D&D 5E Everyone Starts at First Level

[pming]

Hiya.

I hate fate points with a passion, be it as a DM or a player.

It's much better if the players' actions save the day and prevent a PC death or TPK, than if some "oops" game mechanic does it.

Players also tend to play stupidly riskier if some game mechanic is going to bail their butts out of the fire.

I vastly prefer giving the players a few "go to the well" magic items for them to pull out and use when the dice go cold, the DM foobars and sends in too challenging of an encounter, and/or the players make bad decisions.

Bad/unlucky things can and do happen, but that's no reason to change the game system to make it easier. A real challenge of PC death should always be possible. Maybe not likely, but possible.

I can respect that, and 99% of the time I don't use/like Fate Points ("FP") in my games either (other than WHFRP, where it feels right...but that's where I first encountered them, so I guess that's probably why). I don't see them as an "oops" mechanic, though. I see them as sort of like a "campaign-story-consistency-mechanic". In story terms, chances are that at some point in one (a story), the main character is put in some situation that really REALLY should have ended him...but he miraculously survives; just watch any Indiana Jones movies and you'll get a bajillion of them. Indi may be high level, but his side-kicks and female hangers on generally aren't. In 5e, they'd die in the first opening action sequence.

I'm the opposite from you when it comes to magic items. I'd vastly prefer basically anything other than giving out Potions of Saveyourbutt, Rings of Bytheskinofmyteeth, and Wands of LuckythisisJUSTwhatIneed. To me, that cheapens the characters...it wasn't really the PC who saved the day...it was his magic item(s). To me (us; my group), weaving in some stupendously unlikely event is much more entertaining, creative, and rewarding than just whipping out a magic item to save the day. *shrug* As I'm becoming increasingly fond of saying, "Different strokes and all that".

The core reason I'm considering FP's for my 5e Greyhawk game is that 5e does seem to be a bit of a meat grinder for 1st to 3rd level characters. Once they hit 4th, it's like the world opens up and becomes their oyster. But getting there is quite the challenge. Fine for my 1e/Hackmaster game...everyone knows what to expect...but with 5e, we'd like to actually play characters longer than a session. So adding in a FP thing could do the trick for now. After everyone gets more comfortable with the "feel" of 5e, I'm sure I'd ditch the FP thing...probably.

As for players playing "stupidly riskier", we actually find the opposite. The FP a character has is a precious thing. I guess it's kind of similar to saying "Yeah, well, we've got nothing to loose, so go for it!" (re: no FP's), and "Yeah, well, we could be in waaay over our head, hate to have to use a FP...maybe we should re-think this" (re: a FP or two). Players with "nothing to loose" play more riskier because, well, they have nothing to loose. Those that do have something to loose...something they are likely never to get back, or get back rarely...tend to play more cautiously. Of course, with how I'd use FP for 5e, a PC would be able to recover a FP in some way...but, as I said, that's because we want to just play the game and get a feel for it more. I guess it'd be a "temporary crutch" for not knowing the system and what is/isn't available in it.

Overall, as I said, my games tend to be rather deadly. The FP option lets me continue to DM in my "normal" way and not have to worry as much about a group of adventurers starting an adventure at 2pm, and a completely different group of adventurers completing it at 8pm.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm the opposite from you when it comes to magic items. I'd vastly prefer basically anything other than giving out Potions of Saveyourbutt, Rings of Bytheskinofmyteeth, and Wands of LuckythisisJUSTwhatIneed. To me, that cheapens the characters...it wasn't really the PC who saved the day...it was his magic item(s). To me (us; my group), weaving in some stupendously unlikely event is much more entertaining, creative, and rewarding than just whipping out a magic item to save the day. *shrug* As I'm becoming increasingly fond of saying, "Different strokes and all that".

The difference for me is that one is done "in character" and the other is not. It's not about handing out potent magic items and it's not about handing out a lot of them, it's about letting the players shine using their PCs instead of letting the game mechanics shine.

Like you said, different strokes.

Overall, as I said, my games tend to be rather deadly. The FP option lets me continue to DM in my "normal" way and not have to worry as much about a group of adventurers starting an adventure at 2pm, and a completely different group of adventurers completing it at 8pm.

If you need to rely on fate points to solve that issue, then fate points is not really the topic of discussion.

As for 5E, it really depends on how tactical your players are. Our group of 6 3rd level PCs took on 4 5th level (2 attacks per round) foes and 8 foes (with special abilities like knocking foes prone, and trampling, and pack tactics) similar in level to us (based on the number of hits it took to take them out). We were outnumbered 2 to 1, but won. We did have to pull out all of our big guns and many of our other resources (as an example, a potion of healing that my wizard bought at level 1 was used to bring the fighter back conscious, something that I had saved for 2+ levels for an emergency).

5E is only super deadly if either the DM makes it that way, the players make it that way (by making tactically unsound decisions), or the tables runs into a really bad streak of dice rolling. You can control the first one. If you want to make the game deadly, you should give the PCs the tools that they need to confront that deadliness. Giving the tools to the players without giving them to the PCs means that the players are not using the PCs to handle that deadliness, but an external house rule instead.

 

[kalani]

Like many other DMs, I would start the character at the minimum level for the current tier (1st, 5th, 11th, or 17th respectively), with minimum XP for that level.

Such characters would not have any permanent magic items (as such items are not necessary in 5e), but would have comparable GP wealth..... ~1000gp if starting at 5th level....Perhaps 5000-7500gp if starting at 11th level.

From their starting wealth, I would let the character purchase common potions, and let them choose 1-3 non-permanent items of uncommon rarity (potions, scrolls, and the like) - based on party level.

The character would not have any renown, favors, enmity, titles or other intangible awards.

 

[Kalshane]

One thing the seems kind of silly about the "everyone starts at 1st" thing is the argument that "Well, if they're really low compared to the party, they'll level up really fast!" which seems to defeat the purpose of making them 1st level to begin with.

If you've got a 10th level party and a new 1st level character is going to hit 7th level in a few sessions anyway, why not just start them at 7th instead of them going from newbie to veteran overnight? (Which is pretty similar the "start them at the bottom of the current tier", but with more math involved, so I honestly think the same tier option probably works better in practice.) The instant zero-to-hero situation seems more immersion breaking to me than the party finding and recruiting someone in the neighborhood of their power level.