D&D General Players Decide when to Level Up

[plisnithus8]

How are character and-or player turnover in a long-term campaign handled in such a set-up?

Do retired (or temporarily dead) characters level up even though they're not adventuring? If yes, on what justification other than pure gamism?

What about characters who, in the fiction, go above and beyond or who don't pull their weight - group decision-by-argument as to who levels up and who doesn't?

I've really relaxed over time from being a stickler DM: PC death is rare, new PCs come in at the same level as others, PCs all level up together (even if out for a while).

 

[overgeeked]

Thoughts? Would this work for your groups?

My groups would be level 20 before the sentence fully left my mouth.

 

[Distracted DM]

I've really relaxed over time from being a stickler DM: PC death is rare, new PCs come in at the same level as others, PCs all level up together (even if out for a while).

I do similar- I wonder if part of that's age, or (gaming) maturity, or shifting priorities.. or what.
With certain games like West Marches, sure, each character tracks XP. But in a "standard" campaign where it's the same players and (mostly) PCs, you still get XP even if you missed a session- everyone tends to level at the same time unless something crazy gets thrown in that makes one PC have more XP, like the Sun card from the Deck or a few old AD&D items like in Night Below "a good creature reading this tome grants 10k XP, if the creature is an elf they get an extra 5k, the tome then disappears to another place."

At some point I thought "if you're missing the session, you're already missing out on the fun... why punish you more by putting you behind the group power-wise?"

 

[GMMichael]

How are character and-or player turnover in a long-term campaign handled in such a set-up?

New PCs start at level one. As it was meant to be.

 

[Seramus]

Do retired (or temporarily dead) characters level up even though they're not adventuring? If yes, on what justification other than pure gamism?

We used to joke that dead characters are still adventuring in the afterlife. Of course, that entirely depends on the cosmology, and some dead character might just be sitting as a larvae in a lower plane, waiting to get scooped up by a hag. But the idea is funny enough. And I HAVE run adventures with the entire party being ghosts in an afterlife more than once - both as stand alone adventures that eventually saw them escaping, and after a TPK to keep things going.

 

[Lanefan]

I do similar- I wonder if part of that's age, or (gaming) maturity, or shifting priorities.. or what.
With certain games like West Marches, sure, each character tracks XP. But in a "standard" campaign where it's the same players and (mostly) PCs, you still get XP even if you missed a session- everyone tends to level at the same time unless something crazy gets thrown in that makes one PC have more XP, like the Sun card from the Deck or a few old AD&D items like in Night Below "a good creature reading this tome grants 10k XP, if the creature is an elf they get an extra 5k, the tome then disappears to another place."

Characters get xp, not players.

If a player misses a session but the character is still in play, it gets xp as normal.

But if the character misses an adventure because it's back home looking after its political affairs (and the player has brought in a temporary replacement) then the stay-at-home doesn't get any xp, so how does it level up?

At some point I thought "if you're missing the session, you're already missing out on the fun... why punish you more by putting you behind the group power-wise?"

Again, xp are for characters; and if you miss a session your character is and remains just as active as it was, played by whoever's present and-or the DM.

 

[Lanefan]

We used to joke that dead characters are still adventuring in the afterlife. Of course, that entirely depends on the cosmology, and some dead character might just be sitting as a larvae in a lower plane, waiting to get scooped up by a hag. But the idea is funny enough. And I HAVE run adventures with the entire party being ghosts in an afterlife more than once - both as stand alone adventures that eventually saw them escaping, and after a TPK to keep things going.

As xp are (in theory) an abstraction of the idea of gained experience through learning and doing - i.e. memory - then this idea works fine IF on coming back to life the characters retain their memories of what they did while dead. Which can be a cool idea, but would lead to lots and lots and lots of single-player DMing to update all the dead characters.

 

[Distracted DM]

Characters get xp, not players.

If a player misses a session but the character is still in play, it gets xp as normal.

But if the character misses an adventure because it's back home looking after its political affairs (and the player has brought in a temporary replacement) then the stay-at-home doesn't get any xp, so how does it level up?

Again, xp are for characters; and if you miss a session your character is and remains just as active as it was, played by whoever's present and-or the DM.

Not every table has a PC present and active if the player isn't able to attend that session; in fact, this hasn't been a thing in any game I've played except for very early-days, in 2e. I leave that option up to the player- and if they want to, they can ask another player to control said character. It probably happens 10% of the time.