Levels! They are the benchmarks we use to measure
the power of characters in roleplaying games, and if level 1 is the BASELINE, the starting
point for RPG heroes, what the heck is level 0 and WHYY would you want to play at level
0? Quite simple really, level 0 is for-- It’s for people who like awesome
stuff like 500 new monsters for 5e! I even got to write one!
It’s all in DUNGEON DENIZENS: the latest wildly successful Kickstarter
from our sponsor, Goodman Games! All 500+ monsters were fully illustrated in
physical mediums, including my own--which came out pretty creepy--the nesufti! These
little creatures are cat-like homunculi crafted by vampires, from marshland clay,
the bonemeal of murderers, and most vitally, the blood of their creators. The nesufti is the
first line of influence for its vampiric master, creeping into villages at night,
and gradually poisoning sleeping victims with the vampire’s blood
to prime them for undead servitude! The nesufti believe they are helping these victims
by inching them towards immortality, and above all, these little weirdos want companionship
with their new blood brothers and sisters! You can check them out with over 499 other
monsters--and MORE being added as stretch goals, plus cool add-ons like a GM screen,
2-page dungeons using the new monsters, cardboard pawns of the monsters, and more! Dungeon
Denizens is available for 5e and DCC, but the Kickstarter ends on March 21st! And remember
to use the LINK BELOW so they know who sent ya! Ahem, so I’m Bob, this is where we learn how to
have more fun playing RPGs together, and level 0 is for an RPG character BEFORE they become the
hero! As someone who enjoys BOTH the heights of superheroic overpowered fantasy adventure
AND the depths of grimdark gritty wilderness survival adventure, I think level 0 is the
perfect place to start your own hero’s journey! And logistically, it’s the BEST way to
ease new players into a new system! So I’m going to share how I’ve homebrewed
and run level 0 characters in 5e, and how to build a level 0 character by
the book for Dungeon Crawl Classics--which is famous for their incredibly fun
and memorable level 0 adventures! And I have a fun announcement about that at the
end of the video! But hey, leave a comment below sharing whether you’ve ever played a level
0 character, and let me know how it went! Now THIS is Luna Alqamar, a level zero 13 year old
half-tiefling with no character class and abysmal ability scores! I made and played this character
in 2016 when my friends and I had been into D&D for a year at most, and none of us, not even the
GM, really cared about the rulebooks! You can tell because we still didn’t understand the difference
between character sheets of different editions! We homebrewed EVERYTHING in
those days including these level 0 characters for a simple one shot!
We the players did not know it going in, but the premise of this one shot was for
us and a group of other adolescent NPCs to safely escape our village as it was raided
in the night by a small army of goblins! I specifically remember my character’s older
sister, Terra (see what I did there, Luna, Terra?) She got cut down by a goblin right
in front of me as we snuck out of our house through a window! It was pretty brutal, but that
is some classic hero backstory material! And rather than just making it up myself and writing
it down, we experienced that backstory moment! So for the story--for character development--this
kind of backstory-focused level 0 is awesome! For the mechanics… like I said,
we didn’t know what we were doing! Seriously, look at these stats: all
9s and 10s, with 4/10 HP remaining, and an armor class of only 10! So every check,
saving throw, and attack roll was TENSE! We scrambled to use anything at our disposal
to gain advantage! And for a 5e one-off, it was super fun! But unless you want to
play a horror game where your one character is LUCKY to make it out alive, this is not
