NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8513622" data-attributes="member: 6790260">My pessimism about low levels would probably be significantly ameliorated if what I'd been through were even remotely like this. I've repeatedly had DMs throw stupidly dangerous fights at low-level characters and not understand how things could go so pear-shaped when their other groups do just fine. IIRC, one group we had to fight a mummy as our second encounter at 1st level, with zero warning or opportunity to find out that we'd be doing so until the mummy got the drop on us; then as soon as we got completely DM-fiat saved from a TPK, we went out on our first mission, got our asses handed to us by a fight so we decided to take a short rest to heal....and then got ambushed by a second viciously hard encounter and only one character escaped alive, at which point the campaign folded.Other groups have suffered similar ignominious ends, not always at the hands of stupidly-powerful enemies. (The aforementioned "wow, that fight hurt, we need to rest" combat was against a handful of giant spiders and...some other thing I don't recall, for example.) Even groups that didn't disintegrate so rapidly generally have had pretty clear "alright, guess I have to use kid gloves" moments.Given I get neither interesting mechanical interactions nor meaningfully enjoyable story out of such experiences, yeah, I basically have zero reason to engage with them. They provide no thrilling action IME, and rarely (if ever) require much more than "expend mundane resources" or "read the DM's mind as to whether you should be diplomatic this time or a treacherous snake." Probably doesn't help that most of the "challenges" allegedly faced by low-level characters either feel trivial/perfunctory, moon-logic, or ridiculously punishing (As examples of that last one: "you made one mistake, now take 4d8 damage as a 1st-level character" or "ooh, shouldn't have gotten touched by a mummy you didn't know was there, now you have mummy rot and will die in 1d4 days unless you get a spell you can't afford and no one in the party can cast.")Also, as for the "don't piss off the bandits": Alright. That sounds really dull to me, because "set traps for your enemies" and "sneak around and maybe get intel so other people can actually fix the problem" mean...doing precious little yourself. Particularly the former, since that doubles up with "do immoral things to succeed." Just feels like it's emphasizing how petty and pointless one's life is when the best the character can hope for is "maybe learn something, so I can tell the actually important people in the hope they'll fix it."</blockquote>

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