Character Trees [Archive] - Wizards Community

Character Trees [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
zag01
09-15-06, 04:25 PM Character Trees are a mechanic introduced back in the 2e Dark Sun setting where players have 2-4 characters but only play one at a time.

I was wondering if anyone has tried such a system for a campaign and how they thought it worked out.

I'm starting a campaign (eberron) later and was considering using this concept. Any advice would be appreciated.

As I see it the Pros are:
1. Players that get antsy after a few levels in one character concept don't have to kill off their character to try something new.
2. When the 'BIG' finale type battles come along the PCs have the option of playing multiple characters and having a Grand Melee to defeat the BBEG and ALL of his minions. Instead of requiring a bunch of henchmen/cohorts/NPCs to help out.
3. It allows me, as DM, to have a deadlier campaign without too much worry of character death stalling out the game.

And Cons would be:
1. We'd be spending a lot more time at lower levels since we'd be rotating characters in and out. (Provided we didn't level the others up 'off-screen')
2. Players may not get attached to their characters as much and may consider some to be 'cannon fodder'. Though thats more play style and I don't think its going to be a problem with my group.
3. Some players may want to 'switch out' more often than others, which would lead to a more unbalanced party. (This isn't necessarily a Con, but its not something I've had a lot of experience with as a DM)

Finally I thought about Con No.3 and thought what if some players didn't want to switch at all. Would that be too unbalancing? How would you guys make that work?

Thanks for your input.
oma
09-15-06, 07:04 PM I am considering it myself. I am an avid Dark Sun player from way back, but my group has never tried it. I think it will work best when you allow an "off screen" character to level up when the current character levels up. That way they still get some advancement. Not ALL of the off screen characters get a level, mind you, just one of them.

I am really hoping that they will bond with the characters but I am smart enough to know that from experience there is always at least one character in the tree that is basically forgotten about.

The only big drawback is that it takes a long time to make all those characters.

As my campaign begins in Eberron and then begins hopping over to Dark Sun, I will make the 1st set of PC's and the players will play them. As we progress and they decide what they would like, I will let them fill out there character tree with other classes and races. That way they can take advantage of the new setting of Dark Sun and play characters from there without knowing in the beginning that that is where they will be going. I like the idea.

In gives the players a lot of flexibilty to try things they may otherwise not do, as they know if it doesn't work out, they have 3 other PCs to choose from.
Jhaelen
09-16-06, 05:20 AM It's an excellent system if the mortality rate in a campaign is high (which was definitely the case in Dark Sun). However, several players in my DS campaign complained they didn't really get attached to some of their characters. With four characters some tended to become 'filler material'. But the flexibility is great if you (as the DM) don't make it too difficult to switch characters in-game.

In my current 3.5 campaign some players have already created a backup-character should their current character suddenly decease. Since new characters always start midway to the previously attained level it's easy to do and a sensible precaution. Otherwise gameplay tends to slow down or even stop for everyone because the player of the dead character starts creating a new character and is eager to get back into action.
JM
09-16-06, 01:56 PM I am just about to introduce the "character tree" concept in an Eberron campaign as well. I am taking a little different approach to it though. I have "assigned" each character a class umbrella (warrior, arcane, divine, expert) and let them make their class under the umbrella. They are then each asked to make 3 other characters, one from each umbrella. They only have to have the first character completely finished for the first adventure but they have to have the basic concept (race, class, background, goals, etc) of the other 3 done at that time. I have a couple of players that get antsy and like to switch characters every 3-5 months. Instead of having to introduce a new (previously unintroduced) character, I am introducing all of the characters in the first adventure. They will be a "team" of sorts. So, as characters die, get critically wounded (and take time to recover), get side tracked on other adventures, etc. they can go to the well and pull out another character. They can always come back to the first one assuming he has not already died.

I am going to allow the "background characters" to advance in level as well and probably stay a level or two behind the primary charaters. So there will be some negatives to jumping to another character but they won't be too far behind.

My group is pretty good at playing characters that fill holes, so if someone dies and they are the only arcane spellcaster, the next person will come in with someone arcane. Plus, mutliclassing should help with any holes.

My group has done the "assigned umbrella" approach for a while and we all really enjoy it. There is some freshness and anticipation when you are waiting on assignment of the next "umbrella". And no one has any issue playing any type of character. We all like the challenge of playing something different. Plus, with all of the blended classes (beguiler, duskblade, etc.) and multiclassing, you aren't really too pigeonholed with any one umbrella.

We have never done the character tree concept, so I am curious as to what feedback others have.
StevenO
09-16-06, 10:41 PM I like the concept although I believe it needs to be updated.

