D&D General When a character dies and a new one arrives

When a player brings in a new character after a previous one dies, how do you handle it?

New character comes in at same level as before
Votes: 41 54.7%
New character comes in at average level of the party
Votes: 13 17.3%
New character comes in a previous level -1
Votes: 2 2.7%
New character comes in lowest level in the party
Votes: 5 6.7%
New character starts at first level
Votes: 4 5.3%
Other
Votes: 10 13.3%

Ruin Explorer

Legend

Apr 25, 2021

DemoMonkey said:
(You get the behaviour you reward. If you penalize the players for the characters death, you wind up with timid over-planners.)

This.

The more you punish death, the more you make it a constant risk, the more you get players who are cautious, careful, slow, paranoid, unheroic, and so on. If that's the aim of the game, and how you want people to play, which can be fine for a Very Specific Kind Of Game, then great. But if it's not, well, I've seen tons of DMs over the years complaining about how cautious and slow their players are, and yet also crowing about how "deadly" their game is and so on, and it's like HMMMMM could these two things be connected?!