43 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

Something else to consider as an addendum to my previous comment; is it fair to the ongoing players to have to carry a new Character whose half their Xp level?

While there could be some fun story elements involved, but it does take something away from what the other PC's could be doing instead of having to keep an eye on the new PC.

To be fair its probably not that big of a deal to consider, but something.

Isn't this why everyone loved the Kid archetype back in D6?

"Nooooo! Don't run in their kid!...oh dammit, not again..."

Yeah, It CAN be fun if done right...

As a related question how do you feel about players who just don’t like their characters ie they don’t have fun playing it or it did not meet expectations should the be allowed to reroll and at what exp point ie same as death or less exp?

sometime you get a character who on paper seems like a fun or useful build but in play is just bad (and before you say no they must play it one of two things will happen. they drop out of the group or they do really stupid stuff to try and get killed

I'm giving out less XP to new and replacement characters in my campaign.

But at this point new characters are rolling in with 800 additional XP for a "new" character.

I also do some in campaign free XP in the form of Force training. But at these levels the PC's are all fairly robust and the differences in capabilities are window dressing.

IIRC we started this campaign with +650 XP after character creation. There were limitations on how the PC's could spend that additional XP, but we all had respectable, well rounded, and in certain areas, highly capable heroes.

9 minutes ago, Oldmike1 said:

As a related question how do you feel about players who just don’t like their characters ie they don’t have fun playing it or it did not meet expectations should the be allowed to reroll and at what exp point ie same as death or less exp?

For players who are new to my campaign; I always give a single rotation (~ 13 sessions) grace period during which, if they find that the campaign realities don't align with their expectations, they can ditch their PC but retain whatever XP they've accumulated for their replacement.

And I'm reminded of our D&D game.

We have this rule that was ported over from HackMaster, where you could shunt up to 10% of your Exp over to an alternate character. That way, when your character dies, you can show up with someone who isn't starting from scratch.

However, I wasn't shifting XP over and I had my character die, so my replacement character showed up with 0 Exp. Everyone else has an alternative character already at level 2.

One other player has shifted to their alternate character (because they wanted to change).

But it works for us.

Well at least for the Living Campaign Game I've run in we've always used a 3-game "Mulligan" rule where you could totally re-do a character if they didn't like the one they had.

I tend to use this in regular campaigns cause frankly games are supposed to be about FUN, if someone isn't having fun with their character I won't force them to play it.

At the same time I like to encourage players to really think about their character before building it; concept, background, contacts etc...saves the time on hating the character.

On 4/3/2019 at 6:54 PM, Varlie said:

I agree with Yaccarus. If I had killed off one of my player's characters, I would start them with the same xp or within 5%.

It sounds like this gm is either very inexperienced or very vindictive. If it's inexperience, try working with him and explaining what he's doing does not lead to healthy games. If he's vindictive, find another group.

I don't really understand this complete emphasis on power balancing and progression. Why isn't it more important that the concept and particulars of the character as it enters the ongoing story (hopefully there is one of some kind) of the campaign than whether or not the character will have the same success as the other party members when attempting to kill enemies or whatever? In a team there are going to be members who outperform other members, and this is not a problem so much as it is an asset for the team to have members who perform at the higher level. That is unless people are functioning mainly on ego. The group may have functioned better before that character died, but Adventure is about Adversity.

I think they should have built in a system whereby as you advance the advancement gets slower so that this situation wouldn't be such a problem. The character who is "behind" is going to always be lower in XP than the characters that lived and the Combat as Sport people will be unhappy.

This system is much more lenient than most on XP differences. That being said, when I run a game I try to have it where all of the characters are somewhat close to each other unless there is a reason to have someone who is significantly below the others.

Unlike others who have posted, I have not problem connecting with a character just created with higher XP as long as I have a strong concept of him before I start rolling him up. I don't need to play through base XP to whatever XP. My post that you quoted was mainly saying that if I kill off a character in my game, I'm not going to force the player into a low level character on top of losing the character that they had already put time in.