I day just take your character pool and advance them all at the same rate although you may wish to add some minor penalty for the inactive characters. Third edition isn't quite as forgiving of XP lag as 2nd, yes a lower level 3e player should get more XP per encounter but at lower levels character were often required to double their XP between levels in 2ed.

Provided you keep some mechanism of reality it should be possible for the exact composition of a band to switch between advantures yet assume the "inactive" adventures are still doing something to earn XP so they are ready next time they are called up to the big show.
thanatos_lich
10-10-06, 11:29 AM sounds like a good idea to me. It would give much more flexibility.
Magus Gar Kan
10-10-06, 11:37 AM Yeah we have it, we call it multiple cohorts :D
Jprostovich
10-10-06, 01:20 PM We have used this on my current campaign I am running. I think it works pretty well so far. We are running a campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting. At first I started with a small group, and then all of a sudden, I had a whole bunch of players. Not everyone could make every game session so variances in levels were becoming a problem. One of my players also brought up the idea of having opposing teams, Good and Evil for lack of better words. So the growth of our individual characters would slow considerably while we hopped from one group back to the other. And finally, players do like to try new things. I like to focus on what is fun for everyone first and formost, so the XP tree works great (so far) allthough at times when my inactive characters are gaining xp, it feels a bit like cheating...ah who cares.
I do reccommend keeping careful track of everything however. I have done so with a website. My players can log on after the game session and see what the score is.

have a look
http://liberation-of-tethyr.tripod.com/id4.html
Also, I am not a web designer, the site is not finished, but cut me some slack...
The_Jester
10-10-06, 01:28 PM It might work best if you only had two back-up characters for a total of three. And instead of rotating or only leveling up one it might be better to give both back-up characters 75% of the full xp.

It might work best either in a high mortality game or with players who can't settle on a single character. It's a good option to avoid players retiring characters regulalrly to try something new; a problem most common with new players and those who buy many new books.
razorboy
10-10-06, 02:10 PM I'm running a Ptolus game, and my players have 2-3 backup characters each, with basic backgrounds and explanations of how their backup characters are linked to their primary character (family member, friend, etc.) Since the setting has a large and influential adventurers' guild, introducing new characters is relatively easy. So far, no one died or wanted to play a new character, but my players know that the option is there, and I have ready-made introductions for backup characters. Saves me and the players time and imagination. :)
dizfactor
10-10-06, 05:39 PM A major advantage of this sort of set-up would be to allow more specialized groups to tackle more specialized adventures. If there's a mystery to be solved at the College of Wizardry, everyone brings out their arcane casters, and if you want to organize a big burglary, everyone busts out with their rogues, etc.

However, if you want to switch out characters a lot on an individual basis, it might become necessary to restrict the campaign to a very limited geographical area, so you don't end up in the situation where one party treks across the barren desert for weeks and ends up in a faraway land, and then someone decides it's time to bring out his halfling rogue, who was last seen on the other side of the desert. "Oh, yes, I happened to travel out here, too, for no particular reason!"

If, instead, you're going to have multiple sets of characters, where you essentially have multiple "parties," it's a little easier to maintain continuity in some senses, but you lose some of the flexibility.

I've been thinking of running a tiered character tree system, where every 5 levels or so with their main character, everyone creates a new 1st level character and adds him or her to their stable of characters. The need for something like this was brought to my attention when I was designing a scenario for my current SW RPG group, which involved exploring an old ruin on an alien planet and trying to find a certain artifact before a very nasty rival team did. Lots of wilderness exploration, combat, running, jumping, climbing trees, etc. Which is fine for many of the characters, but the group has a social specialist who's pretty much useless at all of those things (an elegant Falleen crime lord), and who is really at the place in his career when he can leave that sort of thing to his associates, especially since his character thinks the whole artifact-hunting thing is a waste of time. He's incredibly valuable to the group as a negotiator, so putting him in the line of fire when he doesn't have to be seems kind of stupid, especially since it's seriously out of character for him to do so.

