I prefer 3rd-12th level as a player, but picked 5th-10th as the closest option.
At lower levels a couple of bad dice rolls can leave your character dead without you making any really bad decisions. While that may be funny for a moment it does mean you have to create a new character - not a quick process in 3/3.5 - and then your DM has to find a way to integrate them into the game. It's also hard for a DM to plan things around their particular characters, as they're fragile enough that you can be wasting your time quite easily.
At higher levels there's lots of save-or-die effects, which in many ways is worse. These characters have been played for longer with more emotional investment, and seeing the character you've spent a year or more developing die in one failed saving throw is disturbing. Admittedly this implies characters who've started at first level, I have found that when I create a character at a higher level I'm kess concerned when they die. That may also be due to the fact that my group always starts campaigns with first level characters, and higher level characters are created only for games intended to be single adventures.
At lower levels a couple of bad dice rolls can leave your character dead without you making any really bad decisions. While that may be funny for a moment it does mean you have to create a new character - not a quick process in 3/3.5 - and then your DM has to find a way to integrate them into the game. It's also hard for a DM to plan things around their particular characters, as they're fragile enough that you can be wasting your time quite easily.
At higher levels there's lots of save-or-die effects, which in many ways is worse. These characters have been played for longer with more emotional investment, and seeing the character you've spent a year or more developing die in one failed saving throw is disturbing. Admittedly this implies characters who've started at first level, I have found that when I create a character at a higher level I'm kess concerned when they die. That may also be due to the fact that my group always starts campaigns with first level characters, and higher level characters are created only for games intended to be single adventures.
