Character Death

[Greenfield]

We have a long standing rule in our group: New characters enter the game a level behind the party.

Because of the way we award experience, based on the individual character level, lower level characters earn a larger share, so this gap will tend to close on its own.

One reason was character death: Losing a character means losing that level, whether you switch characters or the old one gets Raised. No advantage to the power-gamers.

We had a loss this past weekend. The group took a side trip to obtain an item from some Egyptian/Persian burial catacombs. We had been encountering restless spirits for a week, and all reported that these catacombs had been disturbed.

Now, would everyone who would be surprised at running into a Mummy while exploring/desecrating an Egyptian tomb, please stand on your heads?

Yet we managed to lose our Cleric (the resident power-gamer/problem child), and he thinks our rule for new characters is unfair.

He particularly thinks that his old PCs gear should go to the new PC or be spread among the group. (Our rule is, you not only can "take it with you", you have to. Goods go to the family or to the grave, period.) In any case he wants his new PC to have gear priced like the other PC had. (This is the guy who, when he was DM, handed out huge piles of loot, far in excess of what was appropriate. And now he doesn't get to keep any of it.)

Gamer antics aside, how does your group handle new characters joining the game?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In the game that I'm currently running, I am keeping the characters all the same level. That means that character death and joining characters have no real effect on character level.

I also use a house rule that limits the ability of characters to use magic items that are too powerful for their level. That means that at their current level (eighth) they can have as many +2 swords as they want, but they are unable to use a +3 sword at all, for instance.

Previously, I have used a similar rule to yours, new characters coming into the game at -1 level from APL, at -1 level from the lowest level character, at 1st level, and so on. A couple of levels of difference don't affect game play too horribly, in my estimation, and usually the gap closes relatively quickly.

 

[Green1]

Well, depends on power level.

If it is low level and the gear survives, it can be divided amongst the surviving PCs. Or left there. Or used a RP device and donated to some cause or next of kin. But, as DM, it is not my decision only that I insist it is in character and not meta gamed. I do not mind "twinking" or lower level characters having too powerful a magic item. Yes, the first level character may have the +3 leather of fire resist, but his other items may be crap and he is still squishy.

At higher levels where raise dead and family spells become readily available, this is less an issue.

 

[delericho]

Before I start, everything I'm about to say reflects how we used to do things in 3e. It's now very likely I won't run that edition again, but we haven't yet settled on the 'right' convention for 5e.

We have a long standing rule in our group: New characters enter the game a level behind the party.

Because of the way we award experience, based on the individual character level, lower level characters earn a larger share, so this gap will tend to close on its own.

One reason was character death: Losing a character means losing that level, whether you switch characters or the old one gets Raised. No advantage to the power-gamers.

With us, it depended: if your new character was to replace one who died, you did indeed start a level behind, and with wealth as per the Wealth by Level table. If the new character was a replacement for one who had merely retired (for example, if the player just wanted a change), you came in at the same XP as everyone else, and again with wealth as per WbL.

He particularly thinks that his old PCs gear should go to the new PC or be spread among the group. (Our rule is, you not only can "take it with you", you have to. Goods go to the family or to the grave, period.)

Yeah, we don't do that. It's down to the surviving PCs to decide what they do with the fallen PC's stuff.

In any case he wants his new PC to have gear priced like the other PC had. (This is the guy who, when he was DM, handed out huge piles of loot, far in excess of what was appropriate. And now he doesn't get to keep any of it.)

One of the things I did in my last couple of 3e campaigns was that I too gave out much more treasure than the book suggested, but I made sure it wasn't optimised for the group. (So the Big Six essentially never appeared, for example.) PCs could then sell the loot at a loss to but the items the really wanted - giving them a choice: more valuable but non-optimal gear, or optimised treasure of a lower nominal value?

The upshot being that new PC (which would inevitably have optimised gear) came in with a lower value of treasure than everyone else, but it worked out about the same in actual use.

 

[Ranes]

I do pretty much what Delericho does. If a new PC is joining because the player's previous character has died, what happens to the dead character's gear depends solely on its recoverability and the desires of the survivors. If a player retires a PC, that character keeps all of his belongings. He can sell equipment to the remaining group members, assuming they want to buy it, but otherwise he's going to keep all that hard-earned wealth. I haven't had too many players retire their characters, though (at least, not during a campaign). Replace dead ones? Sure, they've all done that. And they come back at APL -1 via a trip to the WbL table.

