Hi all,

Whenever one of your player's characters dies, how do you handle new character creation?

Recently, I had a near TPK when the party's psyker accidentally summoned an unbound party and wiped out all of the acolytes present at the game session. Some of the players have decided to make new characters rather than burn fate points. And I was just going to let them come back with their previous xp.

However this presents a bit of a problem for those burning fate points. For not only are they burning points, but they're going to be badly disfigured. And this is a bit unfair.

Any suggestions?

~TxGator

Note: unbound party = unbound daemon... The machine spirits must of made mistype! :-D

In my previous D&D campaigns, we used the rule that new/replacement characters start out at the XP midpoint of the level below the lowest level existing party member. I decided to use the same system in DH, and, although we haven't had any un-Fate-pointed deaths yet, we have added a new player to our group, and the half-a-rank lower starting point seems to be working well.

I don't understand why people make new characters weaker than those that already exist.

When there were PC deaths in my games, or we've just had new players join, up until the majority of the group were Rank 3 I started them out as new PCs (Rank 1, 400 xp) as in play there didn't seem to really be much difference, especially if the new characters added missing skills or abilities to the group.

Now though we're starting after a hiatus and I'm bumping the new PCs to rank 4 (2000 xp) to give them a leg up. We'll see how that pans out over the next few weeks.

That said the majority of my GMing of the past almost 30 years has been in super hero genre games and no matter what the point purchase or xp system used characters nevre seem "balanced" - but that's part of the genre i.e. on Hawkeye & Thor on the same team? No balance there. BUT the balance is in the fact that they are the best there is (in the world, or at least in the team) at what they do.

For different genre example look at the Fellowship of the Ring - four "rank 0" hobbits, experienced human warrior, dwarf warrior & human ranger, hundreds of years old elf and a demi-god wizard...in fact Decipher's old LotR rpg fully expected "mixed rank" groups.

I guess what I'm saying is that 1st rank and 7th Rank characters can "happily" exist in the same party as long as they each have a role to play, the players recognise that and the GM takes it into consideration when writing scenarios. An interesting character with a decent skill or useful role in the group is, to me at least, more important than "balance".

Frankly, one should side with the players already present that choose to burn a fate point to survive. Minus 1 fate point at character generation at the minimum as well as reduction of XP or reinstatement of/based on the amounts of Corruption/Insanity the previous characters had or just disallow re-rolling if there was a fate-point to be burned. There's nothing wrong with having a player sleep in the bed that he/she made and following it all the way through to the end. Frankly, their lack of attachment to the character is the problem if an "avoidable death" via fate point burn is topped by a bland re-roll. It kills the gravitas of the acolyte's life/death situations if the character's survival doesn't mean anything but a hassle of generating a new one.

Sometimes it is just more appropriate for a character's story to allow their death to actually be the end. A heroic last stand, one last great sacrifice for the team and so on. In cases like that I don't want to punish the player for following through on a (hopefully) really cool death scene. On the other hand, if it is just one of those "meh, I'm bored" moments then it is quite allright as a GM to be strict or even drop a hammer or three on the proposed replacement.

Prior to Ascension I used to grant new characters a stack of XP at a fixed point a few levels below the rest of the party and then allow the player to "gamble for XP" by allocating D5's to Insanity or Corruption and gaining bonus XP for each "prior-trauma" die they opted to pick up. This way a fairly unblemished shiny new hero or a frayed and grizzled veteran of "many bad things" was firmly the choice of the player.

Since Ascension things are much simplified for my group. New characters are built with 13,500xp (beginning rank 9 Ascension or equivalent). They can select any combo of options from DH/RT/Ascension as long as the new character concept fits with the established group. The litmus test is "Would the Inquisitor actually recruit that?" I have not signed off on any Astartes "throne agents" so far, but I would be open to a well developed back-story for a solo "Kill-Marine" if it is more about story than crunch. Of course the player making an Astartes character for Inquisition duty would have to be open to maintaining a more subtle "alternate-character" for the more discreet missions. The other perk? My game sessions tend to run VERY long and the biggest drawback to a new character is FATE. Therefore new characters are granted maximum starting Fate Points for their origin. I also hand out token bonuses for the new character if the old one "went out in a heroic fashion" or the new concept is a cool theme that would be a fun RP element but suffers from game mechanic drawbacks I sometimes "tweak" the character's package a little (For example a very social Techpriest with Biologis leanings might use the rank tables for a regular Techpriest but use the attribute chart from Explorator instead.[allowing expensive Fel upgrades instead of impossible, plus a few other ups and downs])

