How would you handle this?

[Lichemaster]

I currently play with 3 ppl and they controll 2 characters each. A 4th friend is now joining the group, so instead of killing off 3 charcters so they all play 1 each, what can I do?

I thought of letting the other 3 guys choose one and the other 3 set up a base camp. But then they can change characters now and then,

What do you guys (and girls) think?

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

I currently play with 3 ppl and they controll 2 characters each. A 4th friend is now joining the group, so instead of killing off 3 charcters so they all play 1 each, what can I do?

I thought of letting the other 3 guys choose one and the other 3 set up a base camp. But then they can change characters now and then,

What do you guys (and girls) think?

That sounds like a decent solution, so long as they can adventure near the base camp.

Another option is to give the players some time to pick a characer. Do the base camp thing for a while (a month or two), with the understanding that at the end of that time, the player has to pick one character. The other one goes off on some other adventure.

My kids groups started out the same way--just my two kids, playing two characters each. Then some friends joined in. It's very difficult when a young child is running two characters. Then something happened to one of the characters, and he had to leave the group and go on an Atonement quest. So, that helped get rid of one extra character. My daughter is still playing two, but she's 12 and can handle it much better than my son (who is 8). Still, I want to think of a way/reason for her to get down to one character. So far, killing a PC hasn't worked, because the only PC I managed to kill was someone else's character.

 

[Seonaid]

I'm currently in RttToEE, and we all have two characters rolled up in case one dies in the middle of a session (which has happened ). What we do is what has been suggested, basically. We have a base camp set up and while we're there both of our characters can act (for example, we just had a combat literally right in front of our door, and two of us had both characters present). However, when we go out adventuring, we leave half the party home to guard the base and to take care of things like going to town for supplies or to sell loot. If for some reason several players can't make it one night, then whoever is left is given the choice of bringing one as usual, or both to make up for the lack. XP is given equally to both characters, so they level the same no matter how much use they're given.