Zero Level Characters

 Welcome to the first of what will hopefully be a long series of posts about TTRPGs.  I have been entertaining the idea of creating OGL and third party content for some time, but I'm not sure exactly when I'm going to jump in.  I have also been considering making a physical zine, but I'm not there yet with content, so I was thinking a blog might be the best way for me to keep interest, and possibly see if anyone else has interest too.  

Welcome to 2005 with the Blogger site!  If this does well, I will probably be migrating it to a real website, but I don't really feel like paying for a domain or putting in the effort if I am just going to have a handful of viewers.  Anyways, enough about the how's and why's and let me get to an actual topic.

This topic is zero level characters, and I am going to focus on 5e Dungeons and Dragons.  I want to be clear that I am in no way affiliated with Wizards of the Coast, and nothing I am saying is official, just my experience running and playing in the system.  Saying that, zero level characters are not something that I have come across often, and when I am running a game, I often get push back from players about starting at level 0.  Even if players are open to it, I am always asked why would a campaign start at level 0?  Of course there are several reasons, but in particular with 5e, it is to utilize something that I feel is often overlooked, and that is the Background mechanic of the rules.

So, you're running or playing in a game, and you picked a background for your character.  This mechanically will add something your character can now do, and maybe give you a few items.  Something I see happen more often than not, is Background basically ends there in many games.  There isn't really anything wrong with that either, what the character did in the past doesn't have to have a bearing on the current game.  But one thing I have seen often as a player and a Dungeon Master, is awkwardness in role play, especially in early sessions.  So, a Background could be what the character did prior to becoming a "hero."

Something I have been able to do a few times in games, is have the PC do something "heroic," which sends them on the path to now being a level one character.  Maybe it is an act of self sacrifice or something else that can become a defining moment for the character.  I personally like this as an idea for characters, because it gives the player and the DM an opportunity in game to explore alignment (something else I find under utilized in a lot of current games).  Another way I have done the transition is more of an XP based approach, basically having 0 level characters kill some kind of threat.  While this sort of goes with the "becoming heroic" idea from above, it's often more dangerous to player characters in the fact that the outcome is really decided by dice.  I like to think of the two different ways as a milestone approach, compared to an XP approach.  

Mechanics

Since 0 level characters do not have a class, it's up to the DM to decide what the starting HP are.  There are different ways to do this, since this is an RPG, but one way that I like, is to pick a race, and add the constitution modifier to 1d4 or 1d6, depending on how difficult the DM wants to make level 0.  Basically, do the same thing with all stats, with a base of ten.  I personally like 1d4 because it makes the transition to level 1 have a drastic increase in HP.  

There isn't really much more to say mechanically, because I find 0 level characters extremely straight forward.  Using them does give the DM a lot of room to play with, and while certainly every game isn't suited for 0 level characters, I've found that long term RP heavy games can usually benefit from the concept.