Topic: 0-level death funnel?
Hey all, I've got quite a conundrum I'd like your input on. I've prepared an adventure for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and I'll post a question at the end:
The adventure starts with two warring clans in a mountain valley. The townsfolk have followed the bandits from across the hills that stole their sheep. The game starts with the bandits stopping at a watering hole with dozens of stolen livestock, where the townsfolk wait to ambush them. The PCs will be split across both sides of the fight:
The original plan was to give each player 3-4 0-level characters (2 players get bandits, 2 players get townfolk), and then have some extra NPCs on either side. So a fight starts one way or another, the sheep stampede, this causes a rift into the cavern below to open up in the valley floor, throwing everybody down into a huge underground chasm with an old temple to some horrid god creature in it. The characters wake up some hours later, amidst the dead/dying combatants and livestock, without much in the way of supplies.
So here's where I'm torn: should I try the 0-level death funnel where each player gets 3 or 4 characters to play, and at the end they choose one survivor to be their level 1 main character (like in Dungeon Crawl Classics), or I should I do a more traditional 1 1st level character to a player, with the other survivors being npc followers/henchmen? OR some other way to go about it?
