I'm curious, how do you other players handling character death? IE, your and adventure deck #4. You're playing in a party of 3 (2 other real life friends). One of your friends dies. What does your group do? Does everyone start a new character? Do you replay old scenarios as a group (the rules don't seem to support this)? Do you encourage the player to play solo? What if they don't have a base set?
Just curious about how you guys all handle it as the rules don't specify how to catch a party member up with a new character.
Well, the rules as written give you two options.
1. Bring in a new character with no feats and a deck of cards up to AD-2; if this limits you to lettered cards, they must be Basic.
2. Solo (or solo with other fresh characters helping) to catch up.
Personally, I'd suggest bringing in a new character with the party's feats and a reset deck. Unless you're doing OP, because OP actually has hard-set rules.
Reset deck means only B cards?
Reset deck means only B cards?
If you're in B, 1, or 2 adventure, then you use B or C cards that have the Basic trait.
If you're in 3 or higher, you can go up to cards that are AD-2 (so if you're in 4, you can use 2 cards.)
Well, the rules as written give you two options.
1. Bring in a new character with no feats and a deck of cards up to AD-2; if this limits you to lettered cards, they must be Basic.
2. Solo (or solo with other fresh characters helping) to catch up.Personally, I'd suggest bringing in a new character with the party's feats and a reset deck. Unless you're doing OP, because OP actually has hard-set rules.
I would do what Sandslice suggests, as well. Also note that the surviving party members can hold on to the dead character's stuff if they want to, displacing cards in their decks. And perhaps they could pass them on to the new character, trading them for cards the new character brings in. But doing that is entirely up to your party.
My issue isnt really the cards, so much as the missing feats. Card catch up can happen very fast, even just by playing the very next scenario in the adventure with a new basic deck. Just play chicken a bit, and let the group do the work ;p. The big problem I haven't figured out yet.. is how to get all the feats back.
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If you don't want to bring them to the level of the rest of the party automatically, you could consider something like the Tier 3 and 5 pregens in the OP guide.
I believe it essentially works out to:
1) Paths B/1/2 - new character with no feats
2) Path 3/4 - Tier 3 pregen - 2x of all feat types
3) Path 5/6 - Tier 5 pregen - role, 4x of all feat types
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I would still make them earn the feats somehow. Maybe give them an adventure's worth of feats each scenario until they catch up. For example
You die on 03-4 and the party fails. Rebuild a featless character, and after succeeding 3-4, gain any B Adventure feats. After beating 3-5, gain any feats earned from Adventure 1, etc. Then at 4-2's success, take any remaining Adv 3 feats prior to 03-4 where you started.
My issue isnt really the cards, so much as the missing feats. Card catch up can happen very fast, even just by playing the very next scenario in the adventure with a new basic deck. Just play chicken a bit, and let the group do the work ;p. The big problem I haven't figured out yet.. is how to get all the feats back.
Long ago, back in RoR I raised the issue on how to catch-up on feats in you died during the course of an AP (especially if you died late in the game or many times - and many times can happen if when you take a new character, she is underpowered vs rest of the team).
Wasn't a real problem at that time for large groups like mine. We could afford a newbee in the group and finish the AP anyway. Was just frustrating for the player that didn't reach full character potential.
With the difficulty of WotR, I see it as a real issue this time and I'm az bit disappointed that Mike/Vic didn't change this rule. Anyway, we have our own house rule to mitigate that so I guess will stay with it.
For info : our house rule is that :
1) When you die you MUST change character (you can't take the same one) - that's for pressuring you to stay alive
2) You build your deck by the rulebook (cards level AP-2)
3) Take a role card immediately if AP5+, if not you will get a role card when you finish AP 3 or 4.
4) You join the team immediately (so you don't have to replay any scenario).
5) You get no feats to start with BUT anytime you complete for the first time a scenario, remove the (skill/power/card) feat part of the reward if any, then add as a reward one feat (or two feats if AP is 3+ or three feats if AP 5+). Feat are won in the same order as the normal AP, until you catch up. You can never get to a character that couldn't have been reached without dying (for example you cannot just select powers on your role card that weren't on your initial character card).
Bring them in with feats and rebuild the deck according to the rules.
Later on in these games following the rules is an onerous task.
Going back and playing the original scenarios means taking out all cards from subsequent APs.
Playing the current AP at AP4 and on is near suicidal without any feats, you're likely to just die again once a tough scenario designed for characters at full feats hits. Not to mention some basic enemies have been removed at this point.
And finally forcing the party to go through all the previous scenarios is unfair to the other players who will likely get next to nothing for their troubles after they have filled their decks with all relevant boons.
I assume WOTR will be no different in this regard or perhaps even more onerous.
I can see a solution to this perhaps in the tablet version of the game and going back on your own to build a character up wouldn't be so bad if you had the time to do it. Which me and my group do not.
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Remember, this is your game and since you're playing with friends, you can play it the way you want. You didn't say you were playing Organized Play so those rules are set.
The rules on dead characters and rebuilding are on pg 14 of the rulebook (newest rulebook). And those rules do not offer any feats for the reborn character. It does have rules how to build your deck as described in the posts above. That's the official rules.
The caveat is that having no feats hampers the game for the rest of the party. I've never been a fan of no feats past Adv 1. (Meaning that the group has completed Adv 1 and is starting Adv 2 or is in the middle of Adv 2.) Losing skill, power and card feats is bad. Generally if someone bringing in a new character, I scale them up with one less skill feat, power feat and card feat. And stick closer to the deck building rules.
Play the game so that it's fun. Don't just stick to the rules if it screws up things for everyone else because you're having to protect the hampered player.
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Usually it's just me and my fiancé playing, so if I die I can pretty easily "play up" a new character. Not sure what we'd do if she died in a late adventure - she has less interest in solo play than I do.
The way I do it is to create a replacement character as per the rules - no feats, cards up to AD-2. But then I replay all the scenarios until I catch up, but leaving everything already in the box there. So yeah, you get the advantage of a better deck, but the nastier banes are in there, just showing up in early scenarios.
I suppose one could pick and choose scenarios based on rewards, but that would cause you to miss adventure rewards which are usually card feats.
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I just give them the same feats as everyone else, but make them abide by the deck-building rules of wherever we are in the campaign. Meaning, either Basic cards or 2 less than the current Adventure.
I think that's the best way to handle it, personally. Players with dead characters find it less of a burden, and they are able to quickly catch up to the rest of the group in power in just a handful of scenarios.
But I also like to remove the dead character from play permanently, meaning no one else can pick that one until the end of the campaign.