D&D 5E The Dying Conundrum

[Saeviomagy]

In general, I wouldn't have one player continue to play both characters simultaneously. They would need to make a choice, and the character they don't play becomes an NPC. They may even stick around with the party for a while, but I would probably make it a priority to whip up some story to avoid that.

At a future time, I might let a player switch back to the old character (appropriately levelled up etc), like the old darksun character stable.

In general, I find the game is best played when players are enjoying their characters, to the point where I'd let a player completely reroll the mechanical side of a character. So if someone wants to have a dozen characters and keep swapping between them, I would let that happen as long as it is not disruptive.

 

[aco175]

I once had a loose campaign based in a large town where characters were members of the adventuring guild. Each player started with 3 characters and the thought was to swap them out as wanted/needed. The idea was to play an adventure each week and be able to finish in 3-4 hours. They were all episodic, with no grand overstructure but more so that other players could show some weeks and not every week. The thought was that people could come each week and not miss much.

It worked for several weeks until a core set of players sorted themselves out and adventurers started to last a couple weeks. After this, the swapping out of PCs pretty much stopped and a set group emerged.