5e My Level 0 rules and their perks @ Level 1+

[BerzerkerUnit]

I have a campaign in mind and I want the players to start at Level 0. Note: I haven't read the existing Level 0 stuff for 5e, but I have something else in mind.

The first session is about the characters as youths meeting for the first time. Right now I'm thinking a Bi-Annual apprenticeship event where people from all around come, create a bazaar and the children compete in events intended to impress tradesmen and companies looking for apprentices.

Nobles are there with their kids as well, though for networking purposes, arranging marriages, etc.

The specifics of what brings the PCs together will be based on their Background choices, but right now it's basically a "bogey man" type plot in which adults are no help and it falls on the children to take care of the problem. It might be a Kobold scout, a vengeful spirit, or something else.

The default reward is apprenticeship with a mentor of their choice. I want them to explore the town and seek out the mentors of their choice.

A couple exceptions. A character with the Spark of Faith or Magic is "forced" to apprentice with the Church or a Magic Academy. That doesn't mean they're forced into a particular class,

The Character Generation Rules (https://docs.google.com/document/d/15jk6EcOtTOwfKo6DbYdBUd38jS2xJ14TKz0SGbk7KIE/edit?usp=sharing) as I've envisioned them.

Perks.
After the initial session there will be a time skip. At that point the players get to Points buy their abilities as desired. Once assigned they can replace any 1 of their Points buy stats with one of their previous rolled stats.

So let's say they get an exceedingly average roll of 10/11 for every stat, then point's buy and leave Charisma 8, they can swap that 8 for a 10 they'd had as a kid. This is intended to lead to some exceptional characters.

Additionally, they'll get to keep the Spark benefits they had as a kid. If there's an overlap (Like a Mischievous Spark and Rogue Class, they can choose another proficiency). If that Rogue goes on to be a Thief, I might give them Resistance to Falling damage and/or Advantage to attacks made while climbing.

A Warrior's Spark that becomes a Fighter might get a +1 with whatever weapon they were proficient with or the Shield Master Feat for free.

The campaign I have in mind is going to be of above average difficulty, so characters with more juice

[GloatingSwine]

I can see a number of challenges in this.

First off, because this is a "level 0" session nothing the characters get from the session looks to have any impact on their characters once they hit level 1. Character generation parts do, but their actions and events in the play part just seem to let them choose a class.

I would look for an opportunity for the players' actions in the session grant them some kind of early-levels bonus, so they're invested in playing this other character who isn't quite their character yet. (I'd probably skip the "roll 3D6 in order then replace that later but keep one if you want" with some other minor bonus they all get for solving the session. Players are probably going to have a character in mind before they start and want to work towards it in this level 0 session.)

Second, because they probably want to be different classes the "explore the town looking for a suitable mentor" would mostly be separate for everyone, so at any one time n-1 of your players are sitting on their hands waiting for the one who is finding the mentor for their desired class to actually find them. I'd probably skip that element and just have something set up in advance for the characters your players decide on in session 0.

Edit:

I would probably look for a way to split the bonuses the characters are intended to get from this into three:

One from their spark

One from the outcome of the level 0 session

One from their apprenticeship (try and have a couple of possible candidates for each of the classes the players are intending to play so they have a choice to make).

[BerzerkerUnit]

Thank you for your feedback.

Eliminating the “roll 3d6” would hugely undermine the intended transformative element that “growing up” is supposed to have.

Allowing the ability replacement also allows me to scale the kind of benefit each character carries over. A character that flips an ability from an 8 to a 14+ might get to keep a minor perk, while character that was a sickly child with low stats or nothing worth flipping may get to keep more or upgrade them. This ability to enhance on a gradient is part of the goal.

As for splitting the party, the adventure in writing starts half a week into the trade expo, so characters with specific goals in mind will have already seen those, while the remainder is an opportunity to learn a little more about the setting and maybe be invited into a more specialized career option.

[GloatingSwine]

My concern is that by making the main campaign point buy, and classes and sparks being selected, you're basically encouraging players to go into session 0 with a character in mind. That means they will probably want their "level 0" session to be a prototype for the character they want to play later.

One way you could achieve the transformative element is to have the players do their stats, then have a default -2 to all of them for the level 0 session to represent them being children, and then have a set of optional character quirks that they can pick one of that all add an extra penalty to the child character which turns into a bonus when they become an adult. So a sickly child takes an extra -2 STR as a child but gets an extra cool thing as an adult character that represents how they overcame it (since the idea of this is to produce slightly juiced up characters).