how it feels to be level 1

Imagine forcing your players to start at level 1 😂

Okay, okay, but hear me out. What about instead of giving strong monsters to your first level party, you will give... get ready... weak monsters against them?!
I know, I know, I'm brilliant

For real

I mean, the reality of what you should have done when you heard him say "I have 6HP" is to say, "Dang, they almost take you out, you suffer 5 damage!"

There is no rule that says the DM must give out however much damage a piece of plastic says. You decide, and if you know he has 6 you know 6 takes him out of the action, and 12 instantly kills him.

So as the DM your role is to help the players have fun. So how much damage do you decide he takes to maximize table fun?

Ah, back when it was weird for there to be two Jacobs.

If you just play the game without Player Character Deaths & TPKs then you can avoid the problems!!!!

Sounds like Lost Mines of Phandelver with the Goblins and Surprise, in which case… the book does say the Goblins take the adventurers alive, which might be helpful?

enters
plugs Quest-o-nomicon
leaves
refuses to elaborate

Reminds me of when my party went to fight goblins in a cave at level 1 and we got goblin slayerd.

everyone complaining about survivability at level 1
I'm sitting here wondering why he threw a group of goblins at a level 1 party in the first place
and also why they started at level 1

You could just start at lvl 3? :') or 5? Much more fun 😂

My DnD experience is minimal but for some reason after 7 years of not getting to play (because no one wants to DM, the classic scenario) I finally bit the bullet on my own and decided that I'd be the dumb ass that chooses to DM. I knew nothing about hosting campaigns. I knew only that I wanted the first session to be explosive, exciting, and dangerous. My party of four levels 1's found themselves in a tavern that was suddenly attacked by fire bursting through the windows and front doors, setting the entire building aflame, blocking their exit, and slowly reducing the amount of safe space in the building turn by turn. What were the turns for? For the combat of course, as four burning zombies rose from the fires around them and started stumbling towards them. Shattering the large fish tank in the middle of the building took them several turns, but it did help douse some of the flames. It also unleashed a Quipper swarm. The party survived this encounter and lost only 8 HP total. This miracle will stick with me for a long time to come.

Last night, me and a friend (my bf as dm) were playing brand new characters we have been making for a month. Level 1. We took up a job, fighting goblins. Two different NPCs told us to turn back. We thought we could do it.

Turns out, 20 goblins and two level 1 characters make for a quick TPK.

Our DM was nice enough to let us Time Warp or whatever and restart the day from breakfast.

Fun, fun

I need that long sleeve.

For trying to make a cool, experienced character roleplay-wise who is still level 1, I would like to use excuses like that they have been crippled physically or by magic and are trying to work back up to their true strength (which may not even be a lv 5, but that is still miles from lv 1 as far as capabilities go).

If a player plays a mage with a con modifier of 0, he deserves to die....

How does this man have a child. He's gonna be a good dad

Its why I like to start at 3. lv 1 chars are as squishy as a low level guard if not more so. lv 1 npc's can be good though, like wandering wizards who offer to cast mending for cash at rest stops, it just adds some cool depth and lets players hire low level adventurers when needed to perform minor tasks.

The ending was just sad 😢

Basically goblin slayer

OOOHHHH I GET THE CHANNEL NAME NOW

Best advice for new dm's operating a lvl 1 campaign is, RP the enemies to underestimate the player. And Muck up an ambush, giving the players the best chances of defending themselves. Or give them every opportunity to surprise the enemy. Even three goblin's that are surprised can be quickly overwhelmed, assuming the players have that advantage, even if it's slight.

what classes they are a barbarian...and a... just make a paladin at level 1 can heal and have 19 AC

That reminds of me "Out of the Abyss" when our party was level 1 during the breakout. Half of our npc's died and half of the party had to be carried around because they were unconscious and all healers used up their spell slots for cure wounds and healing word. That was one heck of an escape.

I threw like 5 goblins and 4 gnolls at a party of 5 level 1’s and the party destroyed them with low level aoe attacks. I’m gonna throw an ogre at them Saturday

I had my players face a dungeon of skeletons and a skeletal minotaur for my first game. At level one. Balanced?

Wait, there is more people then just infinite jacobs in the Jacob universe?

Four ways to handle this:
1. Start at Lv 3.
2. Use smaller encounters. Three Goblins is actually a deadly encounter for a party of 2 level 1 adventurers. Heck, even a 2v2 would be classed as deadly, Goblins are no joke against low-level characters. I'd say use Kobolds instead but I have pledged to protect Kobolds from all who wish them harm in any way, shape or form, so if you do that you get to join my list of "enemies of the Kobolds". Another, far more acceptable option would be bandits.
3. Introduce a DMPC who is the same level as the the other party members and remains at the same level as the other party members.
4. Let the party take sidekick PCs.

