What level do you start your campaign at?

[Psion]

I had some players a while back who really preferred to start at level one, but I find I am happiest with starting things at level 4.

 

[thullgrim]

I voted level 2, I too like the low level goodness but I tend to be a little hard on the encounter side so I start at 2 just to give the PCs a few extra hit points.

 

[Talmun]

Amen.

I don't enjoy Dming combat against rats either.
I also like my characeters to have some survival ability. I've seen alot of potentially fun characetrs go down the drain due to a lucky critical hit al first level. There really is no reason to raise one of these characters (storywise) and you've klost a chracetr with tons of plot hooks (generated by good players usually).
Also, the extra feat help characetrs flesh out their concept slightly more.

While I don’t particularly enjoy running combat with rats either (or dogs, rabbits, housecats, very small rocks…), I do enjoy most of the other things about a low level game, including the relative fragility of the PC’s. IMO You don’t have to create unrealistic adventures just to keep them alive, you simple need to remember the limited resources on hand and plan accordingly when designing adventures – for instance, this last game started off with an urban storyline; the PC’s could get into fights with NPCs and deal with other low-level problems and then toddle off to a healer or a shop to get patched up.

In all the low level games I’ve run, no one has died at level one. They have come mighty close, mind you…
In all, I think the thrill and enjoyment (not to mention the pride of starting at 1st and going to 20th, or whatever) of very low-level D&D outweigh the drawbacks. My $.02 anyway.

 

[Zerth]

In my group, we have sort of agreed to start most of our games at 2nd level. Like already mentioned, there's always the chance to get PC's killed very easily at level 1. There's really a huge difference between 1st and 2nd level, but usually everybody levels up after the first session or the second maximum, so we decided to skip the "compulsory" first session to get to 2nd level. In addition to increased early PC survival rate, 2nd level also gives the chance to make multiclass characters right from the beginning, but doesn't really take much away from building and evolving the characters, which we also enjoy very much.

We still regularly start games at 1st level or at higher level for games with monster races. Many different people DM in my group so the games tend to differ quite a lot from one another.

 

[The_Gneech]

In the past, I've always started my games at 1st level ... but the problem is I've never had a campaign last past 7th or so, usually due to loss of players or the game just fizzling out or any number of other reasons.

So for my current game, I told the players to bring back a group of characters from a previous game, moved 'em from my dull little homebrew to Greyhawk, and made them all 4th level (whereas in the previous game the group had been 6-8 when it ended). I am very pleased with the result -- the characters are already integrated as a team and already have a history (which wouldn't make sense if they were all 1st level again: "Say, you remember when you fireballed that displacer beast?" "Fireball, are you nuts? I can barely do magic missile!"), but they're at a low enough level that the game still has the potential for a nice long run.

I suspect that for future campaigns, I'll probably start the game at 3rd; we've begun enough games that everybody's sick to death of kobolds. I do tend to throw a lot of stuff at my players, too, so it'll be nice to not have to hold back so much while they grow more than a handful of hit points.

-The Gneech

 

[trilobite]

I think it would depend on the type of campaign that you are running too. If your running a FR game and everyone is pretty familiar with it then starting at a higher level would not be a problem. But take a brand new homebrew that the players (and GM) are not familiar with then starting at 1st would be a better option. Thus both the players and the GM could grow into the setting.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Usually level 3. My current game is somewhat Planescape-ish campaign with monster characters, and I started that one at 7. PbPs I usually start at about 5.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Level one, but I have no fear of advancing the PCs a level a game until they get to 3.

 

[Hjorimir]

Somewhere between 1st and 3rd, depending on my mood at the time. As a DM, it can be pretty darn boring at 1st level as you scour the books for 'interesting' punk monsters to fight (that you haven't fought before).

Also, all of my players have played a lot of 3.x at this point and there isn't too much for them to learn about low-level play. So in my latest game I started them all at 3rd.

Now, if I was going to something that is still a bit unknown (say an all psionic game with the new book), I'd be more inclined to start everybody at 1st and even slow progression a bit so we can learn the rules at a comfortable pace.

 

[Chupacabra]

First level all the way. But usually I fudge at the beginning levels (1-3) and wont kill off a PC with a lucky die roll unless he or she does something tremendously foolish.