Replacement PCs: what level?

[molonel]

This is not a direct answer to your question, but perhaps it will help: this muddies the waters of my own poll, but it at least partly depends on what kind of a game/campaign you're playing in. If you're playing in an Epic Quest to throw the Ring of Gyges into Mount Kilauea in order to preserve the idyllic lifeways of Hobbtopia, there's a certain notion of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil. So if the beloved Nigel Dustyknickers, companion of the Ringholder, gets shanked by a Satire of Industrial Man... the forces of Good have a problem. So it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that the forces of Blessed Providence will guide another Noble Hero into the fold... a man of considerable accomplishment and worth who will have the necessary skills and pluck to replace the fallen Companion. Why? Because there is an implied intervention of Destiny into the whole course of events, and (given the nature of the struggle) an expectation of ultimate success. Good is supposed to win, and will. On the other hand, perhaps you are playing in a Weird Tale where the characters are Fierce Wanderers. They spend their time skulking about in the ruins of the Nameless City killing the equally fierce Crocodile Men and plundering their heathen artifacts to sell on the Black Market. These are daring individuals, perhaps even heroes in some sense, particularly if you consider dark rites of the Crocodile Men, not to mention their man-eating qualities, to be inimical to mankind. But that is only secondary, because mankind may have a civilization here but it is not Civilization... man's cities are corrupt with vice and avarice and some men are about as bad as your typical Crocodile Man (who at least is honest about his primitive motives). Moreso than heroes, these are Adventurers who are in it for the thrill, or the loot, or the power, or maybe just because they're not satisfied doing anything else. They seek the dangerous possibilities of life (you could wind up lying in a ditch, or wearing a crown) rather than the predictable and often depressing certainties of the mundane. At least if you die with your foot on a Crocman's neck you know that you lived. For Misfits such as these, there is no expectation of success nor charmed path. They carve out an empire or die trying. Therefore: in the latter sort of game Level 1 is meaningful as the place where you start, the closest you get to the mundane. Everybody starts out there and goes as far as he is able with his combination of luck, talent and skill. If everybody else is level 8 and you're at level 1, well you've got some catching up to do. But that's the game. Now, the dichotomy I presented, if not precisely located at the extremes, at least highlights them. A game could fall in between. But the point is, starting at Level 1 suggests a game of "This individual man against the harsh realities of this (often dark) fantasy world". Whereas an epic quest of Good vs. Evil suggests that the characters are actors in a larger drama and have special destinies accordingly. In that kind of game I can easily see how starting over at Level 1 could be inappropriate.

Well, by framing the question in the manner you have, while all that is well and good, you have circumscribed the discussion to a level-based game. Presumably, but not explicitly, you mean D&D.

In either sort of game you describe, using the ends of your dichotomy, the survival and enjoyment of the game of a 1st level character amongst people who are 9th, 10th 15th or even higher level is going to be severely curtailed. Yes, yes - I know. Someone can "roleplay" a low-level character to great effect. But in a level-based game, your ability to participate in the game itself - as opposed to merely social interactions, and even those are curtailed to some degree if you use the RAW mechanics for Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidation - is limited EXTREMELY by cutting you back down to 1st level.

I'm not just talking about combat, either, although your very existence in any mid- or high-level combat is going to be an unrealistic series of backflips by the DM to keep you out of harm's way if you're going to ever see 2nd level.

Encounters in D&D scale to the party. If you present an encounter that is designed to challenge the 1st level character - social interactions, a lock that needs to be picked, a trap that needs to be detected, an animal that needs to be befriended, something needs to be tracked, whatever - the higher level party members will be bored or deal with it before the 1st level party member can do anything.

At this point, people nearly always point to the presence of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin in LOTR.

There are several problems with that:

1. Most of the LOTR would be extremely boring in a tabletop roleplaying game. "You spend a week sneaking through the swamps toward Mordor. Next session: You spend another week sneaking through Mordor, avoiding all combat. Next session: You spend a week sneaking through Mordor. You run away. You hide. You beg for your life. Isn't this fun?"

2. Nobody wants to be an observer of heroic action in a fantasy game. They want to participate. The hobbits were often observers of heroic action, and comic relief. I don't want to WATCH Boromir fight off the orcs. I don't want to WATCH Legolas shooting his bow. I don't want to WATCH Aragorn drive off the Nine. I want to DO those things, eventually.

3. Knocking someone back to 1st level rewards cowardice, and discourages heroism in a fantasy game.

"Yes! You heroically fight off the demon, and send him back to hell! The city is saved, but ... you're dead. Welcome to 1st level. The neutral evil rogue who always avoids combat is meanwhile 13th level, and gains the treasure from the encounter."

