D&D 5E Where does the punitive approach to pc death come from?

[Celebrim]

Training was really "wonderful" when the DM was successfully building dramatic tension in the important quest, so we can completely derail the game into a very meta discussion about when the party is going to take a hiatus so some party members can level up.

I didn't really understand the 1e DMG as a whole until I realized that it was one experienced DM's campaign notes. Granted, he was a good DM, and granted he was one of the first DM's, but there is a lot in the book that only makes sense in context of the game he was running.

That game was played basically 6 nights a week, with 12 or more players sitting at a table, on a rotating basis depending on who was motivated to show up. Gygax is making some assumptions about what other DMs were doing and experiencing based on the bias created by that sort of situation.

If you read it that way, and to a certain extent the preface encourages you to read it that way, then the book is brilliant. If you try to apply its very specific solutions to very specific problems blindly, then you run into a lot of trouble.

I think you misunderstand the training rules completely if you think they are mostly about Gygaxian naturalism.

 

[Celebrim]

I never owned a compendium of NPCs, but the DMG seemed fairly clear on the point that NPCs had stats that were appropriate for who they were, so the village blacksmith might have 3 HD and a THAC0 of 19 with his hammer. I'll check my books for an exact quote, when I get home.

I don't know about 2e, but in 1e a blacksmith was a "laboring male", and would have had 2-7 h.p. and would have fought as a 0th level fighter. He would therefore be almost the equal of a soldier, which would have had 4-7 h.p. and fought as a 0th level fighter.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Training was really "wonderful" when the DM was successfully building dramatic tension in the important quest, so we can completely derail the game into a very meta discussion about when the party is going to take a hiatus so some party members can level up.

Training rules are great for making it so that players don't have to worry about XP during the game IF no single quest awards more experience than is needed to gain two levels. You're supposed to go on a quest, complete the quest, and then maybe gain a level if you were close.

If you set out on a quest, and gain enough experience for several levels before completing the quest, then training rules don't really work for that scenario.

 

[concerro]

This is not standard practice. Even when I was playing 2nd edition the worst I have seen was you come in at the level of the lowest party member or you come in one level lower than you were before. Most GM's will let you come in at the same level as the party.

edit: That was replying directly to the OP. I did not realize this was an 18 page thread.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In the 30 years I've played D&D no one ever made all new characters start at first level. It wasn't even suggested by Gygax that all new characters start at first level. I've seen enough posts online to know it wasn't common with others, either.

My experience was that it was pretty standard practice up until 3.0, when starting-beyond-1st-level guidelines seemed to start working.

It's not as bad as it sounds, either, since the old-school exp tables, whacked though they often seemed, tended to catch a first level character up to the party pretty quickly (assuming the DM wasn't a stickler for the optional training rules). You'd never quite catch up, depending on just how far behind your started, but you'd generally get within a level of the party eventually. Remember, these exp tables were tuned so that you could have multi-classed characters splitting their exp two and three ways, and Henchmen getting half shares more or less keep up, too.

But, it's one of those things that could easily vary from region to region or even group to group. Not surprised to hear some abandoned the practice earlier than others.

And, with 5e back to the first few levels going very quickly - and the design goal of bounded accuracy - I see no reason not to go back to that policy, today. It'd give a real consequence to character loss, and avoid the 3.x issue with new/replacement characters being used to sneak in a late-blooming optimized build.

 

[Nytmare]

These rules were in no way formalized across the entirety of the hobby. I started playing in 81, and every group I had been a part of considered creating a new character at anything above first level to be cheating. I didn't run into anyone who didn't play that way till probably my second year of college in 93.

This was not to say that when a character died, it had to be replaced by a first level character. There was nothing stopping you from bringing in a surviving, higher level character from some other D&D game; but the common rule we always saw and always played with was that a brand new character had to start at first level and be built from the ground up. This also, as you might imagine, lead to a surprising number of higher level D&D characters with surprisingly great magic items, that were created and leveled up while people were away at camp, or on vacation with their cousins. When I was in middle school, my one friend John had a folder full of god-like characters with levels way up in the double digits that (if the rumors were to be believed) were stolen from his older brother who was away at college.

