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because the idea is for players to not be undefeatable immortals at 1st level.
as a first level adventurer, you have only just mastered your craft and are just now venturing out into the wilds.
the idea is that as you gain experience through your battles and your travels, you develop yourself and your skills.

Just finished a play test last night. One dwarf fighter and human cleric, we fought 4encounter, each had two gnolls making the first three fights "tough" for our level. Then the last fight was 4 gnolls. We moped the floor, not taking any damage untill the last fight. We stealth and got a surprise round in every fight except the last, so using tactics and your head matters, which is apps for the game. Inthe last fight, dwarf almost went down twice, but clerical healing kept me alive (I did have toughness for the dwarf but it didn't matter cause the clic was going right after me, so even if I went down without those extra HPs the cleric would have brought back right away, so it didn't really help much, tis time). 

After the game, cleric had used up her two spells, but still had one channel divinity left.  We did pretty awesome but we were lucky, getting crits and surprise a lot. If the earlyt three fights did not go so well we would have been in trouble for the last fight. Then again, this was abit above our challenge rating. The xp we got was 1800 each, which almost leveld us to level three. 

So, I would say its not so bad. You can die if your not careful, you have to think about what you are doing, and not just charge into rooms. If I had played the human rogue I made, we would have had different tactics. More hit and run, to lure them into a trap, things  like that. Also, it seems youwill level pretty fast, so you won't be this vulnerable for long. My dwarf now has 27 instead of 17 HPs and the cleric has 17 instead of 10 with an extra heal spell. So I think next session we should be good to go. If we were fighting more level appropriatemonsters such as kobolds and goblins, the risk of being killed would have been much lower as they only do about d6-1 damage instead of the gnolls 1d8+2/6. 

The original posts shows that a p v p would be like rocket tag, but that is not really in the spirit of the game. If players want p v p in their game that's fine, but p v p fights are going to new a lot different from fighting a band of kobolds by the nature of all the pc special abilities.

Aug 25, 2012 -- 9:16AM, AlmightyK wrote:

because the idea is for players to not be undefeatable immortals at 1st level.
as a first level adventurer, you have only just mastered your craft and are just now venturing out into the wilds.
the idea is that as you gain experience through your battles and your travels, you develop yourself and your skills.

Aug 25, 2012 -- 12:06PM, Tlantl wrote:

I see no problem with any of the problems the OP brings up. Being able to be killed by an attack that is designed to kill you is not a problem. 

Wanting a 1st level character to be superman is. 

The real starting level for 75+% of all 2e and 3e games was actually somewhere between 3rd and 6th level.  Very few people (pretty much just people like those that commented above) actually wanted to play at level 1 because of how obnoxiously swingy it was.  Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with danger--I want the game to be dangerous, but people should get at least one strike before they're out.

So, yeah, if they're going to keep the HP that low so a single attack can take you out, that's fine, but they need to somehow change the default assumption about starting level from 1st to at least 3rd. 

Aug 25, 2012 -- 12:36PM, mellored wrote:

Every PC should be able to suvive 1 crit from an at-level monster.

As long as the crit dos not take the wizard to negative con score and some one can heal him or he passes three saves, he will live. Crit is pointless unless it is scary, and wizards have no business being in the front ranks, taking crits any way. In the play test I did the cleric did not get attacked once cause the fighter was always in front of her, and she just used radiant lance, or whatever it is. Working together and using tactics goes along way. (and a goblin crit would be 5 HPs by the way, do a wizard with +2 con would survive a crit from a goblin. Just not form something bigger and tougher) 

As the player of a 1st Level Wizard who was 2-shot under the negative threshold by a regular hit followed by a crit, both in the same round, I will say the cleric is irrelevant to the equation.  The Wizard hp are too low, end of story.  Asking for say, 5 more at 1st level for all classes isn't asking for a superhero either.  In fact, I see no one asking for a superhero.  What I see is that characters are glass cannons and monsters are all crosseyed.  The balance is off, and the gameplay proves it, and it needs to be adjusted.  When a warlock can do 3d6 damage every round but have under 10 hp, that's imbalance.  Bring damages down for players and monsters, bring attack up for monsters, and hp up for players, slight increase in hp for monsters too.  If the goal is one-shotting monsters, just bring back minions.  If the goal is one-shotting players at 1st level, no need for a fix.  Keep as is.