Level 1 weaklings are bad?

[Roy]

Lol, what?

Standard level 2 Wizard = (4 + 2) + (2.5 + 2) = 10.5 HP. Arrows do 4.5 damage without composite, which PCs can barely afford and NPCs can't really. And that's the only damage bonus available at that level.

[RandomCasualty2]

The thing that sucks about low levels is that you have so very little healing or spells. So you pretty much want to rest after each and every battle.

[Akula]

NPCs have a lot more wealth at low levels than the PCs do. I agree that healing is the biggest problem. Making it less fun to play the Clerics and Druids because you have to blow you limited resources on healing. Spells aren't as much of a problem. You have at least three per day more likely four, because one is generally enough to significantly impact an encounter you should be relevant for a four encounter adventuring day.

[Prak]

the real hypocrisy of this statement is in comparing D&D to, say, runequest. My main problem with runequest is that you start out being barely competent in the majority of skills due to the way the system works. It's a skill based percentile system, ie, you have a bunch of skills with a precentile rating, and they're all based on your attributes. This is fine, except when you add in the resolution mechanic.
when using a skill, you roll a d% and succeed if you roll under your skill rating. Now, yes, your most important skills (ie, whatever you use to kill stuff) can, and probably will, start out in the 50-80% range, and so you can generally be assumed to be relatively skilled in your specialty. Pretty much everything else is going to be in the 10-25% range, with hardly any bonuses for how easy a given task happens to be. This means that your special hero (which, honestly, means something in the vicinity of dick in that game), has a very real chance of say, drowning, because in all likely hood he's got a swimming rank of 25%.

In D&D... well... yeah... you actually start out vaguely competent.

oh, yeah, and you get two improvement rolls at the end of each session, plus extras for any skill you critted on during the session, and you have to roll over your rating to improve your skill. Sounds, vaguely, reasonable, right? Well, your improve by 1d4+1% at a time.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

The single thing I hate most about the Runequest rules is the random advancement. At the end of the day, your XP aren't guaranteed to result in a better character. That, and it looks like it's really easy to lose all your limbs.

[Crissa]

The only thing I hate about D&D at level 1 is that the Fighter gets Mounted Combat but the Paladin doesn't.

I don't get the idea of not having a schtick yet. But that's only a problem in some classes...

-Crissa

[NineInchNall]

My favorite levels so far have been 4th and 6th. Both of those were with a Beguiler, though, so ...

Oh, yeah, level 9 was pretty fuckin' awesome with my FR Druid. *sigh* Such a fun character.

So for me the fun has kicked in with second level spells and continued through gaining fifth. The tactical and descriptive options are simply more entertaining than those available during the Mook Time.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The only thing I hate about D&D at level 1 is that the Fighter gets Mounted Combat but the Paladin doesn't.

Can either of them even afford a horse at that point?

[RandomCasualty2]

Spells aren't as much of a problem. You have at least three per day more likely four, because one is generally enough to significantly impact an encounter you should be relevant for a four encounter adventuring day.

Well yeah, assuming you take all combat spells. But as a wizard, I want room to take some divinations and utility magic, instead of just filling all my slots with color sprays.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Since I forgot to include this in my earlier post: I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the problem with Level 1 from the DM's perspective. If you want to run a standard dungeon/wilderness adventure, you're really limited in your choice of opponents at Level 1. The only suspense is whether you'll be fighting kobolds or goblins this week.

[Akula]

Well yeah, assuming you take all combat spells. But as a wizard, I want room to take some divinations and utility magic, instead of just filling all my slots with color sprays.

I have a friend who will opine endlessly about the combat applications of the floating disk spell. And only completely wiping out half of the days encounters is fine. Divination and utility magic allows you to shine out of combat, you get the same screen time. As has been pointed out, a crossbow can actually make a significant contribution at low levels. Plus going by the "need a divine caster" argument you would have some magical firepower in every fight.

EDIT: Prestidigitation is pretty damn awesome for a utility spell at low levels.

[RandomCasualty2]

Since I forgot to include this in my earlier post: I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the problem with Level 1 from the DM's perspective. If you want to run a standard dungeon/wilderness adventure, you're really limited in your choice of opponents at Level 1. The only suspense is whether you'll be fighting kobolds or goblins this week.

