New Characters ... how do they start ?

[RigaMortus]

When a character dies in one of my campaigns, I let the player create a new character with experience equal to HALF of their previous character. If I have them start out at level 1, that will just bring the average party level down and the group will get MAD exp. Also, the level 1 guy will have less of a chance to survive. Just kind of a house rule I have adopted over the years.

 

[whatisitgoodfor]

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?

Not really, but then my group tends to adventure with a lot of hangers on anyway.

It usually amounts to a promotion of sorts from cannon fodder to party member.

 

[jasper]

IMC They start equal to lowest level of pc
they buy their equipment.
3 potions of CLW
and then have 100 gp left.

 

[hong]

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.

Screw rationality. When it comes to matters of honouring and paying respects to the dead, no human society is "rational". Therefore, when it comes to setting campaign guidelines for disposing of equipment, just about any practice can be considered plausible, including burying them with their owner.

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

RttToEE is the sort of dungeon that tends to result in lots of deaths regardless.

 

[Shin Okada]

I have never buried a ingle PC in 3e anyway. When someone is dead and his body is there, we resurrect him. When someone is permanently gone, usually, there is no dead body nor his items.

 

[SpuneDagr]

I run a 7 player dungeon crawl (never more than 5 people at a time) with no pretense whatsoever of a plot. The PC's have three urns on their mantle with the remains of their comrades.

Anyway, the average party level is 5 and I always start 'em at first level. You gotta EARN it.

 

[Black Omega]

A lower levels I started the new PC at the same level asthe other PC's. Once you hit fifth level I think I'll do it a level lower, though death is rare enough in the game I don't expect it to coem up often.

 

[hong]

I have never buried a ingle PC in 3e anyway. When someone is dead and his body is there, we resurrect him. When someone is permanently gone, usually, there is no dead body nor his items.

3E is a lot kinder to your characters' toys than previous editions used to be. Now it's assumed that your items automatically survive most forms of damage, unless you roll a natural 1 on a save (and even then, you still only have a chance of losing one item). In the last session, one guy got hit with a disintegrate spell, turning him into a pile of ash on the floor. All his items still survived however. So you have a pile of ash with a bunch of magic items on top of it; a scene reminiscent of Duck Dodgers' disintegration-proof vest....

 

[lmccauley]

Not really, but then my group tends to adventure with a lot of hangers on anyway.

It usually amounts to a promotion of sorts from cannon fodder to party member.

Cool. Shows that one has to be careful when making assumptions about other groups playing habits - we rarely have any "hangers-on" in our party, so it just wouldn't work for us. When a new character is introduced it is almost as if he is just another NPC (with about 3/4 XP), although after the first adventure they are usually (well, no-one has been turned away yet) invited to join the group proper.

We're a pretty casual group of friends/gamers, so we aim for the most fun, rather than strict logic most of the time. Not that we throw logic out the window, but it is not the most important goal for us - having a fun time is.

Cheers,
Liam

 

[eXodus]

i start new characters at the average level for the party at the minimum xp for that level.

for gear they get that level's gp worth in the dmg, all magic items subject to my approval.