A recent post in a 5e DM's chat area has got me thinking, and we all know how dangerous that can be. The thought percolating inside my skull is, in addition to a Session Zero (which many of us agree is a good idea), you also run the party at Level Zero. Session Zero, as you may or may not know, is the practice of sitting the party down and hashing out the details of the next campaign (or series of campaigns) with them. What the flavor of the campaign is, what the party is going to consist of, how the party gets together, etc. Playing Level Zero comes after that - you run the PCs at Level Nothing to take care of introductions and give the players some more meat to latch onto. I did this to a limited degree in my last Session Zero, running each PC through a short little solo backstory session that gave them ties to the rest of the group and the campaign. It was pretty effective, but pretty specific to the campaign, as it tied the party to the Musketeers-like organization I'm using to fight murder hoboism in the current campaign.
Anyway, my thoughts on the subject. If you do want to use a Level Zero start to your campaign - for me I would use this if I wanted to start out the campaign with a story of aspiring adventurers coming together to go take care of a problem threatening their village or whatever - here is what I would do. First, everyone is level zero (d'uh, right?) of whatever class they're going to be at level one. Second, everyone rolls 1d6 plus their CON bonus (see below) for HP. Yes, rolls it, not "automatically gets 6 HP". Third, everyone has a proficiency bonus of +1, and only skills from their background. Fourth, if they are a caster class, they get whatever cantrips and ability to cast cantrips as if they were 1st level, but no more. Fifth, starting money is purchased with half their class's and background's starting money (and no magic items, like healing potions). This is a good time to let the Crafty McDIYertons in your party explain how they're making their own healer's kit and other useful bits they'll likely need but can't afford. Sixth, when rolling stats, they get their racial bonuses, but only if any human PC does not take feats. A zero level PC with even one feat is way out of balance. Seventh and last, each PC has -300 XP. You read that right, negative 300 experience points that they have to earn back to zero to reach 1st level.
After the party reaches 1st level/zero experience points, the members get everything that they normally would at 1st level - full HP, full starting money, full skills, all their class's abilities at that level, and any feats (though if you have a human PC and they took the racial ability bonus, don't let them trade it in for a feat).
The Zero Level session(s) itself must be low level, low challenge - a few goblins, a few kobolds, very low CR humanoids or monstrosities or beasts, and never outnumbering the party (less than is preferable). It won't take many fights or monsters (basically 6 times the number of party members) for your PCs to reach zero XP, especially if you remember to award XP for non-combat encounters and provide said encounters. The most important part of the Zero Level is making this arc of the campaign pertinent to the forming of the party itself, and as an intro to the rest of your campaign. If you fail those two, hopefully you and your players can use it as the tutorial portion of the campaign, learn important house rules, get used to each other's style of gaming, that kind of thing. And have one more interesting/funny story to reminisce about.
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