D&D 5E New Players same level as Current Players?

[Nytmare]

Which is fine to a degree, except that it starts to break down significantly once the core characters are many levels in and new PCs are introduced. While it's great to want the characters to grow, at the same time WHY would a group of characters be ok with someone coming in to their group who is considerably outclassed? From a strictly narrative perspective, a group of people have been adventuring for a while, and in comes new character X. X seems interesting, has a vibrant personality, looks like they have potential. But. Time and time again, out of combat (using skills and non-combat spells), they don't actually appear to bring nearly as much to the table as even random NPCs comparable to them are bringing. In dangerous situations, they aren't merely ineffective, they are a liability. The rest of the group, you know can take a hit or two, even a nasty one, and pull through. But damn if X doesn't keep getting dropped over and over, even when protected by the group, from what should be minor threats to the party.

A group of people would only put up with that for so long before saying look, you are just not a great fit. I'm sorry, you're a nice person and all, but having you is a liability, not a benefit.

Do you not see how every game of D&D isn't going to have this setup? Or that maybe the new character has information the group needs, knows how to find a thing, can introduce them to a person, has the same enemies, or one of a million other uses that don't boil down to what their stats are or how much damage they can deal and soak up? The challenge is to find a character who fits, not to keep finding characters who don't fit.

Like I said, even from a narrative sense, it doesn't actually make sense.

For some narratives. For other narratives it works fine.

There's a reason I brought up (and notice you didn't address) NPCs. Apply the ES@1 to NPCs, and see how well it works. Because, again, every PC is an NPC until a player takes control of it. They should exist within the game world on their own in a way that makes sense from both mechanical and narrative perspectives.

I didn't address it cause I thought it was kind of nonsensical, not because I was stunned into silence by how clever it was. Proponents of starting-at-first-level-play are imposing a mechanical rule on what players are allowed to play, just like how a DM might say "no characters with wings" or "no starting your character off as a king or queen".

Plus, as a player? As someone who has DMed large numbers of players over the years (working at a FLGS for ~13 years can do that; you see a lot of new faces)? Yeah, this kind of campaign would likely be a deal-breaker quite quickly for a great many people. Hence the results of the poll itself. And if over the course of an adventure a major character dies? That player, too, will have to bring in a PC at level 1. I suspect, based on a lot of experience, that a player that has that happen might just see how profoundly unfun it can be to be shoved so far in the mechanical hole, so to speak. To go from this epic hero doing epic deeds to being potentially downed by a lone goblin with a single hit, and a profound liability to the rest of the group.

I am happy that you have found a way that works for you and the people you play with.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

I edited my post poorly, in trimming down I removed a third option "find different people to play with". Those last two weren't meant as quotes of what you were saying, they were other common suggestions as to how people "fix" a hypothetical player. "Doing A, B, or C aren't always the best or easiest ways to do it."

Regardless, what I was pointing out with the first part of that post wasn't that you were misquoting someone, it was that you were inadvertently attaching a lot of unspoken and unalluded to negative actions to a play style you don't like. You accidentally managed to spin someone thinking that a milestone system player might get something they didn't earn to a DM in an XP based game being an antisocial jerk and refusing to give a player XP because they didn't "take an axe to the face."

I think you might be doing it again now by talking down to the people not in your column of the poll and telling them that they're doing it wrong because they're only worried about leveling.

Tone notwithstanding, I'm still waiting to hear why milestone levelling can favor characters that somehow haven't earned it. Just that sentient alone led to my other comments, so perhaps you are right that I need to ware what words I use to describe my dislike of it.

You've said you're more on the fence with both styles, and favor one or the other based on campaign and players. Can you offer a reason why milestone levelling favors the deadweight characters more than XP? I mean, in an XP based game, what do you do if a character doesn't contribute? That's why I inferred you would withhold XP, as that is the only 'punishment' I can see that's different from milestone levelling.

 

[Nytmare]

You've said you're more on the fence with both styles, and favor one or the other based on campaign and players. Can you offer a reason why milestone levelling favors the deadweight characters more than XP? I mean, in an XP based game, what do you do if a character doesn't contribute? That's why I inferred you would withhold XP, as that is the only 'punishment' I can see that's different from milestone levelling.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/positive-reinforcement

[EDIT] And I don't think that milestone D&D favors dead weight players, I was trying to address people possibly misreading what someone else was saying.

