Replacing dead party members

[Dooks Dizzo]

I hate duplicate characters, with a passion.

I'd make him reroll his stats the harshest way possible and let him remake his Warlock like that.

If players can just remake the exact same character, what's the threat of death?

Sorry, but I take the hard line on this one as far as advice goes. You made a silly character and he died. You don't get to make another silly character and punish the whole group because you're being obstinate.

The only caveat to that is if his Warlock idea is just so damn cool and well role played that him being sucky in combat doesn't matter. Does he play the character that well? Has he written pages of history for the character? Does he play like he has an 18 Charisma?

We had a similiar situation back in 2nd edition. We had a fighter with just terrible stats. But the guy had a great idea for the character and didn't want to reroll or make a different class.

In the end he wound up dying (due to his 8 con) and the party really felt the loss. He never did all that much in combat but he role played his ass off and when the character was gone, the game just wasn't as much fun.

If I had a say in the matter I would have cheated and brought him back.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

In previous versions of the game, I allowed replacement characters to come in at (average party level)-1. Will this be a problem in 4E?

I'd wager less so than in 3e, actually.

The surviving party members want to dictate the roles of the new characters (one Leader, one Striker). Should I allow this, or force them to accept the characters made by the players?

I can sort of see wanting someone to stay striker, since other players may have built their characters around a party that already had a striker (warlock) in it, but there wasn't even a leader in the original group. Tell the surviving party members that if they want a leader so badly, they can have their character jump down a pit and play a cleric or warlord themselves.

The player of the Warlock wants to play an identical character (did I mention he is 14 CON, 18 CHA, Infernal Pact, and has no Infernal powers except Hellish Rebuke?). Which hard alcohol should I use to deaden the pain I feel inside each time I read his character sheet?

First off, I'd lay down the law and say no identical characters. It detracts from the story to have infinite identical twins.

As to this poor build, I'd suggest talking to the player and coming up with a character that works conceptually for him AND mechanically for the group. For example, you could let him use the fey-pact abilities and change the fluff so that he still has a demonic patron.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

As to this poor build, I'd suggest talking to the player and coming up with a character that works conceptually for him AND mechanically for the group. For example, you could let him use the fey-pact abilities and change the fluff so that he still has a demonic patron.

Well, is he taking the non-infernal abilities because he likes them, or because of the key ability score associated with them? If it's only because of ability score, let him use Cha for the infernal powers. Though if he's after the flavor of the powers he's picking, I'd definitely recommend switching pacts. I mean, neither the star or fey pacts are very 'fire and brimstone' like the infernal pact - if that's not what he wants, infernal isn't really for him.

 

[ulrikbb]

I believe that the DMG suggest to let new players or players with new character enter at the same level as the rest of the party. I'd do that - I feel that lagging a hard-earned level behind just doesn't contribute to the fun of the game. I don't punish my players for being daring. Or stupid. Plus, in 4E, there's less to learn about each class. You don't get a gazillion spells that you know nothing about if you start a fifth level wizard, so playing them from scratch is not as necessary.

 

[Dooks Dizzo]

Hey, your answer might have just popped up! Talk to him about that neato Dark Pact Warlock that Wizards just made for us.

 

[HarbingerX]

I believe that the DMG suggest to let new players or players with new character enter at the same level as the rest of the party. I'd do that - I feel that lagging a hard-earned level behind just doesn't contribute to the fun of the game.

I agree. Also note that the only way a character can 'catch-up' is by other people missing sessions or going on side adventures. There is no XP award scaling by character level as there was in 3e. I'm onboard with coming in at a lower level being 'not fun' and think that play style is best left behind.

If you really want to penalize the player for dying, then at most start them off at lvl-1, but after a number of sessions or milestones, let them catch-up to the same xp as the rest of the party. This is similar to how the DMG suggests handling players missing sessions.

 

[Anawyn]

Along the same lines as the previous few posters, there's another reason the "party level -1" idea makes less sense in 4E. In 3E, you generally lost a level when raised, so it made sense that if a player instead just started another character, they would as well. That's no longer the case, getting raised has no long-term penalty, so you'd basically just be punishing those that decided they didn't like their character enough to keep with it, or couldn't get the party to spend the gold to raise them. This would generally mean those who die early in the campaign suffer for no reason.

 

[PHGraves]

I'd make him reroll his stats the harshest way possible and let him remake his Warlock like that.

Sadly, the chance of him re-rolling the exact character would be relatively low (rolls are made in front of the group). Since this is 4E, however, the group has decided to use the standard point buy. This, plus the DMG's suggestion on replacement characters, makes 'cloning' far too easy.

In 4E I'd do the same: Look at the Raise dead ritual and let the player create a new character with an identical amount of XP with reduced effectiveness for the first couple of encounters.

Seeing as I do not allow characters being returned from death in this game world (and my other 4E games have not hit 8th yet), I never did look too hard at Raise Dead. I will probably use the RD rules for replacement characters, as it will give a temporary 'benefit' to the characters that survive.

After reading these posts and thinking things over, I have decided to limit replacement characters as follows:
Replacement charcters suffer the effects of a Raise Dead ritual.
Replacement characters can either be the same race or class as the previous character, but not both.

Thanks for all the input.

 

[Commonblade]

Yoink, taking that solution for later...

 

[Saeviomagy]

Just one question - how did the characters end up dead anyway? Were they left for dead by the rest of the party? Did they fail their 3 death saves? So far my experience with 4e has been that dropping unconscious and then standing up again is pretty much par for the course - I think only one party member has not been knocked into the negatives at least once, and many of us have made it to our second death save, but noone has even had to make a third (we're pretty quick in trying to get people back up again).

I'm not trying to crap on your fun here - I'm trying to get some perspective so we can help you avoid this situation again.