Have you had a problem with "character dumping"

[Glyfair]

I just finished reading the most recent article from RoleplayingTips.com (it's not online yet). The theme is introducing new characters to a campaign.

I noticed one running theme in the early tips deal with "punishing" players for switching characters. Essentially the GM wants to make sure that people don't drop a character just because they are bored with them.

Has this been a big issue in your games? Even when I had players who tended to be like this (one would easily go through 5-6 characters before the game started in 3.5), it wasn't too much of a problem. Even when it started to disrupt the game, I never really needed to use mechanical methods to discourage it.

Has it been a problem in your games?

 

[Sebastian1992]

Sometimes...

It's a problem when you have a whole party turn over and have to change the direction of the campaign. Then again, I did have pretty random players who didn't seem to care, so maybe it was just making me angry.

 

[Wormwood]

Has it been a problem in your games?

Not really.

Bored players make for bad games. If 'dumping' a character helps to avoid boredom, I would encourage rather than punish it.

 

[questing gm]

I've had players who got bored of their characters and asked for a switch. Since it would have disrupted the continuity of the campaign, I said 'no'. Then the party resolved to mass suicide.

I also did this once but it was to put me and my PC out of the misery of going through with that campaign.

I understand that some players are just too eager to try out new character concept and builds but at least have the decency of retiring the old character and give a little background on how the new one comes in.

 

[Richards]

Nope. I, as the DM, automatically "inherit" any dumped PCs.

Case in point: in our current campaign, each of the four players has two PCs that they interchange as they see fit. (All 8 PCs are part of the local chapter of the Adventurers Guild.) My son had wanted to try out an odd concept: a human sorcerer running the role of a front-line fighter. He took proficiency with the greatsword as one of his feats, buffs up his AC with mage armor and shield, lessens the hit point gap with false life, and even chose a toad as a familiar just for the extra 3 hp. After 7 levels, he's decided the experiment was a failure: for all his work, he ends up with a guy who's almost as good as a fighter, only without the fighter's bonus feats. So he decided to drop the PC from his roster.

It just so happened that this occurred at the exact same time that the other PCs had captured a notorious thief, tied her up, and used a Guild ring to teleport her back to their headquarters (as they were several days away from their HQ and in the midst of another adventure, and didn't want to have a bound prisoner slowing them down). The abandoned sorcerer PC was the only one in the area when the bound thief teleported in (along with a note pinned to her stating who she was and where to turn her in for the bounty on her head). Instead, the sorcerer (now an NPC under DM control) allowed the thief to talk him into freeing her, as she would be worth much more to him alive and free than the reward money he'd get for turning her in. He's now abandoned his Adventurers Guild ties, become her apprentice, added a couple of levels of rogue, and is one of the players' greatest (as in favorite) foes - nothing like a personal sense of betrayal to make for a memorable foe. (Plus, he knows all of their tricks, so he's doubly dangerous.)

My son, meanwhile, is replacing the sorcerer-as-fighter PC with a summoner (complete with a Small fire elemental familiar) that he's always wanted to try. Everybody wins.

Johnathan

 

[Crothian]

I will not punish a player for switching characters. I will also not reward them for it. PCs that are long lasting in my campaigns find they have more plots around them and are more involved in the story. That is my reward for players that don't switch characters like this. However, it is rarely ever an issue with us.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I have been punished for character dumping, probably with reason, since I have some sort of D&D ADD. I remember one time, my new character joined the group, and out of nowhere, a flying monster dives towards me, um, defecates all over me and flies away. My character growed hair all over his body (he was an elf) and stank like last week's orcish underwear. The curse lasted about a week.

AR

 

[Vegepygmy]

Has this been a big issue in your games? Even when I had players who tended to be like this (one would easily go through 5-6 characters before the game started in 3.5), it wasn't too much of a problem.

I've seen it become a problem. I prefer to run and play in campaigns where there is a lot of continuity, and I find that constant character switching really disrupts that.

But I'm also a believer in "death penalties" in general. I don't care for campaigns where players who get killed return to play with a new character who is the same level as the one who just got killed. I like it when death hurts.

So my house rule is basically: if you are bringing in a new character, whether it's because your old one got killed or you just feel like switching, the new character comes in one level behind everyone else.

 

[humble minion]

I will not punish a player for switching characters. I will also not reward them for it. PCs that are long lasting in my campaigns find they have more plots around them and are more involved in the story. That is my reward for players that don't switch characters like this. However, it is rarely ever an issue with us.

Generally i'm of the same opinion, though it's not as easy as it sounds. Of my group, there's one whose rather lacking tactical ability, combined with his truly horrendous die-rolling, mean his PCs die a lot. His subsequent characters tend not to get much in the was of plots centred around them (though I do my best with the first one!) One of my other players has a measure of character-ADD, and he'll tend to get bored, and then have his PC do something silly and borderline-suicidal just for a laugh, and then when the inevitably PC dies as a direct result of this, cheerfully make up a new one.

It's kind of a double-edged sword. As a GM, you can go to huge efforts to spin plot around people's replacement characters in order to keep the players involved in the game, but with these two players I know from long experience that their PCs are purely temporary anyway. One of them can't keep his PCs alive, and the other can't be bothered to. So I don't overdo the PC-specific plotlines for these guys anymore since I've got other players to take care of and it's all too much hard work after a while, and it's a pain setting up all these plot hooks which are just left dangling when the PC dies and is replaced out yet again.

Mind you, I'm completely aware that I'm probably contributing to the problem because the less they have to do with their characters, the less attached they are to their characters, and therefore the less they'll try to keep their characters alive, etc etc. But as a GM I've got a limited amount of preparation time, and I've got more productive things to do with it than working out sideplots to tie in with the five-line backstory of a character I know full well isn't going to last very long anyway.

 

[Burrito Al Pastor]

As a player, I have dumped characters. There should be no restrictions or punishments for doing so. If my character has stopped being fun, for whatever reason, why should I continue to have to play him and not have fun?