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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Akunin" data-source="post: 104990" data-attributes="member: 15">There are several ways to prevent this from being abused:Verisimilitude:  It's sometimes hard to justify a new character "popping into" the scenario.  If your party is knee-deep in undead while exploring The Crypt of Necromantic nastiness, you're unlikely to just "run into" a high-level friend who'll jump in, save the day, and join the party.   Make the player who chooses to start over wait a bit until the storyline can accomodate him.Rule 0:  Let's say the party is in the aforementioned meat-grinder of a dungeon, the Bard is now a zombie, and the Fighter has no choice but to mow him down.  The player decides that a Bard wasn't a good idea for this adventure, so he presents the DM with his half-dragon Cleric / Radiant Servant of Pelor.  The DM has final say on what classes and races are allowed in his campaign.  If the game started with the characters at level 1, he's perfectly justified in not allowing a +ECL race to be used, as the other players did not have that same option.  And if Pelor is not one of the deities in your campaign world, who's to say that the Prestige Class even exists for followers of your campaign's sun god?  Prestige Classes are a DM's tool for building unique organizations and specialized occupational paths for characters.  Just because it's in a book doesn't mean it's gonna be fair game.As a DM, I have a list of what books are allowed for character construction, and whether items like Feats or Equipment can be chosen freely or whether the player needs to check with me about it.  In that list are which Prestige Classes are a part of my setting, and restrictions on taking them if necessary (for the ones that require joining an organization or which are by invitation-only, as opposed to something anyone devoting enough effort could get into).  If the Prestige Class isn't on the list, then sorry.  It's not a part of the setting.  I don't care how cool it'd be to have a Bladedancing Ninja with levels in the "Double-Bladed Goodness from the Jungle Planet of Death" Prestige Class - we're playing in the Realms.Make it clear to the players "this is what you can play in this game" and if you get a character sheet for a "Half Fiendish Troll Fighter 5 / Overpowered Net Prestige Class 3, specializing in Unbalanced Home-brew Weapon #7" your player has no right to complain when you tell him "Oh, hell no!"Penalties:  A lot of DMs I know require that players bringing a new PC into the campaign do so at a level below the previous character's level.  It prevents players from making "disposable" PCs, as those who keep killing off characters are going to be coming back with lower and lower levels, just as if they had a character brought back from the dead.  If the player wants to advance in levels, they'll need to find a character concept and stick with it.It's a hard option, and some players will object to it, but if players are using character death as a way to "tune" their PCs to favor the current scenario (we're getting killed by a certain type of monster, I'll make a Ranger / we're out of healing, I'll make a cleric...), you as a DM may need to correct the situation.  Sometimes, that requires taking a hard-line approach.Even a lesser approach, such as not allowing the PC to choose his magical gear, or not allowing a character brought in as a replacement to begin with Prestige Class levels can alleviate this problem.</blockquote>

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