Whether the campaign starts at a higher level than usual, a new player joins midway through a campaign, or a PC meets an unfortunate end and needs another to take her place, one issue all Game Masters eventually face is the introduction of “experienced” player characters.
A complicating factor is that players creating “experienced” characters have a window into their PCs’ careers and can make optimal choices that they may not have made if they had to live with each decision on a day-to-day basis. This gives the new PC a leg up on her companions that had to do so.
This issue may be reinforced if the GM also gives the new PC funds with which to purchase gear – such purchases are laser-targeted to the PC’s needs, rather than the result of finding gear through play or purchasing immediately useful gear as the funds come in rather than wait to go on a spending spree six sessions down the line.
While there certainly have been techniques over the years to ensure that new characters suffer a penalty (starting at level 1, getting an amount of experience points equal to the lowest member of the existing party, or being limited in choice of gear), I’ve noticed two trends in my circles that mitigate these somewhat. The first is the move from varying individual rewards to a uniform group award, so everyone in the party has the same amount of XP.
The second is “letting XP reside with the player,” which simply put means that when a player retires a PC, voluntarily or involuntarily, her new PC starts with the same XP total as her previous PC. In some cases the PC can “cash out” her old gear to purchase new gear to more appropriately outfit her new PC.
Here are a few ways to moderate new PCs so that they “feel” like they came through the gauntlet, rather than simply given optimal builds. These techniques can also be combined to best suit the needs of a campaign.
Allow the player to build the character normally without telling her where the endpoint lies.
This technique works best with new campaigns that are intended to start with more experienced PCs than normal. Rather than tell the players “we’re starting at Level 4” or “I’m giving you 50 extra XP,” the GM simply tells them to make beginning characters. Once that is finished, the GM gives out a few more points and resources gradually, allowing the players to advance their characters incrementally.
The trick here is that the players don’t know when the GM is going to announce that character creation is finished. Thus, a player that’s optimizing her picks for a “fifth level” build may be surprised when the GM stops character creation at third level. A player hoarding her XP for a 400 xp ability may be caught with 300 unused XP when the GM stops character creation just short of handing out another 100 points.
New PCs start as beginning characters, but they get accelerated advancement until they catch up.
The main difference between a PC that gains advancement through play and one that gets the advancements up front is that the former has to live with her choices. If the latter has to as well, even for a shorter period of time, then she’s more likely to make immediately useful choices rather than build optimally.
When using this technique a new PC starts out as a beginning character when joining the campaign. During play the GM doles out extra XP or gear to the character incrementally, allowing the PC to eventually catch up to the rest of the group. How much and how often the GM doles out rewards depends on the nature of the campaign.
This technique works well for games where experienced PCs are often only slightly less-fragile than beginning characters; in level-based campaigns the GM may wish to incorporate the first technique and announce that she’s allowing the new character to “level up” a bit after the new PC is generated.
You can’t always get what you want.
Using this technique the player makes decisions, but there’s a random element involved that may take away choice. There are two ways to do this. The first is for the player to come up with three or four choices and then roll a die to determine which option the PC actually receives. This diminishes some optimization while allowing the player to retain control over building her PC.
The second option is for the GM to assign percentages to each new ability. If the player wants to purchase it, she needs to roll under the percentage. If she fails, then that option isn’t available. The GM can either assign a uniform percentage to all abilities (e.g. the player needs to roll under 60% for every ability) or she can assign varying percentages based on the perceived usefulness or optimization of the ability.
A word of caution with the second option. While the second option grants the GM more control, Murphy’s Law tends to favor the player rolling to keep abilities you’d rather not let them have or, worse, grant the player a string of bad luck that eliminates the worthwhile options for her.
Choices for new PCs are limited.
This is the nuclear option. Using this technique, the GM may limit the choices a new PC can make. In a game with multiple “splatbooks,” for example, new PCs may be limited to the core rulebook. If “prestige classes” or other advanced options are available, a new PC may be barred from joining them until after play has begun. The GM may offer a limited selection of abilities and allow the player to choose the one that best suits her. At the extreme, a GM may even pre-build career paths so that new PCs following it have their options chosen for them.
This technique should be considered carefully and used sparingly. While it certainly works, it can dim a player’s enthusiasm. After all, the other techniques still grant the player varying levels of control over building her character. This technique makes the new character more of a “pre-gen.”
Still, this technique is great to limit some of the more outrageous options and ensure that the new character doesn’t walk into the campaign outshining everyone else.
Final Words
Obviously, the usefulness of each technique depends upon your particular campaign style and your group chemistry. You may find that limiting choices isn’t an option for your players or that starting a new PC as a beginning character is effectively handing her a death sentence before play begins. You may find that your players really enjoy the “select from three abilities” technique more than the “pick three and roll for it” technique. Use what works for you!
That said your particular campaign may already have enough safeguards built in to ensure that new PCs don’t gain unfair advantages. If so, what techniques do you use to ensure that new PCs are “balanced” with established ones? Is this a bigger concern for you in some games but not others? Have you used any of the techniques offered here and, if not, would you consider any of them?
