D&D is not a supers game.

[Mallus]

But I am wondering if we will ever see an official version of D&D where beginning characters are actually vulnerable in a fight again?

You mean like AD&D, AD&D 2e, 3e, 3,5e, and Pathfinder? (I'll grant you 1st level 4e PCs were pretty durable, by design).

Besides, it was clearly stated the PC hit points were deliberately inflated for the play test. The goal was to test the core resolution mechanics.

P.S. I started w/AD&D back in the 1980s. It was always a superhero game in fantasy drag, so long as the PC made it to mid-level. As soon as PCs begin flying, fireballing, and walking away from falls off 30ft towers while in armor, you've left the pastoral confines of the Shire far behind.

P.P.S. Back in my day, it was common to grant 1st level PCs maximum HP. Which meant 1st level rangers almost as durable as ogres. Fighters tended to have high strengths and weapon specialization (UA was common in my parts, too). Players wanted more power and durability at 1st level, not less. In fact, the idea of arguing for rules changes that lowered your chance of surviving to 2nd level would have sounded absurd to everyone I first played D&D with (and this includes the adult parents of our friends who taught us).

P.P.P.S It's not about entitlement, it's about having enough interesting options at the start of play, and enough durability to survive a little bad luck (ie, having the opportunity to use them once or twice before dying).

 

[herrozerro]

You mean like AD&D, AD&D 2e, 3e, 3,5e, and Pathfinder? (I'll grant you 1st level 4e PCs were pretty durable, by design).

Besides, it was clearly stated the PC hit points were deliberately inflated for the play test. The goal was to test the core resolution mechanics.

another point would be that in 4e, everybody had inflated hit points. that 1st level goblin had 25 or so hit points as well. it was not some kind of one sided durability match.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The problem with Zero To Hero is that it's outside the 'sweet spot' at low and high level. Low level PCs, at least prior to 4e, have too few hit points and not enough options to be mechanically interesting. At high level the game becomes too complex, PCs have too many crazy spells such as Raise Dead, Teleport, and Wish, and casters dominate.

 

[Li Shenron]

It is a fact that in Basic D&D as well as AD&D (1st edition) 1st level PCs were less powerful than later editions.

Definitely. If the 1st-level PCs had received all the power creep in one single "bump" from OD&D to 5e, almost everyone would have considered it ridiculous. But because it was "spread" through many editions, each bump has been more acceptable.

The sad truth is that we've all grown up with consumerists' minds, so the best way to sell us something is to make it look "more" than the previous version. But by now that most of us gamers are middle-aged (i.e. 30+) we should have become wiser.

I don't see why 5e couldn't accommodate both playstyles in the form of optional rules. WotC should introduce an optional 0-level rule, where PCs start with low HP (maybe just CON) and only the most basic abilities, to emulate old-school play. It should also relegate spells that always hit and powers that do damage even on a miss to levels 2 or 3, and optionally allow players who want their characters to have these powers from the start to just begin play at a higher level.

It's a possibility but it's harder that way than just set the "floor" a bit lower. There was a 0-th level optional rule in 3e but nearly nobody used it.

 

[On Puget Sound]

When I learned D&D (3 beige books plus Greyhawk) we would make 20 characters at once, and we never named them until they made second level, because most of them never did. Yeah, magical times, but remember that at the time we were also pretty amazed by Pong. I'm not interested in going back to that; if I were I would play Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, which is very deliberately powerless at first level.

 

[The Human Target]

As I said before, the modularity lies in having the option to start at higher levels of experience. The notion that Level 1=Level 0 simply because you want characters to start at equitable HP levels to everybody else in the fantasy world is a straw man in itself. Believe it or not, this is how D&D was played for decades before 4th Edition came along. And I, for one, enjoyed it.

Why should we who disagree with you lose out on levels of gameplay because you want less HP?

 

[herrozerro]

Why should we who disagree with you lose out on levels of gameplay because you want less HP?

+1

No experience, but i wish I could.

 

[mlund]

If I'm interested in playing a scenario where I can kill the PC Wizard by throwing a surprised house cat in his face I'll use a Level 0 module to have a party full of up-jumped dirt farmers.

- Marty Lund

 

[Fifth Element]

And I am sometimes tired of players who invent a great personality and background... for a freakin' 1st level PC!

Yeah, everybody knows roleplaying isn't important at 1st level!

I mean, what?

There is nothing wrong with a group enjoying this style of play. It is no more elitist than the groups that want strong, powerful characters to start at 1st level saying the folks that like a gritty game are doing it wrong.

No, the elitist ones are those who come on message boards like this and literally call other players pampered or entitled because they don't "earn" their gameplay experience. That actually does happen, those very words are used (I've seen them many times), and it's happened in this very thread.

Talk about self entitlement. "The world owes me a living, and D&D owes me Superpowers..."

Yeah, this game here that I paid my own money for and am investing my own time into, how dare I want it to deliver what I want to get out of it! Playing a game is exactly like real life, after all.

 

[renau1g]

And I am sometimes tired of players who invent a great personality and background... for a freakin' 1st level PC!

Really? You're tired of it? I'd love it if my players invested time into their PC's like that. If it was super-duper deadly, 1 bite from a rat kills you, well I'd expect them to play paper-thin PC's and be bored as a DM with no hooks to draw from.

I've looked over the playtest PC's and they're a far cry from super heroes. Hyperbole FTW! IMO 4e had the most competent 1st level PC's, they had very high survivability and access to fairly powerful abilities regularly. I'd like to step back from there, but not all the way to house cat fearing wizards.

So we have some that want super-gritty, barely above commoner PC's that are starting their journey from 0, while another that wants their PC's to have some level of competence from the start.

Personally, I think a 0-level module would work well, it would still allow those in the 2nd group to start at level 1 and experience the full level curve, and it would allow those in the first group to start at their very beginning level of adventuring (which probably tend to skew towards older players that the earliest editions of the game was more like). Again, this is my opinion.