"Suck now, be awesome later" is bad design

[GâtFromKI]

If your character dies and the party can't/won't bring them back, you restart with a campaign start level character unless the DM says otherwise.

You're talking nonsense. There are rules for creating a character above level 1. And anyway, what is the point of playing a level 1 character in a level 10 group ? The low-level character can't contribute to any challenge and will be insta-kill by splash damage at first encounter. If some MC makes you play a low-level character in a high-level party, he's a passive-aggressive dick who doesn't want you to play but doesn't dare to say it clearly.

Or heck, the DM may will have to throw divine intervention to ressurect your sucky low-level character again and again (getting a bit more sucky with each ressurection due to level/con loss) if he forces you to play a level 1 character in a level 10 party.

Corrected for you.

[Dogbert]

zero-to-hero is also used for induction to the hobby, because you don't want to scare new players away with too much data at once, so you start small and give them small chunks of rules (i.e levels) at a time for an easier learning.

Now, I'm not saying I like it (I LOATHE z2h), but at least I understand it has a reason to exist in entry-level games.

[Wiseman]

Zero to hero does not have to mean suck to awesome. Even if you only have a few options they can still be functional and usable.

[Lokey]

Depends on how much suck to awesome or awesome to suck actually happen.

If you're playing RaW even core-only, does suck to awesome exist? Magic users get enough encounter over stuff at 1 to only have to worry about blowing a spot/listen and getting their face ripped off, but that can happen even to the barb that starts with stupid high con too.

I can see some melee that build toward a PrC and none of their feats matter much til they see shock trooper or something that finally makes them relevant in combat. It's somewhat easy to fix but not in a rules for everybody way (presumably a dm should know what you're bringing to the table and can bring lesser versions of your final shtick online earlier or from the start).

[Gnorman]

If your character dies and the party can't/won't bring them back, you restart with a campaign start level character unless the DM says otherwise.

Are you literally insane? This is monumentally stupid and no one does this. Either produce a citation for this "rule" or admit that you're making up bullshit.

[Orca]

If your character dies and the party can't/won't bring them back, you restart with a campaign start level character unless the DM says otherwise.

Are you literally insane? This is monumentally stupid and no one does this. Either produce a citation for this "rule" or admit that you're making up bullshit.

It's dumb, it wasn't used even then by anyone I knew, but it was in the 1st edition of AD&D in the DMG. I suppose it may be headcanon for some aggressively stupid grognards.

[erik]

There's no book rule for starting level for replacement characters but I have played many campaigns where that was the house rule. I suppose including Living Greyhawk where all new characters start at 1. So in addition to being personally the most common method it is probably objectively the most common.

[ishy]

There's no book rule for starting level for replacement characters but I have played many campaigns where that was the house rule..

Uhmm, yes there is. In the 3.5 DMG:

Under most circumstances, a new character should begin play at the beginning of the level lower than the player’s previous PC. For example, if a player wants his 9th-level paladin to ride off into the sunset, his new character starts with 28,000 XP, the beginning of 8th level. A new player should create his first character at the beginning of the level where the lowest-level existing PC is.
In some circumstances, you might want to be more lenient.

Note: this is not the entire section, read it all if you really care.

[erik]

Hunh. I wonder if that's in 3e too. Probably is.

[Schleiermacher]

That's how we've always run things in my group(s), certainly. And yes, it was in 3.0 too.

[hyzmarca]

Really, the effectiveness of a low level character in a high level party depends on the usefulness of low-level abilities. If a level one character can do things that make it easier for the other characters to win, that's okay. He doesn't need to be able to win on his own.

[GnomeWorks]

If your character dies and the party can't/won't bring them back, you restart with a campaign start level character unless the DM says otherwise.

Are you literally insane? This is monumentally stupid and no one does this. Either produce a citation for this "rule" or admit that you're making up bullshit.

My folks do this. If your character dies and you have to roll a new one, it is level 1, full stop. Doesn't matter what level the rest of the group is.

[virgil]

IIRC, for the old editions of D&D, the XP it took to go from level X to X+1 was enough for a level 1 character to reach X; and so being a cheerleader for a session or two was all that happened before being able to meaningfully contribute again.

[Kaelik]

My folks do this. If your character dies and you have to roll a new one, it is level 1, full stop. Doesn't matter what level the rest of the group is.

Aside from how incredibly stupid that is on every single level, and how you should beat yourself and all your family until you/they stop doing that, it must really suck for that new guy when level 12 parties because according to my chart here, when the party faces an CR 11 enemy, assuming he somehow manages to survive that fight, he gets zero XP.

[Mord]

My folks do this. If your character dies and you have to roll a new one, it is level 1, full stop. Doesn't matter what level the rest of the group is.

GnomeWorks' stories about his family campaigns are among the more entertaining of the horror stories related on the Den, but at the same time, the more of them that I hear, the more I wish I had CPS on speed dial and a time machine. I'm so sorry.