I’ve always simply told my players the target level and let them build their characters to it. Of course, I do engage them in talking a lot about their characters’ background, habits, goals, personalities, allies and enemies, etc. before asking them to head off with the dice and rulebooks. This ensures that mature characters are more than a sheet of stats. Yes, there’s always the problem of players min-maxing for a specific level instead of going through the imperfect process of acquiring skills and equipment gradually without knowing what the future holds. I’ve only seen that be a real problem a few times, though. Excessive min-maxing is player problem, not a system problem.
That said, I do like your idea of gradual advancement. I would fold it into my character creation process for reasons of richer personality development, though; not for reasons of preventing min-maxing. I could see asking players to (in a D&D type system):
1. Show me what your character looked like at 1st level, just getting started out in adult life. How did you get started, and what were your expectations?
2. Show me your character at 3rd-4th level. As you gained some tough, real world experience, how did you choose to develop your skills? What kind of people did you associate with?
3. Show me your character at 7th-8th level. Where were you developing expertise? Who were you starting to make an impression on as a rising star or growing rival?
4. Etc.
I like your method, Blackjack!
To be clear, I don’t see my article as an attempt to curb min-maxing; I agree that it’s a player problem and any “munchkin” worth her salt will find a way to edge around it. What I am trying to do is make the process more organic, as it’s very easy for any player rolling up an advanced character to justify the ends rather than consider the means (e.g. “Ooh, I can have Wicked Blow at level 5 if I burn 3 slots? Well, I have 4 empty slots here so why not?”).
Yeah, this article seems a little odd, because I’m not 100% sure what problem it is trying to solve.
D&D 4E has already pretty much disposed of this one by allowing characters to retrain abilities as they advance. The only place this stuff really comes into play is with magic items, where a new character might ‘suspiciously’ show up with a matched set of items that perfectly complement each other. (Because having feats or whatever that complement an item is absolutely something that all PCs should have.) And…you know… so what? If it’s that big a deal, just tell them “No, you can’t have a frost weapon.” So…really this isn’t an issue in 4E.
In most other games, advancement just isn’t that granular; I don’t really think there’s that much difference between an ‘organically’ built character in a stat/skill system and a “build your character with 50 extra XP” character.
That mostly leaves… Pathfinder/3E D&D. Okay; Fine. So it’s game specific advice. But… in that case, I think I agree with 77IM – why not approach this the OTHER way and reward the PCs who have been playing the game for a while with some retraining/whatever. At the end of the day, this is the least of the problems you’re going to have if you have a serious munchkin in your Pathfinder game, so….
Min-maxing isn’t the only problem when creating a high-level character; sometimes you get the opposite problem and get suboptimal characters!
High-level characters tend to be much more complex than low-level ones, with a lot more options during game play and character creation. I’ve seen players pick abilities that look good on paper but never get used because there’s always some better action to take; if they had played that character from level 1 they might have known about that. And I’ve seen the reverse, where a super-advanced build turns out not to be much fun and the player would have gone in a totally different direction if they had built up from level 1. Finally there’s just learning curve; for some people it’s a lot easier to learn their new PC at low levels and then add complexity with each adventure, rather than start at high levels with all those options.
The right solution to deal with characters who have poorly chosen combinations of powers is to allow a mechanism for adjusting them. For characters who’ve been in play a while there should be a cost to it to represent the realistic difficulty of learning new skills and to discourage players from trying to swap skills constantly. But for newly created characters such changes should be almost free.
One technique a few of my GM friends have used when starting a new campaign is to make the first session a dress rehearsal. We start with a “one act” adventure that ties in to the storyline of the campaign. It tends to answer the question of how we all met, among other things. But most importantly it gives us a chance to practice with our characters. The rule is that after this one session you can adjust anything you like about your character’s build– swap ability scores, class levels, skills, spells, items you’ve paid money for, etc. But after that you’re limited to the normal rules of advancement, retraining, and commerce.
I was going to reply on exactly this point. In a lot of games, it’s the characters who have been played for a while that perform better than their points would indicate–because player experience and optimization adds an edge.
Fortunately, an equal point character will make up that difference as they play their character over time and develop their own tricks and subtleties.
Often the issue with a later designed character is that they are one-note, especially if they dump their point/XP/feats in a narrow column.
I have used your second suggestion (“beginning characters + accelerated advancement”) to great success in multiple campaigns. Generally I do double or triple XP until the new characters catch up, depending on the growth curve. In Savage Worlds, this works well right out of the box, since starting PCs are still useful and survivable. In 4th Edition D&D I had to give the new PCs a “handicap bonus” to all checks, attacks, and defenses, plus a pile of bonus hit points. This made them numerically equivalent to experienced PCs, but without as many powers or magic items.
But maybe we are looking at this problem backwards: What’s the harm in letting the established PCs retrain abilities to further optimize their characters? (Especially for replacing an ability that was good at very low levels but they haven’t used at all lately.)
Walt, great article. I hit this often as my D&D game is now levels 6-10 (depending on the character class). Since it is B/X, I just bring new people on board at about the lowest level of the group. However, I can see where it would be more of a problem with games with more choices.
I also use pregens, so it is up to the player to bring life to the character. Though I certainly would allow attribute swaps as desired and reasonable.
Good stuff!