 

[Riley37]

Star Wars without Obi Wan dying? Lame.

Indeed. Imagine if he returned at the end of the movie, as Luke was making the final approach to the thermal exhaust port, whispering "trust the force, Luke". How lame is THAT?

Decades later, Jackson makes the LotR movies, in which the old mystic tells his allies to escape while he holds off the Big Bad in a dramatic duel... *and then reappears later in the story, even more powerful*. Total rip-off, eh?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Indeed. Imagine if he returned at the end of the movie, as Luke was making the final approach to the thermal exhaust port, whispering "trust the force, Luke". How lame is THAT?

Well, it might fit in a camp movie like Spaceballs. Luke hears a whisper, "Use the force, Luke!" and looks back and Obi Wan is huddled in the back seat. Luke is like, "What?!? I thought you were dead!" and Obi Wan screams, "No, Luke! Keep your eyes on the--" and then Luke's ship hits one of the gun turrets poking out of the side of the canyon and everything explodes. Roll credits.

 

[Li Shenron]

(I didn't read the whole thread, but I'll toss here my 2cp)

I remember in old games, if your PC died you rolled a new one at 1st level and you joined back up with the party and continued on your way. Even if the party was 20th level, you still started at 1st. It wasn't that big a deal but it changed over time and now 20 years later it seems punitive, impractical and actually pretty weird.

There was also a mirroring of typical gaming habits of that era. Video games for example were typically just like that: when you lost the game, you started over. In the past couple of decades, the paradigm changed to just keep playing, sometimes without even any sort of penalty.

First of all, there's the power disparity and the contribution the new pc can realistically make. I know we've all bought into bounded accuracy like it was a religious text, but a 1st level pc IS NOT "basically as effective" as, say a 5th level pc. The 1st level pc doesn't have the extra attack, spell slots, spell levels or hp that a 5th level pc has and will likely die in any encounter a 5th level party engages in. The only way this is workable is if the 1st level sits at the back and tries not to draw attention from monsters, which is not much fun for the player.

In combat yes, but you are forgetting all the rest of the game.

A first level PC in 5e can have a proficiency, a unique class feature, or spellcasting capabilities, that the rest of the party doesn't have. Someone non-proficient for example is going to have +0 even at 20th level, while the 1st level PC will have +2. The higher level PC might still have a higher ability score due to the boosts by level, but it may also not... Certainly the "everybody can try everything" mentality doesn't help in this case.

But in general it's only combat where there is a problem, and then it's the HP/damage difference which really matters. If you ask me, I was in favor of the early 5e playtesting idea for HP to start much higher (IIRC in the 1st playtest packet, everyone started with HP = Constitution score), but now it's too late for that.

Secondly, there's the in-world practicality of picking up a lower level companion (that someone mentioned in the other thread): taking the extreme example, why would 20th level PCs pick up an unknown, unskilled 1st level pc?

Because they are skilled in something the rest of the party isn't.

If you have no trapfinder, a 1st leve trapfinder with her +2 proficiency might be still better at trapfinding than a 20th level PC who is not proficient.

Again, unfortunately the "everybody can try!" concept gets in the way, at least with some skills, so for 1st and 20th level PCs to coexist smoothly probably the DM has to think of some added values to proficiencies (e.g. only allow untrained checks on routine tasks). But in general in 5e it's still much better than in 4e where everybody just got better at every skill by level.

 

[Riley37]

Video games for example were typically just like that: when you lost the game, you started over. In the past couple of decades, the paradigm changed to just keep playing

I spent many quarters to reach the end of certain video games. I got to see a cool ending, they got my quarters.

"taking the extreme example, why would 20th level PCs pick up an unknown, unskilled 1st level pc?"
Now we know why Aragorn and Gandalf let Pippin and Merry join the party: they were the new characters of players whose previous PCs had died!

Are there any other times, in fantasy stories or real life, that veterans and fresh recruits end up on the same team?

As said, one can tailor a new PC to whatever competencies aren't already covered. You could have a high-level party, none of whose members can Wild Shape or Find Familiar; then a new PC enters who has either of those; and then you need a flying animal scout, and suddenly the newbie becomes as popular as Rudolf the Reindeer.