[erik]

I suffered through many home campaigns using that exact system for new/replacement characters (start at level 1, final destination). It took years of explaining why it was horrible before it sunk in.

[pragma]

GnomeWorks' stories about his family campaigns are among the more entertaining of the horror stories related on the Den ...

Link? I'd read that.

[RedstoneOrc]

I wonder if there's a way to do it mechanically that doesn't make anyone want to kill themselves.

No there can't be. Otherwise your character doesn't suck first and is awesome later. Suck first, awesome later and awesome first, suck later can never be balanced.

Dota and LoL seem able to pull it off. Certain heroes are brutal at low levels but scale poorly, while other heroes won't do much until they've got a bunch of levels under their belt, but then they'll rip apart the face of the enemy team.

Not to mention Dota teams seem fine with one of the player being relegated to "that bitch whose main value is spending their wealth buying utility items for the other players".

Now granted a MOBA game takes one hour while a D&D games may take years. But doesn't change the fact that in your average MOBA, the player heroes are far from balanced across the levels, yet MOBAs are stupidly popular.

The community barrel of cocks, yeah you're gonna have to suck them. The biggest reason this works in LoL and not D&D is that LOL is pvp. Team pvp but still player vs player. D&D is cooperative and does not work with mountains of pc bodies. Smaller reason is you are forced to play the entire game to get the win condition.

D&D could work like the dirty MOBA's and their Elk, but your first and only campaign with the characters would have to go 1-20 full stop every campaign no retiring, no level-loss for die too I guess. Now in Baldur's Gate, the closest thing I've played to old school 2nd or earlier D&D, Is the only game I've play that comes close to rock now blow later. And with it you didn't need to go all the way to 20th to fuck faces with any kind of spellcasters and warriors to starting to have only faces and no genitals of any sort. This started to happen around 5th level for spellcasters, and went in full effect around 11th (resurrecting warriors every three fights). So every game would have to be at maximum and minimum 1-11th for the balance to be fair, but you know nine more levels plus dlc for 10 more levels make the game casters all the way down.

For 3E you dial the levels back to 1-8 or so cuz more caster powers less fighter good shit is going on. But really force people to pay the same characters forever that balances the suck then rock balancing if the leveling actually stops.

[maglag]

The community barrel of cocks, yeah you're gonna have to suck them. The biggest reason this works in LoL and not D&D is that LOL is pvp. Team pvp but still player vs player. D&D is cooperative and does not work with mountains of pc bodies. Smaller reason is you are forced to play the entire game to get the win condition.

D&D could work like the dirty MOBA's and their Elk, but your first and only campaign with the characters would have to go 1-20 full stop every campaign no retiring, no level-loss for die too I guess.

But MOBAs are all about cooperation. You'll have a pretty hard time winning if the players don't coordinate, in particular because each hero can only be in one place at a a time yet you have to defend different vectors.

Also MOBAs may not have level loss, but they do have gold loss every time they die. I've seen several D&D players advocate that they'll rather lose levels than treasure. Example 1: Mormekdain's Disjunction is widely considered the ultimate FUCK YOU spell the DM can throw at the party. Example 2: nobody ever uses sunder because it would mean less loot.

And ironically, from several discussions in this very forum, it seems like many people advocate that D&D is not a teamwork game, because seemingly every PC should be capable of roflstomping any challenge they meet on their own, and you suck if you ever need any other player's support for anything. No matter if you're a wizard or warrior or priest, you should simultaneously be able to tank enemy attacks, kill enemies on your own and have utility for every possible situation.

My folks do this. If your character dies and you have to roll a new one, it is level 1, full stop. Doesn't matter what level the rest of the group is.

Aside from how incredibly stupid that is on every single level, and how you should beat yourself and all your family until you/they stop doing that, it must really suck for that new guy when level 12 parties because according to my chart here, when the party faces an CR 11 enemy, assuming he somehow manages to survive that fight, he gets zero XP.

Been there, done that. Many years ago I actually had a D&D group where when we got a new player or somebody needed a replacement, we would go to the wilderness to farm low-level random encounters for the new lv1 characters to catch up (the high level characters would also hold back from doing anything to don't "suck" exp).

Yes, it was really shitty in retrospective, but it still happened.

Eventually we managed to get the DM to agree for character "tresholds" where for example if the party was level 12, new characters could start at level 10. But they still got 1st level WBL.

[GâtFromKI]

Really, the effectiveness of a low level character in a high level party depends on the usefulness of low-level abilities. If a level one character can do things that make it easier for the other characters to win, that's okay. He doesn't need to be able to win on his own.

If low-level character were useful to win, any BBEG would have several low-level minion helping him, and Fireball would be praised as a great spell.

It's not the case, so I guess everyone agree low-level characters are useless in high-level party.

IIRC, for the old editions of D&D, the XP it took to go from level X to X+1 was enough for a level 1 character to reach X; and so being a cheerleader for a session or two was all that happened before being able to meaningfully contribute again.

