How do you explain backup characters?

[prufock]

I'm going to be running something intermediate between Tomb of Horrors and Return to the Tomb of Horrors in a little while. I'm calling it "Tomb of Horrors Revisited," and it's basically a 9th-12th level game that occurs in the in-between time. I'm changing/updating elements of the tomb (because some players have done ToH before), while retaining it's deadly quality. It's 3.5, and since the Tomb is deadly, I'm considering backup characters, as many other people have done.

The problem I'm having is: how do you explain the sudden appearance of the backups following the death of the main character? I like some measure of rationale to anything that occurs in my games, so I'm not comfortable with just "poof! they're there, everyone accepts it as normal."

Ideas?

[JGoldenberg]

Have them come one at a time claiming to be seperated from their own adventuring party, that way if someone else dies the back up character could be from the 'other group' and if few deaths happen, well, you get to make some creative looking corpses with some items that could help your players live longer.

[Another_Poet]

When I ran Tomb of Horrors this is how I did it.

A prize was announced for whoever could destroy Acererak in his Tomb. Many adventurers from all over the land set off to the fabled location, trying to cross the swamps to reach it.

The original team of PCs had an airship which took them there with all haste. (You could replace the airship with any setting-appropriate means of transport, all the way down to teleport). Other, slower teams and individuals took barges and boats across the swamp.

Thus, the PCs arrived there all on their own. Each time one (or more) of them died, one (or more) other adventurers just happened to be pulling up in boats.

[gbprime]

Something like that, yes. A replacement PC isn't instant, but could come by in a day or so, depending on how near you are to someplace they'd want to travel to.

You could also rule that there's a Crossroad (ala forgotten realms) nearby, and the PC's are able to use it to travel quickly back and forth to an otherwise distant town. Then you can pick up a new person in the Tavern. (Which is where all PC's come from, right? )

[valadil]

The next group of monsters you fight took a prisoner from the last group of adventurers they killed. That's the easiest way to insert a new player into a dungeon. I don't know how many times you can do it in the same game though. Maybe someone is imprisoned in a cell in the dungeon? You could reflavor that idea and go for magical imprisonment - somebody is shrunk down to insect size and stuck in a jar. Or something.

If you like giving narrative direction to the players, you can task them with inventing their own introduction.

[prufock]

If you like giving narrative direction to the players, you can task them with inventing their own introduction.

That's not a bad idea. I also like the concept of the replacements being prisoners/stuck in a trap.

[Telonius]

Explanation: "Hey. I heard you guys were going to be seeking out the Tomb of Horrors. I wanted to wait awhile before following you to see if it was as deadly as everybody said. Good lord, what happened to that guy?" (points at former character).

[Set]

Some sort of botched Reincarnation effect.

"Hey, Max is back, and he's a half-elf this time!"

"Uh, yeah, but I'm not a Ranger anymore either..."

[Aharon]

If character death's aren't happening a dime a dozen, you could also use cohorts etc. as the backups. For example, at the moment, 3 NPCs travel with my group of four to five PCs. When one of them dies, he gets control of one of the NPCs. This is also the case when one of them is paralyzed/stunned/ability drained to 0, so the players have something to do.

[senrath]

I used what Set mentioned when I ran the Tomb a couple of years ago, and it worked out pretty well.

[Shpadoinkle]

There's almost always some way to work a new PC into the group when the guy they're replacing dies, even if it's just something lame like "You come accross an unconscious prisoner tied up/shackled to the wall" or whatever.

[Fitz10019]

The podcast Fear the Boot -- I haven't listened in a year or so -- talked about RPGs needing a 'group template.' The idea is that the players as a group should have an overall explaination of how they know each other and why they work together (their example was neighborhood kids who grew up together, as they seem to favor modern RPGs/settings). A 'deep group template' was one that could easily explain several more characters over time (the neighborhood one does this easily).

This is tricky with the OP's Ravenloft setting (the boats idea was good), so I only refer to the group template in the spirit of the thread title.

[Optimystik]

Some sort of botched Reincarnation effect.

"Hey, Max is back, and he's a half-elf this time!"

"Uh, yeah, but I'm not a Ranger anymore either..."

"...and he has boobs!"

[BlckDv]

In my current game we actually had the players write up several potential back-up PCs in advance (of note they all enjoy char creation), and then the party posted that they were recruiting at a nearby tavern. We devoted a session to in game RP interviews, and the party voted which backup PCs to accept, with very minor OOC fudging so everyone got represented, and no one got more than 3 approved.

We now having a running explanation that the backup PCs are the ones doing normal upkeep, doing basic footwork, or following up on the false leads the players skip over. We handwave that the backup PCs provide their own rewards from the leads they follow, explaining why they come in with correct WBL, but forbid active PCs from giving old gear to them (a balance issue players accept).

It is assumed that from time to time one of these backups delivers a status report to the main party. If someone dies, next time they make camp or other good break, that player's backup PC shows up with a report, and they ask him to stay on with the main party.

[Irreverent Fool]

"...and he has boobs!"

This happened in a game I played. Due to reincarnate being our only method of accessing the afterlife's revolving door and our party fighter's insistence upon wearing the girdle of sex change (due to it offering a strength bonus), what was once a male human fighter became a female half-orc with half-orc barbarian racial substitution levels. (On top of the fighter levels, though a couple of those were lost due to deaths.)

Fun times. S/he later ended up getting turned to stone and now presides over the town square of a settlement founded by my character with a plaque reading something along the lines of "The great hero who will return in a time of great need" (great need being when someone hits him/her with a stone to flesh spell).

obnoxious
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[Mastikator]

Let the backups be hirelings designed to take over when and if the main PC's die.