When I ran my first Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure, Sailors on the Starless Sea, sixteen 0-level characters went in, and nine characters came out. So I gave every character 11 XP that they earned through the adventure.
Later, with the benefit of hindsight, that didn't seem right. Some players got one 1st level PC, another got two or three. Following this through, I decided XP should be allocated per player, not per character, otherwise what's to stop someone from bringing multiple characters, sidekicks, cousins once removed or stable boys? The DCC game has a conceit built in that you can play multiple characters, established right off from the first funnel adventuere, but the game will break down if you award XP equally to multiple characters run by the same player.
So, the solution I worked out was granting XP to the player, and if they brought multiple characters on an outing (that survived), it was up to them on how they would allocate their experience points between their surviving heroes. Later, I ran another 0-level funnel with this house rule, and lucky players with multiple living characters had the hard decision to decide what survivor got to claim the mantle of 1st level. Later in that same campaign, players with capable 2nd level heroes that were flawed sought out henchmen, proteges and sidekicks, in the hope of grooming new characters, while being protected by the characters that had earned their levels. Felt right.
This system developed into players having a stable of characters, and given the adventure, could decide which one to bring out to play. They leaned towards bringing one character usually, unless grooming/developing another character. This also blunted the trauma of losing a 2nd or 3rd level character, because they had a 1st level character back in town to fall back on.
Somewhere within the AD&D DMG, Gary Gygax has a great article about timekeeping in the Campaign, talking about various characters that come and go, travelling to the dungeon, or carousing about town, or making perilous journeys to see a far off wizard, or just leave characters behind because the players who control them couldn't make the session ... this concept lends itself well to DCC, with an episodic/dungeon storyline and characters of differing levels being able to encounter a wide range of challenges (and sometimes, run screaming together, fear is not level-dependent).
And having different level characters is not a bad thing. If poor luck or decision making strikes, and a hapless player has all their characters killed in the funnel, not to worry -- just let them bring in a few 0-level characters and tag long with the newly minted 1st level heroes ... adventures will still be filled with calamity and challenges that even a 0-level character can contribute to in some modest way ... and they'll catch up eventually, probably.
DCC has a great XP system, where the rewards scale to the difficulty of the encounter, not how many HD the monster has or what level the PCs are ... it allows for multiple characters across multiple levels to join forces. Because higher levels are harder to achieve, new characters will advance quickly to trail only slightly behind the grizzled party veterans, and when failure or death ensues, starting back over at 0-level isn't the end of the world, and later generations of characters still feel like they've accomplished something worthy when they get to those lofty levels.
Now, don't forget to award XP for difficult roleplaying sessions, overcoming traps, and heroic gestures like saving the town from the despotic mayor, gifting a magic sword to the elves, not just when they stab the minotaur in the box ...
Since Goodman Forums are closing down, I'm reposting here:
ReplyDeleteClaim: "The game will break down if you award XP equally to multiple characters run by the same player."
Refutation: "No, it doesn't." :P
Why would the game break down just because a player can retain more than one character? (What does it mean to "break down" in this regard?) The solution offered is to award XP to the player and not to the character(s), without mentioning the obvious effect: players immediately ditching every character but one. Who wants to play three level two characters when your friend plays a level six character?! (That's what 300 XP gets you)
The solution I prefer, by far: talk to your players. If you all agree the campaign is most fun with three characters each, then give three batches of XP to each player. If you all agree the campaign is most fun with two characters each, then give two batches of XP to each player. If you all prefer one character per player (the way most D&D is played), then give one batch of XP to each player.
In short, give XP to each character, but make sure everybody is on board with the number. Don't ask your players to simply share XP between multiple characters, since that's a recipe for underpowered play in D&D.
If the group is small, or nobody wants to play the Lucky Halfling (or Thief, or Cleric, or whatever), ask one player to volunteer to play a second "semi-NPC" character, or lets call him or her a "cohort", that always trails the party by one level. That is, if the group is level 3, the cohort is level 2. The cohort doesn't need to track XP - it automatically levels when the party does.
PS. In my campaign, all five players maintain three heroes each. On any given adventure, they actively play two of them, with the third one tagging along as a torchbearer and possible replacement. I thus hand out two batches of XP per player.