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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6528696" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Addressing your points in order:1.) The power disparity for heterogenous levels in 5E isn't usually as bad as you portray it. You picked an extreme example (one 1st level guy in a 20th level party) but how likely is it that the very first death in the party, ever, would happen at level 20? More likely you'd have one 20th level guy, some 14th-18th level guys, a 9th-level guy, and the 1st level guy. The 1st level guy will level up pretty quickly due to the shape of the XP table, and if you think 2nd level guys can't contribute in important ways I guess you've never run into a Diviner. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-P" title="Stick out tongue    :-P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":-P" /> Even a simple Bless from a 1st-level cleric can be really nice.2.) The experience I'm about to relate isn't as extreme as your 20th-level hypothetical, but here's an experience I had recently: mid-level party (5th, 5th, and 7th), after raiding a dungeon, received a diplomatic message from one of the dungeon's inhabitants with the request to deliver it to the king. 5th level guy accepts the letter and tells the party he's leaving to give it to the king, because that's what his character would do in that situation. Other party members are kind of taken aback, but okay, he's gone now and I guess we're down to two, and I as DM am like, "Okay, maybe I'll have you run the monsters this session then." But early on in that session, another plotline comes to fruition and one of the party's (unwilling) minions catches the "adventuring" bug and gets promoted to full NPC ("will gain a full share of the XP from here on out") and will become a 1st level character in a class of his choosing as soon as he gains 300 XP. Then to my surprise, the player of the missing 5th level PC volunteers to take over the NPC, Grindle, as one of his own characters. It makes perfect sense, so I agree. So now instead of playing a 5th level guy, he's playing a 1st level guy (now 2nd), in a party of generally much higher level--but it makes perfect sense from a roleplaying perspective, and the player doesn't view it as a punishment.3.) I don't use as many exclamation points as your hypothetical DM, but I do let my players know that I expect all of their PCs to start from 1st level, and advance either with XP gained during play or else using the "character tree" rules. (I.e. when an in-play PC goes up a level, another character in the tree also goes up a level too, as long as he isn't higher level than the PC in play.) I don't claim that it's a punishment or a reward, but it is one of my rules. I will admit that, as a player, I view advancing to a higher level as a reward, but it's only meaningful if it's earned--I dislike starting at high level; it feels like not having a history. (It's okay for a one-shot though because in a one-shot, nobody has a real history, just a backstory.) From this perspective, starting a 1st level character isn't a punishment, but it is a necessary prerequisite to earning a reward.4.) In 5E, it is really, really easy to avoid having to start over at 1st level anyway. I love to throw out Deadly fights, and so far my PCs have all survived every fight even when I thought they wouldn't (thanks partly to my use of the Morale rules in close battles) and rarely even get knocked unconscious. Even if someone does manage to die, in 5E you can be raised from the dead with a 3rd level spell (!!!), and you suffer zero long-term consequences. No Resurrection roll, no Con loss, no restrictions on elves, not even any serious time limits except on the 3rd level version (Revivify). Death in 5E is a resource drain (time and material component costs), not a career-ender. You practically have to go out of your way to die permanently.</blockquote>

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