designed as an OSR/nostalgia-trip deal.

The only time I used level 0 (2e) was to play out childhood incidents that triggered the desire to become an adventurer later in life. I made an individual session with each player and developed the background. While it was an interesting way to build a character background it was too much work for something that faded to the background (and was forgotten) very quickly once the high action hero adventure kicked in.

 

[shesheyan]

It took us about 10 sessions to get to level 3. Everyone is different!

WOW! I'm curious. How long was each session? Do you award XPs or do you use Milestones?

 

[Retreater]

Level 1 if I'm starting a campaign for new players or a published campaign that has a good opening that ties into the rest of the plot.
Level 3 if I'm starting a campaign for more experienced players with an original campaign.
Level 5 if I'm running most published official campaigns by WotC, because that's where they actually "start" because they assume you've played Lost Mines of Phandelver.

 

[Cadence]

Lvl 1, unless it's starting with some particular higher level module the DM has been excited to run.

 

[dave2008]

WOW! I'm curious. How long was each session? Do you award XPs or do you use Milestones?

We don't use XP and our sessions typical run 4-6 hours. I stopped using XP in 1e and I have never gone back.

 

[Oofta]

It took us about 10 sessions to get to level 3. Everyone is different!

My first 5E campaign it took us 6 months to get to 3rd level IIRC. We were doing a Harry Potter/adventurer training start to the campaign. It was a blast.