Zero to Hero

I was reading about the idea of bringing some “classic feel” to 4th edition the other day, and it got my mind to whirring. I’ve never much been a fan of the “zero to hero” aspect of earlier editions of D&D — my great and powerful wizard dying when an irate badger poked him with a spoon just didn’t gel for me — but all the same I get why some folks would want that phenomenon, whether the urge comes from Skywalker roots or some other point of origin.  Part of it may be about feeling like you’ve earned your badass privileges, and 4E definitely flies right in the face of that — you start out pretty freaking competent.

So how do you get to the “zero” level of 4th edition?  How stripped down can you get?  Here’s my thoughts.  (And I’m curious — is it something you’d be interested in seeing expanded into an actual product? Or is this better left as a wee little blog post tossed out there on GM’s Day?)

When it comes down to it, I’m thinking about, in essence, negative levels — ones where a level 1 encounter will be a real challenge, and a single level 1 monster could take some real work.  The progression I’m thinking about would essentially be work as follows.  (The XP entry-points to each level are figured by working backwards along the “+250 XP per jump” lines of the PC positive level progression.  It takes 1000 XP to get to level 2, 1250 to get to level 3 — so it should take 750 to get to level 1, 500 to get to level 0, 250 to get to level -1.)

Note: Things COULD start at a Level -3 or lower if you want, but at that point you start stripping away even more essentials: no at-wills, no starting feat, etc.

Level -2 (-1500 XP)
You start out with your class features, 1 feat, and one at-will ability — no dailies, no encounters. Your level/2, rounded down, will also be at -1, which will make you just a bit more vulnerable and a bit less effective (lower defenses, lower chances to hit).

Concerns: Humans will still get the leg up here with a second at-will, but maybe that’s OK.  Any ability that provides area of effect will have some significant potency, so at the least, Wizards and Dragonborn will have some serious early mojo.  On the other hand, this is a pretty temporary level, since you’re looking at earning only 250 XP to get out of it, and having a little imbalance isn’t going to hang around for long.  Honestly, when you strip away a lot of the class abilities, it’s expected that the influence of racial powers will be more strongly felt.  And that one feat you start out with will be pretty influential.  It’s a texture I kind of like for this.

Level -1 (-1250 XP)
You gain your first encounter ability. -.5 rounds down to -1, so you’re still at a -1 on a number of things.

Level 0 (-750 XP)
You get your second at-will ability.  Your level/2 rounded down jumps to +0, so you start being more on par with your level 1 “final” form.

Level 1 (0 XP)
You gain your daily ability.  Congrats; you’ve made it to Level 1.

But that’s not the only thing that “scales”, here.  You’re also talking about altering what it takes to make a solid encounter.

In particular, the Target Encounter XP totals table expands to include the negative levels (which I’ve gotten at again by following the early positive level progressions backwards).

So here, you can see that a group of 4 Level -2 PCs with only one at-will ability apiece (plus class features, etc) would be at “par” with 4 minions, or a single level 1 monster.  I’m not sure if this math really bears out — this is a collection of Zero To Hero notes that haven’t seen any kind of playtest — but I *think* it still works out.  If I recall correctly, the idea is that it takes about 10 standard-level encounters to make it up to the next level.  At level -2, the standard same-level encounter reward would be 25 XP, and it takes 250 XP to get from level -2 to level -1, so the conceptual math there works out.  The idea of a pair or trio of level 1 monsters really making a group sweat has a certain perverse appeal to it as well.

So while I’m not sure if my balance notions are off, I think there’s something to be said for this setup.  And more to the point, folks who start at level -2 might end up feeling like they’ve “earned” their level 1 awesome more thoroughly.  Which is one of the big points of the Zero to Hero concept, right?

1. David A. Kot, March 4, 2009:

   As a DM, I fully understand your question, Fred. While I appreciate the idea of negative levels, I believe that the oft-pined weaker levels comes with new challenges. My players – NOT Their characters – fear me as DM. I use subtle misdirection to obscure simple encounters. Players get nifty, tangible rewards when their characters do grand things (like foil items cards, for example). I have invested in enough 3rd party material to present unique creatures instead of a routine beast. Our shared experience has been a positive one, Fred, and we have simply invested in the granduer of 4th Edition. Honestly, to regress and hinder the power idea may give-way to another 3.5E vs. 4E, and give 3.5 (or earlier editions) more ammunition (i.e.: “See, we told you so…our edition is better, and you had to cripple your system to make it like ours!”). Embrace change, and look upward, not back. Challenege yourself as DM, and look to bring excitment and that intangible element- excitement/fear/wanderlust back to the table top game. And no…President Obama did NOT approve this ad.
   - Dave

2. Jonathan Walton, March 4, 2009:

   Fred, this is really neat and exciting, actually. I bet you could make a whole product out of this, if you wanted, though you’d probably have to playtest it a bit. You could even include a few level -1 monsters.

