Minsc
Explorer
What's a character tree?
D&D 5E DM's: what do you do with players who want to switch characters?
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
An old Dark Sun technique, a variant of which is mentioned on page 236 of the 5E DMG. I will explain:
Classical AD&D might feature a stable of characters, and the DM would tell players at the start of an adventure which of their characters to bring. E.g. "this adventure is for levels 7-9, so bring one of your mid-level guys. Lord Robilard (level 20) stays home." Then they would play that adventure with that PC.
Then in 2nd edition, Dark Sun was envisioned as an extremely deadly environment with high PC turnover, so an additional idea was introduced: instead of just a stable of characters, have a "tree" of replacements available at any given time. In addition to choosing which character to play at the start of the adventure, if your current character died you'd pick another character from your tree and the DM would manipulate the narration to ensure that the new character happened along shortly. (Maybe you were guarding a caravan, and it just so happens that the PCs try to hide from the bad guys in the caravan you're in.) Two additional rules: when one PC in your tree goes up a level, you can pick another PC of equal or lower level to level up at the same time; and (IIRC) everyone in a given player's tree has to have at least one dimension of alignment that they are. E.g. all Chaotic, or all Good. Different players don't have to share an alignment but one player's characters have to have some basic shared philosophy, IIRC.
Beyond that, it's up to you what if anything is shared by the PCs in your tree. They could be brothers, or people from the same village, or maybe they all used to be gladiators in the same stable, or they could have no more than a passing acquaintance one with another.
So that's what a character tree is.
The 5E DMG suggests that you make all PCs in the character tree level up when one does, but that seems cheap to me and results in everyone always being the same level all the time. I'd rather embrace heterogeneity. YMMV though.
Minsc
Explorer
Interesting. I plays Dark Sun and this sounds vaguely familiar.
I don't intend on making the my games deadly, unless a player does something really stupid. I think I'd let people come back with a different character, but he'd be at the beginning of the lowest level character in the party.
Quickleaf
Legend
I brutally kill off the old character in increasingly vicious situations that lead to humiliating and grisly death. The new character starts at level 0 with no magic items, and must roll 3d6 in order for stats. And I repeat until the indecisive player makes up his mind. Then I may subject the character they finally decide on to "rocks fall, you die" just to teach them non-attachment.
But seriously, there's no one right answer.
At my table this rarely happens because I work with the players to tie their characters together, and I work individually with each player to tie their character to the story. If they wanted to switch characters for some reason, I'd have them make a new PC at the same level as the rest of the party with whatever magic items are appropriate for the campaign (DMG has guidelines for starting characters above 1st level, with recommended magic items according to how high/low fantasy your campaign is).
MechaPilot
Explorer
I allow the switch with no penalties of any kind. My philosophy is that D&D is a game, and everyone should be enjoying themselves. If that means putting up with some character swaps, then so be it.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
That's a different variant on it: IME the player chooses what character(s) to bring on a given adventure; and if the character choices are completely off the wall sometimes the DM does some quick adventure tweaking to suit. That said, our levels rarely hit double digits so we don't have any Lord Robilards to worry about.
If a character that has been retired for a considerable length of game-world time wants to rejoin we'll do some "mini-dungeoning" to see what it's got up to in the meantime (and whether it survived) and what xp and-or loot it might have acquired (or lost).Character tree sounds like an interesting variant, except I wouldn't enforce that a given player's characters all have to be somehow similar; I know if I'm cycling characters in and out it's often because I just want to play something completely different for a while e.g. the dour neutral grumpy Human Ranger has got a bit stale; let's bring in a happy-go-lucky CG spinny Elf Illusionist.
Lan-"sometimes dour, sometimes grumpy, but never neutral"-efan