the ideal way to run a 5e level 0 session. Shortly after that one shot, I ran my first
session of D&D--well, wildly homebrewed D&D, and I had all the characters start at level
0! --As you can see on this hard-to-read spreadsheet I made in 2016 to keep track of the
weird homebrew classes like “Vampire Knight!” So these characters also began with LOW stats,
but each one got a 5e background! This was a BIG upgrade because backgrounds
provide some equipment, some gold, proficiency in skills, tools, or languages,
and sometimes a useful character feature! Using backgrounds results in level 0 characters
who CAN go toe-to-toe with a goblin and likely come out on top! And for 5e, this is pretty
close to how I would run level 0 today! Start with the stats of a 5e commoner, choose your
race and apply any special features, then choose your background and write down any equipment
or special features. But I have two issues with this old method! First, that would technically
leave us with only 4 HP which is basically 0 hit points in 5e, and second, the 5e backgrounds are
only available in the player's handbook! Ideally, this should be a character you can make for
free, so here are two possible solutions. Just set the HP at a nice and even 10 and
use the free PDF of One D&D backgrounds, linked in the description! This is nice
because you can also pick your race aka species from this PDF, and these backgrounds
give you more bang for their buck by coming with a unique special ability called a feat, in
addition to some equipment and proficiencies. Solution 2: Just pick a 5e class from the 5e SRD
which is also free, linked below! Then calculate your hit points like you normally would at level
1, and keep one piece of the main class feature. So the Barbarian for example would
have its d12 HD, but I would ignore all of these proficiencies except maybe
simple weapons, and ignore the equipment, and unarmored defense. Rage, however, being
the defining feature of the barbarian class, should absolutely make an appearance
during this level 0 backstory adventure! That character should rage
HERE for the first time, and it should be a little sloppy! Since
they’re supposed to get two uses at level 1, they should only have 1 use at level 0. Then
I’d only keep one or two of these bullet points, and only let it last for only 30 seconds
instead of the normal duration of 1 minute. You can follow this pattern for each martial
class pretty easily, and for spellcasters who would normally start with a bunch of spells,
I’d say 1 cantrip and 1 first level spell slot. Following this method for 5e, you’ll end up with
a would-be heroic character who is likely to survive their first low-level adventure,
and come out with a great story! Plus, it’s way faster to make a character this way, and
way easier for new players to get into the game! If that sounds intuitive to you,
give this video a like! Or if you have a different idea for level 0
in 5e, share it in the comments! Now if you want a tried and true, wild
level 0 experience, you have to try out Dungeon Crawl Classics because it’s built into
the game! Overall, DCC plays similarly to D&D, but one of its defining features is the use
of a level 0 “funnel” to begin a campaign! Funnels get their name for being deadly adventures
that whittle down a large party of level 0 peasants into a normal party of level 1 heroes!
The standard approach is for each player to create 3-4 random level 0 characters, and I’m going to
walk you through the steps for creating just one character using the free quickstart rules--and
yep, you know it, the rules are linked below! Step 1: Determine ability scores; 3d6 in order
for each. Note ability modifiers on Table 1-1. The abilities are: Strength, Agility,
Stamina, Intelligence, Personality, Luck. Of course, 3d6 results in lower stats than a
typical 5e character has, and the modifiers are lower, but ALL stats and DCs are a little lower
in Dungeon Crawl Classics, so it kinda evens out. Now let’s see… *rolls 3d6 boom, boom, boom.
