D&D 5E Everyone Starts at First Level

[JiffyPopTart]

See my comment about Bilbo and the trolls above.

Bilbo actually DID things in The Hobbit in addition to just making a crapton of stealth rolls successfully. He fast talked trolls, straight-up fought some spiders, fast talked Gollum, fast talked dragons (apparently hugely powerful beings in Middle Earth are very vulnerable to fast talking).

Frodo, on the other hand, pretty much does NOTHING in LotR except make a crapton of stealth rolls, walk a LOT, and fails a very important final will save at the end of the campaign. The amount of times he is saved by a Mary Sue NPC to advance the plot and keep him alive is humorous....
Fatty the Hobbit (NPC)
Tom Bombadil (NPC)
Aragorn (Solo NPC)
Elrond X2 (NPC, once for drowning the Nazgul, once for performing miracle surgery)
Galdalf (self sacrifice)
Sam X7 or X8 (NPC, technically Frodo's hireling)
Gollum (Evil NPC)

Frodo's Battle Score
Nazgul in the shire (ran away)
Nazgul again in the shire (ran away)
Tree roots (rescued by Bombadil)
Barrow Wight (Actually hit a monster!, but then saved by Bombadil)
Nazgul again in Bree(ran away)
Nazgul a third time at Weathertop (stabbed and dying)
Nazgul a fourth time at the river (saved by Elrond via 10th level spell)
Goblins/Orcs/Cave Troll (knocked out but saved by magic armor)
Boromir (ran away)
Gollum (A Victory!!!!)
Faramir (captured, released)
Shelob (ko'ed)
Gollum (lost the ring)

Edit: Oh, how could I forget....Balrog (ran away)

 

[the Jester]

The "young hunters go out with the veterans" thing is fascinating.

Credit where credit is due- that example is from Arduin Grimoire, vol. 3 (IIRC), in the discussion of an alternate hit point system that gives you more up front and less per level.

 

[the Jester]

I have to wonder if that is decades of experience being the low guy on the totem pole, or being the DM?

I'm on my way out the door to go have an early dinner with my gf, so I will have to address the rest of the comments in this thread later, but I just wanted to answer this.

I am primarily the DM of our group, but that's far from exclusive. In high school, we played ES@1st and I was mostly a player, and until 3e, every actual campaign I played in (and there were quite a few) used ES@1st as the default, with one exception that started at high levels and made no bones about being High Level Gaming.

I'd say I've DMed about 80% of the time, but that's over the course of probably close to two thousand game sessions over the years. (My current campaign setting is nearing 1000 sessions, my old one had around 400 when the world ended and I've played in plenty more, so...).

 

[Savage Wombat]

I felt the absence of some sort of "you kids today with your hip-hop and your story-based level advancement" post. In some games, levels should be earned through victory, not through narrative. But anyway...

As I thought about it, I realized that in the old 1st edition games I remember, the area effect damage your 1st level newbies so fear seemed pretty rare. If it didn't cast spells or use a breath weapon, you weren't going to get blasted. One could pretty reliably survive in a higher-level game by staying back and firing arrows from cover.

 

[Joddy37]

Interestingly enough, there's actually an analogous situation in the world of MMOs. It occurs in Eve Online which has a reputation (among other things) of being a game where a newbie can contribute to a veteran group battle on Day One. (Assuming the newbie can figure out the interface, of course.)

Here's an article about such a newbie experience: http://tagn.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/tackling-in-syndicate/

I tried to analyze what exactly it was about the mechanics of Eve Online that made this possible. My conclusion was the primary reason was the lack of Area of Effect attacks in the game. Without AoE, it simply isn't worth burning an action on killing a newbie.

My post: http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2014/05/useful-on-day-one.html

So my feeling is that it would be much the same in D&D. If AoE is limited, then the newbie can survive and contribute. If AoE is common, it's very likely the newbie would be killed in short order.

Just like the PCs, monsters and villains can also manage their AoE spells to give the best possible damage. More often they will want to get the tougher characters instead of the weaker ones into their spell area. If as a low level character, you manage to avoid potential areas of effect by staying clear of your strong fellows, you can increase your survivability a lot.

Also I don't get why some people think that a low level character won't contribute anything to party success. D&D is not a combat or a war game. It is a role playing game. Low level characters can still contribute in exploration and interaction pillars. The nice thing is, this edition is indeed making it even more possible than the older ones.

 

[Paraxis]

Just like the PCs, monsters and villains can also manage their AoE spells to give the best possible damage. More often they will want to get the tougher characters instead of the weaker ones into their spell area. If as a low level character, you manage to avoid potential areas of effect by staying clear of your strong fellows, you can increase your survivability a lot.

Also I don't get why some people think that a low level character won't contribute anything to party success. D&D is not a combat or a war game. It is a role playing game. Low level characters can still contribute in exploration and interaction pillars. The nice thing is, this edition is indeed making it even more possible than the older ones.

