I'm a relatively new GM, having previously run a few Deathwatch sessions. I have a fairly steady group, though sometimes players can't make it. If the players start to lag behind in levels, do you allow them to bump up or do you make them work for it? How about if the characters are 5th Rank, and a new character comes in. Do you bump that new character up to 5th Rank or make them work it? I'm curious as to how GM's handle this situation, as it has arisen in my group's D&D campaign and I believe it will happen in my Dark Heresy sessions. Thanks all!

With my group, we usually have new characters (either a new player or a replacement character for one that died/was removed) come in a level/rank behind the current players. For a character whose player missed a session, we usually don't bump them at all, unless they missed several sessions or a whole book out of something like the Apostasy Gambit or Haarlock's Legacy. In that case I would think we would bump the character to just one level/rank behind the other characters.

~ alemander

Okay. I didn't want to bump them too far, because that wouldn't be fair to the other players. That sounds good. Thank you for responding!