Death Spiral vs Starting at 1st Level - X-post from 'Death by Infelicitas'

[S'mon]

I used to be part of a major campaign (20+ years in the making, dozens of regular players, 8-12h play/week...). That campaign applied a death penalty; die and your next character came back weaker. During my play I saw at least half dozen spectacular death spirals, as these new weaker characters of course tended to die much easier, and then the player got an even weaker character, which died even easier, and so on...

Death spirals are an interesting topic. "Die and you come back -1 level" on the face of it seems much more generous than the old school "everyone starts at 1st level", but recently I have been doing the old school way (with Labyrinth Lord and Pathfinder Beginner Box) and the results are fascinating: With all PCs starting at 1st, there is no vicious spiral effect. Instead, the GM is forced to accommodate the reality that most people are 1st level, and create an environment to match - an environment tailored to survival at 1st level.
Instead of the on-level grind of CR matched encounters & death spiral if you die, you instead get a virtuous circle effect - 1st level is survivable, with luck, but the more levels you get, the better your survival chances. Although if you are 4th level and adventuring with 1st level newbies, you probably won't die but you won't level fast, either. If a group of PCs reach 4th level together, they can then seek out tougher challenges.

Obviously this does not allow for Adventure Paths, but for sandbox play IME 'start at 1st level' works brilliantly:

It gives a real sense of achievement on reaching higher levels.
It makes it very easy for new players and PCs to join the game.
It allows for a much more plausible, alive-feeling world.
There is no Death Spiral. There is only the Circle of Achievement.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

It's a fascinating idea. I only see one problem: Level imbalance within a group. If someone has a 4th-level character and someone else has a 1st-level character, it seems unequal. This may work in practice but I find this hard to sell to my group and I'm also pretty sceptic about it.

 

[S'mon]

It's a fascinating idea. I only see one problem: Level imbalance within a group. If someone has a 4th-level character and someone else has a 1st-level character, it seems unequal. This may work in practice but I find this hard to sell to my group and I'm also pretty sceptic about it.

Of course it's unequal - though the 4th level PC might die, in which case the player then starts over at 1st. I've been doing it this way and we recently had 2 1st level & 1 4th level PC after a 2/3 TPK, it did not cause any problems.

The important thing is that levels are seen as an achievement, not an entitlement, and not predestined. I would not use it in eg my 4e Forgotten Realms campaign, because that is intended to go to high level, so for it I use a single 'Party XP' tally. In that 4e game it is the rate of advancement, not advancement itself, that is the reward for skilled play. That also works well - it is the in-between approaches of "-1 level" or "-2 levels" that lead to dysfunctional death spiral effects.

 

[Lwaxy]

We sometimes START with level unbalanced groups (or the equivalent if we aren't using levels). It does work fine, usually.

 

[Nagol]

I've run campaigns like this (1e) and have played in them as well (1e, equivalent 'start over' in other game systems).

I found a few distinct behaviours I didn't like.

1) The more the characters achieve, the less risk the players are comfortable with. This makes sense if you think about it. The greater the achievement, the more is at risk anytime the character is threatened. Under 1e, it is possible to continue advancing infinitely fighting basic orcs -- it gets really slow, but advancement continues. So characters tend to stay at a set risk level until the players gets bored, a change in the game world changes the risk level, or, least frequently, the player decides to try somethng harder.

2) If the level split gets large, say 5+ levels (one game had a 11+ level difference between new characters and the lowest established character with a 15+ level difference from new to top) then new character survival becomes a lottery: does anything try to attack him -- yes; you lose, roll a new character, no; you win, collect xp! And the new character have almost nothing to offer in terms of ability other than as carrying capacity and chaff in combat. The gain in levels is slow enough that a character requires multiple lottery wins with zero losses to catch up to the point where survability stops being random.

3) Mixed-level groups tend to have a lot of social friction especially around reward division (because the lower levels aren't pulling their weight). So a weak character tends to get little or no treasure and continues to get relatively weaker than the more successful characters.

It works best when the campaign is the old type; i.e. when the campaign refers to the game world and whatever players show up for a given session play. That way the lower levels can band together and try something reasonable rather than following the high-level group and hoping for a lottery win survival.

 

[Mircoles]

I think a character dying is punishment enough. Having them create a new character at a lower level is punishing them a second time and quite lame.

It's an old-school idea that needs to die.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Level -1 is much more easily to swallow, if not everyone gets the same xp. In 4e i think it was already bad, if you did not get xp for missing out a session. I know, when everyone had its personal advancement scale, when everyone got different xp for different things (mages for using magic, thiefs for thief xp) And with "overkill" rules and each level not giving too big bonuses/you don´t have to catch up with monsters... it really does not matter.
If you then add, that magic items are sparse, and you can offset a lowlevel with some powerful items, really, no problem.

I recently played warhammer 3rd? The second last edition, most of the time it was barely noticeable, that one player was way higher "level" than the rest of us...

 

[Zhaleskra]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], you and Tuft seem to be using quite a different definition of Death Spiral than the common one. When I hear or read "death spiral" I expect: combat system where getting hit makes it harder for you to fight and easier for the other guys to hit you.

 

[Umbran]

It gives a real sense of achievement on reaching higher levels.

How does that happen? I mean, the world is geared for survival of 1st level. At first glance, that means that, say, 4th level and up are pretty much a cakewalk. Maybe a slow cakewalk, but a cakewalk, regardless. How does this end in a feeling of achievement?

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], you and Tuft seem to be using quite a different definition of Death Spiral than the common one. When I hear or read "death spiral" I expect: combat system where getting hit makes it harder for you to fight and easier for the other guys to hit you.

Yes, lose level on death is a different sort of death spiral, but a similar dynamic - the worse you do, the worse you do.