Hi Guys,
I wonder when I read through the SCA messages that the the death of party members is quite common. We have just started to play SCAP and I would like to know your opinion about the replacement of dead team members. Should I ask all the players to create a subtitute character in case when their characters die in the low level chapters? I think in high level adventures it can not be a problem.
I would not. The death of a character might reveal a weakness in the party's makeup, such as the lack of a front-line fighter or healing character. They might want to plug those holes with characters they might not have made, otherwise.
~Qualidar~
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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While I think Qualidar has a good point about waiting to create a replacement character to fill a hole in the party, but the disadvantage of that method is that if the character dies early, the player is out for the remainder of the game creating his character. You should consider that trade off in determining whether to have replacement characters ready before hand or not.
I usually offer an xp bonus for pre generated replacement characters because they keep the game moving. Such characters come in with more xp than a character generated on the spot, but less xp than if the original character had been raised.
As long as you are considering the issue of replacement characters, I would recommend adopting a house rule regarding (i) what happens to the dead character's treasure and (ii) how the replacement character will be equipped. I enforce an arbitrary rule that the dead character's treasure (other than quest items) is either buried with him or sent back to his family and that the rest of the party does not get to keep it. Dealing with equipment for replacement characters is a lot harder because you need to balance the fact that the player can optimize his choices in a way the rest of the party can't against the fact that other methods (e.g., randomly rolling treasure) are equally unappealing. One route might be to give out the equipment listed for the PC classes in the DMG and let the player substitute out an item or two.
Anyway, in my experience, it's a good idea to consider these questions in advance of the game and have them in writing if possible.
I wonder when I read through the SCA messages that the the death of party members is quite common. We have just started to play SCAP and I would like to know your opinion about the replacement of dead team members. Should I ask all the players to create a subtitute character in case when their characters die in the low level chapters? I think in high level adventures it can not be a problem.
I think that's smart - we didn't actually have any full deaths yet, but we did have some players drop out (they got married and moved away, how terribly rude of them) and the characters that were prepped were good for the new players who joined.
I'd suggest that you have the 'ready to go' characters be similarly skilled to the ones they play, and maybe weave them into the sub-plot as another adventuring group, or solo adventurers who sometimes gather at location X (wherever the PCs are) so that they're not quite as randomly assigned.
I DM a more realistic game, and have had a few of my players die (7 so far, and they haven't quite made it to Zenith).
For the most part I don't like the idea of pregenerating characters, as that's pretty much how two of my PC's died. They became so infactuated with their pregens, that they started playing their characters sloppy. They both died in the same session. Depending on where the party is and how far into the session we are, I'll either tell the player to have a character ready by next week, or I'll let him roll one up (we play 4-8 hour sessions, so if it's in the first 1-4 hours...)
No one in the party has yet opted for being raised, so I haven't had to deal with that. The house rule we use is that new characters come in one level lower than their old characters. The equpiment on the character is up for grabs, and the new character can have standard wealth or whatever for a character his level (no more than half of which can be made toward a single item). I then introduce the new character in the plot somehow (had one be a member of the town guard sent to represent the city, had two be captured by spiders and webbed up, and had a last one be dominated by Drakthar and was working as his servant). The players have free rein with backstory, of course, as long as they explain how they came to be in that particular situation. I've got to introduce a drow monk into Zenith Trajectory now, and I'm thinking she might just be on a pilgrimage from the underdark or something. I'll have to work it out with the player before we start today (in 6.5 hours, yay!).
We've had two deaths so far. We play in pretty short sessions, though, so it doesn't leave that person with nothing to do for 8 hours.
To address the problem of character death, I adopted a house-rule from the WOTC website. Raise Dead imposes 1 negative level. That negative level stays around until the character earns current level x 1000 xp. So, if you died at 6th level and were raised, your character would have the penalties of a negative level until they earned 6000 xp.
This has led to more people getting raised IMC, since, before, they never wanted to lose a level.
Similarly, if they don't get their character raised, their new character will also have the negative level. Its still a penalty, but its not permanent. We don't allow switching characters after 13th level for continuity concerns. I imagine that wouldn't work in many groups, but we liked the idea.
I don't do the required replacement character for the same reason mentioned above: my players get a little infatuated with the new idea and play sloppy with the old character. Moreover, at higher level, customizing the equipment is a real advantage.