You can think of reasons to drag characters like that into adventures they aren't ideally suited for at lower levels, but at higher levels it becomes more and more implausible. At the same time, you don't want to leave the player twiddling his thumbs waiting for the other group members to finish what they're doing. This way, each player could start coming up with a backup character who specializes in all the things their primary character is worst at, for those adventures where they really don't belong, which gives the DM more flexibility in coming up with scenarios without having to shoehorn in something for every single PC to do.
Ateth_Istarlin
10-11-06, 07:15 AM Is this the same thing as the old 'Character Stable'?
(Sorry, but I don't have any Dark Sun stuff):confused:

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
zag01 09-15-06, 04:25 PM	Character Trees are a mechanic introduced back in the 2e Dark Sun setting where players have 2-4 characters but only play one at a time. I was wondering if anyone has tried such a system for a campaign and how they thought it worked out. I'm starting a campaign (eberron) later and was considering using this concept. Any advice would be appreciated. As I see it the Pros are: 1. Players that get antsy after a few levels in one character concept don't have to kill off their character to try something new. 2. When the 'BIG' finale type battles come along the PCs have the option of playing multiple characters and having a Grand Melee to defeat the BBEG and ALL of his minions. Instead of requiring a bunch of henchmen/cohorts/NPCs to help out. 3. It allows me, as DM, to have a deadlier campaign without too much worry of character death stalling out the game. And Cons would be: 1. We'd be spending a lot more time at lower levels since we'd be rotating characters in and out. (Provided we didn't level the others up 'off-screen') 2. Players may not get attached to their characters as much and may consider some to be 'cannon fodder'. Though thats more play style and I don't think its going to be a problem with my group. 3. Some players may want to 'switch out' more often than others, which would lead to a more unbalanced party. (This isn't necessarily a Con, but its not something I've had a lot of experience with as a DM) Finally I thought about Con No.3 and thought what if some players didn't want to switch at all. Would that be too unbalancing? How would you guys make that work? Thanks for your input.
oma 09-15-06, 07:04 PM	I am considering it myself. I am an avid Dark Sun player from way back, but my group has never tried it. I think it will work best when you allow an "off screen" character to level up when the current character levels up. That way they still get some advancement. Not ALL of the off screen characters get a level, mind you, just one of them. I am really hoping that they will bond with the characters but I am smart enough to know that from experience there is always at least one character in the tree that is basically forgotten about. The only big drawback is that it takes a long time to make all those characters. As my campaign begins in Eberron and then begins hopping over to Dark Sun, I will make the 1st set of PC's and the players will play them. As we progress and they decide what they would like, I will let them fill out there character tree with other classes and races. That way they can take advantage of the new setting of Dark Sun and play characters from there without knowing in the beginning that that is where they will be going. I like the idea. In gives the players a lot of flexibilty to try things they may otherwise not do, as they know if it doesn't work out, they have 3 other PCs to choose from.
Jhaelen 09-16-06, 05:20 AM	It's an excellent system if the mortality rate in a campaign is high (which was definitely the case in Dark Sun). However, several players in my DS campaign complained they didn't really get attached to some of their characters. With four characters some tended to become 'filler material'. But the flexibility is great if you (as the DM) don't make it too difficult to switch characters in-game. In my current 3.5 campaign some players have already created a backup-character should their current character suddenly decease. Since new characters always start midway to the previously attained level it's easy to do and a sensible precaution. Otherwise gameplay tends to slow down or even stop for everyone because the player of the dead character starts creating a new character and is eager to get back into action.
JM 09-16-06, 01:56 PM	I am just about to introduce the "character tree" concept in an Eberron campaign as well. I am taking a little different approach to it though. I have "assigned" each character a class umbrella (warrior, arcane, divine, expert) and let them make their class under the umbrella. They are then each asked to make 3 other characters, one from each umbrella. They only have to have the first character completely finished for the first adventure but they have to have the basic concept (race, class, background, goals, etc) of the other 3 done at that time. I have a couple of players that get antsy and like to switch characters every 3-5 months. Instead of having to introduce a new (previously unintroduced) character, I am introducing all of the characters in the first adventure. They will be a "team" of sorts. So, as characters die, get critically wounded (and take time to recover), get side tracked on other adventures, etc. they can go to the well and pull out another character. They can always come back to the first one assuming he has not already died. I am going to allow the "background characters" to advance in level as well and probably stay a level or two behind the primary charaters. So there will be some negatives to jumping to another character but they won't be too far behind. My group is pretty good at playing characters that fill holes, so if someone dies and they are the only arcane spellcaster, the next person will come in with someone arcane. Plus, mutliclassing should help with any holes. My group has done the "assigned umbrella" approach for a while and we all really enjoy it. There is some freshness and anticipation when you are waiting on assignment of the next "umbrella". And no one has any issue playing any type of character. We all like the challenge of playing something different. Plus, with all of the blended classes (beguiler, duskblade, etc.) and multiclassing, you aren't really too pigeonholed with any one umbrella. We have never done the character tree concept, so I am curious as to what feedback others have.
