Suicidal players

[Nifft]

One thing that I did with 4E was use the treasure parcel system to keep the game balanced with these frequent changes, since in prior editions the group tended to end up with way too much magic from all these characters leaving.

Oh, just to address this: we had a firm policy of magical gear leaving WITH a departed / departing PC, and new PCs getting a level-appropriate chunk of loot.

Cheers, -- N

 

[ggroy]

One thing that I did with 4E was use the treasure parcel system to keep the game balanced with these frequent changes, since in prior editions the group tended to end up with way too much magic from all these characters leaving. What I did in 4E was to say if a character started play at 6th level, he'd get a 7th, 6th and 5th level item, and assuming the group still had the old character's items, that meant they had "found" a 7th, 6th and 5th level treasure. That worked out quite well, as it tended to reduce the tendency for the other players to say "can your next character have a bag of holding? We'll need that when you're gone..."

In any edition of D&D, how I dealt with magic stuff for players who changed characters, is to have their new character start off with magic items of a similar level as their previous character and/or other characters in the group. (4E made this relatively easy to do). Magic stuff their previous characters left behind, I just treated as a bonus.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Wait a minute... I don't see why that player in the OP had to do character suicide? I mean Going Paladin to Monk or vice-versa isn't that dramatic of a change.

Now, let me just say that I once played a "Suicidal Character" thought he was suicidal interms of being bat-s crazy and would take unnecessary risks. Of course, it didn't end well for that character since he was Chaotic Neutral and then got suck on Carceri..

 

[Herschel]

I have some of players like that in my Tuesday Night campaign and I have to say, it really sucks the life out of it for me. There's only one character that's been played over two levels. I had boosted him a level but they're all at 10th now and I didn't think it would be quite wise to boost him to Paragon ahead of the rest of the group. He does have a free Deva Heritage feat from teh story line though and the best gear. One player is complaining his controller (Psion that he's played for three sessions) is "boring" and complains the Barbarian gets to do all the damage, but the barbarian also goes down a lot and really gets messed up of the Psion isn't daze-locking baddies.

 

[Deset Gled]

I tell my players if they want to jump characters that is fine but they will be much less involved in the story bercasue the new character won't have the 5 month history with the goings on as the other PCs.

Of course, the downside to this is that the players who start off by rotating through characters quickly now have less incentive to stick with a character (even if they find one they like) because it's not as involved in the story as the other characters. This is a problem if the DM is tryinig to encourage players to stick with one character, rather than playing along with it.

I would imagine that the incentive of all new characters starting with a minor penalty compared to the rest of the group (a small XP drop, just slightly below normal wealth amount, must have a minor curse at the time of character generation) would go a long way. Don't make the penalty so big that it's crippling, but just big enough for the players (especially powergamers) to want to avoid it. Make the penalty worse if a new character starts at a plot-critial point in the story, and have no penalty at all for times in between major plot when it makes sense for the group to lose and add characters.

 

[amerigoV]

Generally the reason the players become disinterested in the character has nothing to do with the story, and is purely to do with power level, either the character being inherantly underpowered due to shoddy build and randomized stats, or because a new splat just came out with more powerful options.

I won't disagree that this happens alot, but I'll add another factor. The OP mentioned 4e and being able to build what you want. The Roles of 4e can be an issue. I liken it back to 1e - no one wanted to run the cleric since they generally had to select healing spells. This can happen in 4e where you might have not have a diversity of players to cover all the roles. This can create some discontent for those that might be asked by the group to run a role they are not the most excited about but is needed to balance the party. I noticed this about myself - in reality I love strikers but was running a leader for a group - I really did not care if the leader PC lived or died after awhile.

 

[ggroy]

Of course, the downside to this is that the players who start off by rotating through characters quickly now have less incentive to stick with a character (even if they find one they like) because it's not as involved in the story as the other characters. This is a problem if the DM is tryinig to encourage players to stick with one character, rather than playing along with it.

How I got around this problem, was to have the newer player characters "retroactively" establishing connections and backstories to the characters already in the group. Typical stuff is a newer player character being an old friend with a particular existing character in the group.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It sounds to me like an inflexible DM is the real problem for the OP. In earlier editions, like he said, the DM may have wanted to force players to play the godawful stats they rolled. But guess what? It's a cooperative game. You try and force the other side to play things they don't want to, and problems arise. Not really surprised they chose suicide to get a new set of rolls. If that's the only escape route the DM's left open, it's entirely caused by him that anyone unhappy with their PC takes that option. (If instead he simply didn't allow PCs to commit suicide, I imagine they would have left the game entirely or bitterly stayed in, building a steady grudge towards the DM).

Then new options come out and players want to add it in or switch characters, and the DM says the only way you get a new PC is if your current one dies. Gee, could I ever guess what's going to happen after that?

In my games, I let PCs retrain their choices if they're unhappy with them, at least to a point. If they're trying to tweak things between every session, I lay down the law. Similarly, if a player decides he wants to play something else entirely, I'll just let the current PC leave the group for x reason, and have them part ways. If there's a tough fight and a PC was going to be leaving soon anyway, the player might opt for some sort of heroic death to help his comrades, whatever. In any case, once a PC leaves the player's hands, (alive or "raise dead ready," I don't care) he's mine. An NPC. To use however I like to further the plot or possibly turn into an enemy of the party. Or he just goes off somewhere and plays no part in the campaign. Up to the DM.

Makes for happier players and more coherent plots.

Oh, just to address this: we had a firm policy of magical gear leaving WITH a departed / departing PC, and new PCs getting a level-appropriate chunk of loot.

Cheers, -- N

Every group I've ever been in has been the same.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

What Nifft and Crothian said.

The youngest player in my group really can't care less about story, and he has a tendency to switch PCs frequently. I figure that forcing him to stick to one PC won't make him any more interested in the story, so I just let him switch when he wants (or restat his PC if the concepts are similar) and leave him out of the story. He's happy to essentially be the party's combat machine.

 

[ggroy]

It sounds to me like an inflexible DM is the real problem for the OP. In earlier editions, like he said, the DM may have wanted to force players to play the godawful stats they rolled. But guess what? It's a cooperative game. You try and force the other side to play things they don't want to, and problems arise. Not really surprised they chose suicide to get a new set of rolls. If that's the only escape route the DM's left open, it's entirely caused by him that anyone unhappy with their PC takes that option. (If instead he simply didn't allow PCs to commit suicide, I imagine they would have left the game entirely or bitterly stayed in, building a steady grudge towards the DM).

I remember when I first started playing 1E AD&D and the basic D&D box sets, it was frequently common for the DM to rule with an iron fist. (This was especially the case for some older more experienced DMs, who came from an extensive wargaming background). For the most part, many of these games were not what I was looking for. It was common to churn through as many as twelve or more characters, in numerous TPKs.

When I first started to DM, I was doing things literally the opposite of the iron fist DMs I was accustomed to. In my experience, many players typically preferred DMs who were more accommodating and lenient.