I have a group I play with normally, and we're just starting Skinsaw Murders. Another player wants to drop in, probably just for a week in order to learn. (He's already bought a copy to play with his son, but was a little confused and wants some help).
Any advice for how we should setup his character? I feel like if we start him at the beginning/ie level one, only basics, no boxes checked, he's apt to have a less than good experience. If he was joining the campaign for real, I'd just start him there and do some reshuffle of acquired boons after the session, and possibly run some catch up sessions for the older story. But for a one-off addition, that doesn't feel as fun for him. What's your advice?
The rules say he should start from scratch. But here is what I've done a few times.
1. Give him all the same number skill, power, and card feats you guys have earned. He's your buddy after all. Make the game just as fun for him as it is for you.
2. Take everyone else's deck and count how many cards are in each of these categories:
- B/C Deck Basic
- B/C Deck Elite
- B/C Deck Not Basic or Elite
- Deck 1
- Deck 2
Then get the average of each category for your group. Let him take cards in each category equal to the group average. So if the group on average has 3 deck 1 cards, let him have 3 deck 1 cards. Work with him as a group though so that everyone agrees his character feels to be at the same level of cards as the average for your group.
I think this will help make everyone happy. He isn't too weak to do what everyone else does, but he also isn't too strong that joining late was an advantage for him.
On a side note, I would encourage you to find time to let him play 1 or 2 scenarios from the base adventure, if not all 3. You could just play you and him (assuming you are the owner of the game). That way he gets familiar with the mechanics and his character before he has to decide what he wants to upgrade on them and before the mechanics start getting played with in the later scenarios.
We grant new players all the feats they would have earned and 1-3 cards of their choice from the box that could have theoretically been encountered up to that point. How many cards depends on how far along you are.
You have to be careful with just letting them pick whatever, lest they get all the great cards that everyone wants but just hasn't encountered yet. Doing only a couple means they take what they need, instead of just taking all the great stuff.
Thanks for the replies and thoughts.
I understand about the RAW and would definitely do that if a new player was joining us for real/regularly. I like the various suggestions for how to handle a drop in, in a more lenient fashion. And if the drop-in decides to be a regular, I'd revert the character to starting from scratch and running make-up sessions.
Had a friend join a game mid-playthrough last week, actually.
We just gave him the same amount of feats that the rest of us had and he started with a base deck.
It worked fine but this was only in the middle of AP1.
If we'd been further along I'd probably just follow the adventure rules for what the base types of cards were at that point. I haven't gotten that far but at some point don't elites become the new equivalent of basic cards once those start to get removed? In other words just let them pick from whatever the current "basic" card type is... you could use a more involved system as Hawkmoon suggested by my thought was that he would fairly easily find upgrades.
I'm kinda against letting someone pick specific cards - for example in one of my games, I'm playing Lini and am midway through AP2. If I were to redo her deck to all basic cards + picking *any* two cards from the box, I'd arguably have a better deck than I do now as I have not gotten very lucky on finding useful upgrades. I think the randomness of the card draws is what makes the game interesting and this somewhat breaks that.
So, I missed that this was a "drop-in" player, as in only joining for one session, when I replied earlier. I'd amend what I said to add: don't let other players keep the cards this character started with. They can keep what this character acquires, but not what they start with.
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The way we did it for one of our friend was to build his deck using the normal deckbuilding rules (we used the recommended deck list), then give him the rewards for the scenarios and adventures he missed.
In my opinion, the bulk of a character's power comes from the feats, so a character with a starting deck and the appropriate feats should be able to at least survive the current scenario and improve the deck with what he picked up in the meantime. The card rewards give a chance, albeit low, of getting a few decent cards to help. If you want a better chance at that, you could draw multiples, but only allow the player to keep one for each card reward.
It's also how I'd build a new character after their unfortunate demise.
I would just use the same deck building rules as for character death.
But instead of losing all you feats. You gain all the feats from your current adventure number minus two (example: if you are playing Adventure 3 you would gain the all feats from Adventure 1 and build your character with cards from Basic to Adventure 1.)
Thanks, we did the "all rewards for the completed scenarios" approach, I also let him draw one card, three times, from a boon deck of his choice). Only two of the card rewards (included the three freebies I gave him) ended up being useful to him. It worked well, everyone had fun, he didn't feel underpowered even though his deck was worse. And we found how he had been misplaying with his son (he didn't understand ally/blessing discard to explore again!) So I think we got a new convert to the PACG, but not to my personal ongoing campaign.
As a side note, stupid monster in the closet :) Everyone kept missing their perception check. We had two open locations, each with a single card (failed to close the location with the monster in the closet when we beat the henchman there). Finally got the villain to jump to the monster in the closet location, and beat him there. The monster "survived"!