in my campaign (kingmaker) we have a large group. about 7 people. the game runs very smoothly and my dm is great
the only issue we have run into is characters dying and what to do from there. me and one other guy are lvl 9 which is the highest. everyone else is between 6-8. we have one player who through both stupidity, bad playing and some plot has died 6 times each time bringing in a new character.
my question
what do you do with introducing new characters into an ongoing campaign? my dm has allowed them to first make lvl 1 with 4th level hit points when i was a lvl 7 then let them build lvl 3 guys, then 4 and now 5th lvl characters. his reasoning is that a 1st level pc will die due to lack of hit points/gear. i totally agree with him but there are some who feel that they are getting something they havent put the time into to get. weve been on this campaign for a year and i just got to lvl 9 and a new guy show up this week and got to build a lvl 5. just curious of other peoples experiance or what they do
It's a game that should be played for the fun of everyone in the group. I wouldn't worry about people "getting what they haven't earned" and stuff like that. However, if the same dude keeps dying I'd probly tell him he either needs to figure some stuff out or leave the game (repeated death by one player usually smacks of a lack of attention to what is going on and/or a complete lack of caring about the campaign...he probly just sees it as Friday night social hour with the group).
Trust me though, that level 5 dude playing in a group with a couple level 9s will NOT be feeling like he has gotten away with a "cheap one" by starting at level 5 whereas you earned up to 9. He's gonna feel slightly useless if he is that far behind everyone.
Truthfully, in the campaign I play in anyone who joins the group joins up at the party's level. There's no sense in punishing someone for the fact that you only got to know them recently, or their schedule didn't permit them to play until recently, or they just got rid of a controlling significant other recently...
Just worry about making it fun for everyone. If people are ruining your fun, then you need to really do something and figure out a balance. If they are making the game more fun, who cares about who has earned what levels in a fantasy gameworld?
The way we usually do it... is NEW players get to start around the lowest xp of the group.
Vetrans who lost a character, get the xp 'quickening' of their old character.
In 2E this can lead to different levels depending on what the class choices are, but it all evens out nicely
As for people getting something they didn't earn? I wouldn't worry about it at low levels like that. 19th, 20th level... then I could understand feeling slighted.
Think of it as a movie... if a new character joins in around 2nd or 3rd act... they don't come in at level one.
Think about Lando, Or what about Legolas and Gimli? The hobbits and Aragorn were doing loads of stuff early on... the elf and dwarf didn't join up till the council meeting... THEY didn't start at level one when they joined in ;)
I find it to be more important that a character isn't in line for a sudden death than any perception they're getting something for free.
Now, as things now stand in my campaign, when a character dies they are brought back. Period. Part of the reason for this is that all of the existing characters grew organically, taking feats and levels and balancing the need of the "now" vs. their future plans.
When you make a character from scratch, you can ignore all of that - it doesn't matter if nobody in their right mind would be a 5th-level character with 1 level in 5 classes if your character is 15th level and you can just plop 10 levels on top of that.
So, in my campaign, that player would not be making new characters - the group would be paying the gold for a raise dead and would likely be taking it out of that character's share. That also helps a lot with continiuity. I know that's not how all groups do it, but I really prefer to have the same group long term.
On the other hand, a new player is different; it doesn't happen very often, and I use a bootstrap - no character in the party can be more than X levels behind the highest level character - if they are they are immediately pulled up to minimum XP. This is important at all levels, but especially important in, say, the 8-16 range. Being a 7th-level character hanging around with 12th-level characters is not only a lot less fun, it's a way to quickly get dead.
(of course, right now my bootstrap is 15 levels, but that's another story :)
The way we usually do it... is NEW players get to start around the lowest xp of the group.
This is basically what we did in my group, with one clause. We have the situation set that if we have at least 50% of the group's members available to play, we'll play. This has led to some discrepancy between levels of a couple characters. So to ensure that new players (if we decided to bring more in) or remade character due to death (hasn't happened yet) weren't penalized, we set it as:
New PC's come in at the minimum XP required to be the lowest level of one of the 4 most active players. (Group is about 8 players)
My group keeps all characters at the same level. Having 'earned' it has nothing to do with it. You simply cannot put a level 1 character or a level 5 character with a level 9 character. It isnt fair to the player who's character died as they are forced to play side kick to the higher level characters. And it isnt fair to the high level pc because they have to babysit character that might die at any moment OR they are in comflicts that are trivial to them. My group now keeps every character at the same xp total, and I would never allow more then a 1 level variation in any game I ran should I change to a more individual method of xp tracking.
My campaign houserule: Any new PC starts 2 levels behind the highest level PC. And I pick most of their equipment. Deal with it, keep playing, and make due with what you've got. Its not like there won't be other treasure to find.
Or just go play something on PS3, XBOX, or PC that lets you put in cheat codes.
Since about 1981, my friends and I have consistently started all our games at level 3 or so. I think the number of times we've begun a party at level 1 in all that time has been few enough that you would not even need a whole hand to count them.
In all that time, nobody has ever cried foul when a new character had to be brought in, whether after a death, or even out of boredom, and that character was started at a level high enough to be viable with the rest of the party.
Generally, we start the new guy at one level lower than the average of the party. Did the player "work" for that level or "earn" it? I suppose you could say yes, since their former character of the appropriate level took time to level up before he died. So what's the difference?
Really, it shouldn't matter. It's a game, not a competition to see who gets the big promotion at your $400,000-a-year brokerage job. To treat it as such is a sign that perhaps a reality/priority check is in order.
Really, it shouldn't matter. It's a game, not a competition to see who gets the big promotion at your $400,000-a-year brokerage job. To treat it as such is a sign that perhaps a reality/priority check is in order.
+1
More gamers should understand this...
Our group used to rule that new characters come in one level lower than the lowest level character. We eventually had a party ranging from level 9 to level 13. It's hard for the low levels to contribute effectively and some fights can be extremely dangerous for them. As a result, in our new game, we've decided to keep everyone at the same XP level. It allows players who can't make a particular game to keep up with the group and not feel like dead weight when they are finally able to attend.