Now, I will work with the Player if he decides his replacement character should be a padawan or young, inexperienced kid looking to make his mark on the galaxy and make sure they aren't so inept that they won't be able to keep up. Like I said, it's not as much as issue here as it could be in D&D and Pathfinder coming in 2-3 levels below team average but once you get farther than 150-200 XP behind the rest of the group, you run the risk of being the Support person providing the boost die rather than taking the action.

57 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

I don't really understand this complete emphasis on power balancing and progression. Why isn't it more important that the concept and particulars of the character as it enters the ongoing story (hopefully there is one of some kind) of the campaign than whether or not the character will have the same success as the other party members when attempting to kill enemies or whatever? In a team there are going to be members who outperform other members, and this is not a problem so much as it is an asset for the team to have members who perform at the higher level. That is unless people are functioning mainly on ego. The group may have functioned better before that character died, but Adventure is about Adversity.

I think they should have built in a system whereby as you advance the advancement gets slower so that this situation wouldn't be such a problem. The character who is "behind" is going to always be lower in XP than the characters that lived and the Combat as Sport people will be unhappy.

^THIS...I've been gaming a REAALLLLLY long time and I've already burned out on power-gamer characters and focus more on RP these days than anything.

I know there's an ongoing discussion elsewhere about whether you HAVE to have at least 1 Attribute at 4 or not in order to have fun with the game.

I haven't found this to be in the least bit true. I played a Gand (Naturally) in the local Living Campaign for two and a half years with NO attributes over 3 until the last several sessions,and I had a BALL with the character. **** I made improbably and Impossible rolls on a regular basis (1 Influence engaged in Social Skill Checks? YES! Ask me sometime about how I won an Social Contest via an Interpretive dance by woodland critters!). In the end it's a game the only solid rule is; HAVE FUN. If you aren't having fun figure out why and how to fix it.

5 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I don't really understand this complete emphasis on power balancing and progression. Why isn't it more important that the concept and particulars of the character as it enters the ongoing story (hopefully there is one of some kind) of the campaign than whether or not the character will have the same success as the other party members when attempting to kill enemies or whatever? In a team there are going to be members who outperform other members, and this is not a problem so much as it is an asset for the team to have members who perform at the higher level. That is unless people are functioning mainly on ego. The group may have functioned better before that character died, but Adventure is about Adversity.

I think they should have built in a system whereby as you advance the advancement gets slower so that this situation wouldn't be such a problem. The character who is "behind" is going to always be lower in XP than the characters that lived and the Combat as Sport people will be unhappy.

I agree more or less completely, but come to the opposite conclusion.

If you don't put an emphasis on power balance and progression, why not introduce characters at the same xp level?

1 hour ago, penpenpen said:

I agree more or less completely, but come to the opposite conclusion.

If you don't put an emphasis on power balance and progression, why not introduce characters at the same xp level?

Why even use XP at all? Ditch it, and advance characters in big chunks when they reach appropriate narrative milestones.

1 minute ago, Stan Fresh said:

Why even use XP at all? Ditch it, and advance characters in big chunks when they reach appropriate narrative milestones.

That works too, but I personally like a fairly slow trickle of xp (which I tend to save up and buy 2-3 talents at a time anyway).

Then again, at my table(s), most limitations are in practice self imposed, including xp. Sure the players limit themselves to the xp handed out, and if they really wanted more skills and talents, they could probably get it by asking the gm.

If you see it like that, xp is pretty much a charade that is kept up because the players thik it's fun and a good guideline to get a semblance of parity between them.

9 hours ago, penpenpen said:

I agree more or less completely, but come to the opposite conclusion.

If you don't put an emphasis on power balance and progression, why not introduce characters at the same xp level?

Yeah I agree that it doesn't matter so much so why not just start them off the same. I was more or less concentrating on the idea that the GM is a sadist if you have to start off over again.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah I agree that it doesn't matter so much so why not just start them off the same. I was more or less concentrating on the idea that the GM is a sadist if you have to start off over again.

I guess if you're killing PCs out of sadistic spite anyway, why waste the opportunity to add insult to injury by docking them xp?