So every new character to an ongoing campaign has to be a ranged combatant so they can stand well out of the AoE effect zones? No melee fighters, monks, barbarians that seems kind of limiting.

The exploration pillar is more than saying "My character searches the room?" there are spells that contribute like flight, scrying, detect X, so while the higher level characters get to do fun exploration things the new first level one makes an investigation roll and this is supposed to be fun?

The interaction pillar, at higher levels you should have a reputation, contacts, relationships with npc's you have built up over the course of the campaign. The new character doesn't have any of that, if they were coming in at higher level they should at least have some reputation they could use. Much like exploration the interaction pillar can make use of some nice higher level utility spells.

All I am saying is low level play is for low level groups, when the rest of the party has moved past one attack for d8 damage, make a perception check, make a diplomacy check type play it is insufferable to be forced to come into that situation as a level one character with single digit h.p and no depth to your abilities.

 

[Joddy37]

So every new character to an ongoing campaign has to be a ranged combatant so they can stand well out of the AoE effect zones? No melee fighters, monks, barbarians that seems kind of limiting.

The exploration pillar is more than saying "My character searches the room?" there are spells that contribute like flight, scrying, detect X, so while the higher level characters get to do fun exploration things the new first level one makes an investigation roll and this is supposed to be fun?

The interaction pillar, at higher levels you should have a reputation, contacts, relationships with npc's you have built up over the course of the campaign. The new character doesn't have any of that, if they were coming in at higher level they should at least have some reputation they could use. Much like exploration the interaction pillar can make use of some nice higher level utility spells.

All I am saying is low level play is for low level groups, when the rest of the party has moved past one attack for d8 damage, make a perception check, make a diplomacy check type play it is insufferable to be forced to come into that situation as a level one character with single digit h.p and no depth to your abilities.

Why do you think every party will go on their high-level monster hunting business even if one of them just died? Maybe players of a certain table doesn't want that. Maybe the owner of the dead character just wants to start a new one from 1st level and his group rearranges their adventuring plans according to the decision of that player. Maybe they want to take a break from strains of high level struggle and while at that, their characters may help the newbie to gain some experience hunting goblins orcs or kobolds in some rustic dale. That way they can help him get somewhat closer in level before they tackle harder foes again. If you have the imagination and your game is a sandbox created under a mutual understanding between the DM and the players, it is all possible. Drizzt doesn't always fight demons and matron mothers. He fights orcs and more than a few times takes Regis with him, and even to places that may prove deadly for him. According to your logic, which is unfortunately a computer game perspective, Drizzt should never take Regis as a companion.

 

[the Jester]

That makes sense. However, I maintain immersion by requiring the new player to write a backstory. Now I normally require backstories in my game anyway (Half a page or so at 1st level) but a PC coming in a to a 3-4th level party might require more at my discretion.

There are a couple of reasons this doesn't work for me, the primary one being that it still doesn't explain why, when the pcs needed a friendly remove curse last week, the high-level cleric who is happy to join their group now wasn't around to cast it then (especially if his backstory is "I'm that guy at the local temple").

Second is the fact that not all players want to write a backstory, especially an involved one, and I don't want to force the issue. I like developing pcs' backstories in actual play, as things come up (either player- or DM-initiated).

If you split XP equally, the 1st level PC will level very quickly in a high level party. The rest of the party will level more slowly, assuming that the GM keeps the encounters a correspondingly similar difficulty for the weaker state of party with a 1st level PC instead of a higher level one.

And it's true that the 5e 1st level PC won't stay first level for long if he splits XP equally with the high level party. But that's because in the encounter against 2 Fire Giants, 2 Ogres and 2 Kobolds he fought the Kobolds while 3 other level 16 party members fought the Giants and Ogres.

Not necessarily, and that's not necessarily the makeup of a 5e encounter.

Much like 1e and 2e, a mid or high-level party is actually threatened by orcs.

 

[Piratecat]

Why do you think every party will go on their high-level monster hunting business even if one of them just died? Maybe players of a certain table doesn't want that. Maybe the owner of the dead character just wants to start a new one from 1st level and his group rearranges their adventuring plans according to the decision of that player. Maybe they want to take a break from strains of high level struggle and while at that, their characters may help the newbie to gain some experience hunting goblins orcs or kobolds in some rustic dale. That way they can help him get somewhat closer in level before they tackle harder foes again.

That's good in a story, but I've never seen it happen in my own games, and I've never heard of it happening here on the site in any of the threads I've read over 15 years. Seems kind of a statistical outlier to me.

I do see adventurers retire after a near-TPK, though, when one or two heroes live and everyone decides to bring in 1st level characters in a new game instead.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Credit where credit is due- that example is from Arduin Grimoire, vol. 3 (IIRC), in the discussion of an alternate hit point system that gives you more up front and less per level.

I think this idea could be worked into an interesting house rule...