Yeah, the low level monsters really don't even do anything that's worth a damn most of the time, nor are they particularly interesting. Pretty much it's all about classed NPCs (which are at least at level 1 rather easy to create), but you don't have a heck of a lot of interesting monsters.

[Fuchs]

Which is just fine if one considers monsters by default to be more boring than classed NPCs.

[Amra]

Since I forgot to include this in my earlier post: I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the problem with Level 1 from the DM's perspective. If you want to run a standard dungeon/wilderness adventure, you're really limited in your choice of opponents at Level 1. The only suspense is whether you'll be fighting kobolds or goblins this week.

Yeah, the choices are pretty limited for a DM at 1st level. All you can really choose from - if for some bizarre reason you're not counting humanoidish races that usually advance as classes - with a CR of 1/2 to 1 are: tiny and small elementals (although steering clear of Air elementals is a good idea), shriekers, animated objects, bladelings, skeletons, zombies, ghouls, ether scarabs, around 12 different animals, troglodytes, brain moles, grigs, a couple of different swarm types, tatterdemanimals, krenshar, corollax, formians, various giant/monstrous vermin (again, some of which ought to be avoided), myconids, stirges (hmmm, maybe wait a level or two), locathah, grimlocks...

Yeah, it's a bugger. And that's not counting your standard fare such as orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds and variants of same. Or any CR2 beasties you might throw in for a tougher fight.

There is seriously no problem coming up with interesting and entertaining challenges for low-level characters if the party isn't entirely dumb. The fact that an awful lot of low-level challenges end up as "kobolds or goblins" is, I would argue, more a reflection of the perceptions of DM's who think there isn't anything else to find than an issue with the low-level challenges available.

Yes, a fair few of the creatures in the list would be super-dangerous if the party don't get a chance to see them coming, but an adversarial DM can cause grief with closet trolls at any level of the game.

Note that I'm not defending the fact that you need to have decent experience of the game to avoid some of the low-CR Giant Crab-type pitfalls; just pointing out that there's plenty left over even when you've pruned out the insanity.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Well, some of your examples are pretty problematic. For example, a shrieker isn't much of an encounter by itself; it's only interesting as a trigger for another encounter. Formians are a social species, and only the workers are less than CR1. I guess if you can come up with a reason for some formians to be more than 50 miles away from their queen, they could make an interesting encounter. However, raiding (or even approaching) the formain hive is out of the question, as the CR jumps from 1/2 to 3 once you're facing the warriors.

Leaving out those kinds of exceptions, there are some welcome additions there. I'd forgotten about the 3.5 undead template rules, which do seem to allow you to make a nice low-level haunted crypt type of dungeon. And it looks like there are enough animals to do a wilderness-themed adventure, possibly.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

There are a number of decent CR 1 and 2 encounters if you bother to look, and I like these levels as a DM because the characters are easy to make.

Off the top of my head, I know what feats like Rapid Shot, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack, Mounted Combat etc. do. I also can quote what a level 1 fighter/barbarian/ranger/cleric get. You have a number of good frameworks to build on. Without even breaking out a book, you can have an appropriate encounter pretty easily.

Elven Horsemen - Race Elf, Class fighter, 12 in all stats (except a -2 con, +2 dex), Mounted Combat (negate an attack on mount), Mounted Archery, longbow (+3/d8/x3), rapier (+2/d6/19-20x2). Ranks in Ride and X.

When he has to make a Save vs. Spell, you know he has a poor Will, and a +1 mod.

What is his AC? Elven Chain shirt (+4) or chainmail (+5) + 2 dex + 10 base = 17.

The Elite Guard take Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization (rapier) with a masterwork weapon, and have one cleric (3 spells, usually all healing, with a ranged weapon), and one wizard (3 spells, usually all blasting, with a ranged weapon) to back them up.

You can quickly calculate out these things without even breaking out a book and have a fair encounter. This is the level of encountering PEOPLE that are a challenge, because as a DM you don't have to give them each 7 levels in Ranger, 3 feats, a magic sword, a ring of protection, a signature item, real armor, and look up every BAB/Save/bonus to save. Seriously, these are the levels where ad hoc has a firm basing in reality.