3. Michael, March 4, 2009:

   What about hitpoints in this zero model. Would they scale down by class? Or just star with normal HP?

4. Kurt, March 4, 2009:

   That’s uncanny; I’ve had basically the same idea a couple of months ago, but never actually wrote it up. I thought of it as an optional “origins tier” setup derived from the existing chargen components.

   Basically, the idea was 3 “preview” levels (-2 thu 0, I suppose), except I wanted to refer to them by level names instead of literal “negative level” numbers. Amateur, Dilettante, Adept.., whatever; turn your inner thesaurus free.

   You’d then take the standard pattern of both racial and class benefits/features, parse them out among the levels. You’d start with basic attacks and racial stat boosters to fight minions, something really vanilla tuned along those lines. You’d start with a negative experience total (just as you propose), and earn the rest of your race and class features as you fought level 1 minions with non-minion bosses and the like.

   While I agree its not my normal modus, I think its an awesome and interesting GM campaign widget to have in the toolbox. I’d love to see a proper (tested) treatment of it!

5. fred, March 4, 2009:

   Mike, my gut is to subtract the HP per level gained, so, for example, a Wizard would knock off HP like so:

   Level -2: -12 (meaning HP = Constitution Score – 2)
   Level -1: -8 (CON + 2)
   Level 0: -4 (CON + 6)

   But that would take some playtesting … for example, because Wizards have a smaller per-level drop, it could mean that some “tougher” classes would actually have worse level -2 starting points.

   Might be better to go fractional: 1/4, 1/2, 3/4.

6. rob, March 4, 2009:

   I was thinking about similar material a little while back, but with a slightly different emphasis than the zero bit. I had been wondering what character sheet I would give to people playing _kids_. Specifically, I was thinking of doing a session or two of an urban game as young adult adventure as a prelude to the actual game. For all that I’m happy with level 1 as a starting point for adventure, it’s definitely a bit of a mismatch for playing a street urchin. Negative levels (Or some variant thereon) may be the answer.

   -Rob D.

7. fred, March 4, 2009:

   @rob — You and I, in a scarily, scarily similar (unspoken) area of thinking.

8. Scott, March 4, 2009:

   I was just working on something like this last week:

   Zero Level

   I think I tended to agree with some of the feedback that the jump from my zero level to 1 is pretty steep, and was looking at ways to smooth that. (Not looking too hard, though, since I’m pretty happy with level 1 in 4e.) Was thinking about splitting it to 2 or 3 tiers, like in the old system.

   I think you’re on the right track here. It’s pretty similar to what I was looking at doing.

9. David A. Kot, March 5, 2009:

   Scot, I think I like what you have presented because I was able to follow it very clearly, almost like a table-format. I would be happy to play test something like this very soon, since my group is still very new to 4E. Let’s decide on a specific format over the next few days, and I can roll with it over this weekend, maybe…

10. greywulf, March 5, 2009:

    Looks absolutely spot on to me, great stuff.

11. FireLance, March 5, 2009:

    Chalk me up as another one with similar ideas. I broke up the zero level into the Novice and Apprentice levels, though (see website link for details).

12. Ryan Stoughton, July 11, 2009:

    This is awesome. I think this could help me ease new players into the rules and would be a good match for the E6/West Marches style thing I want to do (world designed around a 10th level max).

13. Ryan Stoughton, July 11, 2009:

    This thing would go really well with a packaged mini-adventure or four. Like… city urchin, woodland village, mountain pass, and fey glade.

14. Ryan Stoughton, July 11, 2009:

    -1501 Child pick stats, get race features, racial traits; Constitution hit points
    -1500 Youth class features; gain 1 feat; train starting skills; gain 1 at-will attack power
    -1250 Novice gain 1 encounter attack power;
    -750 Adept gain a second at-will attack power
    0 1st gain 1 daily attack power