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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6628459" data-attributes="member: 6787650">[Someone recently asked me for a writeup on character trees. Figured I might as well post my response publicly for the sake of anyone who doesn't own the DMG, or who wants a more complete ruleset for them than the DMG supplies. Some of my rules are based on AD&D's rules for character trees in the Darksun setting. -Max]I think my character trees are almost identical to the DMG rules for character trees on DMG 236 (under Small Groups, last paragraph), but here's the full description:Make as many PCs as you feel like.At the start of an adventure, you tell me (the DM) which character you're using, and also make up some plausible reason for him to be there at the start of the adventure. (E.g. "I was guarding a caravan, but the merchant ran out of money and I got laid off.")You can swap characters during play, but you have to come up with plausible reason for one to arrive and the other to leave. (You don't have to be this lenient--you could force players to wait for a break between adventures--but I have a pretty easygoing style.) Two PCs from the same character tree can never be onscreen at the same time.PCs are separate, so no transferring possessions between PCs within a character tree. I'm pretty hardnosed about this. A player asked me, "Can I just have Thok give Mordenkainen's Sword to Jandar offscreen?" and I said, "Nope. If you want Jandar to have the sword, you can have Thok give it to another player's PC onscreen, and ask them to give it to Jandar onscreen." He thought it over and decided against doing that, even though it's mathematically equivalent. I think that means my rule is working: not allowing offscreen item swaps makes him treat Jandar and Thok more as distinct individuals.Any time your onscreen PC goes up a level, you get to pick exactly one offscreen PC of equal or lower level to go up at the same time. (This is different from the DMG rule, which boosts all characters in the tree and doesn't restrict what level they are.) So if Thok the Barbarian 7 goes up to Barbarian 7/Wizard 1, Jandar the Shadow Monk 7 can go up to Shadow Monk 8 or Shadow Monk 7/Druid 1 simultaneously. But Thok couldn't boost Grindle from Sorcerer 11 to Sorcerer 12.If an onscreen PC dies, the DM will ensure that one of your other PCs happens along shortly. Even if I have to create an interdimensional wormhole to manage it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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