 

[Celebrim]

New characters enter the group generally 200 XP * lowest level of a party member lower than the lowest XP of a surviving PC. Usually this places them rather behind in XP of everyone else, though on rare occasions it can actually lead to an increase in XP compared to where they were. Usually this is less harsh than losing a level, but note that in theory if you hadn't died in a while, this could result in your next character being more than one level below your last character. It's also worth noting that the frequently dying effectively punishes the whole party, so there is a bit of social pressure to not be stupid. I wouldn't recommend this in your case. I'd recommend that new characters start a level behind the prior character, so that players only punish themselves.

In my game one player has never lost a character, and is now about 5000 XP ahead of anyone else and more like 8000 XP ahead of some characters, which leads to lots of jokes about how everyone should commit suicide except the highest level character. Considering we've been playing like 5 years and are now just hitting 8th level, 5000 XP is a pretty big deal.

Magical gear for new PCs generally chosen by the DM and is generally below or even far below the amount of gear that they'd have if they'd been with the group since the start and more equivalent to what an NPC of that level would have.

The bolded parts are to emphasize that I think your power gamer/problem child would generally be even less happy with how I handle character death. And in general, this is far more generous than any game I participated in during 1e, where you either had to take over one of the party henchmen (promoting the henchmen to a PC) or else start over at 1st level. Indeed, the only reason I don't continue that sort of thing is that in 3e XP is roughly linear rather than exponential, and as such it's not expected that the lower level PC will 'catch up'.

The gear of the dead PC, assuming it is recoverable which it generally hasn't been, doesn't have any firm rules regarding what happens but is dealt with in fiction.

Sometimes the dead comrade is looted or partially looted - in particular, consumables like potions tend to be appropriated. Sometimes the dead comrade's gear is sent to a family member. It hasn't generally been a problem any time in the current campaign because typically dead PC's resulted from splitting the party and haven't had recoverable bodies or were looted by those that killed them. The one case of a PC whose corpse was around, the PC's starting possession's were sent back (along with her body) to her father.

However when I was running a weekly open dungeon crawl at a gaming story, looting replacement PC's ended up being the major source of loot after the game reached 5th level or so and had I been serious about that game or ran it for longer than one summer I certainly would have implemented a "PC's aren't lootable" meta-rule. If I ever did such a thing again, I'd start with such a rule.

In any event, I pay and would pay very close attention to parties gearing up from the death of replacement PC's. If the PC did gear up from dead replacement PC's, I'd tend to give even less bling to future PC's and expect future PC's to be geared out of the party treasury.

 

[delericho]

Because of the way we award experience, based on the individual character level, lower level characters earn a larger share, so this gap will tend to close on its own.

Incidentally, in my last 3e campaign we hit a quirk of this system: a character who was a level behind (actually due to item crafting) but who was just under the threshold for the level actually ended up ahead of the rest of the group - his lower level meant that his share of the XP was quite a bit bigger than the other characters, and that difference was actually greater than the difference in their XP totals.

 

[Greenfield]

What's sad/funny in this case is that the PC had a way to return, with no level loss, and the player decided not to.

There's a Druidic spell called Last Breath that does a Reincarnate with no level loss. It has to be applied the round after the character died, and we were there that fast.

But the old PC was an optimized tweak based on some racial abilities of an aquatic humanoid race from Stormwrack, and that race wasn't on the Reincarnate table. If she couldn't come back tweaked to the max then the player didn't want her to come back at all.

Now, because the character chose not to return, our characters have no reason to seek out a Raise or Res' for her.

( So tempted to make a "Whine and Cheese" joke here. )

What will prove even more frustrating for the power gamer is that, because he buried us in loot during his (not short enough) tenure as DM, the following DMs are unlikely to give out much loot. We're over-geared as it is.

So his effort to over gear his own PC while DMing now means that his character will not only be undergeared compared to the rest of the party, but will end up being undergeared by level as he advances.

 

[delericho]

There's a Druidic spell called Last Breath that does a Reincarnate with no level loss. It has to be applied the round after the character died, and we were there that fast.

But the old PC was an optimized tweak based on some racial abilities of an aquatic humanoid race from Stormwrack, and that race wasn't on the Reincarnate table. If she couldn't come back tweaked to the max then the player didn't want her to come back at all.

In that case, I think my response would be, "sucks to be you."

 

[Celebrim]

So his effort to over gear his own PC while DMing now means that his character will not only be undergeared compared to the rest of the party, but will end up being undergeared by level as he advances.

It would appear greed isn't always optimal self-interest, though I for one never thought it was.

"Oft evil will shall evil mar", as the Good Professor wrote.