New Characters ... how do they start ?

[Hypersmurf]

FOOLS! INFIDELS! AGGHHH! THE VERY CONCEPT TWISTS MY MIND!

"Oh. Well, Frodo's dead. Shove him in the hole, boys."
"Uh... shouldn't we get the Ring before we..."
"Hey! You know the rules! All his stuff gets buried with him."
"But... the... should we just go home now, or what?"

-Hyp.

 

[gamecat]

Have you noticed that Frodo howls like a little bitch (in the new filck) when he gets cut?

My mage doesn't really care! (and wizards have less hp than rogues, which frodo is, in my opinion)

 

[whatisitgoodfor]

I always re-start characters off at 0 XP, but whatever ECL they want.

(can make getting to level 2 rather hard though)

 

[Hypersmurf]

I always re-start characters off at 0 XP, but whatever ECL they want.

(can make getting to level 2 rather hard though)

Do you find it discourages people from playing ECL 0 races?

If the party is 9th level, and you're starting with 0 XP, you're a lot more likely to survive as an Ogre Ftr1 than a Human Ftr1...

-Hyp.

 

[whatisitgoodfor]

Not really, since one fight of running around trying not to die will give the human a level or two (remember that ECL counts for average party level also, which drives XP way up)

While the Ogre has to worry about surviving for a lot longer without gaining any HD.

 

[hong]

"Oh. Well, Frodo's dead. Shove him in the hole, boys."
"Uh... shouldn't we get the Ring before we..."
"Hey! You know the rules! All his stuff gets buried with him."
"But... the... should we just go home now, or what?"

-Hyp.

Plot elements don't count as equipment.

 

[Rashak Mani]

Otherwise you bury the rest of the magical equipment... ?

 

[hong]

Otherwise you bury the rest of the magical equipment... ?

Pretty much, yes. There's exceptions like wands of cure light wounds, which are understood to be the property of the party as a whole. Otherwise, if it's the character's item, it stays with them.

I'm planning on using the rules for awakened items ("nemuranai") from the Rokugan sourcebook in the next campaign I run. Basically instead of buying or making magic items, their latent spirits become awakened as the character grows in power. The items are thus direct reflections of the character's prowess or strength of soul. They also fail to work if used by anyone else, which solves the problem of magic items accumulating without limit.

 

[Rashak Mani]

Sorry to disbeleive you...

As a show of respect burying items is fine... but in a life or death situation of a dungeon like Return to the Temple Elem Evil its not very rational.

It would be a reasonable way to avoid dead PCs from overpowering the group while new PCs come with full GP value in Magic Items from DMG.

I can only guess that you guys have a lot of deaths in order to do this...

 

[lmccauley]

Not really, since one fight of running around trying not to die will give the human a level or two (remember that ECL counts for average party level also, which drives XP way up)

Do you have difficulty coming up with plausible reasons for why battle-seasoned adventurers (9th level was mentioned by someone in reply to your post) would want an inexperienced person along with them, other than to carry the rations?

Cheers,
Liam