Comments on: Zero to Hero

By: Ryan Stoughton

Ryan Stoughton — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:34:14 +0000

-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

By: Ryan Stoughton

Ryan Stoughton — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:31:37 +0000

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

By: Ryan Stoughton

Ryan Stoughton — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:25:35 +0000

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).

By: FireLance

FireLance — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:50:23 +0000

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).

By: greywulf

greywulf — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:13:22 +0000

Looks absolutely spot on to me, great stuff.

By: David A. Kot

David A. Kot — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:12:30 +0000

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…

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:25:10 +0000

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.

By: fred

fred — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:30:43 +0000

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

By: rob

rob — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:18:26 +0000

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.

By: fred

fred — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:23:44 +0000

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.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:22:48 +0000

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!

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:03:52 +0000

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

By: Jonathan Walton

Jonathan Walton — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:03:31 +0000

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.

By: David A. Kot

David A. Kot — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:57:11 +0000

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