Hello fellow Adeptus Ludum-Dominus,

From time to time I've people attending my on-going games, whom I expect not to join-in the campaign but that I let play with random NPCs (sheets from other games) I find laying around.

Considering I only allow my players to have 1 or 2 at most Ranks within their Voidships, I've been considering allowing my primary players to create support characters for them, in exchange for extra XP.

Our Rogue Trader could, for example, create a Master-of-Ordnance Voidmaster at level 1 and gain 300xp - 800xp (too little? too much) for his main character.

The Arch-militant could create a Man-hunter to have as a second in-command for him, or as a Bosun.

Explorator could create a chirurgeon, and etc...

These would be NPCs most of the time, but when we have extra-people attending, they'd be given these characters to roleplay.

What do you think?

Well you could do like our DH campaign does

You have your primary PC

a secondary PC who get 1/2 exp

and if you have them any others who get 1/4 the exp

..

and you can swap the PC around so, you can advance any PC in any method depending on needs of the group. And yes they can be used by drop ins as pc as well.

Adding in to make it clearer

You had to pick the primary PC from your collection of PC, and then assign who was going to the get the 1/2 skill and the rest would get the 1/4. It allows you to have backups available to the group as well as if a PC dies they can come in and have history with the group somewhat.

I ran secondary characters in one campaign. It was ok. They could begin play with either character in a session, but could only change up once per session. After they made a change they had to finish the session with that character. And, only the character they were playing at the end of a session got XP for that session. This made for interesting decisions.

That would be quite interesting. I would probably stick to only two PCs similar to errants system but idk if I'd allow switches mid game. More than two pcs would get pretty confusing i feel

Earlier I told my plans to the players, they loved the idea. I don't know why I haven't attempted this earlier.

Yet... The Astropath wants to have another Astropath.
"Yo dawg, I herd u liek bolt-magnets - so I put an astropath next to your astropath so you can burn while you mind-control while you throw while you snap-freeze that ork."

In the two campaigns I and my friend run, we use secondary and even tertiary characters, and they are ran by the PCs, with one exception in my friend's campaign where I'm playing the Rogue Trader, and that's the Navigator. Since he doesn't attend as often as the others, the GM is content to run him and his relief for when he's not here to cause trouble. We find this pretty equitable, since we don't really want to lose that character if we can help it.