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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6701098" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>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 <strong>more than one level below your last character</strong>. 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Magical gear for new PCs generally <strong>chosen by the DM</strong> 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 <strong>equivalent to what an NPC of that level would have</strong>. </p><p></p><p>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'.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6701098, member: 4937"] 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 [b]more than one level below your last character[/b]. 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 [b]chosen by the DM[/b] 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 [b]equivalent to what an NPC of that level would have[/b]. 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. [/QUOTE]
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