Replacement PCs, how do you handle it?

[Kestrel]

So how you handle bringing in new or replacement characters in an ongoing campaign?

Previous to the campaign that I just started, I usually just made the player make an equivalent level PC with recommended amount of gear listed in the DMG. This campaign, I'm considering starting them one or two levels lower, with significantly less gear and randomized magic items.

The reason: I'm trying to promote organic growth of the PCs instead of optimized characters at higher levels. From my experience, there's a huge difference between a character that played from 1st to 10th to one that was created from scratch at 10th. But how to promote that with replacement characters?

 

[DM_Jeff]

I did this once before in a very story-intensive game I ran. When the characters were created at first level I had them invent 1 or 2 friends, family or rivals that would be interesting. Not stats, just their ideas. Then whenever their PCs would level I'd ask them what these other characters might be up to. Some players even wrote little 1-page stories about what those others were doing in their off time, becoming adventurous and gaining levels. We only ever needed to eventually convert 1 to a PC to replace a killed character, but two other concepts survived to be PCs in a later campaign!

-DM Jeff

 

[Dieter]

Been a while since I've ran a d20 game, but it's standard policy in my campaigns for replacement PCs to enter at two levels lower than the highest level character currently being played.

That is, if you don't buy insurance. Insurance in my games basically boils down to investing some of the well-earned gp towards survival rather than ale and whores. You pay a certain percentage of your total XP at every level-up with the knowledge that Grok the Ogre Slayer's death will not be in vain. Upon character death, the player is entitled to roll up a new character at his/her old character's level with some "inheritance" from the old character's treasure.

It's basically a win-win situation for DM and Player as the DM does not have to content with treasure hording/power-gaming and the player gets to keep playing without taking the XP penalty.