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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7401145" data-attributes="member: 996">But you'd catch up quickly because of the way the exp tables were written... Yep.  Hero was like that, and  not just because of power caps.  Conceptually, the way powers scaled conceptually vs mechanically also compressed things.  In D&D, a dagger does 1d4 and two daggers do 1d4, and, in concept, it mostly scales like that.  Get hit twice as hard, take twice as much damage. In Hero, each extra increment (normal die or 'damage class') of damage in mechanics terms represented twice the force.  A 15 STR character was twice as strong as a 10 STR character, but only did 3d6 instead of 2d6, a hero with the "Strength of Ten Men" had 17 more STR than whatever that base-line one man had.  Not exactly going to break the game.  Keep that going and you can have quite a profound conceptual gulf between two things without them being quite in-useable in the same scenario.  For instance, a +10d/DC difference represents something 1000x more powerful, but in a game were 8d is the low end for an effective normal attack, 18d isn't entirely beyond the pale (a pushed haymaker or move-through might get there, for instance), so, you can have things like...... in Champions.  Though Hawkeye is going to depend on his gimmicked arrows to be relevant plinking at things that those bruisers can just knock into next week.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> It was always 'needed' in some sense, 3e, I think it was, started doing it systematically and reasonably well, thanks to wealth/level guidelines and make/buy items, among other things.  One of those other things was that exp tables didn't grow quite the same way, and everyone got the same xp, so it became pretty normal to for everyone to be right around the same level pretty consistently - 4e & 5e retained that.   It depends on the game, obviously.In most versions of D&D, the problem will take care of itself over time, if the zero is careful enough (or the heroes protect him successfully), thanks to the ballooning exp values - the zeroes adventuring with heroes will zoom towards hero that much faster for getting a share of heroic-scale exp.  In 5e, hps are the main issue, BA means the zero can make warm-body contributions that will be welcome enough, but he won't be able to do meaningful damage, and he will die if caught in a save:1/2 AE.In 4e bonuses/DCs, rather than hps are the main issue, too many levels back (more than about 5), and well you can probably won't be erased by an AE, you will rarely be missed by anything, which'll go hard on you, similarly, your contributions will dwindle to nothing. In 3.x/PF, of course, it's /both/, you will not be able to touch any of the higher-level DCs, and you will die if anything sneezes on you.In AD&D and other classic versions, it's weirder.  You'll be able to contribute just fine in some areas - because there's no mechanics involved, and level means nothing. You'll be able to hit enemies, because ACs didn't vary a lot, and your saves will suck, by comparison, but that doesn't mean you'll be auto-failing.  hps will be a problem if the gulf is in the first 10 levels.  1st vs 8th, you're in trouble.  OTOH, 8th vs 18th, not so much, because you generally stop accumulating HD (and thus stacking CON bonus around name level).  The rapid scaling of save:1/2 spell damage could inadvertently fry you, though, very easily.  The way items tend to get handed it in all versions but 5e, BTW, could also make things a tad easier on the zero, since the heroes may have a bunch of hand-me-downs for him that'll make a difference.  A 1st level character can't do much in a 10th level game, but if you have +3 armor and weapons or a wand of lightning or whatever that no one bothers with anymore, it'll help. Give him a supply of potions of super-heroism, extra-healing, resistance-to-whatever, &c and hope he doesn't explode.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  In 4e,  you could introduce the zero as a minion or companion character instead of a lower-level PC.  The theoretical  power scale would be comparable (a PC is nominal comparable to an Elite, and XP terms an Elite is equivalent to a 4-level higher standard, which is equivalent to a 10-level higher minion, so a level n PC could be modeled temporarily with a level n+4 companion character or level n+14 minion, enough to jump Tiers), but it'd work more smoothly.  Of course, minions die easy, but at least not automatically to 1/2 damage from AEs.  Instead of 'catching up level,' the zero could be promoted to PC after a while.  But, really, in 3e & 4e it's just easy to create a new character of appropriate level, instead.Other games that aren't imitators, clones, or fantasy heartbreakers or whatever (which is a lotta games, of course), though, usually don't do the zero to hero thing as dramatically as D&D.</blockquote>

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