I also had a player propose a character change to me due to story developments. Since this was effectively setting aside a good character into NPC status (at least for a while) "for the good of the story" I allowed the player to transfer half of the UNSPENT XP from his old character to the new one since both of them participated in the storyline preceding the change (Effectively making an NPC into a PC).

DJSunhammer said:

To discourage recklessness. If there is no penalty to getting your character killed (i.e. said character will be replaced with one of identical power level- potentially even a virtual copy of the same character), then why take death seriously? I think loosing half a Rank is a reasonable penalty for getting a character killed: just enough to make players take dying seriously, without completely crippling their future participation in the campaign.

Adeptus-B said:

It is also a GM rewarding the players that play through the entire campaign using the same character no matter what the universe throws at them instead of rotating a series of "alts" in and out of the plot or "erasing" the consequences of previous actions by deliberately killing off their character so they can get a "clean slate". Think of it as a GM's way of saying "Thank you for respecting the continuity of my story" with game mechanics. The new characters are still plenty "cool" and capable as long as their player puts some effort into it. If the GM has to devote prep-time to figuring out how to bring in a new character and weave story elements around them then that is time not being used for game prep for the overall story, which is unfair to the other players if the same person is responsible for this turn of events time after time.

My game currently spans from rank 9 to characters just entering rank 16 with the average being around 12. It is NOT a coincidence that the two characters entering rank 16 are the two remaining original characters in the campaign! The others are replacements for dead characters, newer players to the group, "alts" of players who wanted to try a different role or the characters of players who sometimes miss sessions (since I do not assign XP to absent players unless I am informed in advance and NPC their character for a session).

sure let them restart, but give the other players some reason to stay with thier old characters, maybe start the new players off on a slightly lower xp level, or have them use a slightly slower pay rate (say they were employed slightly later so one month for them is a week after the other players in game time). Try dealing with them in game slightly differently, maybe the inquisitor misses his old acolytes and therefore treats the old acolytes with more respect, gives them a teaching role over the new acolytes, who knows what you can come up with... Additionally, i don't know how your gaming group goes through fate points, but mine has only burned 3 since they started, so if they were to die they would start out with 5 fate points less than the rest of the party, that can be a difference, and a good reason to stick around.

Adeptus-B said:

So if someone (in this case the party psyker) screws up and the rest of the party wants to safe him and dies trying you think it is a good choice to punish those helpful comrades?
Would it not be better for them to just walk away the next time?

In my opinion it depends a lot on the situation.
Do the players get fatepoints to replendish burnt ones from time to time or are they stuck with what they got at chargen + talents that grant FP?

Do the players get other goodies from time to time? Like special talents or abilities? I remember something like that from the haarlock adventures.

Instead of having new PCs start at lower xp just give your players some rare goodie. If a player wants to roll a new char just let him do so per the rules and don't give them that goodie.

We had that in our ascension game. All the others have a special ability to notice time manipulating warp effects or something, at least 1 or 2 more FP and some have aditional bionics. But xp wise my char is the same.

I like having my players create Rank 1 characters when their old ones die. Ups the stakes, you know. And i'm glad that my group likes it that way too.

And i, for one, really do not think of it as 'Punishing' a player. Sometimes your character does something stupid, sometimes he gets messed up by the Psyker, sometimes he's just plain unlucky. It's not punishing a player, since after all that's how the game is. Of course it depends on the creative agenda of the group, but DH definitely lends itself well to simulationist play. And if you look at it this way, like my group does, then the 'unfair' nature of the game becomes neither rewarding nor punishing, it just becomes a feature of the system.

I agree with Rakatung, when my players die i have them create level 1 characters aswell. I just give them like an extra 200 or 300 XP to start out with if any above level 1 characters have survived. It does create an interesting group dynamic with the preverbial "fresh meat" coming in to the group fighting alongside the accolyte vets.