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My 2 cents is that at the low levels, players need a bit of a buffer. A Lvl1 wizard with +0 CON can be one-shot by a goblin rolling a crit, to say nothing of the bugbear boss of the first encounter in Lost Mines of Phandelver (many people's first introduction to DnD 5e)
So minor selective fudging to keep the characters alive long enough for them to at least be wealthy enough to afford a Revivify seems like a small and harmless enough concession to me
It is the reason why I prefer starting at lvl 5
Also the classes all feel and play the same below that level.
If it's a 1st level character is there any harm in simply letting them be killed by a goblin? Depends on what you're looking for in a game but an early death can lead to some nice storytelling
Because it takes longer to roll up a new one than a table really needs as an interruption.
Purely practical imo. You don't want things derailed that early. Later on, a death can be worked with, made part of a story. In the first three sessions? It's just a pain in the ass
That’s when we find out the player’s wizard character, Ehariel, has a long lost brother named Aharial with a suspiciously identical set of stats and backstory
He also has been looking for his brother for years only to conveniently find the party minutes after his brother dies
Yeah, our sorcerer got one shot by the goblins. Later on a mage wanted to punish whatever attacked him with magic missile and accidentally killed him. Now bro's a meme for dying in the first round.
Speaking of the bugbear, we were all at 1 hp at the end of the fight, and only because we managed to turn goblins to our side (and Kelemvorism).