In my games, the players themselves have an XP total. This XP follows them from character to character. If they spend XP, it's gone. If they die, Raise Dead and Resurrection and True Resurrection all cost 350 XP x character level at time of death. If they decided to stop playing a character, and come back as someone else, then they pay the same XP penalty as if they had died.

I do this because the feats and skills you choose when you play a character up through many levels are different than the choices when you make a character from scratch, and this discourages dumping a character simply to optimize. I will also assign less than standard wealth to new characters when one is retired, because I like to encourage longterm play.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Same level. It's always seemed stupidly punitive to me to do otherwise.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I see XP less as a reward and more as a challenge rating.

exactimuno. The reward for showing up is a good game, the reward for playing smart is a feeling of pride in your accomplishments, the reward of good luck is a good story to tell. If players need any more rewards than that, they aren't really players I want.

 

[Marnak]

Replacement PCs

This varies for me, but my preference is start them at level one if possible. If I could, I would run a solo adventure (or two) with generous xp rewards that would boost the character up to the level where I thought they could hang with the main party. I find this isn't too difficult because as characters get higher in level, I find folks generally want to raise their dead PC rather than start a new one. Still, if the level one plan can't be implemented for time or other reasons, I would probably start the character at one level below the level of the lowest party member. My main reason for favoring the level one option is that I think something is lost if a character doesn't "play" through all of the levels. It impacts choice of feats, skills, etc. if you are expected to play those levels as opposed to just magially generate at the higher level. I think this is one of the great unappreciated balancing features of DND. Some characters, like fighters, really suffer if you skip over the early levels (when their extra feat advantages do more to separate them from other characters).

Marnak

 

[Ryan_Singer]

Starting from level 1 can be frustrating in a higher level game, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. It important to remember that lower-level characters earn more experience points from the same encounters than higher level characters do. A level 1 character adventuring with 3 level 10 characters will level from each of his first 4 CR 10 encounters. By the end of the first game session, he's 5th level. He continues advancing faster than his teammates until he has caught up.

The system is very friendly to those who fall behind in XP, which is why crafting magic items is a good idea. By crafting useful items, you can double your gold, paying only XP. And, because of how the XP system works, if you fall a level behind, you earn XP faster to catch up.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

If the PC died from plain stupidity or just how the dice fall, they come in at level-1.

If they die while heroically saving others, or the DM goofs, their new PC is their old level.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Starting from level 1 can be frustrating in a higher level game, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. It important to remember that lower-level characters earn more experience points from the same encounters than higher level characters do. A level 1 character adventuring with 3 level 10 characters will level from each of his first 4 CR 10 encounters. By the end of the first game session, he's 5th level. He continues advancing faster than his teammates until he has caught up.

This assumes two things, neither of which is guaranteed or even likely:

1. The DM stops the game after each encounter and allows the characters to level (or allows the player of the 1st level character to level while the game continues). I've done this once or twice, but I've *never* seen another DM do it.

2. The 1st level character survives a CR 10 encounter. Any CR 10 area effect *will* kill the vast majority of ECL 1 characters.

Fireball at that level does a minimum of 10 damage, enough to knock out any wizard or sorcerer, any non-dwarven or gnomish rogue or bard, any elven cleric, druid, monk or ranger, and a member of any of those classes with an average Constitution. Its *average* damage is 35, which is enough to knock out 1st or 2nd level character except the literal max possible one (a Con 20 dwarf or gnome barbarian or warmain who maxes his hp roll at second level and takes Toughness as his 1st level feat, for a total 37 hp) and to instantly kill almost any with a Con of 14 or less (average hp for a d12 hit die character with Con 14? 23.). Effects like Holy Word and Blasphemy, hardly out of the question in a CR 10 encounter, will instantly drop an ECL 1 character. A giant's cleave will instantly drop an ECL 1 character. Heck, the vast majority of attacks from any monster capable of harming an ECL 10 character will kill an ECL 1 character, or at least knock him out.

 

[Lanefan]

ExP are a character reward, not a player reward; and I'd prefer the senior characters in the party to at least have some advantage over a new character...that advantage is usually a level or so. (though sometimes my parties range widely...the game I just ended ranged from 8th to 12th; the other goes from 7th to 11th (this group keeps dying and coming in again; 7th has become a base starting point...)

Lanefan

 

[Warren Okuma]

Lowest EXP level of lowest-level character.

Same here.

 

[kaomera]

level 1
3d6 in order

QFT

A question for those that favor the "restart at level 1" method: how do you manage to keep the game interesting for the player that restarts from scratch? I just cannot imagine how a PC that is way behind in level can participate in fights appropriate for the party and generally feel useful and satisfied (unless you run a role-play heavy game with very few fights). And this problem must get worse the highest the average party level. How do you deal with that?

If you're really properly challenging the players, then the new character won't actually be that far behind...