Goblins are THE WORST level 1 enemies.
The DnD Starting guide is a joke for balance LOL.
I have literally run 5 DnD tests.
In all of them i died within 2 rounds.
And i don't mean uncouncious.
Getting crit, nat ones for saves etc.
Like any pokemon speedrunner would say.
PLAY AROUND THE CRIT

Meanwhile me and my group switching games everytime not coming close to level 2

That was a nice 3 minute ad

Aidedd has free adventures for level 1 and more, and those are pretty good (I personaly looove "the eye of gruumsh")

Our DM allows us to start with level 2 characters automatically, but with zero XP. As I see it, it's a win-win. No need to offset early experience milestones, because we still have to farm those 300 points to catch up with our actual level, yet we get at least basic class abilities and almost twice as much HP compared to lvl1. This helps to avoid silly situations where a single crit can instantly kill someone. It also provides a room for mistakes early game while we're getting accustomed to new characters and classes. The concept of mortality is, of course, an important part of the game, but on level 1 you can die from pretty much anything in the most unfun way. And the party has no means to deal with such sticky situations yet.

Our party did a level 1 campaign. As in, we never left level 1. The 'boss' was level 5, and took all of our cunning and alot of downtime tricks to defeat. But it turns out with enough alchemist fire and acid, a bunch of peasants can in fact defeat a demon possessed bandit lord.

Also we managed to get a lot of hirelings.

I love this dude awesome content

In my level 1 games, characters get HP equal to their max roll on their class hit die plus their constitution score instead of modifier. It gives the level 1 characters an extra 9 to 13 HP to help them survive the first couple levels. My players seem to really appreciate it.

I'm mildly surprised that Colton wasn't the one who immediately had their low level, not a rogue character die. For all we know, his barbarian survives!

That feel when you're banking on becoming a demi-god level 20 AP carry Wizard, but die as an 8 HP level 1 who is praying to the Fighter carrying the early game, and can only make disorienting lights appear, sometimes, if you're lucky.

Starting at level 3 is the meta for not making full casters feel like they are useless. RIP to the Druids who die to a rat in a sewer at level 2.

Eh...BS

Can we talk about the fact that the wizard had a +0 con

Listen fam, good game master prioritizes fun over some stupid rolls. If rules at the start are too steppy, well, just change them

Goblin slayer was inspired by this very situation

"Goblins." - Goblin Slayer

BRO! I just did my first session as a DM and I was running the Curse of Strahd adventure. The first new area the players went to after introducing one another in a tavern I rolled on the "random encounters" table and got "2D6 Scarecrows." My roll was 5, so I had them come across 5 scarecrows on the side of the road. The encounter in the book explains that if the characters walk past them then the Scarecrows do a surprise attack on the party. Scarecrows are "challenge 0" monsters so I'm thinking this will be a reasonable encounter...

I almost TPK'd my first group as a DM in the first session...

I ended up starting to fudge the numbers of my rolls and of the enemies' HP so that they would have a fighting chance and thankfully I saved it and no one died. The cleric of the group had gone unconscious, but was stabilized by his teammates before the battle ended. It had been a while since I myself had played a level 1 character so I forgot that many of them would be in the single digits for HP (scarecrows have 36 HP and have multi-attack... Ooops). Good news is that Scarecrows give 200 XP so the party got 1000 XP allowing them to level up twice, so now they're level 3 and much better off. I didn't think the book, intended for level 1 players mind you, would throw such a challenge in its random encounters. It was a great learning experience for me, though, teaching me to prepare better as a DM and that I should probably ask what players' HPs are when starting out so I can adjust the creatures' stats to make it more fair. The players were kind of giving me shit for almost killing them all, but in a joking manner so I knew they weren't actually mad. In fact, like I said, they levelled up twice so in the end they were happy once everyone had lived.

Also, the cleric asked to loot the bodies and I gave him a healing potion, because that makes sense that a Scarecrow would have one lmao. He was at 1 hp though so I felt I should give him a way to not be almost dead.

You know... The DM could just say that the rolls aren't as high as they actually are... Isn't that one of the reasons for the fold out they roll behind?

starting a wizard with 10 dex and 10 con when you died 5+ times already? have you heard of the definition of insanity?

did you forget to write an ending to this one?

Tricked into watching a commercial, I just got played.

I love this too much