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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5941735" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is true. But I still think the game should be packaged with the default assumption being that play will begin at 1st level. (Where do you sesnsibly start, if not at 1?)Gygax's approach to campaign design, integration of PCs into campaigns, etc, presupposed (as far as I can tell) a well developed play community that new players would be absorbed into - with regular sessions taking place (multiple times per week), rotating GMs, rotating PC rosters, etc. In this context, explaining to a new initiate that his/her PC will start at 2nd or 3rd level makes some sense. (Though I think still might be a bit weird for the initiate in question.)But in the contemporary era, when presumably WotC is hoping that new players will pick up the rulebook and teach themseleves and their friends to play without being part of a Gygaxian community of hardcore players, I think a new-player-and-new-GM-friendly 1st level is pretty essential.Random AD&D factoid (at least as best I recall it): even if you're using the "death's door" option, a single hit will still kill you if it drops you below zero in a single blow (there is an option within an option to make the "single blow" threshold -3). I think it is 3E (may be 2nd ed?) that changed the threshold for unconsciousness rather than death being the same as the threshold for death (ie -10).That very small window for unconsciousness obviously relies, for its practical viability, on AD&D damage numbers being a lot small than in later editions.Likewise. I've had one TPK - at 2nd or 3rd level (I can't remember which) in an encounter that was not to bad from a level point of view but destroyed the PCs via action denial (I had a spectre with a daze aura, and I think some other action denial as well, and started with a surpirse attack).Other than that, I've had two PC deaths - the PC wizard has died twice, once at 2nd and once at 15th, both times in over-level encounters (and the second time he probably wouldn't have died if he'd played better - he was stuck in a swarm, used a ranged spell to try and get out, and dropped from the oppy, but he could have used an ability to swap in a close burst that would have been just as effective and given him temporary hit points).And I routinely use over-level encounters (with MM3 damage numbers), often in waves but by no means always. Level +1 and +2 very often. Level +3 to +5 less frequently. And my players are not particularly dedicated focus-firers either.Here's <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/319168-pcs-defeat-calastryx-get-up-some-other-hijinks.html" target="_blank">a link</a> to my Calaystryx encounter - the PCs were 15th level, but had already faced a lot of encounters until Calastryx turned up! No one died, but it went to the wire:*Comp 2 L14 skill challenge (as a result of which each PC lost one encounter power until their next extended rest); *L17 combat; *L15 combat; *L7 combat; *L13 combat; *L15 combat (PCs advance from 14th to 15th level); *Comp 1 L14 skill challenge; *L16 combat; *L14 combat (Calastryx); *L13 combat; *Comp 1 L15 skill challenge; *L16 combat (the L15 solo was defeated by being pushed over a bridge down a waterfall); *L15 combat (the solo returned later in the night, having survived the fall and climbed back up).I haven't found this at all. My players don't let their PCs die, but that's because they play well. As the story about the wizard above shows, if they do slip then PCs can die. That need to focus on the play is part of what keeps the game interesting, for us at least.</blockquote>

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