New Character Magic Item Selection.

[Scribble]

When a character dies and the player decides to roll up a new character, what methods do you use to determine what magic equipment the new character has?

 

[havoclad]

Let 'em pick.

Generally I do something along the lines of
a) only one item over 25% of your total worth
b) that one item can be at most 50% of your total worth

My biggest problem with this general situation is how to handle the party looting their newly dead companions. It seems that looting your party is way more rewarding than looting monsters.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Let 'em pick.

Generally I do something along the lines of
a) only one item over 25% of your total worth
b) that one item can be at most 50% of your total worth

My biggest problem with this general situation is how to handle the party looting their newly dead companions. It seems that looting your party is way more rewarding than looting monsters.

Seen it handled a few different ways.

I've used the above a & b.

As well as saying two items are randomly rolled with appropriate GP cap. This represents things picked up along the way.
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For looting the dead, for those unraised generally their stuff is attempted to go to some family. Now for 'traitors' to the party (happened in recent game), they were looted fully after execution.

Yeti

 

[Dog Moon]

My biggest problem with this general situation is how to handle the party looting their newly dead companions. It seems that looting your party is way more rewarding than looting monsters.

So true. In one campaign we had so many people dying that we were getting rich off of the other party members so the DM started devising ways for characters to die and not have us get the equipment, like the character who died in the lake. His body and thus treasure was never found.

But yeah, we pretty much allow new characters to buy whatever they want so long as they can afford it, sometimes with a cash cap, sometimes not.

However, a part of me would like to give the character some random items [like those are what he has found in his adventuring career] and then he can keep/sell whatever he wants and then buy new items. Not sure if it's worth the trouble though.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

We try to have wills and make it so all of a dead character's gear and loot goes to his/her estate, or family, or whoever, so the party isn't picking over their equipment when they die. Our party also tends to pick up everything of value, meaning anything masterwork, or worth more than 20-30gp. This is all sold and divvied up to the party, but around lvl 11 or so, peeps want to scrape up the cash for a true ressurection, rather than take the level hit for raise dead and keep the cash. And this usually ends up coming out of everyone's pockts. :\ We usually keep a party share of the loot, for new spells and healing items and whatnot, but it usually just gets burned on a true res. I once sugested that they cast raise dead on my character, and give me the difference in the spell costs so I can buy better stuff to keep me alive next time.

Our players tend to not go for huge gp items on new characters, but the extra items like potions, scrolls, and any other one-shot items tend to be forgotten.

 

[Emirikol]

We have a simple set of rules that we've been using since the advent of 3.0 in 2000:

1) New characters get "wealth per level"

2) Any single magical item purchase cannot be more than 1/4 of the "wealth per level"

3) Any special items from the previous character may be 'willed' to the new character, however it counts against the "wealth per level" total, but isn't subject to the 1/4th max rule.

4) Any items not 'willed' to the new character may be purchased by the other characters _from the DM_ or are lost.

jh

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[kanithardm]

Cash cap = VERY VERY GOOD my player bought a holy avenger with all of his money and could hit everything..... on a -6. even the CR17 monsters. So i made harder encounters, lets jsut say everyone else died A LOT.

 

[Beckett]

Normally, we allow new characters to be outfitted as per the standard starting gold for their level, no limits on items.

For my Age of Worms campaign, anticipating multiple character death (2 at the close of the second adventure, but there have been many, many close calls), I ruled that new characters would be outfitted according to player taste, but they would have the starting gold of an NPC of their level.

 

[Emirikol]

Cash cap = VERY VERY GOOD my player bought a holy avenger with all of his money and could hit everything..... on a -6. even the CR17 monsters. So i made harder encounters, lets jsut say everyone else died A LOT.

Yea, consider it a lesson learned. We had the same problem. Best to have a policy ahead of time. Players seem to oftentimes have a hard time controlling themselves on that issue. They will find the most broken, abusable thing in whatever obscure book they can, just so they can push the DM's buttons.

A simple cash cap stops all that.

jh



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[Lanefan]

Random roll modified by common sense, to a large extent, usually done by me as DM during downtime...unless the new PC is coming in at raw 1st-level, or is coming in as a rescued captive or slave (usually = no possessions at all). It is very rare in our crew that a player asks to have a specific item coming in, but if someone says "if I'm coming in with a magic weapon, can it be a battleaxe?" I'm cool with that. I'm not cool with them automatically assuming they'll come in with a magic weapon, though...

I assume the PC has had something of an adventuring career prior to meeting the party. Given that, and its level, I roll to see how wealthy it is relative to where it probably should be; simple fact of life that some characters come out richer than their peers, while others suffer mishaps and lose wealth hand over fist.

Then, I roll to roughly figure out how much of said wealth is magic, and how much is cash/gems/etc., heavily weighted toward the magic side. Then, given all this, I do some very generalized rolling (how lucky have they been in finding weapons? armour? potions? oddball stuff? etc.) and come up with some items the PC would reasonably have.

Looting dead party members (we call this "vampiring") is another issue entirely, and tough to adjudicate. A PC's posessions don't just vanish on death, so they have to go somewhere. Wills are only any use if the party abide by them...not guaranteed. Sometimes, the possessions get blown up by whatever killed the PC. Rarely (but I've seen it happen) a party Cleric will sacrifice some or all of a dead comrade's loot to some deity. But most often, the possessions just get plowed into party treasury, to be divided with the other loot next time in town.

Lanefan