Okay, 12 for STR that's actually quite good. And 12 for Agility as well! 8 for Stamina. Okay,
another 12! Okay, what's going on here?? So only a 7 for Luck. That's not good, and a 10 for
INT. So pretty down the middle for this guy! For those modifiers, between a 9 and a 12
is just a +0, but STA and LUC are both a -1! Step 2: Determine hit points; roll
1d4, adjusted by Stamina Modifier. Obviously 1d4 HP very low compared to 5e, but
again, all the numbers are a little lower, and you do get a bigger HD at level one depending
on your class, and if you survive to level one! *rolls 1d4... a 1. A single hit point
adventurer! And technically we had a minus 1 to our STA...I'm pretty sure
it's minimum 1 HP (is confused lol). Step 3: Determine Lucky Sign--this is one
of my favorite things about DCC characters, having this unique lucky or unlucky skill--roll
1d30, adjusted by Luck modifier on Table 1-2. And that gives us the birthsign of "conceived on
horseback" so we would add our luck modifier to all mounted attack rolls! But say that
this player for whatever reason really wanted to have this character--you know,
we assume they survive--really wanted to have this character be some kind of mounted
fighter, cool! I would let them find a way, either bargaining with a Patron or maybe
finding some ancient relic, that allows them to change their stars! Right? Change their
birthsign so their mounted attack rolls aren't forever given this minus 1, and they can have
that go to something hopefully less important! Now step 4: Determine 0-level occupation;
roll 1d100 on Table 1-3. This result will include the character’s 0-level
starting weapon and trade goods. So this is basically our background and it
includes our character’s race!… 73! That gives us a (human) locksmith! So our trained weapon
is a dagger and we have "fine tools" as our trained goods! This character should get
probably +1d, right. Instead of a d20, they'd probably roll a d24 on their
checks when they're doing stuff for locks: breaking into a room, breaking
into a chest, what have you. Step 5: Choose an alignment! As it says later
in this doc, that’s Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. And by the way, you can of course choose an
alignment for your D&D level 0 character, but I left it out because most people don’t
really use alignment in D&D. In DCC however, there’s a good chance that alignment will come
into play during your adventures, and this choice will affect your character’s abilities
for certain classes IF they reach level 1! For this guy, I’m gonna go with… Chaotic! Why not! Step 6: Determine starting money;
roll 5d12 copper pieces. Yeah, gold is actually a treasure in DCC! And your
level 0 probably won’t have any at the start! Step 7: is just making sure we marked
our equipment from our occupation, and giving us one other random
piece of equipment from Table 3-3. And we rolled a 23, that's a torch! Pretty weak, very cheap, we could've
bought that with our copper anyway. Because it does say we can buy more
equipment with our copper pieces! And I’m going to skip this step here,
but it’s good to do because even if this character doesn’t survive, the
party may get to keep their stuff! Some other things to note: our AC is 10+/-Agility
modifier, our saving throws our modified by STR, AGI, and PER, and I’m not sure if it’s mentioned
in the quickstart, but if you are playing a level 0 dwarf, halfling, or elf, the core rulebook
says you do get a subset of their features! For example, dwarves can see in the dark
out to 60’ and have a base speed of 20’, and I don’t think they’re supposed to get this
next thing at level 0, but leveled DCC dwarves can also smell gold and gems, and I think that’s
super cool, so I’d let them have it at level 0! Elves can see in the dark out to 60’ and they are
sensitive to iron, so wielding or wearing iron equipment causes them to lose 1 HP per day. Elves
also get a +4 bonus when looking for secret doors, and halflings can see in the dark out to
30’ and have a base speed of 20’. And again, it doesn’t mention it specifically as a
level 0 trait, but halflings are naturally small in size and lightweight, which can
be used to their advantage even at level 0! And halflings, elves, and dwarves all speak
their racial language in addition to common! Then Step 8 of character creation:
Attempt to survive your first dungeon. If you survive and reach 10 XP, you
advance to 1st level. At this point, you choose a class. Honestly, I
don’t think anyone calculates XP for the level 0 funnel. Typically you
level up just for surviving, that’s it! And here’s the cool announcement, I’m going
to play a group of level 0 peasants in a DCC one shot posted on Jorphdan’s
Jocular Junction! Speaking of cool, remember to check out Dungeon
Denizens through the link below, or this video about the main basics of DCC!
Thanks for your support, and keep building! :D
While I've been getting familiar with the rules very gradually over the last year or more, I've recently run my first funnel (Sailors of course) and got to play in one as well. Funnels really scratch an itch I've had since I started running D&D ~7 years ago. I made this video to hopefully show other D&D fans the possibilities with this fun part of DCC!
I ran Sailors last sunday and it was our first DCC experience. It was...brutal xD Nobody cared about checking the rocks in the breach to the west and they all died...first TPK ever. I thought it was lame to roll up new chars after just 5mins and allowed them to make a reflex save so a few survived. It is really recommended to read the module twice and make notes. In those walls of text some info easily gets lost on the fly.
You like funnels because you like things that are fun.