Pimp my 1st level characters!

[Digital Archon]

Give them max gold and let them buy a few magic items like potions and scrolls, either at market price in the DMG (most scrolls of level 1 spells are only 25 gp, and there's not much else a wizard has to spend money on once he's bought a staff and a lantern), or at Item Creation price, optionally only if they have an appropriate feat.

Allow them to retreat after a fight and take a few days off to create items if they took the feats.

 

[Quartz]

A common mistake with larger groups is to put in a tougher monster. Instead, put in more lesser monsters.

A big aid to survivability at low levels is to remove critical hits - only masterwork and magic weapons can cause criticals. This stops the orc whomping your 13 HP fighter for 40+ HP damage.

And EL7 at L2? No way. Draw the limit at EL4, maybe a weak EL5. I'd want my players to be 4th level before tackling an EL7 encounter.

 

[Phlebas]

Why not start at level 2 ? seems a reasonable way to improve survivability that has absolutely no knock on effects later on

or give them a patron at low levels who hands out potions or wand of cure light or MW items but then vanishes later on....

problem with other magic items that improve low-level survivability is that they have a tendency to hang around unless you only give out one-shots or charged items. improved point buys are also difficult to remove / balance later

Eberron AP's are pretty simple, and you always have the option of freezing them after a certain point (though make sure you tell your players AP's are a temporary goodie)

 

[Hussar]

I'd third (fourth?) the inclusion of AP's. That is probably the biggest life saver right there.

It might not hurt, as well, to sit down and talk some tactics with your players. Just to make sure they are on the same page. You're possibly running a hightly tactical campaign against some fairly casual players. That might be an issue.

 

[Stormborn]

This is what I tend to do when playing with fewer players to get more survivable PCs:

Roll stats - 4d6 dropping the lowest, reroll 1s, 6 times places as needed. If you have more than one score with a negative modifier re-roll all 6. Makes for higher stats early, but that means little at higher levels.
Action Points or some other consumable source of bonuses to rolls that represent luck or extra effort. If you are worried about them give them 2 or 3 to start and then award them an extra one for roleplay, criticals, etc. Their are pleanty of rules floating around for various options on this.
Max starting gold.
Backgrounds: choose 3 related skills and make them permanent class skills, get a +1 circumstance bonus in each, choose 1 feat from a limited list of feats. Backgrounds can also include less mechanically obvious details like those menitoned by Danny above.


Sometimes I have also had patrons provide them with a needed item(s) or gp up front to make what they are being hired to do more survivable. Things like a wand of CLW with only 10-20 charges, a MW weapon or two (on loan, the PCs can buy them at the end of the adventure), or some single use items like potions can help a group out when things are tough up front.

 

[szilard]

Action Points

Start off with hp equal to Constitution. Roll hp as normal per level - but only start using the rolled totals when they exceed the PC's Con.

-Stuart

 

[Quartz]

All these options to make first level characters tougher; don't they simply increase the arms race? Why not make the challenges the PCs face weaker? Hmm... this might be better in a seperate thread.

 

[Asmor]

Here's an idea...

Any time a PC with full (or more) HP is reduced to 0 or less in a single shot, instead the PC is reduced to 1 HP. This can only "trigger" once per encounter, so even if the PC gets healed to full in the middle of the fight he's subject to being KOed by a single hit.