Here are my basic level 1-2 encounters from the last session:
1 - any MM race + 1 feat (2 for humans)
2 - Adept (F&K class) - amazingly good at low levels, d8 auto-damage (save 1/2) is really nice for an all-day ignore-DR ability.
3 - Half Dragon (kobold template) - F&K class.
4 - trained <animal> used by any of the above (kobolds have dogs, elves have attack hawks, humans have a couple of horses between them, gnomes have badgers, etc.)
5 - Imp, Dretch, Quasit - staples of the "you will eventually go to the other planes" campaignsm, or the tamed familiar or a "high level" (5) wizard.
6 - Monstrous Scorpion/Centipede/Spider - typically hiding in the shade of a chasm, the entrance to a dessert tomb, or deep in a cave, as appropriate.
7 - Armies of skeletons and zombie - these are crazy overrated for their CR. A Sun Cleric can destroy something like 4 times his CR of these as a standard fucking action. You can safely throw 10 of these att your party and have them be zombie-swarmed. Bonus points for being a movie/fantasy stable. Move bonus point if you have a CR 2 necromancer animating his not-CR-1/2 army of <insert race>.

These levels have the LARGEST choice of manageable encounters. Really.

[Amra]

Well, some of your examples are pretty problematic. For example, a shrieker isn't much of an encounter by itself; it's only interesting as a trigger for another encounter. Formians are a social species, and only the workers are less than CR1. I guess if you can come up with a reason for some formians to be more than 50 miles away from their queen, they could make an interesting encounter.

I've done exactly that, which is one of the reasons I've mentioned them. First encounter: a group of formian workers who had stumbled through a planar portal after their accompanying warriors were killed. A war on their home plane meant that the queen, hard-pressed, was sending expendable groups of scouts out to find new sources of food and the location of a MacGuffin that could be the deciding factor in the conflict. A few encounters with formian workers (and various races that were in league with the Formian Queen) to get them up to second level, followed by their first contact with a warrior, followed by a large force of mixed formian types who delivered a message basically telling the PC's "Find the MacGuffin I need to win the war and bring it through the portal or I'm going to have to flee to your plane and decimate everything in 100 miles to support my hive". And so on.

That campaign went quite satisfactorily up to about 12th level.

And it's true that some of those examples are potentially problematic, but it's all about context. There are CR3 creatures that a 1st-level party will handle well, and CR1 creatures that'll stuff 'em if the circumstances are wrong. Undead templates are incredibly handy. I hugely enjoyed running a "Dawn of the Dead" type scenario where the PC's are visiting a hamlet in the boondocks on their way from A to B when they're informed that for some inexplicable reason, anyone and anything that dies within a certain radius is getting up again and walking around moaning "Braaaaaains!".

Even the farmer's daughter's deceased pet gerbil dug its way out of the flower bed to wreak its revenge... I thought it was quite a neat foreshadowing of the undead rat swarm they encountered a couple of days later. The best NPC line was probably "Sounds like rats, you say? No, can't be. We had a rat problem up until a couple of weeks ago, but I put poison down." The looks on the players' faces was priceless

Low-level zombie gore-fests like this are *cool*, because once the cleric has run out of turn attempts it's a case of fighting like crazy and running to the next defensible position to rest and heal up, while the zombies find more unprotected villagers and the numbers build up with each passing night. We had one great climactic encounter where the PC's had holed up in the village hall with the last dozen or so villagers and had to take command of defenses and fall-back positions, saving as many as possible. Scale it right, and you can readily match the numbers and abilities of the walking dead to the PC's increased power. As the PC's get closer to the source of the trouble, more powerful undead are encountered and you're at 5th level before you know it.

[RandomCasualty2]

Which is just fine if one considers monsters by default to be more boring than classed NPCs.

Well even classed NPCs are boring at low level as well.

Wizards are basically sleep/color spray machines. There isn't much in the way of defensive spells at that level that you really give a damn about. So it's glass cannon all the way.

Clerics spam command I guess... honestly could never find much on the cleric's level 1 spells that anyone cares about except for CLW, because those are essential when you don't have the cash for wands. Buffs aren't even a factor due to the stupid scaling buff system. Summons last for a whole 1 round. I mean you can't do much of anything...

Melee types aren't bad, because they actually serve some purpose and options like grenade like weapons are still on the table (though they are super expensive at that level).

But still, it's not like fighters were ever all that interesting to begin with. So you're still just going to have the mounted charger and the guy with power attack and a greatsword. Sword and Board isn't really worth it since you can't have all the S&B feats, and your shield is just a +2 bonus.