Multiple PCs per Player
Since it can often happen that a PC is temporarily removed from play (Due to incarceration, trauma, overindulging, and other funny things) I came up with this idea to build a common pool of PCs (let’s say two PCs per player). At the beginning of each game session, every player selects a single PC to be his or her “active PC”, however he or she can switch to a different one after a score if the first gets temporarily removed from play or for whatever reason. (“My first character broke his leg during the last score and he’s not fully healed yet, so I’d better send a different one on the next mission.” “Cool. Just be aware that your bedridden character could still get into trouble. He could be visited by some caring bluecoats. Just saying…”).
It all worked fine so far. I just got a question: how’d you manage downtime for stand-by characters?
Do you feel they should get the default two downtime activities? A single one? Should I just treat them as additional activity (1 coin or 1 rep worth)?
So far, I’ve told my players to make up multiple characters and use them from the start of a heist to the end thereof, basically downtime as well. You can use another character for downtime actions, but you only get two actions per player. Any extra things (Like the “Little something on the side”) only activate on the active character.
Practical question for you though, how do you feel about level 1 harm needing a full clock to heal? I’ve been thinking of removing that, because it means that even after a single heist, you can have players feeling the need to sit out a heist;
The system I instituted in my game was that if a character was out of the action for more than two sessions, when they came back they’d get a downtime cycle to fill in what they had been up to. In practice, it’s more often been the case that all characters have been present on a score, but split into smaller groups (“Shade will handle the wards on the back door, while Gears will be down in the sewers with his drill, setting up an escape route”).
We’ve being doing this a lot. All of my players either due to overindulgence or incarceration have created their second (sometimes third) characters and we handle it is similar to Bavo Th.. Each player gets two downtime actions they can give to either character after a score. However we still do XP per character as sometimes we get a little vignette of a character that isn’t being played and one of their XP triggers comes up.
Filippo Guaitamacchi, that’s something I was thinking about, too. 😉
Bavo Th. As for your practical question: personally I like my Blades in the Dark world tough and gritty, so I like recovery to be a time and resource consuming activity. After all, if you are still battered after a post-heist downtime, you’d better plan your next score to be less dynamic or explosive and more subtle and low-keyed.
If you like a more action-oriented game you can surely home rule something like reducing each harm by one level for free after every score, for instance. So the harm penalties are still relevant during the single score, but less heavy after that.
/sub
+Filippo Guaitamacchi (Uata)Makes sense! I’m personally leaning towards a middle ground. Level 1 harm just disappears (because level 1 is things like: Confused, afraid, bruised, etc and I inflict it often) with rest if it makes sense in story. Other levels need to be healed as normal.
I’d heal them like cohorts while they are out of play. IE: their harm gets reduced 1 level each downtime (if circumstances are amenable for this)