Anyone have any experience with players swapping out to other characters for periods of time? I’m concerned about putting them in a situation where they end up with two characters that are underpowered due to splitting up their XP. Though it would make sense fictionally, diversifying would seem to hurt over a longer term. Thoughts?
Anyone have any experience with players swapping out to other characters for periods of time?
Anyone have any experience with players swapping out to other characters for periods of time?
This seems to be much less of a concern in this game than in most other RPGs. In my group, we have three players, and they have two characters each. Most of the time, we work things so the group is split, and they run either two separate jobs concurrently, or two sides of a larger job. For a PC that’s Lost or otherwise out of the action for a while, if they’re gone for two sessions or more, when they come back they get a downtime cycle to explain what they’ve been up to in the meantime.
Yeah, I’m not sure it’s going to be a problem. We seem to advance fairly quickly. Every other session is typically downtime because we roleplay fairly heavily and only do three hour sessions. From a retirement/new character perspective it’s fairly clear the character can start at whatever advancement makes sense for fiction. I’m more concerned about one outlying player that is playing two characters in a group of players. Though I guess it’s no different than two players that miss a couple sessions here and there, so perhaps it’s not going to be a problem.
There aren’t really vastly different power levels in this game, but if it’s a bother you could always throw them an XP or 2 for each missed session. That said, there are mechanical benefits to playing 2 characters that likely make up for falling behind in XP. Having two characters lets you always be fully healed regardless of the wounds you take on a score without the long process of filling a healing clock. Those downtime actions could instead be spent on training or LTPs.
I’ve had a couple of people drop out because they overindulged their vice, or because they were grievously injured and wanted the free heal. It worked out fine.
Wrong system, but we have this experience in a rotating-GMs BW game. Several players have swapped out extensively; I’m the only player to have kept the same PC from the start. There’s a running joke that my PC is inept, and it’s true that he’s failed at a lot of crucial moments. But he’s been accumulating power steadily and he’s now actually pretty damned tough in ways that are starting to surprise the other players. There was a literal jaw-drop last session at his strength (power) stat.
We have people doing this in our game and so far the power level thing is a complete nonconcern. Eventually I guess it could get to be a thing, but even still, a starting Lurk is probably better at Lurk things than a Whisper who has a lot of advancement sunk into Whisper things, so it’s very situational.
I feel like the power level is not a big deal in Blades in the Dark. There is much greater advantage in making decisions to minimize risk or maximize gain, thinking outside the box and creatively using flashbacks, rather than paying much attention to dots on the sheet. If nothing else, you can play a support character that puts those with higher ratings in position to succeed while your character builds up ratings.