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Thanks for the feedback, there are some interesting points raised, I guess there is no right and wrong answer, whatever feels right for your group. Still not sure which way our group will go, and I hope I will not have to use any such rule , with many years of fine adventuring ahead.

Stormcrow wrote:Make your new character's relative inexperience a game-hook; make it an important element of the adventure.

There are many ways to involve inexperienced characters, but it's harder to make them feel useful, when all of their rolls could be done better by others. Which wouldn't matter as much if their advancement didn't depend on rolling.

It's not a game-breaker, and there are ways around it, but it can be a problem if the players want equity at the table. In any case, the LM should take extra care to make sure the weaker characters have things to do. Sometimes I'm not very good at that.

So, what can we do, as a LM, to make sure they all have opportunities to shine?
- write plot points around the traits they have (so that they can succeed even if they're a little weak), and make sure they have distinctive traits
- isolate them form time to time, so that they have to do stuff and can't rely on others
- force fate a little and have the stronger characters fall into a spider trap, or an enchanted sleep, so that the weaker ones must save them

Other ideas? Should we fork?

I like it, a new character could start with important contacts, patron, in its backstory, something the experienced characters don't have or couldn't get even with their 'high' skills. After all it's not a computer game, dictated by stats and inflexible rules, it's a story telling game. As long as the LM accommodates and caters for all, that's the main point. Besides, someone already pointed out, having inexperienced characters is a good way to bring an over confident, experienced party down a peg or two, as they spend efforts looking out for them (hobbits in LOTR). It's good to bounce ideas around

Well...there's also the small problem of the 'cycle of death.'

The biggest reason you don't start somebody always at level 1 in a D&D game is that the low level charcter will simply get killed, and have to start over yet again.

A weaker character could get trapped in a 'cycle of death', dying over and over again. And if the experienced characters have any sense, they'll never take the weak guy as a fellowship focus, they'll take eachother, and if the weak guy dies (Again) they just shrug and go 'damn fool shouldn't have come with us on our mission to Dol Guldur...'

In the original days of D&D, players each had a stable of characters of varying levels to choose from—all of which went into the dungeon to find whatever level they could handle for the most experience. Each DM's dungeon and wilderness hosted lots of players, and each session a party consisted of whichever players could come that day.

A game of The One Ring won't work like that, but we shouldn't be ready to completely dismiss the idea of multiple parties of differing ability adventuring in Wilderland. (These days gamers call it a sandbox.) If your "high-level" character dies, no big deal: play in a "low-level" party for a while until you get more powerful.

A sandbox campaign has the advantage of feeling "alive" as various players do all sorts of disparate things in it independent of each other.

My experience in the military has led me to believe that no one is useless nor should anyone feel that way playing a fictional character in a fictional world with fictional combat.

If you as a player feel like your character is useless as your character that's a specific choice you are making for your character not something forced by mechanics.

Even Gandalf can get saved by a Hobbit. Even the world of Middle Earth can be saved by three of them.

Have the new guys fight and the more experienced call battle tactics and lend battle points and lead.
Have the new guy take point and thus he gets the AP and trains up and learns how.

Take that new guy on as fellowship focus, and say "Hey, kid keep your head down, I got you, we're gonna do this", and Do It.

If we play out one year per adventure, but the time we go from Aragorn Leaves Rivendell, to The War of the Ring, that's almost 70 years. Your humans will have children and grand-children fighting next to elves that are 1000 years old and whom recall the beginning of the third age.

It's not a problem for me.