StevenO 09-16-06, 10:41 PM	I like the concept although I believe it needs to be updated. I day just take your character pool and advance them all at the same rate although you may wish to add some minor penalty for the inactive characters. Third edition isn't quite as forgiving of XP lag as 2nd, yes a lower level 3e player should get more XP per encounter but at lower levels character were often required to double their XP between levels in 2ed. Provided you keep some mechanism of reality it should be possible for the exact composition of a band to switch between advantures yet assume the "inactive" adventures are still doing something to earn XP so they are ready next time they are called up to the big show.
thanatos_lich 10-10-06, 11:29 AM	sounds like a good idea to me. It would give much more flexibility.
Magus Gar Kan 10-10-06, 11:37 AM	Yeah we have it, we call it multiple cohorts :D
Jprostovich 10-10-06, 01:20 PM	We have used this on my current campaign I am running. I think it works pretty well so far. We are running a campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting. At first I started with a small group, and then all of a sudden, I had a whole bunch of players. Not everyone could make every game session so variances in levels were becoming a problem. One of my players also brought up the idea of having opposing teams, Good and Evil for lack of better words. So the growth of our individual characters would slow considerably while we hopped from one group back to the other. And finally, players do like to try new things. I like to focus on what is fun for everyone first and formost, so the XP tree works great (so far) allthough at times when my inactive characters are gaining xp, it feels a bit like cheating...ah who cares. I do reccommend keeping careful track of everything however. I have done so with a website. My players can log on after the game session and see what the score is. have a look http://liberation-of-tethyr.tripod.com/id4.html Also, I am not a web designer, the site is not finished, but cut me some slack...
The_Jester 10-10-06, 01:28 PM	It might work best if you only had two back-up characters for a total of three. And instead of rotating or only leveling up one it might be better to give both back-up characters 75% of the full xp. It might work best either in a high mortality game or with players who can't settle on a single character. It's a good option to avoid players retiring characters regulalrly to try something new; a problem most common with new players and those who buy many new books.
razorboy 10-10-06, 02:10 PM	I'm running a Ptolus game, and my players have 2-3 backup characters each, with basic backgrounds and explanations of how their backup characters are linked to their primary character (family member, friend, etc.) Since the setting has a large and influential adventurers' guild, introducing new characters is relatively easy. So far, no one died or wanted to play a new character, but my players know that the option is there, and I have ready-made introductions for backup characters. Saves me and the players time and imagination. :)
dizfactor 10-10-06, 05:39 PM	A major advantage of this sort of set-up would be to allow more specialized groups to tackle more specialized adventures. If there's a mystery to be solved at the College of Wizardry, everyone brings out their arcane casters, and if you want to organize a big burglary, everyone busts out with their rogues, etc. However, if you want to switch out characters a lot on an individual basis, it might become necessary to restrict the campaign to a very limited geographical area, so you don't end up in the situation where one party treks across the barren desert for weeks and ends up in a faraway land, and then someone decides it's time to bring out his halfling rogue, who was last seen on the other side of the desert. "Oh, yes, I happened to travel out here, too, for no particular reason!" If, instead, you're going to have multiple sets of characters, where you essentially have multiple "parties," it's a little easier to maintain continuity in some senses, but you lose some of the flexibility. I've been thinking of running a tiered character tree system, where every 5 levels or so with their main character, everyone creates a new 1st level character and adds him or her to their stable of characters. The need for something like this was brought to my attention when I was designing a scenario for my current SW RPG group, which involved exploring an old ruin on an alien planet and trying to find a certain artifact before a very nasty rival team did. Lots of wilderness exploration, combat, running, jumping, climbing trees, etc. Which is fine for many of the characters, but the group has a social specialist who's pretty much useless at all of those things (an elegant Falleen crime lord), and who is really at the place in his career when he can leave that sort of thing to his associates, especially since his character thinks the whole artifact-hunting thing is a waste of time. He's incredibly valuable to the group as a negotiator, so putting him in the line of fire when he doesn't have to be seems kind of stupid, especially since it's seriously out of character for him to do so. You can think of reasons to drag characters like that into adventures they aren't ideally suited for at lower levels, but at higher levels it becomes more and more implausible. At the same time, you don't want to leave the player twiddling his thumbs waiting for the other group members to finish what they're doing. This way, each player could start coming up with a backup character who specializes in all the things their primary character is worst at, for those adventures where they really don't belong, which gives the DM more flexibility in coming up with scenarios without having to shoehorn in something for every single PC to do.
Ateth_Istarlin 10-11-06, 07:15 AM	Is this the same thing as the old 'Character Stable'? (Sorry, but I don't have any Dark Sun stuff):confused: