Last night a player commented: "Levels 1-4 are just training wheels. The game doesn't even start until 5th level. Unless you're playing D&D for the first time, you should just start at 5th level."
Now, she hasn't been playing for ages - probably just around 5 years. I would expect it to take longer than that to become that jaded to low-level play.
Do you agree? If not, how do you address this? Start at 5th level? Speed through Levels 1-4? House rules to give more power or better options?
Yes, in the sense that (a) I find these levels far
far more tedious than challenging, (b) those are the levels WotC assigns to the first tier of play and so, in a very real sense, a new experience of play is
intended to occur at 5th level, and (c) like trying to plan an outing that will be both challenging for a father and his five-year-old child(ren), it all too often ends in an authority figure carrying the tired little one(s) past the finish line because they weren't up to the task.
I thought level 1-2 were the training wheels in 5E and that level 3 is where it all begins?
I've heard such in every edition of the game, but its variable.
Depends. 5th level is an intentional and, in general,
shared level where things change for most characters. Subclass can occur at 1, 2, or 3 depending on which class you play, so if you base it on subclass, there will be lots of exceptions. 5th level is when 3rd level spells come online (iconics like
fireball and vital support functions like
revivify), when "heavy" martial characters get Extra Attack, when cantrips go up in damage the first time, when Bards get their Inspiration Dice per
short rest, Monks get Stunning Strike, etc. No cutoff will be perfect, but the 4->5 transition is somewhat more clean than 2->3 in terms of "almost everyone undergoes a major change/gets a major upgrade."
So they put the zero to hero levels in and then put signposts in place for those of us who actually don't care for that play style to explicitly say "hey, it's ok to skip these levels if you want and start at level 5".
Yeah...if only DMs would actually like...
ever consider listening to those signposts. I've played all of
one 5e game that didn't start at 1st level. It's also the highest-level game I've ever played in, because games are
way too likely to fizzle out....or to run into problems because low levels are simultaneously extremely sparse in tools and extremely deadly.
It needs slowed down if anything.
For me, this would make 5e literally unplayable. As in, I would literally not be able to enjoy it anymore, doubly so since I don't tend to play with friends (I am my friend group's forever DM and 100% okay with that).
By the time you get much beyond 5th level, you're unstoppable.
Uh...what? Care to explain that one?
No, they were not, and why specifically those levels ? Why not 1, or 1-2, or 1-6 or whatever ?
Also, lots of people only play D&D at low level only, very few people play at high level anyway.
If you're going to make claims of this nature, provide the statistics. Otherwise, stop acting like you know any better than anyone else here what the preferences of players are.
I would disagree that levels 1-4 are training wheels.
You need more skill as a player to survive playing a level 1 character than you would as a level 5. You have less hit points, less abilities, less resources to overcome challenges at lower levels than you do at higher levels.
See, this is
exactly the problem I identified back during the playtest. People told me I was either straight-up wrong, simply had a vendetta against 5e, or was blowing an issue way out of proportion. And then, lo and behold, my predictions were
exactly right.
Because yes, you are 100% correct. These are the deadliest levels in 5e, and by far the levels where you're most likely to lose a character forever. They're also the levels where the designers specifically provide few options at a slow pace, so that players can get used to them and feel comfortable with their higher-level characters. AKA, you are 100% correct in saying that these levels are trying to serve two different masters: both the "I want a meatgrinder!" rock-bottom-zero fans (well, sort of, as demonstrated by the "no I need to be
even more zero" posts in this thread) AND the "I'm a total neophyte who has no idea what a 'saving throw' is nor why you would throw something in order to save yourself...?" folks who need help and guidance. It's completely baffling to me why they thought this was a wise choice, since the game really is stupidly lethal for the first couple levels and then dramatically less so thereafter.
Some people want to start out strong and get into the high fantasy action, others want to be challenged with greater chances of death and greater difficulty.
The beauty of having low levels being weak is that each group can dial in their own challenge level. If you want less challenge and more capable characters, start at higher levels. If you want more challenge start at lower levels.
That would be beautiful if more than a vanishingly small fraction of games
actually started higher than 1st level. Because they don't. Out of literally a dozen or more online games I've joined, all of
one started higher than 1st level. And that was with me being extremely selective and usually ignoring opportunities because they
didn't start higher.
Honestly, I find the term "training wheels" very derogatory for people who like playing at low level, for all kind of reasons.
Shouldn't surprise you, there's plenty of derogatory terms thrown at people who prefer higher-level games, as you well know.
Another thing is I think for most tables, levels 1 and 2 are done within the first handful of sessions. They pass by so quickly that some people wonder why bother even playing them?
Sadly, IME, they have not been. I have had multiple DMs drag these levels out for ages, both in PbP and in more "typical" session play. I believe, in the longest-running 5e game I've been in, we took three weeks to go from level 1 to level 2. (And, keep in mind, this was
after I gave an honest attempt at convincing the DM to let us start higher than 1st level, since no one in the group was new to D&D/tabletop generally, but a couple were new to 5e.)
I got to wonder how do people deal with encounter building for level1 characters?
In my experience? Badly. Have seen multiple level-1 TPKs that subsequently resulted in group dissolution.
If low level characters only ever get a steady diet of balanced encounters, it’s going to feel like a monotonous cakewalk.
Toss the idea of balanced encounters and those low levels become more tense and exciting than any other level of play.
If you find character permadeath exciting, sure. If you don't, they're tedious slogs to test whether or not you'll be
allowed to play any further. Which doesn't feel even slightly fun or exciting for me. It instead feels like, "Spin this roulette wheel and pick a color, red or black. Guess wrong and you'll be kicked out of the casino. Oh, no, don't bet any
money, you'll get to do plenty of that
once you survive the roulette wheel."
My son says if it does not have at least one dragon then it can't be a good adventure.
That said, you are not training at levels 1-4. Even at level 1 you have extraordinary powers.
Extraordinary compared to
what, exactly? Compared to ordinary Earth humans? Of course! I don't know about you but I have absolutely, positively
zero interest in playing "literally an actual Earth farmboy with literally zero more capabilities than what you could expect an Earth farmboy to have," for
any amount of time, let alone multiple levels.
