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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalendraf" data-source="post: 913154" data-attributes="member: 3433">We've had a total of 5 character changes to date.  In 2 of those cases, the character was unrecoverable (rogue turned to dust by mummy rot, cleric turned to a shadow).  Some DM's might rule that you can be raised after turning to a shadow, since the body is still there, but I've tended to rule that once you are turned into an undead, your very soul is lost to the darkness.  This tends to make undead a bit more fearsome.Three characters chose to be reincarnated and two of them came back as creatures that would be quite hard to adventure with.  The druid became a bat, and the barbarian turned into a snake.  The druid was playing very much in character and had stated he wanted to be reincarnated if he ever died.  As for the barbarian, he was hoping to change into something really cool like a centaur.  Unknown to both characters, I have my own regional tables I use.  If you get reincarnated in a swamp, you will likely turn into a swamp-dwelling creature.  Hence the bat and snake.  Both those characters left the party with most of their wealth, so those deaths didn't pose nearly as much of a wealth influx problem as the 2 undead killings did.  The other fellow who opted for reincarnate changed from a human into a halfling and just loves the new small-fry character.The only other character replacement was a fighter/wizard with horrible stats and hit points that died at a fairly low level (4th), and used the death opportunity to get a new character.  That was the party's very first casualty, and I was actually happy that he opted for a new character.  The concept of the original one was extremely weak in its implementation.  I think he was aiming for the spellsword prestige class, but didn't really have good enough overall stats to be messing with multiclassing across 2 fairly unrelated classes (fighter needs strength, con, wizard needs int, dex, then there's casting in armor penalty, etc).  It didn't help when he rolled 1's, 2's or 3's on his d10 for hit points either.  This death did create a wealth influx, as the items were looted from the dead fighter/wizard, and he actually had some of the best gear in the party at the time.  The party had been letting him have some of the better protective items, possibly because he was so pathetic, but was one of only 2 fighters in the party at the time.FYI, The beginning party (barbarian/ranger/rogue, fighter/wizard, rogue/sorcerer, druid and ranger) was pretty easy to womp.  They lacked a decent front line.  The barbarian was ok, but his AC was pathetic, fighter/wizard had dreadfully low hit points, ranger wanted to be an archer instead of melee character.  The druid was often thrust into front-line duty in spite of fairly weak AC.  This group had no cleric either, so the druid was the only source of healing.  Some of the early deaths I can attribute to the fact that the party was rather unbalanced, and lacked a true cleric.  With each of the replacements the group has become much stronger and better balanced  (fighter/wizard->wizard, rogue/sorc->cleric, druid->paladin, barb/ranger/rogue->fighter/sohi, new player->sorcerer, original ranger/deep wood sniper).    So at no time did the players abuse the rule of bringing in a replacement character.  Instead they brought in the new characters because their old ones were simply not playable.</blockquote>

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