Starting at 1st level appeals to me for a lot of reasons. The list of spell choices is more quickly digestible, the character's stories are developed together rather than apart, and it fits in with the vision I have of a more Renaissance/beginning of history feel for the campaign.
The biggest issue with starting at 1st level, as Scott said, is that the number of hit points you have is perilously close to the amount of damage a typical weapon does. (This is a "feature" of D&D, and I believe it's a holdover from its wargaming roots.) Here's how I plan to mitigate this. First, as Fabio mentions, some challenges the players face will be intellectual, rather than combative. I know there's at least a few players that would prefer more puzzles and dialogue and less combat, especially if it slows down the game. More on this later. Second, as Fabio has also mentioned, the "critical hit" rule is the bane of PCs. I will introduce a rule along the lines that anything with less than 4 HD (or under 4th level) can't make a critical hit. Thirdly, I encourage the players to play their characters, particularly at the beginning, recognizing that getting a knife in the ribs could easily kill anyone, so they should try to avoid being within arm's reach of anyone ornery with a weapon.
As part of the incentive, I'm going to award experience based on obstacles overcome. So, if there was a band of goblins in the road, and you sneak around them or bribe them, you get the same experience as if you defeated them in combat. (There's a catch: if you run into the goblins again later, you don't get experience for them again, even if you do fight them the second time.)
Lastly, this ties into Dr. Strangelove's question about the lethality of the game. While I have some absolutely surreal ideas that I would _love_ to try out for ensuing adventures if the whole party dies, I don't really expect that to happen. I don't want to dismiss the possibility of character death entirely, but I have a hard time setting up a situation where a character is likely to die unless I know they'll have access to being brought back. If the characters don't put themselves in deadly situations, they won't die. (In order to preserve dramatic tension, I won't specify where I consider the line to be between "easy fight" and "deadly situation".)
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2 comments:
I should point out that this is all a "behind the curtain" conversation: the primary issue (but not the only one) is that first-level characters in D&D are fragile, and the solutions involve the DM tweaking rules or constructing the early adventures so that there's less risk. I really do want to adhere to the idea that you can play without knowing any of the rules, so this is all stuff that you wouldn't see as a player, unless you wanted to check the DM's arithmetic.
If the DM (me) does his job, and you're not trying to portray a character with a death wish, all you'll notice is that your character doesn't die in the first couple of adventures. Which I think is a reasonable thing to expect.
Also, let me address another issue with starting at first level that Scott mentioned, that first level characters haven't done anything. I agree that character backgrounds that have more meat to 'em help to make a better story, and gives the players more to work with.
But I'm thinking that we don't have to assume the characters haven't done anything. We could instead assume that characters are only now coming into realizing their true potential. Kinda like mutants -- they had lives before this, but _here's_ where the _really_ exciting stuff starts.
This depends a bit on the character. If someone wants to be a human fighter who's just got his spurs (like Dunk in George R. R. Martin's "The Hedge Knight") then there's some interesting back story, but not a lot of earlier activity -- he's a young guy, after all. On the other hand, maybe someone's been the village constable for a long time, and only now has really decided to make a name for himself. (Maybe now he's got nothing to lose, since his wife and children were killed in a terrible accident...)
If you were to want a character like the ex-constable, I'd fill you in on the sorts of monsters you've seen, anything useful about the town politics, etc. (In rule terms, you're spending several skill points in knowledge[local].) The history for this character could be exceptionally rich -- town murders that were never solved, bribes taken from the local mob, local shopkeepers who owe favors...
In summary, I want to allow as much freedom as possible for people to choose their character to be whatever they want, and to describe them however they want. It just so happens that in game terms, they have great opportunities to become more than they currently are.
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