Starting at 1st level with a higher group

[Schmoe]

I agree. The "If a low-level character is smart..." comment doesn't seem realistic or based on play experience. If the low level character is smart he doesn't go out with the guys that can breathe hard and kill him.

Quasqueton, how many 1st level PCs have you seen played in campaigns where the rest of the PCs are 6th level? 10th level? How long did they survive?

I did it. First campaign I played in when 3E came out, I joined a group of level 6-7 characters going through a converted ToEE. I was a 1st level melee ranger. I never died, made significant contributions (though I used a bow to stay out of melee at first), and was only 2 levels behind the highest level character by the end (12th level).

We played by 3E xp rules, where everyone got the same amount of xp regardless of level.

Sure, it was a little more challenging, but I enjoy those kinds of challenges every now and then.

From my experience, I would be much more wary of joining a group that was levels 9+ as a 1st level character, as those are the levels where AoE attacks seem to become more common and deadly. At anything below that, you really only need to survive one or two sessions before your risk of getting one-shotted becomes manageable.

That said, in the right kind of campaign it would be fun to bring in all new PCs at first level. A meatgrinder, take-no-prisoners dungeon crawl is the perfect scenario for this, where part of the challenge is keeping enough of the group alive long enough to build a competent team. In a scenario like this, the dungeon becomes a character of its own as it claims more and more lives and players bring more fresh meat to the table.

 

[TerraDave]

Years back I had a long running campaing with sudden player turnover.

The new players where that rare breed, people who hadn't played (and over 20) and wanted to. I knew they would need time to learn about the game and their charecters, but didn't want to stop The Campaing. You cannot stop The Campaing, especially when you are playing an older edition that has slow leveling since your story awards don't compensate (as we know now thanks to Quasqueton) for not giving XP for treasure.

Anyways, the 1st level pcs join the 8th level pcs. And to make it worse, I actually had to slow down their convergence, 'cause they really needed time to get used to everything....It was fun, a classic case of the right players and DM making up for other things.

But the lack of balance across pcs, the constant near death experiences...and just the miss match between what I wanted to do and the capability of most of the players (never mind their charecters), well, I am not so sure I would want to do it again.