 

[Nytmare]

If you wanted to model fiction where everyone is a competent hero with a rich backstory, you could play ES@5

Actually, now that you mention it, in my E6 campaign, I think that every NPC was first level... Huh.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/positive-reinforcement

Explanation needed.

Are you saying that positive reinforcement is happening because... What? You can't punish them somehow? You know, like withholding XP? The same thing you said no one is suggesting?

Or are you saying that you can give extra XP to a character whenever they contribute (in your own eyes) and therefore encourage them to contribute more by continuously doing so?

The first is downright bad DMing, the second is some amateur psychology experiment when you could simply just talk to your player if they aren't contributing.

"Hey Mike, buddy. Why aren't you getting involved when the others are rping and coming up with plans? Is something the matter?"

A lot simpler than trying to promote the behaviour you want by thinking some extra XP can buy a player's investment in something they don't want to do.

 

[Tectuktitlay]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/positive-reinforcement

[EDIT] And I don't think that milestone D&D favors dead weight players, I was trying to address people possibly misreading what someone else was saying.

I guess it's a good thing that some (perhaps many?) of us who use milestone leveling are specifically removing that being either a positive or negative reinforcement from the picture entirely, hmm? As in, it is in no way a reinforcing agent whatsoever? Much like setting a superhero campaign at street-level, heroic level, or cosmic level sets a metric of overall relative power-level of the characters involved, without rewarding or punishing any of them?

I find giving characters in my campaigns tangible in-game rewards not tied to their fundamental metric of power level relative to one another, but instead tied directly to their roleplaying, is a much better agent of positive reinforcement to get them to engage in behaviors desirable to the...roleplaying part of the game.

 

[Jacob Marley]

It's not a bad way to play, just very difficult to pull off successfully even with very established groups of players who know each other quite well.

Okay, so it is a very difficult way to play, point conceded; are you interested in learning the techniques used in successfully running a campaign with players playing characters at dissimilar levels? If so, I'd be glad to offer my thoughts.

 

[Lanefan]

...post 172...

This and some others are great posts to which I don't have time to fully reply right now; I'll get to 'em later though the way this is exploding my replies might be out of date by then

Lanefan

 

[Tectuktitlay]

Okay, so it is a very difficult way to play, point conceded; are you interested in learning the techniques used in successfully running a campaign with players playing characters at dissimilar levels? If so, I'd be glad to offer my thoughts.

Well, I have done it. Many, many times in fact; I've been playing for over 35 years now, and played an awful lot of styles of play, and systems, at this point. While I do know how to work with characters of disparate levels, even severely disparate levels, sure. I would love to hear your thoughts on how to do so. I pretty much always love to hear different viewpoints and approaches.

 

[Nytmare]

Explanation needed.

Are you saying that positive reinforcement is happening because... What? You can't punish them somehow? You know, like withholding XP? The same thing you said no one is suggesting?

Or are you saying that you can give extra XP to a character whenever they contribute (in your own eyes) and therefore encourage them to contribute more by continuously doing so?

The first is downright bad DMing, the second is some amateur psychology experiment when you could simply just talk to your player if they aren't contributing.

"Hey Mike, buddy. Why aren't you getting involved when the others are rping and coming up with plans? Is something the matter?"

A lot simpler than trying to promote the behaviour you want by thinking some extra XP can buy a player's investment in something they don't want to do.

Seeing as how I have never had to do this, and that I managed to solve never having this problem by accidentally falling into a large group of people with very complimentary play styles, all that I can do is guess at the actions, motives, and reactions within the hypothetical situation you've painted.

In a game where XP is being used as a carrot, and not the stick, a DM can easily offer extra XP bumps for players doing the kinds of things he or she wants them to do more of.

It can just as easily be assumed that that same DM could withhold XP from players, but assuming that they can is not the same thing as knowing that they do.

It is also easy to imagine that the player who is acting in some way that the DM doesn't like could be taken aside and talked to.

Saying that it's simpler to just talk to the person starts getting weird though. Maybe the person isn't a talker. Maybe the DM is gruff and not a people person. Maybe Mike won't react well to being singled out and will have hurt feelings. Ooo, what if Mike's got the deadly Mutaba virus, and he's going to become a zombie?

This is fun, what happens next?