hawk@oliven.UUCP (Rick) (12/11/84)
A few weeks ago I asked about methods used to bring new characters into high
level campaigns and promised to post responses. What follow are the responses,
in the order they got to me--except for the first, which I prefer and therefor
listed first.
rick
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The other way is to run a 1st leveler with an gross magic item. He stole/
inherited/picked it up the other day, and is immediately over his head. The
high level party will find him (and widget) useful enough to keep around, and
will protect him. Come up with some reason to keep the firster around, though,
especially in evil/neutral parties.
Wife: Lookie what I found!
Husband: Put down that Staff of Cthulu Calling now!
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Hallo,
As one of the (sigh) current disputers (and probably the leading
one at that), I'd thought I'd answer. Usually, at the higher-levels, you
won't lose a character. Generally, what tends to happen is that if there's
a really bad mess, all but a few of the characters will die but they will
somehow bring back the rest. The somehow's can often be fun. In the past,
they've involved making deals with gods, etc. in a few of the, ah, extreme
cases. As a matter of fact, I don't think I remember a high-level character
ever being permanently lost as long as part of his group still lived.
All of the above being nice, this doesn't really answer your question.
What it boils down to is dead is dead. There are ways to work a character
up faster, such as letting him tag along with a group that's higher level
than he is, but the only way to get a character back in that group is to
work him up the hard way. That's one of the reasons why high-level types
tend to get REAL paranoid. If somebody comes up with a better, and reasonable
answer, let me know. I want it for my "bag of tricks".
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I know of, and have used, two methods to get new PC's in a low-level campaign.
The first is to start out the new PC as 1-3 levels lower than the majority,
and develop a persona for him. Take a character from a closed down-campaign, if
possible; try and convert any skills or magic widgets to the GM's liking.
The 1-3 level penalty is punishment for being so stupid as to get killed.
[the other is the one at the top--rick]
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The idea is not to have just one character up at that level.
If you have a bunch of characters ranging from first thru 20th
(like I do) then you'll have characters which are well on the way
in case one of the high level ones gets killed permanently.
This, however, rarely happens!
The problem, of course, is spending all that time developing your
characters. Generally we don't run one specific group of characters
in a campaign; rather we have a series of adventures and place a
"level limit" (one might be "bring characters under tenth" adventure,
and the next might be "bring characters under third") on the party
going in.
I have about thirty characters ranging from around second to 30th.
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I've never been in a campaign where the average was more than about 11th level,
but we just used to bring new people in at first level. If they were very
careful and rather lucky, they could quickly reach fifth or sixth.
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In the groups that I run with we tend to accumulate
characters at all levels. When acquiring a party, we
hunt up characters of the appropriate levels. If someone
dies then we have to find another character. New characters
tend to enter the world at between 1st and 4th level.