Some kind of twisted logic there.

13 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Why even use XP at all? Ditch it, and advance characters in big chunks when they reach appropriate narrative milestones.

For this system that's not actually a half bad idea. Set it up as a tiered thing like fate;

Minor Milestone advance 1 skills by 1 rank (Maybe even throw in the D6 thing where they can advance one additional skill that was actually used in previous sessions.)

Major Milestone; may take 1-2 tier 1 Talents or 1 Tier 2 Talents, must have linked Talents and advance 1 skills as Minor Milestone

Significant Milestone; As Major Take plus 1 Tier 3 Talent or 2 Tier 2 Talents

Conclusion of Arc; as Significant plus take 1 Tier 4 Talent, or Tier 5 if Linked, or Add a new Spec.

...its rough and I'm just throwing stuff out there for now. Have to do some more thinking on this...

23 hours ago, Oldmike1 said:

As a related question how do you feel about players who just don’t like their characters ie they don’t have fun playing it or it did not meet expectations should the be allowed to reroll and at what exp point ie same as death or less exp?

sometime you get a character who on paper seems like a fun or useful build but in play is just bad (and before you say no they must play it one of two things will happen. they drop out of the group or they do really stupid stuff to try and get killed

All for that (rebuilding a bad character). Just watch out for "That Guy" who has a good, involved, fun, interesting, playable character but sees that if he Min-Maxes 400 xp into a Wookiee Marauder-Enforcer, that he'd have about a 22 WT, 7 Soak, etc... Gaming the system to satisfy his min-maxing desires. Nothing wrong, mind you, with maxing out one's potential in the best possible way, but I'm talking about the guy who sees a fascinating build online and all-of-a-sudden wants to replace his character with it, superseding one dissatisfied min-max with another.

6 hours ago, penpenpen said:

I guess if you're killing PCs out of sadistic spite anyway, why waste the opportunity to add insult to injury by docking them xp?

Some kind of twisted logic there.

I must have missed part of the discussion because I didn't see that. But I will say that one person's challenge is another's cruelty I guess.

It was a separate thread.

I keep equal XP. For new characters or new players, they are all main characters in this story.

Credits and equipment are a bit more difficult. I sincerely hope your group manages to speak with your GM. One thing is not knowing the rules (as you mentioned in the snipers' thread) and another is being a jerk.

3 hours ago, Rithuan said:

I keep equal XP. For new characters or new players, they are all main characters in this story.

Very good point. It may be tough enough to introduce a new character to an established group, even if the player isn't new. Getting a smaller amount of xp might also feel like your pc is less important to the campaign, and that's really not a great way to start in a campaign if there isn't even an understanding that you will catch up at some point.

It's for this reason I'm wary to kill off PCs without very good reason, and pretty much never at random; I feel that it signals that the character wasn't important to the campaign and/or is easily replaced.

4 hours ago, Rithuan said:

I keep equal XP. For new characters or new players, they are all main characters in this story.

Credits and equipment are a bit more difficult. I sincerely hope your group manages to speak with your GM. One thing is not knowing the rules (as you mentioned in the snipers' thread) and another is being a jerk.

Only reason I’d start a new player off with lower XP would be to keep it simple for a newby. Lot’s of talents and abilities can be overwhelming for newer players.

3 hours ago, AnomalousAuthor said:

Only reason I’d start a new player off with lower XP would be to keep it simple for a newby. Lot’s of talents and abilities can be overwhelming for newer players.

Good idea! But in such a case, I'd give them the full amount, but advise them to not spend it all right away, and simply start picking stuff up asthey get a feel for the character and campaign. After all, not all GMs or campaigns are equal and some skills/talents that get lots of mileage in some campaigns may be barely used at all in others.

^This is a really excellent idea. Let them develope as the game unfolds..."Learning through Trauma" as I refer to it...8D

9 hours ago, Rithuan said:

I keep equal XP. For new characters or new players, they are all main characters in this story.

They could be minion NPCs, and still be crucial to the plot. XP only determines their dice, not their signidicance to the plot.