Leveling Up To 1

There was a great discussion on twitter yesterday about what might go into a hypothetical RPG for new players based on changing 4e or Pathfinder. Lots of good ideas, but it also reminded me of another idea that I’ve been sitting on for a while, one that puts 4e through a lens of Harry Potter inspired school play.

The idea is based on a simple premise: first level 4e characters are pretty capable, enough so that it’s possible to create an arc from “zero level” to the place where a character starts play. This idea is that there’s some manner of academy for exceptional students who have the potential to “graduate” to being level 1 heroes. The exact details of the school are fodder for another post - maybe it’s a dungeon crawling academy, maybe it’s selecting future leaders of the land, maybe it’s a feeder to an even more elite school, maybe it’s something else. We’ll worry about it after the basics have been sorted out.

So how do you do this? First, start characters off with all their stats with one 8 and four 10’s and 1 12 (modified by race), 10 hit points and starting racial package of abilities.[1] All characters begin as trained in a single skill. This can be ANY skill, and this stands in lieu of a background bonus, and it is also the exceptional thing that drew the school’s attention to the kid.
Importantly, characters do NOT have all the capabilities of a first level character. Specifically, they cannot:

• Flank
• Aid Another
• Bull Rush
• Charge
• Perform a Coup de Grace
• Escape
• Equip or Stow a Shield as an action
• Grab
• Second Wind
• Total Defense
• Perform any minor action (all require a move action)
• Perform an Opportunity Attack

Characters are proficient in no armor or weapons, so even though the basic Attack action is available to them, they gain no proficiency bonuses. And, obviously, they have no class abilities, no powers, and just the one skill. Beyond that they’re basically a blank slate.

Play proceeds on that assumption, and the DC for pretty much everything the characters might do is 10, which means they’ll be really fantastic at their particular schtick, and capable at their racial ones

The model of play, then, is to follow a pattern of going to a class about some element of this (such as basic arms training) with a quirky and interesting teacher. After the class is done, they get the particular ability, and are then faced with a challenge (either an explicit school test, or some part of the plot) which makes use of that skill or set of skills. For example, after the characters have learned Aid Another, they may be faced with a challenge with an impossible difficulty (like a DC 21 for something none of them have any bonus towards) that they need to overcome.

Once the characters have gone through all the universally available things (like the actions above, as well as learning their initial feat) they may then choose a class as their academic focus, and the process will be similar, with characters learning class abilities, and eventually powers, in their classes. The goal is that, at graduation, the characters have all the abilities they would if they’d created the character at first level.

Now, exactly how many times you want to repeat this cycle is going to depend a lot on your group. Some groups might want to rip through this stuff, others might want to stretch it out. This can just as easily be a single night’s play as it can be an entire campaign, especially depending on how much you want to focus on challenges and play within the school. Whatever you decide, divide 20 points [2] among that many periods and let players spend them as they wish.

For example, a school with 4 years, two sememsters each, might do Basic combat training (Simple Weapon Prof, Equipping shields, minor actions ad flanking) semester one, Advanced training (Aid Another, Bull Rush, Charge, Grab & Escape) second semester, Focus exercises (Second WInd, Total Defense, Coup De grace, Opportunity Attack) third semester then Horizon broadening (First Feat and trained skill) fourth semester. Class is then “assigned” at the end of the second year (angst!) and we move onto more class-specific classes.

Now, part of the appeal of this is that school play is fun. It takes work to bring the school to life and bring in challenges that keep players engaged, but it’s a neat setting premise with a familiar literary base. But there is also some appeal in that you can make learning 4e a part of the process. Players can start with only a minimal understanding of the system, and with each successive challenge, they pick up a few more fiddly bits. Only after they’ve got a sense of the basics do they even need to start worrying about class abilities and powers, and at that point, they’ll probably look pretty darn awesome.

Anyway, this is obviously only half an idea. Without a solid pitch for what the school looks like, it’s got no wings. But I’ll be shocked if some of you are not already thinking “What does 4e Hogwarts look like?”


[back] 1 - You can actually start without Racial Abilities for all races and come up with progressions for them to learn them, but this requires that the GM work things out on a race by race basis, and requires some thought regarding what races are allowed in the school. This is easy to do, but it requires more bookkeeping than I can squeeze into an already long post. Humans are probably the easiest to do in this way - just delay their bonus stuff until after play has begun.

[back] 2 − 20, not 22 because 2 points bought the starting 12. And if you use some other method of stat generation, then just apply the idea rather than the specific mechanic. The improvements come steadily over the course of play.