If it's quick, what's the point ? You already didn't play the end of the encounter, the cleaning of the dungeon, etc, but it's not enough and the game would be better if you couldn't play during a few hours more ?

Anyway, I've already seen that in MMORPG: a high level character fights trash mobs for several hours, while a low-level character waits nearby and gains xp. It's quick as well as boring as hell. Why would you play that in a TTRPG, you have the choice and you already know the end result (boring fights, mobs die, new character reaches a high level) ? Are you never doing any fast-forward, do you play every boring part of an adventure ?

I've seen several D&D players advocate that they'll rather lose levels than treasure.

Because level are easier to repair than treasure. It doesn't mean losing level is fun. It means repairing magical objects is insanely hard.

Been there, done that. Many years ago I actually had a D&D group where when we got a new player or somebody needed a replacement, we would go to the wilderness to farm low-level random encounters for the new lv1 characters to catch up (the high level characters would also hold back from doing anything to don't "suck" exp).

And you still can't tell the difference between D&D and mobas ?

Maybe you should try that in LoL. You do nothing during the first 30 minutes, then your level 10 team brings you to the wilderness to farm low-level encounters to catch up, and you see what happens.

[Kaelik]

But MOBAs are all about cooperation. You'll have a pretty hard time winning if the players don't coordinate, in particular because each hero can only be in one place at a a time yet you have to defend different vectors.

Also MOBAs may not have level loss, but they do have gold loss every time they die. I've seen several D&D players advocate that they'll rather lose levels than treasure. Example 1: Mormekdain's Disjunction is widely considered the ultimate FUCK YOU spell the DM can throw at the party. Example 2: nobody ever uses sunder because it would mean less loot.

And ironically, from several discussions in this very forum, it seems like many people advocate that D&D is not a teamwork game, because seemingly every PC should be capable of roflstomping any challenge they meet on their own, and you suck if you ever need any other player's support for anything. No matter if you're a wizard or warrior or priest, you should simultaneously be able to tank enemy attacks, kill enemies on your own and have utility for every possible situation.

Every single word of this is you being a lying piece of shit. Ignore.

[GnomeWorks]

Aside from how incredibly stupid that is on every single level, and how you should beat yourself and all your family until you/they stop doing that, it must really suck for that new guy when level 12 parties because according to my chart here, when the party faces an CR 11 enemy, assuming he somehow manages to survive that fight, he gets zero XP.

I fail to see why I should beat myself over it; I stopped being interested in playing in their games after my father killed off one of my characters for the... third time, I think? The cleric I was running was "possessed" by some evil god or something (except not really, the god-thing was just along for the ride, and I still had control of the character), and my mother had some sword that would - of its own accord - smite evil with some kind of bullshit, and it decided to kill me, because I "registered as evil" because of the pseudo-possession.

As far as the CR and lack of XP go, they hate 3e. To my knowledge they've gone back to 2e, after dalliances with various other shitty games. IIRC, 2e monsters have specific XP values, so his argument is that, if you live, you'll eventually get close to being sensible.

I look at playing with them as a learning experience: how not to run a game.

GnomeWorks' stories about his family campaigns are among the more entertaining of the horror stories related on the Den, but at the same time, the more of them that I hear, the more I wish I had CPS on speed dial and a time machine. I'm so sorry.

Heh. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and all that.

Link? I'd read that.

I bring up various stories when they seem relevant, in various threads and such. I haven't actually posted a repository of them... though that might be worthwhile, for entertainment value.

[hyzmarca]

Really, the effectiveness of a low level character in a high level party depends on the usefulness of low-level abilities. If a level one character can do things that make it easier for the other characters to win, that's okay. He doesn't need to be able to win on his own.

If low-level character were useful to win, any BBEG would have several low-level minion helping him, and Fireball would be praised as a great spell.

It's not the case, so I guess everyone agree low-level characters are useless in high-level party.

That's a combat rules issue, though, rather than a character replacement rules issue.

Really, it's possible to set up the rules so that low-level characters can't win on their own, but can swing a fight.

[pragma]

But MOBAs are all about cooperation. You'll have a pretty hard time winning if the players don't coordinate, in particular because each hero can only be in one place at a a time yet you have to defend different vectors.

Also MOBAs may not have level loss, but they do have gold loss every time they die ...

Every single word of this is you being a lying piece of shit. Ignore.

I disagree with Kaelik's assertion that every single word here is disingenuous, because the parts I've quoted above are factually true. MOBAs do require coordination among team members to achieve different objectives or even just win fights, and there is an implicit penalty for death in terms of lost soak of XP/gold or reduced map presence (depending on the MOBA). I'm unwilling to defend the rest of the post, but those two specific points seem both OK and relevant unless I'm missing something.

[Kaelik]

I'm unwilling to defend the rest of the post, but those two specific points seem both OK and relevant unless I'm missing something.

They are in fact, 100% irrelevant, and therefore a continuation of the deception.