Our group has a couple of individuals who cannot attend every gaming session.
As we're going to be starting a RtL campaign shortly I was wondering if there were any problems with playing the campaign with 3 heroes some sessions and 4 heroes in others?
If it is going to cause too many problems then we'll either have to have their characters controlled by those who do show up or be forced to exclude them from the campaign.
I would think it best to simply have their heroes controlled by other people when they aren't able to show up. They may wish to leave instructions on how to spend their Character's XP or something, but changing the number of heroes each session does not sound like a good idea. The advanced campaign is balanced (or at least attempted to be balanced) around 4 heroes specifically, fewer than that and I think the levels would be too difficult.
Kartigan said:
I would think it best to simply have their heroes controlled by other people when they aren't able to show up. They may wish to leave instructions on how to spend their Character's XP or something, but changing the number of heroes each session does not sound like a good idea. The advanced campaign is balanced (or at least attempted to be balanced) around 4 heroes specifically, fewer than that and I think the levels would be too difficult.
+1
Really, hero-ing is a group effort. There should be no problems with allowing 2-3 hero players to run all 4 heroes if someone else can't make it for a session.
Even things like buying upgrades (spending hero XP) rarely happen 'mid session' unless you are having long (5-12 hrs) sessions over a full day rather than just an afternoon or evening session. Consequently it is often unnecessary to even think about this issue and even if it is necessary, a) spending XP is almost always associated with spending cash - which means it is as much a group call as an individual call, b) there are rarely 'multiple options' for spending that are approximately the same usefulness (so 'disagreement' between heroes as to what should be purchased is rare) and c) even should there be disagreement it is highly likely that there will be only a dungeon level or two, or an encounter, after the upgrade but during the same session. So if someone wants to 'backtrack' and change the option that their fellow heroes took for them it is rarely of great significance.
twak2 said:
Our group has a couple of individuals who cannot attend every gaming session.
As we're going to be starting a RtL campaign shortly I was wondering if there were any problems with playing the campaign with 3 heroes some sessions and 4 heroes in others?
If it is going to cause too many problems then we'll either have to have their characters controlled by those who do show up or be forced to exclude them from the campaign.
RTL is definitely designed with 4 hero characters in mind- to play more or less will throw things completely out of whack. It will play just fine with 2 players- 1 OL and 1 player controlling all 4 hero characters. If one or more of the players can't make a session, just have one of the other players run that character as suggested above. It can be neat to play someone else's character for a session too.