New characters in an existing game?

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New characters in an existing game? cj.23's picture Submitted by cj.23 on Sun, 15/04/2012 – 13:17

HeroQuest Rules Discussions

Hullo.

In my campaign in the seventh session (base resistance 17) two characters wrote themselves out of the story. This was fine, and made narrative sense, and Phil and Rob have created new characters — but as starting characters. A replacement Sidekick would get higher abilities — and there is now quite a disparity.

Now an admission. Having just finished writing my playtest review of HQ2 last night I have somehow deleted my pdf of the rules (!) – yes I had it yesterday – 🙁 and Esrolia. I think my hardrive is eating random files, or renaming them. Even when I had the rules I could not find a section on introducing new characters to an existing campaign.

So my question: are there any guidelines for this?

cj x

‹ Something Wicked; other Gateways ? Wyter Abilities from the Clan Questionnaire in The Colymar Campaign ›

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New characters in an existing game?

Submitted by Dreamstreamer on Sun, 15/04/2012 – 15:51.

I just skimmed through the rules and didn’t see anything definitive on the subject.

A good rule of thumb might be giving the new character a number of bonus points equal to 20 + 3X the number of sessions played and raising the cap on ability scores to 7W + the number of sessions played.

In your case, the new characters would start with 41 bonus points and abilities would be capped at 14W.

Of course, this method assumes that the characters are spending three hero points on advancement each session. You may want to reduce the number of bonus points available for new characters based on the average number of advancements made by the remaining characters.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

A billion years is too short a time to accomplish everything you can imagine, for imagination is infinite.

Jeff's picture

New characters in an existing game

Submitted by Jeff on Mon, 16/04/2012 – 03:18.

This is a great question for Robin Laws to put in Wyrms Footnotes 16 – let’s put together a list of such questions!

My way of handling this is much simpler – I just raise the starting value of the primary ability or keyword by the same amount as base resistance has gone up. So if you have played 10 sessions, the new character gets one ability that starts at 1W instead of at 17. They can still put up to 10 points in that ability.

Short and simple.

Jeff

Editor-in-Chief, Moon Design Publications

Philmagpie's picture

New Abilities

Submitted by Philmagpie on Tue, 17/04/2012 – 09:48.

Hi Jeff,

I have been running a HQ2 game for 40+ Sessions, and I have adopted the same principle.

Namely, Standard Abilities for new PCs are at Base-1, with a single Breakout Ability is a Base+4.

In a similar vein, I have ruled that new Abilites for existing PCs start at Augment-1, as such Abilities are generally used as Augments, but they are still at a decent level that they can be raised closer to Base and used as a primary Ability if a Player is prepared to spend Hero Points on them.

Phil

RoM's picture

My series also runs for 40+

Submitted by RoM on Wed, 18/04/2012 – 11:17.

My series also runs for 40+ session and has seen many characters come and gone. I usually check the number of total ability points of the second to last character. Then I give the newcomer a little bit less. That way the newbie is weaker than the characters who have already performed some epic deeds. I admit it’s not really a system, rather gut feeling. But it works for me.